Episode 165 – A Chat With Lesley Sim

Hallway Chats

Show Notes

HeroPress Essay: The good and the bad of open source WordPress

Contact Info:

• http://lesley.pizza
• @lesley_pizza
• Newsletter Glue

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hi everyone! My name is Topher.

Nyasha: And my name is Nyasha.

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. Before we get started, I want to draw your attention to Nexcess. They are our sponsor and we greatly appreciate it. I am a user of their services. The HeroPress site is around their servers. And it’s fantastic. I really like it.

They’re super fast. They have all the cool tools that I really like as a nerdy web developer. They have some cool stuff I haven’t got to use yet but I’m excited about. They do a lot of cool stuff with WooCommerce. They have automated testing, they have a sales performance monitor, there’s a plug-in performance monitor, and I’m looking forward to checking that out. And you should too.

Now we’re gonna get on with our podcast. And our guest today is Lesley Sim. Welcome.

Lesley: Hello.

Topher: I have a question about your name. Is the S hard or soft? Is it Les-ley or Lez-ley?

Lesley: Oh, I prefer Less-ley. So soft.

Topher: Okay. All right, cool. We’re talking about famous people named Leslie or Lesley before you came on.

Lesley: How do you pronounce a famous people’s Ss?

Topher: The one I know most famous is Leslie Nielsen. I mean, it sounds like there’s Z in it. But I’ve known some others.

Nyasha: I alternate. Leslie and Lesley.

Lesley: Cool.

Topher: So tell us about yourself. Where do you live?

Lesley: I live in Singapore. It’s almost exactly on the equator.

Topher: Oh, wow.

Lesley: So it’s hot and rainy all the time.

Topher: All the time. And your days are the same length year-round?

Lesley: Yep, that’s right.

Topher: But it’s near the ocean. How’s the temperature like? Is it miserable hot all the time or is it you get a breeze from the ocean?

Lesley: It’s getting there with climate change. It’s getting like really hot, like searing hot. I think most of the time it’s somewhere between 26 and 30 degrees Celsius.

Nyasha: Oh, wow.

Lesley: I’m not sure what that is in Fahrenheit.

Topher: It’s hot.

Nyasha: Hot, yeah. I was gonna say that’s hot.

Topher: I think 30 is just over 100 Fahrenheit.

Lesley: Yeah. So 78 to 212 Fahrenheit.

Topher: Not 212.

Lesley: No, wait, wait. I put in 100.

Topher: 86. That’s not bad at all.

Nyasha: That’s perfect, yeah. Where I grew up, that’s what the temperature was. I have always wanted to visit Singapore, by the way. That’s definitely on my list of visits. So I’ll call you when I go.

Lesley: Yes. I’ll bring you around and show you all the restaurants and great tourist sites.

Nyasha: Awesome.

Topher: I know all about Singapore because we play Mario Kart and there’s a track there.

Nyasha: Pretty nice.

Lesley: You feel like you’ve been here already.

Topher: That’s right. We fly up on top of the buildings and race through swimming pools. It’s great. So tell us what you do in WordPress in your own words. I know but I want to hear from you.

Lesley: I work on a newsletter plugin called Newsletter Glue. It connects ESPs. So like MailChimp, Active Campaign, Campaign Monitor, MailerLite, all those to WordPress, and lets you use WordPress to manage, publish, send your newsletters.

So you don’t have to be, you know, going into MailChimp and fiddling with the email builder all the time. Instead, you can use WordPress, which you know, people listening to this podcast are already more familiar with, they’re in it all the time. So it makes sending newsletters feel like you’re just writing a blog post, which is really nice.

And then you get all the good benefits of having your newsletter archive on your site. So, you know, that means you benefit from SEO. If you have a membership site, you can restrict the newsletter content, and so on and so forth. So basically all the publishing strategies that you’re using for your articles you can now apply to your newsletter.

Topher: Excellent. I do use it and I like it very, very much.

Lesley: Yay!

Topher: There’s actually one support.

Lesley: Personalized.

Topher: Yes. The inside joke is that I sent her a lot of DMs.

Lesley: One thing that I should mention is that we’re now focused on medium to large publishers, newsrooms, and media companies. So we’ve been having a lot of fun kind of also doing more personalized onboarding customizations, and working more closely with them.

Topher: Okay. So last time your team was just you and a developer. Do you have more people now?

