Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Johnson.
RipplePop was founded by Michael and Jordan. We have been best friends our whole lives. Both of us ended up becoming web developers and after working at both large agencies and small studios, together we decided it was time to do better things. We saw a huge opportunity in providing the best monthly support plan for WordPress and RipplePop was born.
From early on we wanted to pick our differentiating factor with RipplePop. There are a ton of other WordPress maintenance companies out there (WP Site Care, WP Fix It, WP Curve/GoDaddy), so why choose us?
The answer became clear as we started our journey. We gained clients and learned every step of the way how can we provide a superior service. Our edge became obvious after talking with our clients. They loved working with us, they loved the way we manage our tasks, and they loved our responsiveness. We knew we had something that no other service did, we had a two-man team that people trusted.
From that day on, we decided we would limit our client cap. Instead of chasing endless growth and hiring new employees as the service quality suffers, we opted to provide a fixed number of clients with the best WordPress support plan you can find.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
When you start and run your own business there will always be struggles and roadblocks. For Michael and I, we are not immune to speed bumps and have overcome a lot of challenges to get where we are. One of our main struggles has been finding out differentiator. What makes us unique versus the many other services who provide a similar offering? Another major struggle has been where to do spend our team. We really are just a team of two, so we handle EVERYTHING. From payroll to the actual work, Michael and I are always working to better our process to optimize our time. Time really is money, and when you are a team of two, every second count.
We overcame our differentiator obstacle by embracing our identity. We thought a two-person team was going to be a weak point, when in fact it became our most valuable asset. Clients who love us, love us because they know us by name. They know that each editor support task they submit really will be handled by the two people the entrust their site support to. This may be a turn off for large sites/clients, but that also helps us weed out clients that might not be a good fit. As we embraced our identity, we saw that another differentiator was we provided a superior service in terms of quality.
As a team of two, we can fully manage the quality of our product. This allows us to run a very tight ship and our clients have come to appreciate this. We go above and beyond for our clients in an effort to make them say “Wow, I can not believe I am getting this level of service for the price I am paying.” If we can get them to say that, we don’t need to spend a dime on marketing.
The other challenge we have overcome and continually work to improve is our time. Since there is only so much time in the day to sell our service, help our clients, and manage our books we spend a lot of our free time learning how we can better optimize our process. One example of this is our ticket system. We originally were accepting tickets via email. Email us your support request and we get to it, then reply to your email with updates. Pretty simple, but over time cracks began to appear. Emails fell through the cracks and things became hard to manage with so many messages waiting for us in our inboxes.
We then optimized our process due to the time we were spending emailing and not doing tasks. We decided to use our favorite project management tool, Trello, as our ticket system. We open a private board and invite the client. We then have a project board that explains or service, explains how to write a ticket, etc etc. This setup saves us a ton of upfront time. It also allows there to be a central hub for clients to check on the progress of their tickets. It is such a beautifully simple solution that many of our clients have transitioned their entire business to Trello for managing their own internal projects. This is just one example of how we are constantly trying to optimize how we spend our time. The more we can get systems in place that save us time, the more we can service our clients.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about RipplePop – what should we know?
We specialize in WordPress maintenance and support but we often go way beyond that for our clients. We are most known for our service quality and personal touch. People tend to trust us because of how transparent we are. Our clients can see the progress of all of their tickets, they can contact us at any time, and they always know Michael or I will reply. This builds an extreme amount of trust and allows us to open up larger conversations with clients.
I am most proud of the ways we have approached growth. Most companies see growth as more employees to accommodate more business. We go in the opposite direction. We never plan to grow our team, rather, we plan to grow our service offerings to better serve our limited clients. There are many ways to grow and I am easily most proud of our growth strategy and approach to growth.
What sets us apart all goes back to our size. Any company in this space makes the same mistake (from what we have seen). They get so big and get so many clients that the quality of the service begins to fall. Then customers complain and look for alternatives. We saw this trend and knew we could do better.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Everyone in my life deserves credit. Michael and I started this business because so many people along our journey have been so supportive of us. From professors to family and friends, everyone who has come into our lives and impacted it in a positive way has contributed to RipplePop. It would take far too long to list them all, but it goes a long way when a few good people in your life encourage you to pursue your dreams. Thank you to those of you who encourage others to pursue what makes them happy over what brings them money.
Pricing:
- $79/month – Unlimited 30 minute tasks and support for your WordPress site
- $99/month – Unlimited 30 minute tasks and support + hosting and daily backups
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ripplepop.com
- Email: michaeljordan@ripplepop.com
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