Episode 35: Finding Your Motivation

We got the band back together for a special episode of The Kadence Beat, and it felt like we didn’t even miss a beat! In this episode, learn about everything coming on the Kadence roadmap, including improvements to Kadence AI, Kadence White Label, Advanced Navigation and Headers, and Kadence AI Pages. Kathy Zant joins us to discuss what she’s been up to at Motivation Code. We talk a bit about various personality tests and how advances in AI uncover what fulfills you in your own stories.

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Timestamps & Links

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:22 The roadmap of Kadence AI
• 2:14 Kadence White Label
• 3:41 Advanced Navigation & Advanced Headers
• 6:09 Kadence AI Pages
• 7:08 Custom Query Loop Templates
• 8:05 Updates to starter templates
• 11:25 Updates to Kadence marketing initiatives
• 12:10 KadenceWP TikTok (Saylor’s Version)
• 14:04 What is Kathy up to with Motivation Code
• 17:52 Find out your Motivation Code with discount code ZANT20
• 21:27 Motivation Code for teams
• 25:46 Knowing how to focus as a solopreneur with your Motivation Code
• 26:49 The Kadence Community on Facebook

Transcript

Kathy: Welcome to the Kadence Beat. I have no idea what episode it is. It’s been a while, but it’s time to get the band back together. Right?

Ben: Yeah, definitely.

Hannah: We’re back together.

Kathy: How are you guys doing?

Hannah: This is so fun. Doing good.

Ben: Yeah.

Kathy: Excellent. Ben?

Ben: Doing good. And, uh, excited today to have a special guest, Kathy, on.

This is not like Kathy joined Kadence again. This is like, we asked Kathy to come and be our special guest. And then since it’s like us, it’s like, Hey, Kathy, will you actually just run this podcast too? Because you’re so good at it.

Kathy: Yeah. So good at clicking that record button. I’m exceptionally good at that. I am, but any opportunity to come and hang out with you guys, you know, I’m going to say yes.

How could I say no? It’s The Kadence Beat. It’s like one of my favorite things to do, or it was. But I am so happy to be here as a guest and share some of the fun things I’ve been doing away from Kadence, even though I’m watching y’all from afar.

Ben: Yeah, I think you have a lot of good. Insight that I think our listeners were really going to enjoy hearing from you today.

but before we jump into that and us asking you to tell us all your smarts, I think it’s probably worth, like, it’s been a while since we’ve been on this podcast, it’s worth giving a little bit of update, like what’s going on in the Kadence world, what we’re working on, what’s some of the exciting stuff.

I’ll just say like, we’re in the process of a lot of fun new stuff. We released AI this year and there’s a lot more coming. Like the initial release of AI was like, we finally got this out. It’s been a lot to get the credit system to work. It’s been a lot to get the whole like structure in place. And now we’re finally getting to build on that and do a lot more interesting things.

We had to lay that foundation. Our design library went from 300 patterns. It’s now over 650. And just like that growth has allowed us to get a lot more specific in the way that we’re doing patterns. We’re getting a lot better at patterns. We’ve found some of the things that weren’t working as well.

And we’re trying to get rid of those patterns and get better patterns in and organize that better. So there’s a lot of fun stuff happening there and with how we’re going to use patterns, how we’re going to use AI and patterns. so here’s what we’re currently working on. I’m very excited to like officially announce this publicly.

Okay. We were building white label, and it will be out this month.

Kathy: This month, like April 2024?

Ben: Yes.

Hannah: We finally can do a live stream where we don’t have people coming down the side, like is white label coming. Is white label coming. It has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. People have been asking you for this for a long time. So I also am very excited.

Kathy: I we’re gonna have to get a new inside joke because it’s been the inside joke since like You first ended up on like an iThemes training with Nathan, you know, it’s been happening for like ever.

Ben: Yeah, exactly. So uh, it’s gonna be its own plugin because we’re gonna allow you to white label Kadence Blocks as well as Kadence Theme. So if you’re not using Kadence Theme and you wanted to use Kadence Blocks, you’ll be able to white label that as well. So it’s its own plugin, which you’ll also be able to white label.

