I am a web developer, podcaster, writer, and heir to a King and my purpose is to glorify the Creator of the universe.
Elkhart, IN
Joined March 2009
- Tweets2.6K
- Following135
- Followers371
- Likes2.1K
I'm thinking about switching from 1Password to Apple Passwords. Are there any power users out there who use Apple Passwords to manage their passwords and include sharing with family or team members?
Over the weekend my brother-in-law asked me what the biggest challenge is in marketing.
I don't know that I gave him an answer, but earlier that day, I spent a few hours using AI to write a messaging guide for a new product I'm offering, and then write the homepage copy.
This was largely a test to see how I can leverage AI and to try and push the limits of what I believe it can do for Touchdown Tech.
It was better than I expected. It was good, not great, but good, and maybe good enough for many business owners.
I shared this with my brother-in-law and told him, the challenge or struggle is the balance between when is “good enough” actually good enough. Because there is always room for slight improvement in messaging or refactoring code and at some point, it is “good enough”.
A few days later, I was thinking about how other industries have changed over the years, and I think there's a pattern that AI is bringing into marketing that we've already seen and experienced in the last 100 years.
Let's look at home building. The materials used today are manufactured quickly but not as durable. The lumber is less dense, more prone to mold and rot. Hollow doors replaced solid wood doors.
These “fast food” homes are focused on function and less on beauty. I guess the silver lining is that these homes won’t last 100 years.
But guess what, there’s still a market for master craftsmen in construction building homes with durable material and I believe there’s still going to be a market for master craftsmen in marketing and web design.
I pride myself on doing exceptional work in marketing, web design, development, and messaging. I don’t plan to lower the quality of what I’m creating so that it can be created faster. If and where AI can help, I’ll use it, but I’m not interested in mass producing websites.
I tend to like to keep things as simple as possible. However, Willow Voice (@WillowVoiceAI) has a feature that I finally took advantage of, and I immediately am seeing the benefits. Willow Voice is a voice-to-text app that runs on my computer, and they also have an iPhone integration, although it's not great compared to what you can do on a desktop.
Anyway, the real cool thing is that you can set up shortcuts so that it will insert things like a phone number, mailing address, email address, website URL, etc. with a simple voice command.
So instead of dictating out my phone number, I can just say, “my phone shortcut” and it’ll spit out my phone number formatted the way I like with parentheses.
This whole post was dictated out with voice to text using Willow Voice. If you want to check it out, here's my referral link: app.willowvoice.com?ref=RHOC…
Here's a screenshot of some of my stats.
Reuben Hochstetler retweeted
100,000+ stores run this WooCommerce plugin. I doubt any of them know their payments are broken. Any store with $1M ARR could be missing $700k+ in revenue. If you run WooCommerce Subscriptions, check your store.
Yesterday, I reported a bug to WooCommerce that silently broke subscription payments after a product switch. Then I got worried: if they missed something this obvious, what else did they get wrong? So I started auditing. Within hours, I had found three more bugs. There were 121 affected subscriptions, and $43,274 in lost revenue.
Here's what I found.
WooCommerce Subscriptions has an internal flag that controls whether a subscription charges the customer automatically or waits for them to pay manually. When a customer checks out with (for example) Stripe or PayPal, this flag should be set to "automatic." If it isn't, subscription renewals silently stop working: no charge is attempted, no failure email is sent, and the subscription goes on hold until the customer notices and pays manually, or doesn't and churns.
Bug 1 (stale cache): After saving subscription dates, the order cache was never cleared. Subsequent saves could serve a stale object with the flag still set to its default: manual. Fixed in subscriptions-core 6.9.0.
Bug 2 (broken HPOS backfill): Missing getter/setter methods prevented subscription metadata from being properly synced to postmeta in HPOS when data sync is enabled. Fixed in subscriptions-core 6.5.0.
Bug 3 (unnecessary re-fetch): wcs_create_subscription() returned a freshly fetched instance from cache/DB instead of the already-configured object. Any unsaved state, including the corrected flag, was silently discarded. Fixed in subscriptions-core 7.1.0.
