[with Omari Harebin] From Corporate Dropout to Digital Alchemist

[Music] Hello friends and welcome to "Somewhat Useful." I'm Christy Price. And I'm Will Myers. And on this show we'll be discussing the topics shaping the world of digital entrepreneurship and tackling questions about square space and web design. We're figuring out this world one website at a time and hope you find this "Somewhat Useful." Hey, New Year New You. How are you? Hey Will, happy New Year. Do you have any resolutions this year? Yeah, not really, honestly. Resolutions, I don't really do that. I stopped doing them a couple of years back because I heard someone say, and it just has stuck with me. I don't really like it, but it's stuck with me and I can't unhear it. But they were like, if you really care about something, you're going to do it. You're not going to wait till like, aware the Earth is in its location around the Sun. You're just going to do it. I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. And I do find myself getting to like October, November, December and being like, oh, I'm going to make that a New Year's resolution to like, eat healthier or start working out. I'm like, this is just a bad, it's started from like two weeks of being unhealthy at the end of the year to like a month. And then now it's like a whole quarter. And I'm like, okay, this is a bad, I need to stop doing this. We'll show up at the gym with everyone else for one month. And absolutely, you're trying to cancel our gym membership. 100%. You like don't get that great of deals that time of the year. And you might as well just start whenever you get the mindset. So I haven't been doing them. I think it's like, I'm not against them by any means, but I've just kind of pulled away. I don't do them either because I'm not very good at them. Yeah. Yeah, that's the other part of it. It's like actually hitting them is really hard because you're making decisions for future you. And I'm right. You should be very careful about the decisions you make for future you. Yeah, think about 2020. Like we were going to the gym that year. No, we were not. That was different. So we do, this is a kind of funny story. We do words of the year. I think you've you've mentioned you do the same thing. I've done them occasionally. Like I've done them. I did that. I think in 2022 and 2024, I skipped a year. But yeah, I have a couple and I'm thinking about my word for this year too. So what if your word's been? Well, it's first is like a good, it's just a word. You know, we're just picking out a word for this year. We'll see what happens with it. It's a good like bonding exercise with my wife and I because we just get to sit down and talk and be like, what are you? What are we wanting to do this next year? What do we feel like we're lacking? We do share a word. Oh, yeah, we share a word. Yeah. It's like what's our what's our joint like combined household word? I love that because honestly, I would I probably wouldn't do this on my own. But I do find it's nice to just like chat about these things with other people. It's nice to just bring them in and in 2020 and obviously 2020 COVID we're making our word before COVID became a thing. Right. No idea what's the tool. No idea what it is. Our word in 2020 was still. Oh, you nailed it. Yeah, I feel like we caused it a little bit. I kind of feel like universe alive. I can't tell people this. Yeah, but still was 2020. And this last year, 2024 was connection. Oh, nice. I think we did an okay job. I think we did an okay job with it. Yeah. What have you words been in 2022? That's when I was coming out of working a whole lot in 2020 and 2021 because there was really nothing else to do. Right. So I worked a lot more. So in 2022, I'm like, my word for the year is ease. And that's when I was just like, I'm going to take a week off every month and just take it easier and just come from a place of ease instead of like this I must hustle. Yeah. So if that was 2022, last year, my word was joy because personally, we had a really rough couple of years in 2022 and 2023 with just family losses. And 2024, I decided it would be joy, just like finding joy in things. And then yeah, and I continue on with that theme, but like yeah, what are you doing this? Ramping it up a little this year's going to be fun. Like I am all about the fun this year. Yes. I am all about that. Whenever whenever I do branding exercises fun is always like a word I really liked. I love it. Yeah. What's the point of any of this unless it's fun, you know? Why am I my own boss if I'm not having fun? You just got to enjoy it. So yeah, interesting. So we both do words. I wonder if anyone else does what let us know if you do words. And if you do, tell us what the word is. I would love to know. Speaking of things that happened in 2024, we had Circle Day. We haven't really caught up with everyone about that yet. How did you feel like it went? Well, Circle Day, I always describe it as like for us, it's kind of like our Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah, kind of is. Yeah. Super Bowl for Squarespace designers except everybody wins. So I love Circle Day. It's so fun to see my co-workers, which I think of all of you in person. Yeah. And you know, maybe we just chat as we're getting coffee at the coffee bar or maybe we get to like have some time the night before Circle Day and catch up. But just like those connections, that's what I live for. Those connections. I love it so much. I know we really got to find a way. I wish there was like more than one because just one a year is just not enough. I'm kind of with you. It's