Post Status Happiness Hour Session Twenty

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Stephanie Hudson from Stellar WP about Stellar Pay, a new payment gateway plugin for WordPress users. Stephanie, the Product Marketing Manager, discusses her background in web development and marketing. They explore Stellar Pay’s features, including its integration with Stripe, subscription management, and no additional fees for essential features. They also address e-commerce challenges like shipping and taxes and future plans for Stellar Pay, including potential PayPal integration. Additionally, Stephanie teases the upcoming launch of Stellar Sites, a new website solution combining the best features of popular platforms with WordPress’s power.

Top Takeaways:

• Stellar Pay Simplifies E-Commerce: Stellar Pay is designed for those who either actively run e-commerce businesses or avoid it because they find it difficult. The tool aims to make the process easier and more accessible.
• Free and Easy to Get Started: Users can download Stellar Pay for free from the website. Signing up directly on the site comes with added benefits like onboarding tips and extra resources to help users get started.
• Stellar Pay Provides E-Commerce Tips: The team behind Stellar Pay offers a newsletter that provides useful insights and strategies for running an online store successfully. Michelle encouraged users to subscribe for ongoing guidance

Mentioned In The Show:

• StellarWP
• Stellar Pay
• Liquid Web
• Give WP
• The Event Calendar
• SolidWP
• Learndash
• Restrict Content Pro
• Devin Walker
• Stripe
• Joel Butler
• PayPal
• Poodle Press
• Ben Ritner 
• WP Accessibility Day
• Solid Academy
• Jono Alderson

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Stephanie Hudson (Product Marketing Manager, StellarWP)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:02  Hey, we’re live with the Post Status Happiness Hour. And today my guest is Stephanie Hudson. Hey, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hudson 00:00:08  What’s up? Hey, everybody. It’s my fault we’re late. I’m sorry. 

Michelle Frechette 00:00:15  It’s okay. It’s only a  minute and a half, but I. You know, when you’re in my seat, you start to panic, like, is she coming or. Oh, my God, is she. Is she okay? Like all those things. Anyway, I’m glad you’reokey. You never know.

Stephanie Hudson 00:00:25  Oh for sure. You never know with me.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:27  Well, with anybody, quite honestly, not just you. But, If you don’t know already. Stephanie, I do work together at StellarWP. and I invited her to be my guest today so we could talk about StellarPay, which is the newest offering from, StellarWP. And, pretty cool stuff. I’m going to put. Let’s see. I’ll put a banner across the board if you’re interested in learning more. And so we’ll refer to that a couple times.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:52  But Stephanie, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself. How are you? Where are you located? What do you do? You know all the things.

Stephanie Hudson 00:01:01  I, oh, man. There’s so many. So. I’m in the southeast. I’m just outside Charlotte, in a little town called Denver, which is, because it’s Denver of the East.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:14  It’s not the Colorado variety.

Stephanie Hudson 00:01:18  Everybody gets it confused, obviously. And, so I’m we’ve had, we actually had winter this year. It was like in the teens and everything, but it’s January 29th and it’s 66 degrees outside now. I don’t know what that is in, Celsius. Sorry.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:36  That’s all right.

Stephanie Hudson 00:01:37  Friends.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:37  But negative. Negative. Something probably.

Stephanie Hudson 00:01:41  It’s lovely. It’s perfect out right now.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:42  OKay.

Stephanie Hudson 00:01:43  That’s how it rolls. Roll in the south. but I come from a long line of a long history of WordPress and web in general. I call myself, not proudly, but lately I’m starting to feel more and more like a web granny because I’ve just been, my first website.

Stephanie Hudson 00:02:05  My first Hello World was in 96, which means next year is 30 years, which is nuts. Also, 96 was only supposed to be 20 years ago, though, right? Like, I don’t understand. yeah, that math, it’s not math thing, but.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:20  I know every time I remind myself how old my daughter is, that means that I am that much older and that she was born before 96.

Stephanie Hudson 00:02:29  Crazy.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:30  We’ll just. We’ll just leave it at that.

Stephanie Hudson 00:02:32  Yeah. So, yeah, I’ve been a web geek. I wanted to be a designer. I always wanted to be an artist or a designer. And, you know what it’s like. I just wasn’t ever that good at it, I guess. I don’t know, but I wanted to figure out I didn’t want to be a starving artist. I just wanted to be an artist. And so I thought, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:51  It’s hard to get over the starving part, though, isn’t it? That’s like how you start. Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:02:55  So. But back in 1996, you know, I was taking some college classes and, and I thought, maybe I’ll, I was taking commercial art, which. Why is it not still called that? That’s so much better of a name than graphic design, right? Commercial art. It’s perfect.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:12  I mean, they sound a little more like. You should be paid higher.

Stephanie Hudson 00:03:15  Right? And then there’s, you know, I was like, I don’t know, it’s 1996, right? I’m like, maybe this whole internet thing is going to stick around. Maybe I’ll design web pages. You know, we call them web pages. And I said, well, if I’m going to design them, I gotta figure out how they work, right, so I can do it. Right. So I took one HTML class, and, when that Hello World went through the internet and up onto the monitor in the front of the class, I was like, what? Like, it blew my mind. It blew my mind.

Stephanie Hudson 00:03:45  It was so fun. And that was it. That was it. So I was just down that.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:49  Bit the bug.

