Tracy Childers Interview

Editor:

This time, we're chatting with Tracy Childers, an entrepreneur who's behind one of the most celebrated internet marketing success stories, WishList Products. Now WishList are arguably most famous for WishList Member that powers thousands and thousands of online membership sites across the internet and around the world.

Editor:

So, Tracy, it's a pleasure to meet you.

Tracy Childers:

Well, thank you. Appreciate you having me.

Editor:

You have been around on the internet now for many, many years. Can I ask how your journey started?

Tracy Childers:

Well, that's a great question. It's maybe a unique background. Well, I grew up, when I was a kid, I had a father who was an entrepreneur and all kinds of businesses. The first, primarily, was automotive repair shops. And then eventually, he just took his entrepreneur background and started investing in real estate. And then after he started investing in real estate, he started teaching people about how he invested in real estate. And back then, the only thing that was really around was direct marketing and also seminars. So, he did a lot of teaching at seminars. So, back then, at the ripe age of 11 or 12, I had my job was the director of shipping, which basically meant I duplicated audio tapes and packaged them up to send them to the people that purchased them at the seminar over the weekend.

Tracy Childers:

So, I kind of took that and recognized just how the world was just, even way back then, this is a long time ago, I'm talking in 1982, people were hungry to buy information, all kinds of information. It wasn't just learning how to invest in real estate, but just all kinds of things. And just over the course of the years, it naturally kind of evolved into things were being sold online in terms of the internet. And I was just always fascinated with technology. So the internet just kind of became a real good fit for me.

Editor:

Wow. Okay. I mean, it's amazing that that's been your journey into the online world. I mentioned WishList Member at the very beginning of this, but for anyone who hasn't heard of it, I guess it's time for us to explain more about WishList Member. Could you just give us a bit of background and tell us what the software itself does?

Tracy Childers:

Sure. So WishList Member runs, as you mentioned, as a WordPress plugin. And, way back in 2008 or so, a close friend of mine, Stu McLaren, and I decided that we would become partners and set up a company that would create software to run a membership site. And the backstory of it was, he was trying to set up a membership site of his own online, and was really, really frustrated with the current solutions that were available back then. Really, there wasn't much around back then. One was really inexpensive and was available to the masses, and it was really complicated to set up. It didn't have anything to do with WordPress. Then, there was another system that also had nothing to do with WordPress, and it was very, very expensive, but they kind of walked you through everything.

Tracy Childers:

And so, we saw that the majority of the people that we were talking to were tired of building sites with HTML where they had to hire a webmaster. And things were starting to move in the direction of WordPress with plugins and themes. And, Stu said how frustrated he was. And I said, "Well, why don't you just build something?" He said, "I don't think you heard me. I'm having trouble using these other pieces of software that are already created, much less, be able to create one of my own." And I said, "Well, why don't we team up? I have been developing software for quite some time," at that point, "and I think that we could build something fairly easily." And, believe it or not, we built this, really in mind, that he could use it to run an idea for a membership site. And then, we would create a company that was also running as a membership site as well.

Tracy Childers:

And it wasn't really our intention to create specifically that product the way it is today. We knew that we wanted to sell information. And back then, way back then, if you've been around WordPress at all, you've probably heard of a popular plugin for eCommerce called WooCommerce. Well, back in the day, that was a company called WooThemes. And WooThemes, they were one of the early companies that were building themes for WordPress. And if you know anything about WordPress, themes mean how it looks, and then plugins were how it functions. And so, they were creating all these themes, and they had a membership. "Hey, you can sign up for our membership, and you'll get a new theme every month."

Tracy Childers:

And what we saw was there were two things with WordPress, themes and plugins. And everything was going in the way of themes, and plugins really weren't quite popular yet. There were a lot of plugins, but most of them were free. And we said, "Hey, what if we became the first membership that sold plugins. You would get a new plugin every month." And that was our initial idea. And in order to create that, we had to create our own system that would run our membership site, and that's what WishList Member was. And, at the time, we really had no idea how important that first plugin would be, and how many people had the same need for something like that.

Editor:

Yeah. I mean, it has become the go-to membership site plugin on the internet. And I'm sure that many people who are either reading or listening to this have come across WishList Member. That was back in 2008 that you had the idea. How has it evolved over time, Tracy, and what challenges have you faced along that route?