just it's so nice being able to just see people in person and just squeeze their little neck and say, "I don't want to shoot." So much. It really is, it's a lot of hugging. It's just lovely. It's just lovely seeing everyone there. It's so funny because I am an introvert. So like I love it so much and I'm so excited. And then at the end of the day, I'm like, "I cannot talk to anyone ever again." Yeah, 100% with you. Yeah, after like two days of it, I'm like, "I need to just be put in a little box and just shut the no-life." Yeah, just need to be totally alone. I'm 100% with you. I got these like spurts of extra version during that day and then the rest of the year. Yeah, and this year was a little weird because you and I were speaking. So I was also nervous the whole time before we were on stage. And Sam Zellich at Squarespace is just like so fun and wonderful. And I told him I was nervous and he knows I love Douglas Adam's author. And he was like, "Remember what Douglas Adam said about flying." And I was like, "What did you say about flying?" He was like, "Amit the ground and miss." And I'm like, "I can totally aim at the ground." Hey, I can do that. Yeah, Sam was great. I remember he was hanging out in like the speaker room with us before. And just I'm sure he was doing this intentionally in retrospect, but just like talking to us about other stuff, which like totally got my mind off of it. Yeah. Yeah, I was so nervous leading up to it. This is honestly, public speaking is probably my number one fear in life. And it's odd because I feel like it went very well and I feel like we did awesome. I had so much fun. And I had so much fun up there. But it was like what I realized it's more of like the build up to public speaking than it's my worst fear. But I'm really glad we did it. It ended up being really fun. It was so fun. I'm excited about today's episode though because we get to speak with Omari, our good friend Omari. We got to catch up at Circle Day and Omari is just one of those people that has such a unique perspective on things. I love talking with him. He's like the philosopher, the web therapist of the whole square space community. He's really amazing. So excited for that conversation. But before we jump into it, we've got some tips. What do you have for us? Yeah, mine's the obvious one. It's a new year. Update your copyright in your website, Fitter. There we go. Yeah. There we go. Updated. Right down there. I think Chris Schwartz-Edmondson has some code on his website about how you can like update it automatically that it's like some JavaScript. Oh yeah, yeah. Curson has that too. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's out there. But that's a good little thing. But yeah, make sure your copyrights get updated. Yep. And well, what's your tip? Mine is so I did a what I love the name of this. It's called a glitch and bitch. And so this is a session like a zoom session from the ladies over at Mushabum. That's Laura Grace and Katie Lynn. They're twins and their web designers. This session was about how like stuff for your office. Like what's your office setup look like? And they talked about the verb chair, which is like this really comfortable chair. And I ended up getting it and I got to tell you it makes a huge difference for us sitting at our chairs and our desks all day. This verb chair is really, really nice. It's interesting that you bring this up because I have this very inexpensive IKEA chair. And I'm fairly certain it's why my shoulders hurt all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about this verb chair. They're not our sponsors. No, they're not no, they're not our sponsors, but it's got the lumbars support. It's got the neck support. It's got all the different supports. It's just super comfortable. I look at the investment in a chair the same way I do like a bed. It's like this thing you're going to be spending a third of your life in. Yeah. They could be expensive for sure. But your dollar to use ratio is like very low, very, very low, 'cause we spend so much time in it. And like you said, like the little neck pains and the back pains and the shoulder pains, it's again, one of those things you can't price in because you don't know if it's like actually gonna change it and then when if you don't have that pain, you don't think about it anymore, but I gotta tell you, I just, I don't have much neck or back pain in sitting in these chairs. I mean, they're just, I highly recommend it. And whether it's verber or not, but just like invest, invest in a good chair, you're sitting in it so long, invest in a good chair, that's my tip. - Yeah, love it. - All right, well let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we're gonna jump into our conversation with Omari. - Can't wait. - Managing a multilingual website doesn't have to be complicated. With Wiglot, streamline the entire translation process from start to finish without writing a single line of code. 