Stephanie Hudson 00:03:50  Ever since. Yeah. So which was. Which was awesome. I’m I love it. I love the whole industry. I love being a geek. I love helping people. All of it. So anyway, I’ve had I’ve done I like to tell folks I’ve done like all the things meaning like I’ve been freelancer, a part timer. I’ve had a full time job. I’ve had my own business. I’ve had a partner in a business. I’ve had I mean, you name it, like any configuration within which you could build websites for people. I’ve, I’ve tried, I’ve done it, so. And, I’m currently in sort of a, a new venture of that as well, where I’m shifting a little bit more into the specifically into the marketing side. Not not as much on the like building of the websites, which I haven’t really been the builder, you know, for a while, although I like to tinker, but but yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:04:53  So I’m, I’m now at, sitting at a desk right down the hall from you, Michelle at Stellar WP.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:58  I mean, the the remote hall. How do we cover?

Stephanie Hudson: The virtual hall. Yeah. 

Michelle Frechette: Virtual hall? Yes. We’re down the virtual hall. We have a virtual water water cooler in our Slack as well. So that’s all cool.

Stephanie Hudson 00:05:10  We do.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:10  Well, we have. And we have some comments here. Let me show you real quick and then you can tell us. Yeah. So Femi, Femi says hi, Michelle. Hi, Stephanie. Saw StellarPay a  few days ago and planning to test it out soon, so that’s pretty cool. Thanks, Femi. Nice to ‘see’ you. Nice to have you here. Nice to have you here. So what’s your title? I don’t think I even remember now. What’s your title at Stellar? I mean we all have titles  I just don’t remember.

Stephanie Hudson 00:05:32  I’m the product marketing manager for Stellar. Now, this is for. For those of you who may not know, because I didn’t before, I literally started working there like Stellar is it’s sort of a conglomeration of things, right? So Stellar WP is the umbrella under which, Liquid Web basically has, acquired a bunch of brands and they are brands that you listener. Dear listener, you’ve heard of them? Right. We’ve got The Events Calendar. We’ve got Give WP, Kadence. I mean, the list goes on, but there’s so many. Oh Solid. Secure. Like, I was a customer of multiple of these.

Michelle Frechette: Learndash. 

Stephanie Hudson: Yeah. It’s like you just keep thinking like, oh my gosh, them two. Oh, yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:24  Restrict Content Pro. Yeah for sure. Which is really nice that we have some and some really talented people. came with those brands, including me. I came with gifts.

Stephanie Hudson 00:06:36  Yay. It’s so, It’s so fun, though. It’s really exciting to see all that and that. Yeah, that it is this sort of, you know, like conglomeration, sort of like a I. Well, I’ll tell you what I’m trying to say in a second.

Stephanie Hudson 00:06:49  So what I’m doing is helping to market the very first product that is built at Stellar, not acquired. So I like to say this is the first Stellar Pay is the  first bio baby everybody. All the other stepchildren. We still love them, just like they’re our own.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:06  They were adopted, but they’re not blood. That’s right.

Stephanie Hudson 00:07:09  Yeah, but we we love them just the same. We chose them, you know? That’s how it.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:13 Yep, absolutely.

Stephanie Hudson 00:07:14  That’s it’s special. So anyway, but the, so Stellar Pay is the very first of several that are already lined up to come out of Stellar WP development. So that’s super exciting. And it’s cool that I got I get to be a part of it. I think it’s it’s really awesome. And the it’s the brainchild. Stellar Pay is the brainchild of the same fine gentleman who came up with Give WP, Devin Walker.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:45  Absolutely.

Stephanie Hudson 00:07:46  So we both get to work with with that like jerk, right? Like nobody gets to be like that good at that many things and also tall and you know like has a gorgeous girlfriend who’s lovely like all of it, right. Like. 

Michelle Frechette 00:08:01  You want to hate him, but he’s just too nice.

Stephanie Hudson 00:08:03  I hope he has webbed feet I’ve never seen without his shoes. But there’s got to be something, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:08:10  I know he’s, like, seven feet tall. I know he’s not seven feet tall, but he’s close to it. Probably. And as long as I’ve known him, he’s just been such a kind and gentle person. But. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:08:19  Yeah. He’s awesome. We’ve had a good time getting, like, working together on getting this out into the world. So I guess that brings us to like, what the heck is it.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:32  With my next question? So what is Stellar Pay?

Stephanie Hudson 00:08:34  Stellar Pay is a payment gateway plugin. It is. It’s a tiny little piece of your e-commerce store that can have a big impact. So basically you’ve got WooCommerce set up and you have a Stripe account where you want to get money into your bank account from and Steller Pay connects the two. Now there are other plugins that also do this.

Stephanie Hudson 00:09:00  So what sets Steller Pay apart is a few things. One, it brings tons of Stripe functionality right into your WordPress, WordPress dashboard. Let’s say that five times fast. So coming from my background of, you know, building sites for myself, building sites for clients, all of that, it’s the the frustrations with e-commerce are many and varied. And I’m seeing sort of some trends right now away from e-commerce. I’m hearing a lot of folks in the community that are there just saying, no, they don’t want to. They’re not even going to do it. And also, we’re seeing a bit of an exodus to things like Shopify and stuff because the. It’s just too complicated for WordPress.. Oh, look, we’ve got Ramone. One of our, one of the developers of Stellar Pay is watching. On live.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:05  No pressure, though, for us who talk. We’re talking about it.

Stephanie Hudson 00:10:08  Oh, I’m not gonna cross any of his lines. Don’t worry. But, So. So because there’s this frustration, there’s there’s plenty of pain points for us to address.