Tracy Childers:

Oh, wow. I don't know how much time you have. So, it's a great question though, because I'd say... First, I want to clarify one thing. When we talk about WishList Member, and we talk about a membership site, there's typically a little bit of confusion that comes up. And people say, "Well, what exactly does that mean?" They hear the term membership site, and they immediately think, "Oh, that's where I pay you something every month to get something." Well, no, that's actually a subscription model, a business plan. We charge you something per month. But a membership can come in many shapes or forms. It could be a free membership. Ultimately, we kind of break it down and we say, a membership plugin controls access to what people have, meaning, they have to log in first with their username and a password, and then they can get access to this, and these people can get access to that. So, that's kind of the clarification.

Tracy Childers:

Now, if you move on to saying, "Hey, all the way back in 2008, what were the big challenges and roadblocks?" Well, really, when you look at it back then, there was not a clear example of how to structure a plugin business. I mentioned that there were a lot of people selling themes. There weren't a lot of people selling plugins. There were a lot of free plugins, and they put them in the WordPress repository, and then people would just download them for free. But, we were always about selling information or selling products or selling software. And so, we had to figure a lot of stuff out, in terms of licencing and stuff. And nowadays, so much of that has just been figured out, and you can just look at the space and say, "Oh, this is what people do in order to sell a plugin." So that was the number one problem, when you go way, way back.

Tracy Childers:

Moving forward a bit, if you understand where WordPress was back in 2008, they were still fairly young. They had been around for a little while, but there were some other things like Joomla and Drupal and other systems. And, WordPress just continued to move forward and being the most popular. They got to be the most popular pretty quick, but now, they're, by far and away, more popular. They run, I think, over, it's between 35% and 40% of the websites online. And this is way back even before there was Wix and Squarespace and stuff. So, if you look at the way technology works, and it was always changing, it actually was a challenge, but it also created an opportunity for us, because I mentioned that we weren't really clear what the business plan was and how you sell plugins. But back then, Hey, buy this. For very, very short amount of time, we would sell the software. And then, okay, now, what about updates and support? There was a very short window when we were just like, "Let's just try to get stuff out the door." And we hadn't even thought through that.

Tracy Childers:

As time went on, we felt like we need to figure out some sort of way to sell updates and support ongoing. And we had a big challenge. We said, "Okay, well, what about when it comes to new features?" And we would do our versioning based on new features, and that was a little bit of a challenge. Until finally, it all got sorted out, and it's just basically the way the whole, I guess, ecosphere works now. People basically buy software, in terms of WordPress plugins. And they buy them for, you get access to the software and you get one year of updates and support. It doesn't matter what version, like Windows 10 or Windows 11. It was basically on a timeline. And so finally, we've sorted all that stuff out, but basically, it's always a moving target. Many times I've said, it's almost like building an airplane as you were flying it.

Editor:

That's a great way of putting it. Were you surprised by the success?

Tracy Childers:

Actually, I really was. It was pretty early on, when Stu and I realized, "Hey, we really have something." And then, as it would go on, we're like, okay. We went for maybe the first... Not quite a whole year, but the first, at least, eight months, where we had not spent a dime on advertising. We started an affiliate programme early on. And so, really, the word was getting spread by having an affiliate programme and word of mouth. And, that was really exciting, because I think that a long time ago, I kind of figured out a formula, in terms of, I mentioned that I had created software before this, and the formula was pretty simple. Take a look at what's popular online, and see if you can find a hole in what's available. And, it's probably best explained by a previous piece of software that I had created. It's back when everybody was trying to figure out online video.

Tracy Childers:

This is before YouTube. It turns out YouTube was pretty popular. But I had a piece of software. People were trying to convert video back then, and back then, are you going to put it in the Windows Media format, the QuickTime format? And nobody knew. And at that point in time, it was flash video. And there was a piece of software that converted your video into flash video, and it helped you make a player and put it on your site. And I found that people were saying the same thing over and over, "That's great software, but it's really complicated to use."