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(upbeat music) We are joined today with the amazing Omari Hairbin. Omari started Squarespace themes, SQSP themes, as many of you might know it, which was one of the first plug-in and template shops almost a decade ago, specifically around Squarespace. He has an online community called the Digital Alchemy Lab. You just released a memoir, the corporate dropout, really excited to hear about that, about how you went from a struggling new father to a successful entrepreneur, Omari. So glad to have you on the podcast, man. - Hey, well, glad to be here. - Well, okay, let's jump right into one of the first questions which is about SQSP themes, because this was one of the first stores for the Squarespace community created, and you did this about a decade ago. So for people who might not be familiar with that, can you tell us about what it was that prompted you to build that and how does it fit into your business life today? - Yeah, so it's funny to hear that because at the time, 10 years ago, there were other soon-to-be template shops and soon-to-be plug-in shops. And so I was just like a beginner newbie, Squarespace freelancer. I was just excited to have my business in the specialist directory. I was just excited to like finally begin leads that weren't dependent on my local community. And I was struggling with these customizations. And so there were a couple of folks at the time. One of them was Square Front. And that was like the premier source of everything you see today. (laughing) But the thing is, it never quite got off the ground, but there was like a lot of, it was the seed of like a lot of everything basically. If you were to go back in the web time machine, you'd be like, oh crap, this guy was like ahead of his time. So that was before me, right? So when I came in, it was like, okay, there are all of these big players, quote unquote, I'm saying. And my struggle was just like, how do I like do these customizations that clients are looking for? Because I don't quite have the development skills. So I had to go to Upwork, or which was Odesk at the time, and like, try to hire a couple of guys, but they could have figured it out. And then I would end up with these, like, ended up with a couple of projects where I had to refund the client, because just couldn't deliver. And it really messed me up because I'd gone from this, this high of like, wow, I'm suddenly getting clients through Squarespace as like a specialist, but I'm not able to deliver technically when I thought it was just like copy and paste in some HTML. And I was like, not at all, buddy. So it was a very cold winter for me that first year, like November, 2014, because I was out the game effectively. Right. I was trying to figure out pricing. So I drank a whole lot of charge your worth cool aid. I don't know if you've ever tried that, but that sent me through the roof where my project minimum was so high that I wasn't getting any leads at all. Yeah. So it was a very cold winter, but I came back in the spring when a friend of mine, you know, he knew what I was going through, and he was like, if there was only one thing that you could do right now to make money, because I was trying a lot of things. I was tutoring, I was one day I'd be making posters for something the next day, I was like shooting a video for a political campaign, like I was all over the place, but I didn't have any traction or momentum with anything. So I was, you know, broke all the time. And my friend was like, you know, if you could do one thing right now, what would you do? And I looked back at my, you know, first year of freelance, and I was like, you know, I really like these Squarespace websites, you know, I've done a handful of them, you know, I enjoy the platform. I think if I were to do one thing, I would make Squarespace websites. And that gave me focus, which I didn't have before. But I also was gaining like this insight that I needed to have systems, and I needed to have like processes, and all of this stuff. But I couldn't put any of that to practice with the clients that I was getting for like random marketing consultant gigs. I needed something of my own. So as soon as I got that focus of like art, Squarespace is the game, I immediately got on Craigslist and created alerts all over the country. So anytime someone in America needed a Squarespace something, that would show up in my inbox. So doing that for a week, it changed my perspective, my perception, because not only did I have this focus, but now in my inbox, I was seeing that, oh, there's a demand for this. And I was, you know, able to be the first to respond to any of these kind of things. So at the next week, I was like, all right, let me get on Upwork and become a free, so I don't be hired from Upwork before. Now I was like, let me become one because I had some of the cool aid that said, you know, don't free lands on a freelance marketplace. (laughing) So anyway, I decided that I was gonna just try it out and apply the same principles. So I set up these alerts, RSS feeds, so that I would get in my inbox every morning and notification if there are new Squarespace-related jobs. And that got me going like from zero to 30 days, just having that clear focus, I was starting to see, okay, so the demand is consistent, right? It was a lot of different kind of customization things, right? So I decided, okay, I wanna make a business around this because I wanna have like a certain passive income lifestyle that I'd been going to these webinars about and like reading blog posts about, I'm like, I want that. And I was like, okay, well, I need a product, so I'm like, all right, one day there'll be Squarespace templates and when that day comes, you know, I kind of wanna be there. So I decided that I was gonna build a business around Squarespace templates, aka Squarespace themes. And I called my friend, I was like, you I got it, this is it. Like, it's over, you know, like it was like I could see, you know, the whole matrix open up. And then it was like, all right, this is the birth of this case study. And for me, I had been learning this SEO and like content marketing stuff. And I couldn't really put it to play with my clients because the relationship wasn't long enough