Stephanie Hudson 00:10:19  Right. And one of them is for me, this is a scenario I would see repeatedly on my own site. You know, I’ve got a website that’s got maintenance clients right for my agency? They have their credit card expire or something. And so it fails. And and Stripe is like, okay, we’ll try it again in a couple of days. Okay. We’ll try it again in a couple. It’ll do it like three times. And then it’s like, I guess they don’t want this anymore and it cancels the whole subscription. And And also P.S. I never would see it like I would never get the notifications. I’m notoriously bad with emails and stuff, but like I would never see it. So that’s one of my favorite things about Stellar Pay, is that it’s bringing Stripe sort of into your dashboard so that if there are failed payments or disputes or refund requests or all that stuff, it’s, it’s in there, so you don’t have to then leave your dashboard, go log in to Stripe, do two factor, get distracted because you’re doing too many things. Go forget to get it. Then you have to go start again. And then by the time you get it and log in and do that, then you’ve got to go back to your website and you’ve been logged out of that as well. It’s the worst.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:31  So it’s an ADHD nightmare.

Stephanie Hudson 00:11:34  It sure is. It’s pulling it all in. Who is on that? Can you put that last? Yeah. Who’s yelling at us from GiveWP?

Michelle Frechette 00:11:43  It’s Camber. 

Stephanie Hudson: Hi Camber. 

Michelle Frechette: She posted on our channel. She’s like, wait, I need to log in to somebody. And then of course, Ramone gets sent us just see a hand, a hand wave.

Stephanie Hudson 00:11:51  So a little wave. Hi. So, So, anyway, that’s one of my very favorite things. The other thing that is like pretty darn exciting is that you can do subscription products, and it doesn’t cost anything extra. So nice for a lot of other, you know, for other solutions, you could be paying almost 300 bucks a year for the privilege of adding subscriptions.

Stephanie Hudson 00:12:16  And so this just knocks that down, which is basically, Camber. Duh. I should have known your yell. It was.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:23  You should have known. Should have known.

Stephanie Hudson 00:12:27  So, yeah. So subscriptions, no additional costs. Everything about Stellar Pay is free. It’s all free. And that’s, seems hard to believe for people, but. But it is, and it’s it’s not. It’s not costing you anything. It doesn’t cost your customers anything. And you’ve got all of the security and everything that is Stripe, right? You’ve got all of the best. Best practices. And to top it all off, Stripe has done like a ton of research that they’ve actually published on, like, what are the best practices for conversions. And Stellar Pay has taken that those findings and that data and is utilizing it. So you can actually see the it’s set up in a way that will then increase potential conversions on your site.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:25  And look at all of those brands that it works with Woo, Amex, Apple Pay, Bank transfer, Google Pay, Visa. All of that is right there built  in.

Stephanie Hudson 00:13:35  The digital wallet stuff is big. That’s so you can get Apple Pay and Google Pay and all of that. And you can also take all the major credit cards, of course, which is what Stripe offers. And then as well, whatever regional payments are available to you. Will show up automatically, dynamically in the setup so that you can accept those as well, if you so choose. And you, you don’t have to go through some of the other ones you have to go through like a vetting process or an approval process to be able to accept things like Apple Pay and such. And you don’t have to go through any of that. It’s just.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:12  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:14:13  Basically just log in to your Stripe account from oh, and you don’t have to set up a new Stripe account. You can use the one you already have.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:22  That’s nice. And now on the screen here it’s a little bit hard to see things because it’s smaller. Of course when you share your screen it says high fees for essential features, but if you don’t see it, there’s an X in front of that that says there’s no high fees for essential features.

Stephanie Hudson 00:14:34  That’s supposed to be a big giant.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:36  Like I know and no insufficient financial insight. So I just want to make sure that everybody knows that. We’re not saying that those are included. Those are excluded. Those are not.

Stephanie Hudson 00:14:47  These are the things we’re busting.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:50  Exactly. I mean, this and first of all, the the website’s beautiful. I like the website. It looks really good. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:14:56  Thank you. Shout out to Joel Butler.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:59  Yeah, he’s a really good designer. I really like working with him. It makes it so much easier. Now I keep seeing on here download now. So does that mean that Stellar Pay costs a fortune or what’s the deal with that?

Stephanie Hudson 00:15:13  It’s free. Yeah. Just download.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:14  It. It’s free. We have there for a reason. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:15:16 You can download it from our website. You can download it from the WordPress plugin repo and download it right in the back end of your website. Just go to the plugins and search for Stellar Pay. It’s there and it’s easy.

Stephanie Hudson 00:15:30  Now you have to have WooCommerce installed. So you have to have a WooCommerce store. Otherwise you can install it, but it won’t activate. 

Michelle Frechette 00:15:40  And then look at this. You can sign up for ecommerce tips too. And our newsletter.

Stephanie Hudson 00:15:44  So this is what we’re trying to do as well is not just I mean, we’re we’re this is a tool that’s useful to folks, but there’s a bigger pain point that is people don’t want to do e-commerce. And that’s a shame because. And so what we’re trying to do is then help empower folks who are agencies serving online stores or businesses that use e-commerce. And also the e-commerce business, e-commerce business owners themselves. So what we want to do is really how are these folks help them. Because e-commerce has so many benefits to a business. So again, I’m coming from the agency perspective. If you just just take maintenance alone, you can like at least 50% more, if not double your maintenance costs just because it’s e-commerce, right? Like you dial up the frequency of your backups, you double check a couple other things.