There’ll be some cool things. So like Starter Templates included you’ll be able to disable Kadence AI entirely from that white label dashboard, and then hide that dashboard to all your users. So that’s exciting. And that will be out this month. that’s like that. Stamp. It’s going to happen. I was actually demoing some of that.

Ben: I don’t know. Mildly terrifying, uh, to do that, but yes, it’s, it’s going to happen. I was demoing it some this week, so that’s something new, exciting coming. We’re we’ve been working on this big project for quite a while. It’s like been a vision of mine for a long time and that’s Advanced Navigation and Advanced Headers as a block/builder inside of WordPress. So currently the Kadence Theme allows you to build a cool, header that is through the customizer. We’re taking a lot of the technology behind that, or just even like the, the ways in which that works and putting that into the Gutenberg editor so that, down the road, if you ever decide to build full site editing, you’ll have that kind of full header capabilities with an advanced nav capabilities where you can do icons in your navigation and you can do mega menus and you can style things, drop downs, all that kind of stuff in a lot more interesting ways than what is currently possible.

So we’re thinking about this as like. Both a block that is going to exist inside of your blocks. You put it in a page, whatever. And also as like a builder or something that you’ll be able to go into, like under Kadence and do like add a header and then apply that header. And, just even having the conversations of like, how does all of the dynamic settings that we’re used to exist inside of a full site editing experience where you’re putting together.

Basically doing things based on template and not based on like a customizer setting. but then also like kind of allowing both and it’s felt like you couldn’t go into a page and change things in the header for that page, that kind of stuff. So, that is getting a lot of traction. We keep doing this.

We keep building the most advanced block and thus we’re keep pushing our limits. So in the last year we did the form block and we did the Advanced Query Loop, which is like a huge block in terms of it has custom indexing. So you can do Ajax filtering and stuff like that. That’s like, I mean, it could basically be its own plugin and in and of itself.

With custom templating and all that. And now we’re moving into this like advanced header, advanced navigation stuff. So solving a lot of the like bigger, how you’re using WordPress, especially as we go into the future when, you know, I’m not a hundred percent convinced that full site editing will be like what everyone defaults to in the future or uses as a norm.

Obviously it’s WordPress’s default, but, there’s still a lot of really, really good reasons to not use full site editing. I don’t have a site where I use full site editing. But that’s obviously still something where we’re going to support. We’re going to keep working toward. And so advanced header and navigation is a crucial part of that, allowing you to have sticker headers and stuff.

Another thing we’re doing AI related is with pages. So right now AI has been starter templates and in the design library, you can have AI content. Now we have a wizard we’re building that’ll actually allow you to build a custom page with custom context. So you’ll be able to say exactly what you want about this page.

And it’ll be a two step process where the AI will come back and say, here’s your page structure, that we think makes sense, you’ll be able to edit that. And then you’ll get handed a series of designs based on that page structure. So like, if you’ve got hero, testimonials, you know, call to action, that kind of stuff, you’ll build that structure first with the AI’s help.

Then you’ll get designs, you’ll pick a design that you like based on that structure, and then you’ll get content that the AI will build. So it’s going to be really, really useful for all the custom pages that like you want to build on your website. and that’s coming soon. Like we’re, we’ve made a lot of progress on that.

A couple of things I’ll note, giving you this like huge sales pitch here. Uh, but like, I’m also like excited about all what we’re doing and we haven’t had a lot. of space to talk about it. So a big thing is we’re adding more dynamic content with third party plugins and things like The Events Calendar, LearnDash, WooCommerce, where you’ll be able to do more custom, , query loop templates.

So you’ll be able to use our advanced query loop to do really custom things with The Events Calendar or WooCommerce, where you’re wanting to show products in a unique way, but still pull in dynamically, certain things about that product. so you can create some interesting layouts with the advanced, query loop block and custom templating.

So we’ve done a ton of work on how the Advanced Query Loop works. We’ve improved it a lot. If you’re following the changelogs, like over the last three months, there’s been a ton of like work there to make it work better with WooCommerce and just be more useful. We’re doing more with dynamic content in that sense.

And then the last thing I’ll mention is that starter templates. When we released the AI version of that, it was like just six styles, essentially, where you had some dynamic content, pretty static feeling and pretty limited in terms of pages. We’re in the process right now of doubling the amount of pages that gets created in all of those styles.