for you to see like any type of rail, traction and so forth. So I needed something of my own and I'm like, all right, cool, perfect. This is gonna be a case study, it's gonna be a test bed to try out all of the SEO stuff I wanna do, all the content marketing stuff I wanna do and all of the digital product stuff I wanna sell in the process. So that was the birth of sqsbthemes.com and that was nine years ago now. So I'm still playing out the case study. It's still going. It hasn't stopped. - I love that. - It's in real time and it's, yeah. - You know at the beginning, you said there was square front and they started and I haven't heard of square front and I've been around you know, long time. What, why has yours stayed around and others haven't? Like what do you attribute to your longevity in this space? - I think I was just able to fail the longest, the hardest. (laughing) - Yeah, just beating your head against the wall, I get it. - And not having any other option. So like there was one point that I went back to try to get a job and it was just not going to be the part of my story. So like there was never any other option for me but to figure it out. And I'm the type of person who I enjoy the problem of figuring things out. And I get great satisfaction when I figure things out. So this happens to be one of those really long problems that I've had to figure out. So but like I give credit to Squarespace Guru. So you might not know about Squarespace Guru but his name was Greg I think. He was like a forerunner and in courses and plugins and snippets and tutorials and everything that you would imagine a Squarespace Guru to produce. He did that. There was design live which evolved into 60 probably probably familiar with. But in the earliest iteration they were doing really cool stuff. They were actually my first like partner for like sending leads to them. So it was really interesting beginnings because like you said a lot of those players didn't they're not playing today. I look at it like a game. They're not playing today. But it's just how stories go and it just so happens that like my story had a bunch of failures that every time I got back up it was like let me try Squarespace again. I think we talked about this on your podcast like a year or something ago but it is like a game. Like you kind of like look at this. You don't treat people like you know characters in a game but you treat this business as like okay I'm leveling up my skills and need to get here to do that and then need to get there. I like that mindset. Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned that there was a Squarespace guru Amari before you because I've heard you called the Squarespace guru within our Squarespace Circle community. And I actually really love that title for you because I feel like I always come away from our conversations with a new way of looking at things. So sometimes when I'm talking to Amari I'll be thinking about how can I get from point A to point B and I'll be thinking like in terms of walking and I'll have this conversation with Amari and I'll be like well why don't you just teleport. And yeah it's like this whole other way of looking at things and I love it. So I'm curious about how you see the landscape of web design changing over the next several years because you know we've got AI now. Yeah. Should we should we be afraid? Yeah no there's definitely nothing to be afraid of. This is the best time to be empowered. And so I like to live in a spirit of power and peace and a sound mind. And so therefore um but it is it is wise to to look ahead right. So 10 years ago to me having a third party Squarespace ecosystem was an inevitable thing right why? Because it already existed for every other platform and only because of like the closed limitations of Squarespace did it take a little bit longer to mature but even then when it matured you've got like way more expensive templates than you would have had had it been like a marketplace kind of thing from the jump. So now if you look forward 10 years there's no templates as we know them today. If you look forward into 2034 everything is generated you know everything is prompted so that's why I think Squarespace's positioning with design intelligence is so smart and ahead because like Squarespace is really it for from like 2014 to 2019 really like shifted the whole trend of web design right Squarespace templates like there the the the bread and butter of Squarespace right that shifted the whole trend of web design where everyone wanted to mimic and imitate to the point where it's like all right it's it's really democratized and commoditized now you know where do you go from here well e-commerce obviously because we need to sell things online but back to design where do we go with design well now we got to prompt everything forward so the way I've my relationship with AI it's for the past um how many months now maybe 17 months has been like what are the things that I've always wanted to accomplish and haven't been able to accomplish that I'm now able to and so it's just pushing my own limitations or extended on my own limitations and then that allows me to run into the limitations of AI and as often as I do that I'm excited because it means there's just a matter of time right so anything that AI can't do today I'm I'm not fixated on that I'm just trying to do what I'm trying to do and as AI evolves and new generations arrive I could just move right into it so I've already had that experience over the past 17 months or whatever a couple of times where things that I was trying to do in January 2023 it wasn't