Stephanie Hudson 00:16:42  It’s not double the work, but it is. You know, it could be double the revenue. Recurring revenue. It’s great. Plus, you can charge more to build them. And you can more clearly show ROI. If you build somebody an e-commerce store that didn’t have one. They can start showing, like we made this much, this many dollars from our store. So, you know, I spent this much, we made this much. It’s a much easier thing than, say, for a billboard site, which is still obviously beneficial, but you don’t have that line item that really.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:19  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:17:19  Shows it. So, so there’s lots of there’s lots of reasons that, you know, doing e-commerce projects are very beneficial. But we’re just I’m just seeing so many folks. If you’re in the if you’re I don’t know how many folks are watching or whatever, I can’t see that number. But if you’re watching, like, let me know, are you doing, e-commerce? Because I have I have a feeling probably not.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:45  one of my one of my favorite comments right now, though, came from Neil. He’s like a Slack reminder worked. He’s here. He’s listening. That’s awesome.

Stephanie Hudson 00:17:53  Yay, Neil! Yay, technology!

Michelle Frechette 00:17:56  I love it. Love it. So when you work with with Stripe, when you have your Stripe account, you already agree to certain fees. So for a lot of people, it’s like at least it used to be like 3% of your purchase.

Stephanie Hudson 00:18:11  Plus 2.9 Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:12  2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, etc.. You still pay that to Stripe?

Stephanie Hudson 00:18:16  Yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:17  So when we say it’s free, this connection’s Stellar Pay is free, but it does not make your Stripe interactions free. I just want to make sure that people understand you will still pay Stripe what Stripe is due.

Stephanie Hudson 00:18:29  Yeah. You gotta pay your credit card fees. All of that stuff. I mean, no matter if you’re going to take credit cards, you’re going to pay those fees.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:34  Exactly. So, but I just want to make sure that that was perfectly clear.

Stephanie Hudson 00:18:37  And we don’t add on to those at all. Not at all. So there’s no additional.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:43  2% or anything like that, right?

Stephanie Hudson 00:18:45  Yeah I know. Stinking transaction fees. It is, it is super frustrating. And, so some of the things let’s see, this is some of the things that are already awesome about Stellar Pay. Do you want to talk about some of the things that might be coming down the road?

Michelle Frechette 00:19:03  Sure. Give us a give us a some insights.

Stephanie Hudson 00:19:07  Yeah. So, roadmap kind of things. Some things that are in the, in the works. Basically, you know, we said, okay, what is what are the biggest pain points about this part of the process. Right. About taking. Selling things online basically. One of course, like I already mentioned is paying extra for subscriptions. Another one is having to like not having visibility into your finances and your Stripe account and everything. My other two that I hear all the time are taxes and shipping. Raise your hand.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:45  Shipping oohhhh. .

Stephanie Hudson 00:19:46  If you have ever set up shipping and taxes.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:50  Shipping is such a nightmare. Especially. 

Stephaine Hudson: It’s worst. It’s. 

Michelle Frechette: It’s one thing. If everything is exactly the same size weighs exactly the same. And you only ever ship one. Great. That’s not the way most things work.

Stephanie Hudson 00:20:02  So, our pal Devin is working on streamlining that whole thing and making it easier through Stellar Pay. 

Michelle Frechette: Nice.

Stephanie Hudson: I know, I’m very excited to see how that happens. And then, taxes is also, you know, I had a client freaking out. They this was just like last year, I think they had a site that they had set up, an online store, they started selling products and they’re like, hey, it’s not taking it’s not taking taxes out. Or it was taking them and it wasn’t whatever. Anyway, it was this whole they were panicking because they were like, I don’t want to have a huge tax bill down the road. Like I’m trying to do it right. I’m trying to do it right. And here it’s because there are thresholds in every state where you’re selling, if it’s who you’re selling to.  I believe so if you have a website, it could be wherever they’re buying from. Like if you sell, if people come from Florida and from Michigan and from wherever, depending on which state they’re in, you have to meet a certain threshold of product sold before you have to start turning that, percentage over to the state. Yeah. So figure that all out on your own.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:11 No.No thank you. I would like for somebody else to figure that out for me. Thank you very much.

Stephanie Hudson 00:21:15  Yeah. Right. So. So that’s another one. Okay, great. So taking what’s there. Making it easier. But guess what else?

Michelle Frechette: What?

Stephanie Hudson: Are you ready for this? I don’t know if you’re even ready for it.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:28  I’m always ready.

Stephanie Hudson 00:21:32  On the roadmap for Stellar Pay is an agency plan. It’s not a plan because you don’t have to pay for it. But an agency set up setup where you can actually go in and white label.

Stephanie Hudson 00:21:45  And you know how I said we don’t add on to. We don’t add on to any of the fees, any of that stuff. But as an agency owner, setting this up for a business, if you wanted to, with our agency white label setup, you could then go in and add just a little touch, just a little bitty bit on top of every transaction that they do. Now, this may just be cost of doing business with you if you’d like to structure it that way. If you have businesses where you believe in them, you know they can really do a good job. And they are, you know, bootstrapping or cash flows tight, you could do rev share with them so that you get a percentage of what comes in from the store, and you can set it up right there. No honor system required.So agency things where you can completely white label it with a dashboard to look at all your stuff and be able to then just add additional monthly recurring revenue.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:41  Nice.

Stephanie Hudson 00:22:42  I mean, I’m like, I can’t wait for that. I’m like, Devin, is it done yet? Is it done yet?

Michelle Frechette 00:22:47  When can we announce this? When? When when? Yeah, we do have a question that kind of plays into the future. And you’re and you know, talking about road mapping. SoFemi wants to know if Stellar Pay is going to integrate other payment gateways in the future, or is it only going to be Stripe focused?