Tracy Childers:

And so, what I figured out back then is, if you can find something that everybody's talking about, but nobody's meeting the actual problems that people are discussing, then you have a real good formula for a good product. And so, we saw that with that same situation. Lots of people were talking about WordPress. Lots of people are talking about membership sites, how do I deliver digital products. And, we were just looking around. We were trying to find something ourselves. And it just wasn't available. Fast forward to today, unfortunately, a lot of other people recognized our success kind of early on, and now you have lots of options.

Editor:

It's true enough. I mean, I guess though, that simple decision back in 2008 has changed your life in many ways.

Tracy Childers:

Yeah, it really has. I mentioned, when I was younger and I was kind of fresh out of college, and I was trying to decide what direction I would go. And, I had a few different job opportunities. Oddly enough, all my connections were in the information product world. And, I was looking at working with a company that sold software training, and they were selling it at seminars and also on videos. And, I was pretty fascinated by the opportunity, but I ultimately decided that I would get involved in a startup. So, my father and I actually started a company, and we were selling information online, and we grew the company. And, when I was aged 26, I had 35 people working for me.

Editor:

Wow.

Tracy Childers:

And man, it was really, really hard. And I said to myself, "I never want to do that. I never want to do that again." So, once I finished up with that, I kind of started working on my own and, really, small business consultant and really just, maybe I'll hire a few contractors. But then as WishList Member started growing, it was natural that we had to add more and more people to our team. And so, it has changed my life.

Tracy Childers:

But I think one of the biggest impacts is getting to the point where like, yeah, this is just how it works. When you get a certain level of success, it's largely based on what kind of a team you put together. And one of the, I guess, most gratifying things that really has changed my life is to see the team that we've put together. And, some people have worked for us for... We just crossed over 13 years, so we've had people that have been with us for well over 10 years now. And, to see them put their kids through school, based on the fact that they work for us is really exciting and gratifying.

Editor:

That's amazing. I mean, how big is the company now? How many members of the team do you have?

Tracy Childers:

We have about 18 and maybe a couple that are part-timers. So, it's roughly around 20. And, it's a great team. And, we all work virtually, so it's just a completely different world. We've always done it that way. And so, people work from all of over the world. Everybody works from home. But, we do our online meetings and go through what we're going to build and what we're going to change and all that stuff. So it's pretty fun.

Editor:

So when the pandemic hit, it wasn't a massive impact to you or your team. It was almost like, well, this is the norm. Everyone's just catching up with us now.

Tracy Childers:

Oh man, you said it well. It was really interesting, because, in many ways, I was looking at the world, and everybody now starts using Zoom and stuff. And I'm like, "Well, you guys are just kind of finally catching on. This is how the world works." So really, it didn't affect us, in terms of working with our team, at all. It was a little bit challenging for me personally, because I wasn't getting out of the house very much on the weekends and things like that, which I found is really helpful, just in terms of balancing your life. If you work from home, and you're home all the time and you never get out, eventually you get a little tapped out and like, "I don't need to do another Zoom meeting with anybody."

Editor:

Yeah, yeah. And in terms of WishList now, obviously you've got WishList Member, and you have other products as well in your portfolio.

Tracy Childers:

Yeah. That's a really good question, and that kind of goes back to maybe one of the earlier challenges that you asked about, that I did not mention. I mentioned that we were planning to build different plugins every month. Well, it turns out that it's a little bit more complicated than you would think. Because when you're building software, you really want to think through all of the ways that people are going to use it. And when we were trying to crank out a new plugin every month, I mean, it was just a rapid cycle. Like, "Okay, we got to do this, this, this, this, and then just, let's move on. We got to move on to the next one." And, it got to the point and I said, "This is not sustainable, and we need to rethink this business strategy."

Tracy Childers:

And so, we stopped making all these plugins, and we really put the focus back on WishList Member. And there was a challenge at.. The way WordPress was evolving, and the way the competition was growing, I took a step back, and this was... I mentioned Stu, my friend that he and I started the company with, and he had decided to move on, maybe like six years into it. And, I said, "We need to step back and look at what we're doing." And so, WishList Member ultimately started to make things easier. And, over time, with all the feedback and "Oh, could it do this? Could it do that? Could it do that?", it started to become more and more complicated, because we had piled feature on top of feature, and then it didn't really make all that sense. So it was a real big challenge for us to step back and say, "We need to re-engineer this thing."