possible like GPT wasn't capable of it six months later it was capable and I was like okay I'm ready and then there are also things where I could see ahead and I'm like okay this is just for me to like experience the manual process of this because in six months it's going to be you know ubiquitous or automated or whatever yeah I think AI agents are are really like about to become the big wave and the way my attention works like when I go all in I go all in and then like if I come out I'm out because it's just you know it's too much but the last time I was all in I was working on like some automated agents that could really just do a lot of fundamental administrative tasks with my business so I think for solarpreneurs this is like the best time ever to capitalize off of what you would previously have to employ a human for and really in my opinion the reason you're a solarpreneurs you probably don't want to employ humans to do certain things because you're just like I don't really want to like offload that on another person and like them be okay with it so but I could offload that on an AI right so like with my memoir I've gone through so many iterations and repetitions that if I were to offload that on like a human even if you know I'm paying them like six figures it would be a lot for them you know it's it would be a lot of reps that that they would have had to gone through working with me yeah yeah so I feel like this is just a really incredible window where we have this collapse of like the potential that we had at like the print and press to the internet to like everything in between it's just like language at your fingertips that's amazing really it's it's just wild it's just wild all this the AI agent stuff that's um that's like the big buzz word now what is the difference between like a chatbot and agent well the agent can do stuff on the chatbot is chat is just primary function is just chat with you yeah but yeah back to the chat bots though so Squarespace guru so I bought the domain you know after it was retired and I think someone else had like you know inherited it and then I bought that domain and I would do random things with it at different points in time so at one point in time I used it to showcase like tutorials for from different Squarespace gurus but then I used it as an AI like to test out this whole AI functionality where what if you could chat with a AI that knew everything you needed to know about Squarespace based off of all of the goop the Squarespace gurus out there and it was just a demo project to prove the functionality out for myself and it was fun but a lot of I do a lot of projects that they're not necessarily profitable in the immediate but they have a lot of long-term profitability but I don't also have time to like stick around for the long-term profitability I have to like just keep moving on so a lot of my what I try to do is like leave behind as many bread crumbs as I can because I often don't even remember literally sometimes literally so with like some of this AI stuff I tried early on to like packages much of what I was learning as I could but it moves so quickly that I don't even know how relevant a lot of that stuff is either so anyway yeah but it's nice when you can you know you're trying to figure something out and you realize that past you had figured it out and you left a note for yourself so yeah that's always good yes I live by that oh Marri you mentioned you mentioned your memoir the corporate dropout and I read it this week and loved it as a parent I thought it was a really amazing thing not just for the world at large but for your kids too and so I'm curious about what it was like to write that what prompted you to write it and for people who are listening it's all about creating a life that aligns with your deeper purpose yeah so I was you know working corporate America and found out that I was gonna have a son And right before he was about to be born, like a couple of months before, I had gotten really into my music. Like music had always been like my side passion thing. And all through college, I was like making beats. And then like when I was in grad school, I'm like now I'm making albums. And then I get it, I graduate and I'm like, whoa, hold on a second. Yeah, I wanted to graduate and get a good job and stuff like that. But I also had this like seat of a dream. I don't know exactly how it's supposed to materialize or whatever. But I love music and I love to make music. So as my son is about to be born, I'm pouring myself into like these albums. And there's no like marketing plan for them. There's no way for them to be like for it to be distributed. I'm wrestling with so much things that like I won't even allow myself to be seen. Right? To a certain degree. But I knew that ultimately I wanted to be able to tell my story. Like the whole point of like music and being a musician is you're expressing yourself. And I didn't feel like I was fully able to express myself. And telling my story was like, all right, this is going to be how I'm going to be able to express myself. So the very first thing that I tried when I was on paternity leave, I was on paternity leave. I took this album that I created right before my son was born called Till Shiloh. And I created this six day Instagram like video album experience. Now you're probably not surprised to know that you couldn't really upload video to Instagram at that point in time. But I had figured it out. So before Instagram was a video platform, I had video on there. And I was telling this really cool story. But it, you know, everything required