Lesley: We have a support person as well as content marketing person. And we’re kind of onboarding writers right now as well.

Topher: All right. That’s cool. So you’re growing.

Lesley: Yeah.

Topher: You are currently an entrepreneur. Have you ever worked for someone besides yourself? You ever had a real job?

Lesley: Yes, unfortunately. My first job was in Changi Airport, and that was really cool because like, it’s, to me, the best… I wouldn’t even say, one of the best. I would just go ahead and say the best effort in the world. And so kind of, you know, getting the insight to seeing what that operates like and the levels that they operate at was really cool.

But then it also turned out that government-type work is not for me. So I moved into ad agencies and I really enjoyed that. It was a lot more fun and flexible. And then I kind of did a hard left, and went and became a freediving instructor for a while.

Topher: Oh, wow.

Nyasha: Oh, cool.

Lesley: Yeah. That was really, really fun. One of my favorite things about that was actually the teaching and less of the actual freediving. It was really cool because you do these short three or five-day courses with students, and you’re like blowing their mind every time. And so yeah, like just getting to be a part of changing someone’s life, even for a short time, was really rewarding.

Topher: That is pretty great.

Lesley: And then I started working for myself after that because you know, once you’ve gone and done that, it’s hard to get a regular job.

Nyasha: I bet.

Topher: Yeah.

Nyasha: You have a really cool background. I’m like, Wow, that’s so cool.

Lesley: Thank you.

Topher: Where did the idea for Newsletter Glue come from?

Lesley: My co-founder and I met on the Indie Hackers job forum. He was looking for a co-founder. At the time, he had built a membership plugin because his background was in membership plugins. He was the lead developer on Ultimate Member. And having gone through all of that, he was like, Okay, I’m gonna come out by myself and try to build a membership plugin that was better than what was out there.

And then he quickly ran into other typical developer, founder problems, which is, you know, Oh crap, development is only half the work. There’s all this marketing you have to do. You know, I didn’t do any of the customer research at the start, I didn’t build up any excitement around the launch, all that kind of stuff. So that’s where I came about.

I tried to do that and we both quickly realized that there’s a lot more to membership plugins than we expected. So the membership plugin, I guess, like competition or area is already really saturated, there are lots of good plugins out there, and trying to convince somebody to move from a plugin that’s already good and very heavily featured to a new plugin that not as stable and fewer features was really difficult.

Even if we tell them that like, it’s a lot newer, has more modern features, it’s still kind of not enough of a push to get them to even try it out. So it really stuck. We were planning on closing the plugin down but during the process of kind of building it out and marketing it we built a MailChimp add-on that sent that post as newsletters. And I wasn’t set about closing the membership plugin down because it never kind of got traction, but I said about the add-on because I was using the add-on for my own Newsletter.

I realized I was sad about it because there wasn’t an obvious substitute that I could use. In contrast, there’s so many of these substitutes for membership plugins. And that realization, you know, I thought like, Okay, if I was set to lose the plug-in or that add-on, you know, there’s probably lots of other people who are looking for something exactly like that.

So we pivoted, and we kind of made that add-on into a full-blown plugin. And we learned from our mistakes and we did everything different from day one. So I built in public, you know, spent a lot of time on Twitter and Slack channels getting to know people, building a community, all that kind of stuff, and doing lots more customer research and interviews at the beginning to really get to know customers and what they wanted.

So there was so much more traction from day one and it was much more fun. It wasn’t a struggle trying to even get people to try the plugin.

Topher: That’s beautiful. And how long has it been?

Lesley: We started in 2020.

Topher: Wow. All right.

Nyasha: Nice.

Topher: Quite new.

Nyasha: In the middle of the pandemic. That’s awesome. That’s awesome to hear a success story that came out of the pandemic like that. That is incredibly cool.

Topher: You know, I mean, it must have been right about then that I became aware of you in the community. I started seeing you on Twitter and things like that. Is that when you started getting on Twitter? Why did I start seeing you everywhere? Was that deliberate on your part?

Nyasha: Good marketing.

Topher: Yeah, it was. That was exactly what I’m talking about. So we did the memberships again 2019 and, you know, I didn’t get on Twitter, I didn’t do any of that stuff. And then, you know, learned from our mistakes. And starting 2020 I…

So what I did basically was just put in WordPress into the search, and then just follow everybody. Literally, like hundreds of people and start I interacting with them.