These three combined accounted for roughly 7% of all subscriptions created at checkout that were silently born broken, despite the customer paying successfully. For 7+ years (we have data from 2017–2024). Automatic payments NEVER fired for these subscriptions. Users never got renewal emails, either. The only way to know they were broken was if the customer noticed they lost access and contacted support, or if the merchant audited their database manually.
Bug 4 (switch): When a customer upgrades or downgrades their subscription, the switcher flags the subscription as manual renewal; it only corrects the flag if the payment gateway changes. A customer switching plans while keeping the same gateway (e.g. Stripe to Stripe) cements the flag stuck on manual. I discovered this two days ago, when I found a happy customer in the store overview that I had just helped upgrade, with multiple valid cards on file, put "On Hold" because of a missed payment.
For years, I've offered to help WooCommerce improve its code quality and performance. I dry-run code: I find bugs by reading. All four of these bugs are clearly visible in the source without needing to use the software. They could have been caught early. They weren't. The incompetence is immeasurable (well, actually, with the diagnostic queries in my next post, it might be measurable). Our store is small. WooCommerce Subscriptions powers hundreds of thousands of stores. If 7% of subscriptions were silently broken across even a fraction of them, we're looking at potentially millions of dollars in spoiled revenue industry-wide that could have been prevented. Perhaps even billions.
None of this was disclosed well or at all. No admin notice. No email. No advisory.
The fixes shipped under vague changelog lines like "Make sure we always clear the subscription object from cache after updating dates" and "Ensure proper backfilling of subscription metadata." One fix was labeled "Dev" instead of "Fix." Two don't appear in the GitHub release notes at all. No remediation tool or diagnostic query was provided. Store owners have NO way to know they're affected unless they manually audit their database. The woocommerce-subscriptions-core repo was archived in May 2025 after the code was absorbed into WooCommerce core — making the fix history harder to trace.
If you run WooCommerce Subscriptions and used HPOS before mid-2024, check your store. Queries are linked in the tweet below.
I couldn't help but open this email when I saw the subject line tailored to Touchdown Tech, my marketing agency.
I don't know if this is part of a wide marketing strategy by @kinsta but it's great.
This morning was tough. The toilet stopped working. It’s raining. Everything outside is muddy. Did I mention we're living in an RV?
At the same time, I feel overwhelmed with blessing. My office is 100’ from my RV and it’s dry and clean. And I have capable help to troubleshoot the toilet issue (🤞🏼 @NicholasHo24).
When someone you trust tells you something over and over again, listen.
Simon from @webnestify has repeatedly told me the best backup and migration plugin for WordPress is All-in-One Migration from @servmask. What kept me from using it for so long is I was confused by their website.
I wasn’t sure what add-on I needed or was or wasn’t included.
Initially I just wanted the add-on for Google Drive. So I tried and somehow was able to purchase it. This was about 1 year ago. I never used it because I couldn't figure out how to download the Google Drive add-on (FYI, you don't need to download it separately).
Now, after talking with support I realize, if I buy the “Pro” plan, I get all the add-ons. But it’s not super clear.
I’ve used it to backup and migrate over 20 sites in the past few weeks and now I can’t imaging using a different plugin.
Another thing I wanted to do was save client website backups to a storage that they can easily access if they ever want to use a different marketing agency. I don’t have this done yet but now I have a great tool that makes it possible.
Thanks Simon for your advice and support!
When I was a teenager, I never would have thought cleaning up brush and fallen trees in a woods would be relaxing or fun.
But this past week I was able to do just that. I think part of the excitement is cleaning up a physical space when in contrast so much of my day-to-day work is digital. Moving something in real life just hits different.
A set break time has been great for our two-man team. It gives us dedicated time to stop working and then start work again.
Since our office is on the family farm, there’s always lots of distractions.
For example, this morning there’s an openhouse for another business on the property.
My family will be around and it would be easy to miss out on an hour of work by chatting with family and people stopping by.
Work is not more important than family but work needs to get done in order to deliver on promises to customers and ultimately to make a living.