Stephanie Hudson 00:23:03  The answer is yes. This is definitely on our roadmap. This is definitely something that we’re looking into. From what I hear from the the people smarter than me, the Stripe is the easiest and best to integrate with. They really have their API and everything nailed. PayPal is the the the next one that we’re getting, inquiries about because that’s such a popular online payment thing. It’s so good with, you know, as a consumer, a lot of consumers want to use PayPal to purchase because they are protected. Right. If you’ve ever done a if you as an agency person, if you’ve ever had.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:46  I can a cat in front of me. Sorry. Oh, hi.

Stephanie Hudson 00:23:49  What’s this Kitty’s name?

Michelle Frechette 00:23:51  Stella.

Stephanie Hudson 00:23:52  Michelle’s body slammed that cat.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:54  I, I lost control a little bit, but, Yeah, that’s Stella, close to Stella. Stella. And she just. She just decided she was going to be right in front of my face and not see anything. So I apologize for the interruption. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:24:07  No problem.I think this should be a cat friendly show. I’m surprised mine aren’t here attacking me. 

Michelle Frechette 00:24:11  She doesn’t usually do that, but.

Stephanie Hudson 00:24:14  Yeah, I have a he’s. I still call him a kitten. He’s like one and a half, but he loves to get on the top of my head, rest on my chair, and just absolutely attack it on camera or like he never does it any other time. So it’s it’s the best. So, where were we? What was I saying?

Michelle Frechette 00:24:30   We were talking about. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:24:30  PayPal. Yeah. If you if you run a store and somebody submits a dispute on PayPal, that can be a little frustrating because PayPal notoriously tends to side with the customer. However, on the flip side of that. Customers then request it like they want to have PayPal as an option because they’re comfortable with it, and then they don’t have to worry about putting a credit card number in and all that kind of stuff. So as it stands right now, Steller Pay is just to connect to Stripe. And if it when we have a PayPal connection, it may be another plugin because of how they work together. But it is it’s kind of fun that because of Devin’s history with Give and all of that and you know that obviously for those who don’t know, is a donation, solution. So you can collect donations for charitable reasons or for whatever. And, so because he’s worked so much with PayPal over the years with give, PayPal is also like, Hey Devin, do you want to work with us on? So Hey.  What about. What about us, Devin? So. Yeah, that’s what I mean, coach.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:43  Yeah. and I do know Femi outside of this chat. So I knew that Femi is not in the United States. Right. So for people who are I mean, Stripe works in a lot of places. It doesn’t work everywhere. PayPal works in a lot of places, it doesn’t work everywhere. So I thought that might be where some of that question was coming from. As far as what other payment gateways might be.

Stephanie Hudson 00:26:04  If you can have a stripe account, you can use Stellar Pay. The next one that will be coming most likely is PayPal, PayPal. And then I don’t know beyond that what other options there are. But so anyway, Cape Town, South Africa, I wonder what time it is there. It’s probably pretty late, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:26:25  I would guess, I don’t know. Femiell us, what time it is where you located? It’s 4:30 in the afternoon here on the East coast of the United States.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:32  But yeah, Europe and Africa. Much, much, different time zones.

Stephanie Hudson 00:26:41  So anyway, so what else? What else should we talk about? Michelle?

Michelle Frechette 00:26:45  Yeah. So it’s kind of exciting. Is there anything else going on at Stellar that you want to tease out.

Stephanie Hudson 00:26:51  There might be.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:53  I knew, I mean, I’m on the inside there, so.

Stephanie Hudson 00:26:56  I know. Do you think,

Michelle Frechette 00:26:57  I think you should share.

Stephanie Hudson 00:26:57  Do you think they’re worth it. Do you think we should tell them?

Michelle Frechette 00:27:00  Oh, yes. Absolutely.

Stephanie Hudson 00:27:01  Do you think they’re ready? I don’t know if they’re ready for it.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:04  So, Yeah. Camber says you’ve been channeling your inner Billy Mays.

Stephanie Hudson 00:27:09  Listen, like Billy Mays was channeling me.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:12  Oh, there you go.

Stephanie Hudson 00:27:14  But wait. There’s more. oh. It’s 11:28 for for Femi. Well, thank you. For tuning. Oh, I sleep late, so it’s not a bad time for me. You know what? I’m a night owls. Unite!

Michelle Frechette 00:27:27  Yes same.

Stephanie Hudson 00:27:28  Unite? Unite Owls? There’s. It didn’t work out loud in my head. There’s a.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:34  It’s like U-N-I-G-H-T. Yeah, I got it. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:27:40  Yeah. Anyway, so coming up, you guys, we’ve got something huge. It’s really. It’s there’s not anything like this currently happening in the web space, and I’m not even talking about just WordPress. What is coming is a little something called Stellar Sites and that it’s. How do we describe this? I haven’t polished up all my stuff about this because it’s super brand new. It’s it’s going to be launching at in this this spring. So April we’ll be seeing this everywhere. But basically this is the best parts of using Wix or Squarespace or even Shopify. But with all of the power and the control and the ownership you have using WordPress. So basically, it’s a low monthly cost for a website that has, is powered by some of the incredible plugins and solutions from Stellar. So it’ll have as a framework and a and a foundation.