Tracy Childers:

And so, we looked at everything we were doing, and everything that we wanted to be able to do, and we kind of had to build a new structure. And it took us a long time to rebuild it, much longer than we ever expected to. The first version that we built, it took us about three months to get a working solution. And that was a really good solution, in three months. It's very fast, because you don't have anything else distracting you. But when you're building on top of a system, and you're trying to think through what else could it do, and we have to be careful that we're not going to break compatibility of all these people that are relying on WishList Member for their website. It took us two and a half years to rebuild the solution, making sure that nothing would break, and then it would be more robust and more scalable in the future. And, once we did that, it was a long challenge, but it really put us on a course to be able to open up to a lot of new opportunities in the future.

Editor:

And how did that decision come about, Tracy? Because obviously that, as you say, it's such a big undertaking to take an already successful product. I know that you were spending time developing it and reversioning the old version. But to take that huge step to go, actually, "No, we're going to start again from the ground up," how did you feel at the time? And, as you say, it took you two and a half years. You're expecting it to be much shorter. But, what was going through your mind at the time? Were you frustrated? Do you find it too much of a challenge in some ways?

Tracy Childers:

Yeah. If I... I'll just open up and I'll be honest with you on this part. Part of what you didn't hear in that story is that, with all these competition, I was saying, "How do we direct the company to make sure that we are still at the top of our field?" We've got all these competitors, and I kept thinking, "Okay, we need to also build a theme, because this is what our people need, people that are using our software." And we actually spent a little over a year working on a theme that would answer a particular set of problems that I saw. And, at the end of that, it just wasn't going the way that I really wanted it to. And, I had to step back and say... It was a really, really tough decision. "We need to stop. Even though we put a whole year of work in on this project, we need to stop and get back to our core."

Tracy Childers:

Because sometimes, it's really important for you to understand what is driving your whole business. And, if we kept working on something that was not really the core, and recognizing that the core needed some updates. So, that was one of the toughest calls I ever made, was to say, "Let's stop, after doing all that work, and let's put all of our focus on this." And, here we are. That was roughly five years ago, maybe four. And it was the right decision to make. But it was challenging though, that's for sure.

Editor:

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask, I mean, which thing in your business endeavors are you most proud of? And is it the fact that you did that?

Tracy Childers:

Yeah. I think that... There's a combination. And, when I think about what am I most proud of, I think that hearing back from people that say, "Wow, your solution has really changed my life, because now, I'm able to do everything that I was wanting to. And I had all this frustration before I was able to start using your product." And, we have certainly grown since that first version. And now we've crossed over where it's running on little over 100,000 different websites. And so, we don't really track all of the numbers. We just know how many times the software has been activated. So, when I see that it's running on somebody else's website, and I see that they're using our software to really impact other people's lives, I think that's one of the most gratifying things over the whole time that I can think of.

Editor:

Wow. What would be your top tips? For anyone who's thinking of starting or growing an online business, are there any insights you'd like to share?

Tracy Childers:

Yeah, that's a really important one. Way back when, when I was younger, you kind of have to realize, okay, what is it that you're good at? Because, if you try to do something that you're not good at, it usually ends up failing miserably. And I'll give you a quick little analogy is, I played baseball when I was a kid. But then, as you get a little bit older, that turns into softball. And, I'm not a real big, strong guy. I had a friend, one of my best friends, he had probably the most home runs in the league. But what happened, a lot of the times is, he would try to swing for the fence, and he would hit it pretty much straight to one of the outfielders, and they would catch it and he would be out.

Tracy Childers:

And I was like, "I'm never going to be able to hit this thing over the fence. But what I could do is I could decide where I wanted to hit it." And I could always hit it right over the first baseman's head. This is really easy for me. This is like, I just want to get a base hit. I just want to get a base hit.

Editor:

Yeah.

Tracy Childers:

And, I kind of took that, and I kind of moved it into business. I see so many people that are trying. They've never done any real business yet, and they're just swinging for the fence. And, that's not where you get your experience. You get your experience by just doing something. Just do something small. It doesn't have to be the next thing to change the internet. Just do something small, because in that small thing, you're going to learn a whole lot of stuff. And so, I think that's probably the best piece of advice. I see so many people trying to build a site, and it has to have every piece of functionality. No, just make it simple.

Editor:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Childers:

And just do something.