Topher: Yes, I’ve done that.

Lesley: I feel like for anyone starting with, you know, 50 or less followers on Twitter, that’s kind of the best way to get started. Because you want to fill your Twitter feed with WordPress people, and then you just start replying to them and making friends.

Topher: That’s wisdom right there. All right. I have some personal questions. Are you native Singaporean?

Lesley: I am.

Topher: Born there?

Lesley: Born and raised. I went to university in Australia, in Sydney.

Topher: Cool.

Nyasha: Cool.

Lesley: That’s about it.

Topher: Does Singapore have its own language?

Lesley: It does not. The language that we learn in school is English. So we’re all kind of educated in English. Our official language is Malay, which is just kind of like a path-dependent historical artifact because we are neighbors and used to be a part of Malaysia. We all also have to learn our mother tongue. So in my case, my mother tongue is Chinese, Mandarin-

Topher: Have to? So who says you have to? Schooling?

Lesley: The government. We learn a second language in school and then Chinese. But lots of people. So in Singapore, it’s kind of like Canada or Switzerland, where you know, you’ve got people who prefer speaking English but then you’ve also got people who prefer to be Chinese or Malay or Tamil depending on how they grew up.

Nyasha: Cool.

Topher: I was thinking today about Luxembourg, which is another city state, and they do have their own language.

Lesley: Oh, cool.

Topher: They speak Luxembourgish.

Nyasha: But they spoke French. Look at that. I’m getting really good geography lesson tonight. That’s awesome. I’m trying to learn Mandarin right now and also Korean, and improve my Spanish. So my goal was to learn five languages in the next four years. So I am going to try to come to you when I come to Singapore so I can, please, practice my Mandarin as well because it’s not that great.

Topher: That’s really ambitious.

Nyasha: Oh, yeah.

Lesley: Why not? Why not one language at a time?

Nyasha: Oh, yeah. So I’m improving my Spanish. I can speak Spanish and I’m learning Korean. And then after that, I’m going into Mandarin because I heard Korean is good for knowing Mandarin and Japanese. So I was like, let’s try that. And then I can hop in to Japanese and Mandarin, and then I’ll know everything and I can take over the world. That’s my point.

Topher: You know the story of how the Korean alphabet was made?

Lesley: No.

Nyasha: I feel like I do.

Topher: Absolutely fascinating. They didn’t have a written language crazy late. Like into the 1800s, they didn’t have it written. And the king when they said, “Hey, everybody else has one. Let’s have one too.” And they just made one. And they chose to make it… Oh, what do you call it? What kind of written language is Chinese and Japanese? It’s ideographic. So they chose to make Korean, not ideographic but they’re like letters. Each one has a pronunciation. And it was really interesting to see a modern group of people deliberately and scientifically make a new written language.

Lesley: That’s so cool. I’m gonna read about that.

Topher: It’s a great story. You should read it. But we digress.

Lesley: I am perfectly happy to make this podcast about the Korean language and its roots.

Nyasha: Also we could talk about KDrama snakes.

Topher: Yes! Do you have family around? Siblings?

Lesley: Yeah. I have older and younger sister.

Nyasha: Oh, nice.

Topher: Is your whole family living in Singapore still?

Lesley: All except for my younger sister. So she lives in Australia now.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Nyasha: Where does she live?

Lesley: She went to study in Australia. So she’s in Melbourne now.

Nyasha: Oh, cool.

Lesley: All three of us went to study in Australia.

Topher: Is that a common place for Singaporeans to go, Australia?

Lesley: Yeah, yeah, I would say so. For studies, holidays, retirement. It’s kind of like nearby with better weather, more things to do, a bit bigger.

Nyasha: That’s why I want to come to Singapore. I just keep seeing about the shopping and the fashion and I’m like, I gotta get a piece of that.

Lesley: I think our fashion is quite simple.

Topher: What’s that?

Lesley: I think our fashion is quite simple actually just because it’s really hot. So I just am in a shirt and shorts all the time. I am not the fashionable person that you’re coming to Singapore to see.

Nyasha: No, you are. You are.

Topher: Have you ever seen Anthony Bourdain’s TV show called The Layover, I think it is?

Nyasha: I found No Reservations, but I don’t think I saw The Layover.

Topher: The Layover, he very deliberately goes on a long flight and puts a 24 hour layover in the middle and then goes into town and eats everything he can find.