Stephanie Hudson 00:28:53  I mean, the Solid Suite of security and backups, you’ll have Kadence as the builder and the themes, and there will be plenty of other possible add ons. Those those will be included in every single one. But if you wanted to have online learning, boom Learndash you know you want to have throw up a your own GoFundMe site. Boom, put Give on there, throw up a Stellar site and all of it is going to be riding on the Liquid Web hosting framework, which is high level and super powerful and not what you’re going to get with a, you know, a low level host. You know, that’s not your $4 a month Danica Patrick style hosting account, if you know what I mean.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:45  It’s really I do know what you mean. What what’s really nice about it, too, is like when I’ve built websites in the past, I was a freelancer once upon a time. I would spend literal hours, hours upon hours looking for a theme that worked for me, looking for the plugins, vetting those plugins, like all of the things like I didn’t know, like, let’s say I didn’t know Give because once upon a time I didn’t like, how am I finding something to put on a non-profit website, right? And so I would literally do searching, and then you’d see that something hadn’t been updated in X number of years or months or whatever.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:18  And all of the work and the guesswork that went into trying to even start a website because you’re like, oh, nope, I don’t like that theme. Nope, I don’t like that theme. Right? It takes all of that guesswork out, which is so, just so wonderful. Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:30:32  And, and the whole like getting a hosting account set up, doing your installing WordPress or getting them to install it. And you know, all of those kind of things too. And then I don’t know if anybody’s played around with the Kadence AI site builder.

Michelle Frechette: Is it pretty awesome?

Stephanie Hudaon:  It is pretty rad. And there’s been some videos out there. Jamie from Poodle Press, his daughters did like, a Kadence build a site thing. They did a ten minute challenge. You know, he does all the 30 minute challenges. Which Kadence. The Kadence creator, Ben Rittner did one of those as well. The 30 minute thing, which was fun. But, But yeah watching, Jamie’s daughters, I loved it.

Stephanie Hudson 00:31:15  It was so. And they’re so adorable. They were really cute girls and. So anyway, that’s, it’s it’s going to be super powerful. And even if, you know, I know everybody’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, AI things don’t worry. It’s not coming for your job. And yeah, it’s not going to be perfect. But listen, it’s going to get you.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:34  To so much further, faster.

Stephanie Hudson 00:31:35  70% of the way there and then, you know, like so.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:40  Yeah, I love it. I think it’s awesome. I’m excited. Speaking of Kadence and speed build challenges, Amber Hines did a speed build challenge under Jamie’s challenge list. There she used cadence because we are one of the best themes for accessibility.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:01  That’s amazing.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:02  Isn’t that awesome?

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:03  I love it. Yeah. That’s huge. I mean, it really is.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:07  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:08 Something to be proud of what is.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:10  Yeah. So. Yeah. So Give WP it started with. It’s it’s it’s legend….Wait for it. Dary. Oh, yeah. You were talking. You kind of missed some of those.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:27  Yeah, I shorted a little.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:28  Okay. So Stellar Sites that should be out around April ish. Then they can be looking for that.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:35  Yep.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:35  That’s pretty.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:36  Awesome. So stay tuned.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:38  I like that. Look at this. June who is the co-lead. June and I are co-leads for Marketing for WP Accessibility Day. And so she’s like hey loving my decision to go with Kadence now. Absolutely. That’s why we why we do what we do. Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:32:54  I’m a big June Liu.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:56  Yeah. Me too. Me too. And I love partnering with her on the WP Accessibility day,too. Which is pretty cool.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:02  I’m sure that’s awesome. I didn’t realize she was doing that with you.. That’s great.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:06  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:08  Okay. I feel like I brought a lot of energy, and I kind of. I wore myself out. Now we gotta.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:12  And we both need some downtime. A little bit, for sure.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:16  But I’ll tell you, this is. I didn’t realize that the Happiness Hour was a dry happiness hour. It’s a dry January Happiness Hour?

Michelle Frechette 00:33:23  I mean you could have brought your own. I can’t really like. Here, here’s a drink. 

Stephanie Hudson:That’s true. 

Michelle Frechette:I’ve had for, like, basically the equivalent of four espressos today, so I am definitely going to be a night owl today. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:37  Yeah.Does it keep you up really?

Michelle Frechette 00:33:37 No it doesn’t.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:40  So I don’t I could drink a whole pot of coffee, go to go straight to bed.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:45  But yeah, I’m an ADHD girl who is unaffected by things like caffeine.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:49  Is that what it is? Is that why it doesn’t?

Michelle Frechette 00:33:52  A lot of us. Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:33:53  Although you know, tea, like the caffeine and tea hits me different. I don’t know if that’s a thing. Like if I drink a bunch of iced tea.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:02  Doesn’t bother me at all.

Stephanie Hudson 00:34:04  I’ll get the jitters, but, like, I can just drink coffee all day.  I, I try not to, though.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:09  Yeah. I mean, I have a podcast called Coffee Talk, so, you know, I have to do the coffee thing sometimes, but.

Stephanie Hudson 00:34:15  As a matter of fact I’ve been on coffee talk.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:16  Yes. You have. It’s been. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was 48 years old. 

Stephanie Hudson: What? 

Michelle Frenchette: I’ve only been drinking coffee seven years, and I like it. I didn’t like it. And then all of a sudden, I had a latte and I was like, oh, this is nice. So now I always have it with cream and sugar. So I’m not one of those drinking black kind of people, but, I love I love coffee now, so.

Stephanie Hudson 00:34:38  Don’t underestimate the the power of a hormonal shift in your life to just change everything.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:43  I have an espresso. I have a whole little coffee bar over here with espresso and a maker and a grinds beans per cup. I’ve got my syrups. I’ve got all my stuff that I’ve. I seem to milk this afternoon and made a latte for my painter and me. Like, if somebody’s painting my condo. So, like, I love it. Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:00  Wow. I knew I thought I knew a lot about you, Michelle, but I just learned something. I didn’t know that that was a new thing.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:07 I am Shrek, I have the layers. It’s like an onion peeling I have.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:11  So we’ve been on. How many shows have we been on together? Because I was on Coffee talks. 

Michelle Frechette: Several. 