Our goal is to get to, certainly this year, to get to 30 different styles. But we have like 12 in the works right now that we’re going to get out pretty quickly. And with those styles, we’re making the actual page content a little bit more dynamic where we’ve added this idea of cycles.

So that way, when you’re building, you’re going through the wizard and saying, you know, this is what my company does, there’s now a cycles and that cycles allows you to say, like, I want to sell products or I’m trying to blog, I’m trying to increase my subscribers, that kind of thing. And then we’re going to do more.

With those starter templates based on what you’re selecting. So big brain dump for me in terms of like, here’s what’s happening at Kadence. It’s, it’s exciting. We’ve got some stuff coming that, I’m really excited to get in everyone’s hand and we’ve been doing a lot. That I think is really, really interesting and exciting.

Kathy: Very cool. So my, can I just rave about a couple of things? I heard things that I am looking forward to the most. I can’t wait to see what the query loop can do with courses. Building courses myself and got a bunch of cool things coming. I can’t wait to tell you guys about them later, but being able to, of course I’m using LearnDash and I’m using Kadence, so I can’t wait to see how I can play those things out because I’ve got like all of this knowledge and I have all of these mini types of courses that I would like to just have one lesson for like, I, I do the lesson once, but it can get pulled into multiple different courses that way.

Is that something I can do?

Ben: Dynamically, yeah, you’d be able to do something like that.

Kathy: Awesome! That sounds exciting. That sounds so exciting. And then I love what you’re talking about in terms of really having AI help you with a goal. First of all, like asking somebody, Hey, what are you really trying to do with this?

Because a lot of times people are building and they’re like, okay, well, I saw this other competitor doing it this way. And so they’re in this mindset of, well, I’m trying to create this thing, but they’re not necessarily putting themselves in the mindset of what am I really trying to accomplish with that?

So the fact that you’re taking that to the next level to really get into the mind of the person who’s building out that site, that is super exciting to me.

Ben: Yeah. Cool. I’m really excited about that. The future of what we’re trying to do, for sure.

Kathy: Yeah, yeah. I, I, I’m watching from afar all of the things that are coming.

I don’t get to play with stuff as much as I used to. Don’t have an excuse to quite so much anymore, but I am excited with where Kadence is going. You’re still, you guys are still doing the work that, I love recommending you to anyone and everyone. So I’m, I’m still wearing my Kadence shirt for those who are listening.

I am showing that I am wearing my Kadence shirt for this momentous occasion. So exciting, all kinds of exciting news and white label, uh, you know, tons of people are going to be excited about that. That’s so cool.

Hannah: There’s so many. Yeah, couple updates from a marketing perspective. Ones that we’ve changed a little bit, how the, we do emails.

We used to send out a weekly newsletter. Now we do still a weekly email, but one is a product update email. So you’ll just get like basically every product that we have, every update that happened that week, whether it’s just fixes, enhancements, features, whatever. That’s what that email is focused on.

And then the next week you’ll get a newsletter that has things like our blog posts, things like what’s coming, stuff like that. So that’s been kind of fun to like mix that up a bit. And then something way more exciting is that we just launched a TikTok account, which feels like we should have done that a long time ago, but here we are.

And. I don’t know if you guys have heard this talk about Saylor. Saylor works with us. She’s one of our devs and she’s probably the best person on our team. She makes every meeting 10 times more fun. I mean, we all just sit around and like, can’t wait for Saylor to give an answer because we’re like, what’s Saylor going to say?

Because it’s, we don’t, I don’t think her life is real. She’s just a fun girl. We love her. Anyway, she is like running with this inspiration and she is basically running our TikTok account. We’re calling it Saylor’s version. And it’s awesome. You definitely want to follow. It’s like the kind of content that you actually want to see.

so yeah, follow our TikTok.

Kathy: Yeah, she is. Saylor is just awesome. So I was probably one of the very first followers. Cause I know she was up to this and she is, you know, cause it’s like TikTok, it’s hard. Like, what are you going to be, you know, I know, I know there’s the Excel person. There’s the, this chief Excel officer or whatever.

And she does a great job doing like Excel tips and stuff on TikTok, but I could never think of like, okay, how can I… It’s the screens are so little, like, how am I going to show how to do something with Kadence on this? But she is, she’s doing it. Not only showing helpful tips of ways to get more out of Kadence, but also just kind of adding some personality and making things super fun.