Nyasha: Oh, that’s a dream.

Topher: It’s a setup there. He’s got friends in town and they’re like, You need to go to this restaurant, this restaurant or whatever. But we saw the episode where he went to Singapore and it was really cool. Because he likes to try a variety of things. So he went to a super fancy place on the top of a tower. And it was crazy expensive. But then he went to like nine different street food places.

And it was a good, quick snapshot of the city. He showed the geography of the cities. It’s like okay, we’re here now. We’re going to drive down here to this restaurant and then we’re gonna drive over here to this restaurant. So you get an idea of like how long it takes to move across the city and things like that. It was pretty great show.

Nyasha: So Lesley, if I come to Singapore, what dish do I have to eat? That reminded me of food and made me hungry.

Lesley: There are a bunch. So Robby from Beaver Builder was just in Singapore. I dragged him out to Nasi Padang. That’s kind of a Malay ethnicity… It’s not really a dish, it’s a bunch of dishes. So it’s like rice, and then you choose from a whole bunch of dishes like curries and stews, a bunch of fried stuff. So that was really, really good.

I think that’s the place that I would bring you this because it’s really fun to choose stuff, and so you get to try a bunch of things. But it’s also not the typical… like if you researched food to try and Singapore that is unlikely to come up but it’s really good. So it’s kind of like the local thing. I’d be able to bring you but it’d be unlikely that you find that for yourself. So I think that’s the place that I would bring you.

Nyasha: I love it. Awesome.

Lesley: And also I think the thing that would come up if you kind of tried to do food research is chili crab. And I think that’s something that you should definitely try just because it’s…

Nyasha: That’s sounds good.

Lesley: Yeah, it’s really good.

Nyasha: Is it spicy?

Lesley: Yes. Yes. A little bit sweet as well. And depending on which place you go, it will be like more spicy, less sweet, more sweet, less spicy and that kind of thing. I think those are the main two. And then you’ve got lots of noodles as well. We’ve got our fair share of really fancy, you know, Anthony Bourdain, Michelin-starred restaurants. If you went to those, I’ll like kind of point you in that direction and then ask you how it was.

Nyasha: Got you.

Topher: So I am crazy allergic to shellfish. How much trouble am I going to be in if I come visit?

Lesley: I think you’d be okay. It’d be similar to Bangkok, which we were all at.

Topher: I did all right in Bangkok. But somebody concertedly told me that they actually put shrimp paste in nearly everything. It’s a flavoring. And I didn’t know that. It didn’t bother me. So I’ve never had shrimp paste. I’m guessing it’s more just actual shrimp that’s gonna get me. But it’s those hidden things that now I’m starting to think about more. I used to think, well, I just don’t eat shrimp but I’m fine. Now it’s a secret that’s sneaked in on me.

Nyasha: Well, now we need to go. We’ll get you a Benadryl.

Lesley: Nyasha were you in WordCamp Asia?

Nyasha: I was. And I missed you there and I was so sad. I saw you tweet and I was like, “She was there?” I was so sad. But yes, I was there and it was fantastic.

Lesley: I wish we got to catch up.

Nyasha: Yes, we do. We do. Actually, that is one of our questions. What did you think of the first WordCamp Asia? Did you have like some top moments? Just your thoughts in general.

Lesley: I had so much fun.

Topher: You were an organizer, right?

Lesley: No, I wasn’t.

Topher: Oh, okay.

Lesley: I was an MC. So they gave me a staff badge and I was really worried people would ask me about, you know, where things were. I was like, “Don’t ask me anything.” I had such a good time.

One of the highlights for me was meeting people in person that I had only ever talked with online. And, yeah, just like any out and… For example, I got to meet James. I’m not sure how to pronounce his last name. And we got to talk about KDrama a whole bunch.

Nyasha: Giroux. James?

Lesley: Yes.

Nyasha: I love him.

Topher: I wish that you were in that conversation too, Nyasha. Three of us would have been able to geek out on that. So just stuff like that was really, really fun. And the location was great. Like, [inaudible 00:23:28] was so nice and so big. Anytime you wanted a break from the conference itself, it was just walk around the mall, and you can distract yourself with 100 different things which is really fun. That food thing in the basement was awesome.

Nyasha: Oh, so good.

Lesley: Yeah, that was so cool.

Topher: I didn’t get to eat there. I wanted to so much.