Stephanie Hudson: I was on the, What’s the other show that I was on with you? I think you came on. Did you come on Devi’s show ever?

Michelle Frechette 00:35:23  I did come on Devi chat.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:26  I came on Devi chat.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:27  Yeah, we’ve we’ve done a lot of stuff together too, like I’ve been on. When you were co-hosting.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:31  Yes. So I’m doing that again this year.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:34  And you are also co-hosting Stellar Spark.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:38  I am.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:39  Yeah. So that’ll be fun. As am I.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:42  I mean, I should have been like. I’m like the Bob Barker of my generation, you know, like, I like the.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:48  I like to host. I like to make sure everybody’s having a good time.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:51  I mean, I I’m right there with you, though, because, you know, it’s not like my face is unfamiliar to many people, so that’s true.

Stephanie Hudson 00:35:59 That’s true. It’s very true.

Stephanie Hudson 00:36:00  It is fun though. So I started fun fact, I ended up doing the Atarim Summit the first time co-hosting it. The first time I did it, I had applied for a talk and I don’t know if they got just got flooded with apps or probably knowing me, I was just submitted it a bit late, but, Vito, Vito like, reached out to me and he was like, we’re actually full for talks. And he was like, how would you feel about co-hosting instead. And I was like, let me get this straight. I don’t have to write a talk. I get my face out there to everybody for five days instead of for 30 minutes.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:42  Where do I sign up?

Stephanie Hudson 00:36:44  I don’t have to memorize it. Like, I was like, yeah, let’s do it. And we ended up having so much fun. It was good.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:52  I’ll give it a talk there a couple of times.

Stephanie Hudson 00:36:54  Unfortunately my previous, co-host Andrew Palmer, has retired from the biz, so we got a new. I have a new victim co-host with me, Robert Jacobi.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:05  Which is. Oh, I love Robert. He’s such a nice guy. You’re gonna have a lot of fun with that, for sure.

Stephanie Hudson 00:37:09  I know it. I love me some Jacobi. Me and him will be drinking gin martinis and stuff the whole time. Probably. He’s a gin guy.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:16  He is. I’ve had a couple of martinis with him over the years. 

Stephanie Hudson: It’s the best.

Michelle Frechette:  I’m more of like, a gin and tonic kind of girl, though, with extra limes. So that’s. That’s my go to.

Stephanie Hudson 00:37:27  So you like Sprite?

Michelle Frechette 00:37:30  No, I actually don’t like it at all. It doesn’t have the juniper flavor, you know? Like, 

Stephanie Hudson: I was just kidding. 

Michelle Frechette: Ginger ale is okay, though. But. Yeah, so.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:42  So. Yeah. So things are happening. We have Stellar Spark coming up in July this year. We’re still working on the final date for that and start to put some things down on paper. So that’ll be an event people can learn about. I’m I’m thinking we might talk about Stellar Pay there too. You know, you never know. Maybe maybe it could be. But, but again, I’m just going to put it right up here. If you’re interested in learning more about Stellar Pay, go to stellarwp.com/stellar pay. and if you’re interested just in what we’re doing at StellarWP, just go to the first part of that or hit home when you’re on stellar pay or whatever. And, learn more about what we do at Stellar WP and who are the crazy people behind all of this. Yes, that would be us. That’d be us. Oh, boy.

Stephanie Hudson 00:38:25  Now there’s another little something I wanted to mention here as well. That is another little piece of the stellar fam and that is, the Solid Academy.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:37  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:38:37  Trying to get you a link. Let’s pop a link in. Let me send it to you so you can pop it in here. You got it. Okay. So,

Michelle Frechette 00:38:49  Pulling it up right now. Give me a moment.

Stephanie Hudson 00:38:52  Okay, great. So, Yeah. So the Stellar Academy, I mean, Solid Academy is amazing. It’s got so many free resources. It’s got another pal of mine, Nathan Ingram, you you know as well. He’s such a great dude. He runs the show over there. They have tons of free content. And then also, if you have the Solid Suite of plug ins, you get the premium version of the Academy as well, which is totally worth the cost of admission, believe me. So the reason I bring this up Is that coming up in? I think it’s in two weeks on a Wednesday. Devin Walker and I are going to be doing a little intro to Stellar Pay, showing some visuals, giving a walkthrough, answering questions.

Stephanie Hudson 00:39:40  So if anybody has tried is trying it out and would like to get on there and ask some questions live or, you know, just, I don’t know, tell us how much you love us and stuff, that’d be great. I’m here for that. And then, two weeks after that, I’m doing a little thing with the, with the Solid crew talking about security as it relates to your checkout process and things and how sleep fits into that. to the security stack.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:10  Nice.

Stephanie Hudson 00:40:10  So some more Stellar Pay fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:13  Yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:40:13  Coming up.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:15  Absolutely. Oh, that’s awesome, I love it. It’s such cool things happening here at Stellar WP and Stellar Pay is kind of the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming on. So yeah.

Stephanie Hudson 00:40:26 It is. It’s gonna be fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:28  That’s. That’s awesome. So, what are you doing this evening after we sign off? Anything fun?

Stephanie Hudson 00:40:35  What am I doing tonight? Boy, that’s a I didn’t, you know, usually, I, I usually do, church on Wednesday nights, but I didn’t have.

Stephanie Hudson 00:40:43  It’s it was rescheduled this week, so I I’ve, I’ve got like a free evening. So I don’t even know what that means. I should probably go deal with the Goodwill/returns that have been in the trunk of my car for about a month and a half now, but we’ll see, we’ll see. Yeah. Oh, hey. Sky..