I love it. So y’all need to go see Saylor’s version.

Ben: Yeah, she’s, she’s awesome. One of the funniest people I know. And you won’t be disappointed to watch some of her videos and see some of her humor because, uh, it’s great.

Kathy: She needs to come on the podcast here. She needs. Yeah, we do.

Ben: It’s a great idea.

Kathy: She would be great.

Ben: So, our special guest today, Kathy, tell us about what you’re doing and how that relates to people who are building businesses and all that kind of stuff.

Kathy: Yeah, well, it doesn’t just relate to people who are building businesses, but it relates to everything. I mean, what I’ve learned from, so the company I’m working with now, Motivation Code is, Motivation Code is an assessment.

It’s based on like six decades worth of research about motivational science. I don’t know all of the history that well, all I know is where it’s at, where it is today, and they’ve taken all of this research about motivation and they have an assessment that is based on your stories.

It’s not a either or, it’s like, do you like coffee? Or do you like tea? Is this like, tell us about a time in which you found fulfillment in a job you did. In an experience you had, something that happened at school. There’s four different stories that you tell. So everything’s based on your story. And then it uses AI to pull out keywords and whatnot. And it comes back and it tells you what motivates you. It tells you what your Motivational Dimensions are. There’s eight different Motivational Dimensions. And so when I first took it, it came back and told me that I was a Visionary as my primary Motivational Dimension.

And then, uh, my secondary is Influencer. And my third is, uh, Achiever. And when I had those three together, I’m like, Oh, that explains so much about me and what I do, and how I get other people, like, to jump on to Kadence Amplify. Hey, let’s do this big, huge thing that, you know, I don’t, I just, like, have a vision of, like, we should try something like this and influence other people.

Like, Hannah, hey, let’s go do this one thing. It explained a lot about me. I’m very impressed with the technology. As I have sat with understanding my own Motivational Dimensions and how I’m fulfilled in the things that I do. Like I’m not so fulfilled with project management or a plan necessarily. I like to just have the vision is like, okay, let’s get all the pieces together.

But other people are really motivated when they’ve got Asana in front of them and the plan is all laid out and they’re just like rubbing their hands with joy. That is not me. So it really helped me understand like who I am, how I work, how working on the Kadence project was like, so inspiring to me because it did give me.

There’s so much vision, Ben, especially that you bring to what WordPress can do. It was inspiring to me and being able to go out there and influence other people to have an empowering experience with the product, I was all for that. So when I took the assessment and then was approached to, Hey, why don’t you create content that inspires other people to find out what really motivates them. You know, the, the CEO of Boeing isn’t necessarily going to sit down and build a site with Kadence, but if the CEO of Boeing can sit down with Motivation Code and understand how he or she is motivated, understand how their people are motivated, how entire teams play off each other.

There’s even parts of the assessment that can say like this whole team is full of Visionaries, where’s the person with Asana? We need someone who’s got some kind of organization on this team. And so you can restructure teams that way. So there’s so much power to it. It just kind of was like. something I could not say no to.

To be able to have that kind of impact for a Visionary like myself. It just, it sang to me, so, uh, right now Motivation Code is the full assessment I think is like. 89. I should know off the top of my head how much the full assessment is. There’s a mini assessment that you can just get like, is it 79?

Ben: I’m on the website right now. 79.

Kathy: Awesome. Thank you. And if you use the code Zant20, you can get 20 percent off on that. You heard it here first. And, uh, there’s a, if you just want to get a high level view, if you’re just curious, there’s a $19 assessment that’ll at least give you an idea of your, uh, of your Motivational Dimension of like how, how you’re wired, it won’t go that.

The report’s pretty in depth. I think I sent you one, Ben, that I took a while back. It’s more in depth now that they’re, they’re constantly evolving the products. So you can take the test now and then like log in in six months and your report might have additional information and guidance for you. Uh, the team is amazing.

So I’m like, I’ve been really happy, like learning with the people who are there. And it’s, it’s a newer assessment. It’s a newer product. It’s very different than like a Myers Briggs or an Enneagram, which are also great tools to help understand yourself. But this one really looks at what motivates you, what fulfills you, helps you make better decisions about your life because you know who you are.