Nyasha: I ate enough for both of us. It was really good. We got to eat there most of the time.

Lesley: Yeah, that was so cool. I think those were the highlights for me. And just the level of organization… I’m going to be super biased and say that I feel like Asian do hosting really well. I definitely felt like, you know, there was people and volunteers for every single touch point that you could possibly imagine.

So even as an MC I wasn’t that involved. But I had so many people coming up to me at different points and being like, “Okay, is this the thing that you do now?” And then like, Okay, we’re gonna guide you into the room at this time and then at this point, this is the thing that you do. There was just so much help at each step.

I was really thankful for that because I don’t know which room I was supposed to be in or what time, all of that kind of stuff. There was help in-person and then also help in the Slack channel. I thought that that was great.

Nyasha: It was the most well-organized event I’ve ever been to just in general, tech conference, conference, wedding. It was just so organized.

Topher: Yeah, I was gonna say it might be the best organized WordCamp I’ve been to. And I’ve been to almost 100.

Nyasha: Whoa.

Lesley: Wow.

Topher: Yeah.

Lesley: That’s really cool.

Nyasha: What’s next for WordCamps for both of you, for Lesley and Topher? What WordCamps are you guys thinking about going to next?

Topher: You go first.

Lesley: For me, probably just the next WordCamp Asia. The European and US ones a little bit too far. I’d like to make it out there one day. Maybe next year or the year after that. But not this year.

Nyasha: I understand.

Topher: Have you ever been to the US?

Lesley: I have.

Topher: Oh, nice.

Lesley: My big freediving detour was preceded by three months in the US.

Nyasha: Nice.

Lesley: I spent that visiting friends.

Topher: What part of the US?

Lesley: I went to a whole bunch of places. So LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, New York, Boston, Philadelphia.

Nyasha: Oh, nice.

Lesley: I think those ones.

Topher: Moving around.

Nyasha: Yeah. That’s pretty cool.

Topher: I might go to WordCamp Montclair, which is in New Jersey.

Nyasha: Okay. I’ll be there. I’m going too.

Topher: Nice. WordCamp Buffalo was canceled last year, and I had already been accepted to speak. And today I got an email that said, “Hey, we’re going to split it back up this year. You get first dibs because you’d already been selected to speak so.” We’ll have to see. It’s in May, I think. And then I’m still dreaming of going to WordCamp Europe. We’ll have to see.

Nyasha: Nice. I won’t go there but I’ll definitely be at the next WordCamp Asia, so we’re definitely gonna get, Lesley. I don’t care where. I just want to be there. I’ve always wanted to go to Taiwan too. So I’m in there.

Lesley: Nice. There’s so many markets. So 100% dragging you along with me.

Nyasha: I am okay with it.

Lesley: Market food, excursions.

Nyasha: Let’s do it. I’m putting it in my calendar now. So if they pops up on your email, you’re like, “When did we do this?” Oh, about a year.

Lesley: I am not angry about that.

Topher: All right, we should wrap this up. We need to end our day and you need to start yours. So I’m gonna read the outro here.

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Nyasha Green and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Lesley: Yay.

Nyasha: Nice.

Topher: Thank you so much for doing this.

Nyasha: Thank you.

Topher: I’ve been looking forward to this since last fall. Like we started talking about it last fall.

Nyasha: I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I missed you at WordCamp. I was like, Oh my god, I really wanted to meet… I really wanted to meet you. I was so sad. I was like-

Lesley: I did such a bad job of trying to make sure that I met every single person that I wanted to meet.

Nyasha: Me too.

Topher: There were people that showed up that I did not know were going to be there. I even had a friend I didn’t know he was coming until two days before the event.

Nyasha: Wow.

Topher: And his boss said, “You need to go. Take this ticket, go now.” And he showed up. I met him in India in 2015. I never expected to see him again. I don’t get over to India that often. And he just walked up to me and I was like, ahh.

Nyasha: That is awesome.

Lesley: So cool.

Nyasha: One of my friends actually is an English teacher in Singapore and I hadn’t seen her since high school. So about, oh my God, that’s like 10 years ago now. And she actually flew over and met us in Bangkok. We went to Chinatown one night.

Topher: Wow.

Nyasha: We were laughing about it. Because we come from a small rural town in southern United States and we’re like, “Look at us, we’re in Asia.” That was fun. That was a really great experience.

Lesley: That’s so cool.