virality. Right? And that was like the game for a long time of like, you know, everyone is like trying to go viral until it doesn't even mean anything anymore. It's like water. But anyway, nothing went viral. I'm now freelance in full time as a creative. I'm like, believe in that, something is going to happen now because I've taken the leap. And so if you take the leap, like, something's supposed to happen, right? Like all of the stories, it's just like they take the leap and six months later, like, it's amazing. So six months later, I'm struggling with square space. But I'm also trying to tell my story again. So this time around, I'm like, all right, I'm going to update my website, my personal website to tell this story of the corporate dropout. And it was called 33 Days the Movie. And it was a lock like you had to log in. So this was before memberspace or, you know, any of those kind of things. And there was something called century log in. And so I had this whole log in experience where you could log in. I hit the header in the footer. And it was this whole video, choose your own adventure experience, right? So you can like take these like different video portals and see like different scenes of my life the year before and a couple of years before. And it was really cool, you know, my fans at the time, they signed up, they enjoyed it. But I didn't know how to monetize it, right? And I had this like idea where it was going to be like a monthly subscription. But no one subscribed or I think one person subscribed, which was actually fine. I just didn't know how the numbers worked at that time, you know, one out of 33 is not bad. But that's that's a norm. But anyway, at that point in time, I didn't have a clear perspective on all of these things. Anyway, I had this cool thing. I emailed it to Squarespace actually. I'm like, I don't know who's responsible for like innovative customer use cases. But here, you know, this is what I've come up with. And they actually hit me back and they're like, yeah, cool, Amari. Thank you for sharing this way to go. And then I'm like, I like went back and I like emailed it to Anthony as well. I got to, you know, I got to go straight to the top and I didn't get a response. But that's just the kind of person I was at that time was like, you know, I needed to like get this thing out. So every once in a while, I would return to it, right? And it became a therapeutic experience because I realized that I hadn't finished living the story that I wanted to tell. I was only in the beginning. But as I started to learn more about storytelling, I was like, oh crap, I'm in the beginning of act two. It's about to get really tough. And then it got really tough. And I was like, oh crap, I'm about to go through like the door of no return. And like I'm about to go through all of these different story beats in like real life. So the whole like heroes journey narrative framework, a whole lot of like screenwriting narrative frameworks became like a life map for me. Where because I had made this choice, I started to live through these different things that I had to experience in order to tell the story. And the whole act three, it was me asking myself like, is the story done yet? Is it over yet? Like have I reached yet? Have I reached? And I did find a place to end the story, right? But the story keeps going. Like I'm still in it right now. Like me sharing this with you is a part of the story because I've never shared it before. Right? So my entire square space journey was really to be able to tell the story. The only reason I got into the platform was because I was using it to tell my story. It was interesting to me how prevalent square space was in your memoir too in the last part of your memoir. Me too. It really became. It really became clear that it was such an important part of your life. Yeah. Yeah. And I obviously couldn't avoid that either. Right? So like a whole part of the end is me saying like, I can't make this about square space. And I'm like, oh, well, this what I've been doing. So the way I even got to finish it was earlier this year, I started right in this like, I guess like a guide, like a square space guide for like, you know, how to become your own square space guru. And I was trying to figure out like, where do I start that story? And I was like crap, Omar, you just got to go back and just we can finish the thing. So in that process, you know, I had a couple of beta readers give me some feedback. And one of those were one of the feedback was like halfway through the chapter on finding my niche. They were like, I'm already tired of square space. You know, I was afraid of that. But whatever. At the very least, if you know, if every every square space, you know, person in this, this market gets some benefit out of it, I'm satisfied off of that. Yeah. And like you said, I mean, ultimately it's your story. I think it's kind of funny that you know, you didn't like it. You said you didn't like how prevalent of a role it played. But ultimately, it is part of your story. You know, there's there's you can't leave it out. And I think a lot of us in this space feel that. Yeah. And we'll drop a link in the show notes too, so you can grab a copy of the corporate dropout. Absolutely. So, Oh, Mara, you what are what are different ways like you're working with people today? Yeah. So for the past, I guess four months or so, it's just been coaching. And coaching is another one of those things where like I was coaching when I was 10 years old. My first side hustle when I got to college was as a like a date and coach. Like I put up these flyers around campus. I love that. I was I went to an engineering school that had like a ratio. That was like 70 30 years. People needed your help. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I immediately did what I do best, which was to advise on finding your particular lane and becoming yourself in a way that could attract whatever it is that you desire. So that's just been a lifelong like just nature, right? And a part of my my conflict at a certain point was like, like how do you charge for your nature? You know, or how do you charge for something that's kind of intangible or has like a lot of spiritual aspects to it? And so I finally resolved that. So it's a really amazing time for me because I'm now able to offer something that is really what I what I do best and where I'm most effective. And it took a long time to get there professional, you know, and the way that I can profess and be paid for. But now that I'm there, it's like, you know, I don't have any qualms. Like I used to have some qualms because the whole like online coach space and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. It's just like, yeah. And never resonated with me. I was always like watching from the periphery trying to understand and I just never could identify myself with that. So, you know, labels and words and identities, you know, it's a completely different look to what you do. Yeah, exactly. I've never had a problem, you know, articulate in myself in some creative way. But those creative ways, you know, they often get in the way of clarity. Right. So trying to find that balance of like being creative and clear. So I like digital alchemists at this point because it really encapsulates like where my soul rests and like Where my relationship with the digital world like has been very much alchemical So that's what I do now. I love that and I've heard that you're also working on a Different kind of plug-in. It's for people and set of websites So can you tell us a little bit about your mindset plugins? Yeah, so I'm really excited about this because It's another one of those things that I've always kind of had or or done or but I I never formalized There I never had a way to like put a package around it You know, I think I'm known within the square space realm because of the plugins we sell at our plug-in shop Yeah, but like I'm really into troubleshooting mindsets, right? Like I can troubleshoot a network, but the same way that I troubleshoot a network is the same way I troubleshoot a mindset because your mindset is a system of networks and Patterns and behaviors and you know experiences over time. So Tracing those Experiences get into the root cause of things being able to like really embody experiences and make shifts through time and Space that's what I really enjoy so mindset plugins are a way for you to get that in like small doses, right? So these are like guided meditations where if you're listening to this right now and you're like, man I could listen to this guy forever You just install these You could just install these you know whether it's for dealing with like the rises and falls of like freelance in and You have anxiety around Send in the invoice or maybe you have anxiety because like you don't know where the next client is going to come from There are certain like patterns of thought and there are certain Beliefs and things that you can install that I've installed and have activated that can liberate you from those anxieties and really It allows you to give yourself permission to feel how you want to feel and allow that to be the generator Like allow that to be the the cause as opposed to React into circumstances and become in the effect. So that's what mindset plugins are all about and It's a kind of thing where I have to look back, right? It's like you do something and then you look back and you say what was the value there or what was the piece that I could you know extract and Give to more people so Wherever there's a surplus in the conversation that goes into a place that people find really helpful Those are the things that I'm turning into mindset plugins. So are these like how do people consume these the mindset plugins audio audio So these are just audio audio Yeah, so I love that okay cool like how you download the zip now you download the zip and you open it up and there I love school MP3. I dig it. I love going the old school way for stuff like that. We'll have a link in the show notes for the mindset plugins too. Yeah So cool. I can't I can't wait. I'm worried like you said like I can listen to this guy forever. Yeah, same And beginning of the new year this this episode's coming out at the beginning of the new year So what a good time to start me some of that stuff. I know yeah, and anytime so I have the thing right anytime You get three requests in a short period of time that's like it's the same request that is your sign Like that is your key you have to you have to follow that So like I announced you know this memoir and within a week I got three requests for the audio books I'm like you can't sleep on that you got to deliver on that. Yeah, same way plugins came about to begin with you know and in one week Three clients reached out for the same exact week Why why do the why do the tweak over again every single time? Right, so I use that all over the place in order to figure out like where the opportunity is because it shows up Right and it shows it starts as a stray request, right? But then another one comes you're like oh that was weird and then another one comes and if you don't pay attention to that third one You've missed you know