And the more data you have about yourself, the better you can say, okay, I know that this job that’s going to put me in front of Asana all day is not going to make me happy. You can make those kinds of decisions and it helps like just looking over. Over my life and some of the decisions I’ve made of like, oh, okay.

I understand that I was trying to key into that part of myself. I didn’t know it at the time, but now everything makes sense. So it’s all about self knowledge and just self actualization, understanding yourself better. Now if you’re an entrepreneur if you’re building a business and you’re here because you’re building sites for other people, knowing how you’re motivated helps you structure your day better, helps you communicate better with clients.

If you’re managing a small team, especially a team of creative people who are building websites. You know, managing creative people can be incredibly difficult because you have to give them tons of freedom to really like run and play with ideas. Understanding how people are motivated, you are more able to meet your people where they’re at and communicate in a language that resonates with them so that you can be a better leader. So this is all about just making better leaders and better humans and happier people. So how do I say no to that? Right?

Ben: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah. That’s, you’ve sold me.

Ben: Yeah. And it’s really fun.

I think it’s really fascinating too, because it’s using AI to allow you to tell it your story, not just answer questions. That’s fascinating. I’m going to like sit down and type out something that happened to me. And then it’s going to be able to assess that is a really cool way to do it. I’m, my wife and I are like, and most of my family, my parents from when I was little, we always have been into like the personality tests and all of that stuff.

Super into Enneagram. And so it’s a constant conversation of like, just throwing out there in the world. Like, oh yeah, I’m, I’m an eight or I’m, I’m a two. And that being like a normal sentence. And there’s so much context and then information that gets passed with that. So, uh, another one that is focused on motivation, I think is fascinating.

And I think could be really insightful for people. So having done it and being a part of the team, what do you feel like are the biggest, wins that people like discover in this process of like, is it like… for you, obviously it’s, it’s, it’s understanding like what kind of job you should work? What kind of in the sense, but like, what are some of the other wins or some of the other stories that you’ve heard?

Kathy: Yeah, there’s one organization that took their entire team. They, they did a retreat. They did the MCode, the Motivation Code together and got to see how everybody else on the team. I mean, it’s really helpful, especially, you know, teams, not everybody’s going to think the same way. You’re going to have different personalities, different motivations, and to be able to really like empathize with other people and like, okay, someone, we’ve got a Driver over here and this person is incredibly motivated when things are, you know, everybody’s feet are to the fire and we’ve got an insurmountable obstacle ahead and they’re going to drive the whole team and motivate everybody to get across the line.

Like that kind of, we’ve got one of those. Okay. Now that explains why that person acts this way. In this certain circle, you know, it just gives you more empathy on a team, which is really important because it’s not all about just, you know, one person. And I think for leaders, especially, We’ve do a lot of talking about leadership and I’ve really been inspired by this whole idea of servant-based leadership, that leaders are not there to fulfill their ego because they’re CEO or whatever.

They’re there to be of service to the people on the team because great things happen when a leader can step back and say, I believe in you. I know you can do this. But in order to really do that, they have to know who that person is. They have to know that, you know, you don’t want to try to empower, let’s say, an Achiever.

An Achiever is someone who’s like very motivated by recognition. They want to achieve things and they want to be told look at that great thing that you’ve done. They really want that kind of recognition, but they are also very driven to do something rather on their own. They can be very independent. So you can see that, you know, a leader might need to know that this person is independently driven.

So if you say, Oh, wow, you did such a great job being a team player on this. Well, you’re not speaking to that person’s Motivational Dimension. So there’ll be like, wow, they really don’t know me. They don’t understand who I am. What am I doing on this team? So it helps you just, you know, cater your knowledge to who that person is and then reward them in a way that they feel satiated by that reward, that they feel fulfilled, that who they really are is being recognized and is being celebrated.

For the contributions that they’re making to an organization. So those types of stories are the ones that are really interesting. , But I I think the greatest impact that we’re going to see with motivation code is as more organizations bring it in, because really every organization is looking for greater productivity, greater team fulfillment. They want to keep their high performers, so their high performers aren’t like

looking for a better option where they’re going to feel more fulfilled. You want to retain those high performers. So every organization is looking for that. So if you can better understand who those people are and help them find fulfillment in your organization, it’s going to stop turnover.