Michelle Frechette 00:41:02  I have a meeting. Hey Sky. I have a meeting with my accountability coach at 7 p.m. tonight. She is my accountability coach for getting my novel written by the end of this year in first draft form and working on a novel based on a true story. So stand by for that.

Stephanie Hudson 00:41:21 Can you tease the subject a little bit, like what’s the story?

Michelle Frechette 00:41:24  So the working title right now is G.I. Joe, meaning like the actual soldiers, not like the action figure. G.I. Joe and the stowaway Bride. 

Stephanie Hudson: Oh.

Michelle Frechette:  I have a friend whose mother swam out to the ship that her boyfriend was leaving after the end of World War Two, swam out to the ship in the middle of the night, climbed the anchor rope or chain and stowed away on the ship. And it wasn’t discovered for two days, unbeknownst to him or anybody else on the ship. Of 6000 returning soldiers. So yeah, so I’m basing it on that. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:42:03  I have so many questions. What was her plan?

Michelle Frechette 00:42:06  Her plan was to surprise them when they got home, I guess, I don’t know. 

Stephanie Hudson: When they got home.

Michelle Frechette: When they. When they landed in New York Harbor, they put her on a boat over to Ellis Island. And she processed in, like any other person coming to America at that time. They were married. They were married until she was were.

Stephanie Hudson 00:42:24  They weren’t married at the time.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:26  No, they got married here. She was engaged to him at the time, but she didn’t want to, like, like many, you know, people that met during the war, she was afraid that once he went home that would, like, kind of fizzle. And there wasn’t the internet, there was hardly telephoning at that point in time. Right. So, like, it would have been like letters that get carried across the ocean.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:45  And so instead she’s like, I am not letting this man out of my sight. She stowed away on the ship and they were married until she passed away years and years later.

Stephanie Hudson 00:42:54  What a good story.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:55  They raised four children together, and.

Stephanie Hudson 00:42:57  Spoiler alert, the guy tried to get away from her like 17 times, but she just kept finding him.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:02  Really? I mean, she’s like, that’s it. I’m in the trunk of your car. I’m on the back of your bicycle. Like you’re gonna find me. I’m gonna. He he was. He ended up as a mail carrier. Years later, she she would pop out of the bags.

Stephanie Hudson 00:43:15  You’ve got so many sequels to come.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:17  Right? I mean, there’s just so much that can happen. But. Yeah. So I’m trying. I’m. I’m working with the family, for as much information from them as possible. And then I’m writing a fictionalized version of it based on a true story.

Stephanie Hudson 00:43:29  So that’s super fun, I love it.

Stephanie Hudson 00:43:31  I have I have a book. I have two different books I want to write, and it’s like, gosh, I don’t know. I probably need to get me an accountability book writing person.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:39  It wasn’t going to happen if I didn’t get somebody to hold me to, you know, some of those. We meet every other week, and she holds me to my my, what do you call them? Deadlines.

Stephanie Hudson 00:43:49  Page goals and all that.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:50  Yeah, yeah. All that. So. Yeah. So we just started two weeks ago. So I’ve, I’ve been working on questions for the family and that kind of thing and started started writing a little bit to give myself some ideas of how I want to progress. So pretty cool stuff. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:44:03  That’s super cool.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:04  Congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. So any other thoughts before we sign off for the day?

Stephanie Hudson 00:44:11  Oh good grief. well, go check out Steller Pay guys, if you’re doing any kind of e-commerce already, or if you don’t do e-commerce because you hate it.  Give us a shot. And if you you can. Like I said, you can get it anywhere. It doesn’t cost anything anywhere. If you download it from the site, we’ll send you a few more like some tips, some onboarding stuff to get you to get you rolling. But either way.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:38  You go there to sign up for the newsletter as well and get some tips on e-commerce stuff while you’re at it.

Stephanie Hudson 00:44:43  Fo sho.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:45  Sounds good. Well, it looks like we’ve got a couple more comments that came in. Let’s see. Oh. Femi says I might need a accountability coach. So many unfinished projects. Trust me, I know. And Camber, like, I can barely work all day. And also remember to eat dinner. That sounds familiar. I had pretzels for lunch at my desk, so I’m going to go actually have some, make a salad or something for dinner now. And, we’ll see. Everybody, I have to cancel next week’s episode. I have an appointment that got scheduled, but we’ll be back after that.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:13  With the exception of the week that WordCamp Asia is happening. But stand by we have Jono Alderson coming up, in the next couple of weeks. 

Stephanie Hudson: Oh, nice. 

Michelle Frechette: I’m looking for more, more ideas and more people who have things that they’d like to talk about. So if you’d like to be on the show, send me a message. Either, Slack me or send me a message through any of the different social medias. Or you could have the contact form on Post Status. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:45:39  Michelle is accessible. Not she’s not just into accessibility on the web. She’s accessible herself.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:44  And you can find me in a lot of places.

Stephanie Hudson 00:45:46  Yeah. And also, if you want to, who else do you want to have on here? Who would be interesting to have you even. No, I’m not saying you. I’m saying like people out there like.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:53  Oh yeah, they could they could give some ideas for sure. 

Stephanie Hudson 00:45:55  Michelle knows everybody, right. She’ll get them.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:57 Yeah, I’ll get them.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:59  I’ll get them for sure. Anyway, so thank you so much. 

Stephanie Hudson: Thanks for having me. Michelle. It was fun. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And we’ll find everybody else in another time. But, find find stellar pay stellar.com/stellar pay. And definitely join us over on PostStatus.com and join our Slack channel over there. Until then, we’ll see you next time. Bye.