Editor:

Yeah. And that is the key, isn't it? Just to, baby steps, in many ways.

Tracy Childers:

Baby steps, for sure.

Editor:

Yeah. And who do you look up to, Tracy, around the industry? There's obviously many influential figures. Is there anybody that you look up to that you admire?

Tracy Childers:

Yeah. I've had a really fortunate life, because I've attended so many marketing conferences, so I've met so many different people. And, just real quickly, I know that you have interviewed Armand Morin at one point in time. He's a great friend of mine. He was an early mentor. I learned a lot from him, especially how to create software. Jim Edwards, he works with Russell Brunson. And, I look up to both Jim and Russell. And also, one of the pioneers of the internet marketing is John Reese. He was one of the first guys to do a big product launch called Marketing Secrets, way back in the day. And lately, I've really been paying a lot of attention to Marie Forleo. I don't know Marie Forleo personally, like the other people, but wow, she does some great stuff, and she creates amazing content, and she's really making an impact in people's lives.

Editor:

Fantastic. And, in terms of yourself and your own business now, what are you working on right now? Is there any insights you can share? I'm looking for exclusives here, Tracy.

Tracy Childers:

Well, I can't tell you everything, but I will tell you a little bit of a hint. When we were creating all these plugins that eventually I said, "We just can't do this," we really cranked out some really, really good plugins back then. Unfortunately, they kind of had to sit on the shelf for a while. And so, what we're working on right now, we're taking some of our older, the most popular plugins, and we're also rebuilding new functionality. And, the way that I look at the... You mentioned the pandemic earlier. And, once the pandemic hit, the online training business just exploded all over the place. People are now learning more and more from home. And, WishList Member has always been about protecting content and adding functionality. But now, we're actually building a course builder, and that has not been shared with very many people. And, we're also adding gamification to it, where you can earn points and badges and everything. I just finished a meeting right before this interview, and we are really close to that.

Editor:

Exciting times ahead. And now you have it, an exclusive. You heard it here first. Tracy, you still write a lot don't you? Well, I know that you obviously write articles for the WishList Member website, marketing articles in a way. Is that something that you enjoy, or is that something that you feel you have to do?

Tracy Childers:

That's a good question. A lot of times, it's really stuff that I feel like I kind of have to do. I think that more what I enjoy doing is maybe creating video training tutorials. And, I wish that I had more time to do stuff like that. I think that probably the most rewarding thing is actually building the software, and then explaining people how they can use it. But yeah, writing is not necessarily one of my favorite passions.

Editor:

For anybody that is looking to launch a membership site, why would you say that they should choose WishList Member, above every other opportunity, every other piece of software out there?

Tracy Childers:

Well, I think the reason that you should use WishList Member is because we were one of the earlier solutions piece, so we had a lot of exposure to what people wanted and both needed. And so, we have created it in probably the most flexible way you could possibly imagine. And, we've also spent a great deal of time with what we call our integrations. So, our integrations work with other pieces of software. And, by far and away, we have the most integrations of any software similar to what we do. And, I think that we're at a point where it would be really challenging for people to catch up with us on integrations, but we are also always dedicated to continuing with innovation. And so, that when we see things that are changing in the marketplace, oh, this is something that people would clearly need, we try to stay on top of those things ourselves, but we also always want to hear back from our customers and hear their feedback. And we take that real seriously.

Editor:

Sure. I mean, yours is a fascinating story, and we could chat for hours, I'm sure. But for anybody who is looking to launch a membership site, how can they find out more about WishList Member?

Tracy Childers:

Well, the easiest way to do that is just to go to wishlistmember.com. We have a short video tutorial, that kind of high level overview, 90-second, explaining what all it does, and lots of information about the different systems and services that we integrate with. And we also have a lot of videos on our YouTube channel. But wishlistmember.com is probably the easiest way to get ahold of us.

Editor:

Excellent. Tracy, I've loved catching up with you today. Thank you again for your time. It's been lovely to hear the background story about WishList Member and WishList Products. I wish you every success with the future products that you are working on right now. And, it's been a pleasure, as I say, talking to you, so thank you very much.

Tracy Childers:

Well, I sure do appreciate that. It's been an honor to be here with you, and I certainly appreciate all the kind words as well.