It’s going to increase productivity, increase fulfillment and attract better people into an organization. So it’s more and more people start figuring this out that Motivation Code is a key. That those data points are going to help leaders make better decisions. We’re going to have happier people working in teams.

So there’s my sales pitch.

Hannah: I love it. It sounds like we’ve got our, our family reunion activity done. All our families can be together next month.

It is so helpful, like obviously in huge teams, but also like in family dynamics. Yeah. And our family, like our parents couldn’t be more opposite. Yeah. So understanding like each other’s fears and each other’s motivations has been so helpful and like allowing them to connect.

And then the same thing with all seven of us kids, we are all across the spectrum with just like our personalities and how we do things. And so like Ben said, just these personality things have been so helpful. So I’m super intrigued by this and I do actually think that we’re all going to do it, but I can totally see how like in a team perspective, like I would love to even like take this to the birth center and like have all the midwives do it and just kind of, yeah, we’re all just wired so differently.

And yeah, it’s hard to, to see that sometimes because you’re like, why don’t you think like, I think.

Ben: I imagine for, for someone who’s not on a team, taking something like this and understanding like what they should get off their plate, whether it’s like farm it out to a different service or whatever, like that could be really helpful in terms of like, I know I should be focusing on this. I get fulfillment.

That’s I’m going to come to it with more passion and energy. These are the things I don’t, these are the things I need to figure out how to get. Either someone else to do or you know, whatever even for someone who’s not on a team that could be really helpful

Kathy: Oh completely completely, especially if like you’re just starting out solopreneur and you’re you know Starting to get your momentum going really honing in on who you are what fulfills you, you know that leverage You know, when you’re, when you’re trying to develop momentum, you have to leverage, it’s like building a new habit.

You know, you’re going from an old way of doing things to a new way. It’s like, it takes so much more energy. So if you’re not leveraging who you really are, it can be so much more challenging.

Ben: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Kathy: How’s the group going? The group is still pretty, I’m still in there. I try to answer questions when I can. Still pretty active.

Hannah: Yeah, our Facebook group is so active. It’s amazing. I’m like waiting for it to slow down and it hasn’t, and it’s awesome., and I don’t spend enough time in there, but every time I’m in there, I’m like, oh, it’s like, it really is self sustaining.

It’s amazing how like, our core Kadence people just are just in there all the time answering questions. I’m so impressed by just our Kadence users and, Yeah, the community is beautiful. You also get haters. You get, that’s always shocking to me too. When people are just rude, it like baffles me, but for the most part, it’s a really like beautiful, thriving community, I think.

Kathy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I logged in this morning and. Nine people, nine new people. Welcome to Kadence. So it’s still growing. There’s still people. I love to see, I’m on Twitter a lot and I see a lot of people who are having, having a good time building sites with Kadence and, and finding a lot of success there.

and a lot of people still having that experience of like, I want to try full site editing. I really want to give it a go, but gosh, I just got to get this out the door. I just have to get this done and Kadence is the thing that’s going to do it for me. And so they’re, they’re sticking with Kadence, which I, I love to see because.

It’s all about empowerment. It’s about helping people build more effective sites more quickly than ever before. And I’m so excited about all the AI tools. I don’t even recognize the starter template plugin anymore. Just like, well, hello, guess we’re using the AI for this. So it’s great.

It is super fun. Well, I guess we can wrap it up. I can hang up my Kadence shirt for maybe the next time I can come by and visit. And, uh, the next one.

Hannah: Yeah. And our special guest is Kathy again. We’ll just keep bringing you on.

Kathy: I do have some cool stuff happening. I will not, I cannot talk about it yet, but I will leave that as a cliffhanger that when I have a new thing launching.

I will, uh, bring it to The Kadence Beat. Maybe I can announce it here because it’s good. It’s got all kinds of fun things to it. I’ll tell you guys afterwards, but yeah.

Anyway. So we’ll have the number on the episode as it gets published on the site, of course. And you will find this on YouTube.

You will find this on Spotify. You’ll find it wherever you listen or watch podcasts. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And on behalf of the Kadence team and the special guest, thanks for being here. Bye guys.

Hannah: Bye.

Ben: Thanks.