you've missed a boat, but it's okay because another one's coming Totally agreed the same thing happens for me with digital products Sometimes I'll just create one because I think it needs to be created and it doesn't do that well But if it's something that someone asks for and someone else asks about something similar and then I get a third one I'm like no, we know that's it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Same same thing then at some point you can marry the things that you just want to do because it's like you know I want this to exist like I want this to be at a certain point you can marry the two Right and you know a lot of creative endeavors start the same way where there's just a thing that you've cared about enough And it radiates to a point where someone experiences it and they're like oh, can I get some of that for myself? Yeah, and then you follow that right? I think a lot of squarespace businesses start that way You know you're you're doing this thing for someone you love it always starts out with like you're doing it for a family member a friend yourself For a project that you love and you care about and then someone else is like hey, can you do that for me too? So you do websites. Yeah, right? And all of a sudden your website designer you can follow that same path Anywhere in your creative world and you'll you'll get the same result Yeah, I had someone reach out to me and she said I've built sites for myself and three friends But I'm not a web designer and my response to her was yeah, yeah, are Yeah, yeah, I'm still not cleaning it. It's but But you are a But I am but you know that's a funny one too because I realize that there's Website design and then there's web design and so I I'm definitely a web designer. I see the wet like I look at the web Like if I go into a market I look for all the nodes And I look for all the connections between those nodes and then I try to establish some kind of presence That's how I approach web design, but like a page. I'm not really that good at it I can't leave that but okay, I mean I saw when you recreated your my space on Squarespace which is really fun and I feel like that was fun I feel like this is a throwback episode because like I just mentioned my space Amari that's something you recreated on Squarespace We talked about Craig's list. We talked about the movie the Matrix so You know if anyone is listening and you're not sure what those things are You're very young just let us know. Let's play Yeah, Craig list the matrix. I know it's sad. Love it. This was worth a time's past. Yeah, I don't get the alerts How many how many were you getting? The peak was like 2018 It was enough where like I could I never had to worry about like finding a small gig kind of thing It was just like a yeah, I mean I layered everything so like right that first First year I did kind of what I described where I try to saturate every possible place where someone could show up with a Squarespace question And then once I you know picked up momentum I just pulled back because Don't have time for all of that but that Stability of knowing I can go back to this pot if I need to that gives you this level of like Calm that allows you to be creative and think do other things so I love that you had that yeah Lightning wrong questions. Are we ready? Yeah. Amari. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, first one's easy. Where are you in the world? I'm in Bridgeport, Connecticut United States of America nice. What are the top three tools in your tech stack in my business tech stack? Squarespace convert kit in sendo sendo. Oh, yeah, convert kit and sendo. Yeah, that's what you use for the plug-in deliveries I love it. It has a really great affiliate program set up too. Yeah, okay last one. That's the best advice you ever received I'm Tell the truth. Yeah, just so simple tell the truth speak it ever cause it what it may Nice say that say that one more time Tell tell the truth tell the truth speak it ever cause it what it may. Yeah Love it. It's really good. That's really good Amari, thanks so much for joining us It's just always such a pleasure to talk to you. You're such a thoughtful and Interpreting human and it's just I love chatting with you likewise. I like talking to you all too for the same reasons I always like there's some major takeaway. I know I can't wait for these mindset plugins. I'm gonna be your first customer Yeah, look it forward to it. We'll have all the links in the show notes below as well. Thanks Amari Thank y'all. Thanks Well, that's it for today's episode. Thank y'all so much for listening. We hope you found this at least somewhat useful Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you really like us leave us a nice little five-star review Is this really helps us grow the pod? Thanks again to our sponsor We got and thanks to our audio engineer Ricky Gunn. We'll see you next time. See you next time Translating a website often turns into an endless project with hundreds of exchanges between translators, developers, and marketing teams. Discover WeGlot, a no-code website translation solution compatible with Squarespace that allows you to easily manage a website in multiple languages. WeGlot translates and displays the content of your website, saving you from having to manage multiple websites for different markets. Speed up the management of your translations with automatic detection of new content and a first layer of machine translation. Then, use WeGlot's post-editing features to control the quality of your translations. 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