One of the unexpected golden nuggets of writing out a life plan and reviewing it daily is that I get to mold it constantly with new inspirations and ideas.
For example, sometimes I’ll think of an area I want to work on (e.g., delegate responsibilities) and then I can write it down and from now on, I’ll have a reminder to do just that.
The alternative is having a great idea and then forgetting about it.
For me this is key to building a vision and continuing to move towards it.
Donald Miller's Hero on a Mission is the framework I use for my life plan.
I'm not an affiliate but if you want to know more, ask a question.
#LifePlan #vision
Can you imagine your friend lying on the floorboard of your truck because he was scared someone was going to see him?
That's where Cory was on his way to McDonalds for lunch.
Hear the full story on prt 2 of the Cory Dexter Story: youtu.be/x0WqFOh-ZGg?si=WGEM…
“Dad, we forgot to pray.”
My son said this to me as we went to bed. I couldn’t believe it for several reasons.
For starters, I was surprised he understood that prayer was part of our bedtime routine. And holding still and being quiet at prayer time isn’t something he enjoys.
It’s not something new, but the power of routine keeps impressing me.
In my own life, spending 30-60 minutes going through my morning routine helps prepare me for a successful day. When I get out of that habit, it’s not good. It may feel like less to do in the moment, but over a few days and over the course of a few weeks, stuff starts getting out of control.
This was an encouragement for me to remember the power of the routine and the impact it has even on a 2-year-old.
For 7-10 years, I’ve known that stories are important in persuasion. But it was hard for me to use them. It felt unnatural when I tried to use a story in conversation.
I’ve read books and watched courses on how to use stories in marketing and communication but it doesn’t come easy or naturally.
That’s changed over the past year. In some ways, it feels like it changed quickly, but in other ways, slowly.
I don’t know how it happened, but I find myself telling a story, usually from my own experience or what I’ve read, as an answer to a question in a conversation or as a response to an objection in marketing.
This past weekend I was at EDGEcon. Speakers cover a varity of topics, from family legacy, to real estate to marketing, to personal productivity. All very relevant.
I noticed that stories help bridge the disconnect that exists when I don’t understand a topic. Here’s a made-up scenario about real estate investing.
The speaker may say, “You can avoid hefty taxes and save up for your children’s education by using an education IRA.” I don’t know what an education IRA is, but if the speaker tells a story of a family who did this for his children, it becomes clear.
Train your brain to tell a story with a point instead of stating a fact or opinion.
P.S. Stories are also a great way to ask a question.
P.P.S. EDGEcon was great and I plan to be back in 2027. I’m going to do some investigating with friends to ask how it compares to other business conferences in the amount of actionable things to take home. There was a lot of what to do, but there could have been more how to do it.
Today is the first day since Christmas and New Year’s vacation that I’m going through my GTD routine even though it’s not a normal “work day.”
I’m at EDGEcon in Cincinnati but it feels good to keep my inboxes cleared out even when it’s not a normal Friday.
Happy Friday and have a blessed weekend!
Ever since I was growing up, I've always enjoyed story. Before I even realized it, I enjoyed story. I would ask my dad, my grandpa, and school teachers for stories. I think it was the drama in the story that hooked me in.
It wasn't until I read the book Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller that I realized story was a key part of the work I was doing in the marketing and web design. It's obvious now in hindsight.
A few days ago, I interviewed one of the best storytellers that I have met, Cory Dexter. The cool thing is that he had an incredible story to tell. Great storytellers can make seemingly insignificant or boring stories come to life. But when you give a great storyteller a great story to tell, all you can do is sit back and listen.
If you’re interested, here’s the story.
youtube.com/watch?v=afqtrM7g…
A lot of customers are just wondering approximately what a new website costs.
While there's a lot of differences from one website to the next, there's usually enough crossover that I can give an estimate.
When I rebuilt the TD website I decided to take this a step further and build a calculator so that customers can use it to get an idea what a new website would cost.
Here it is: touchdowntech.com/resource/w…
Built with the amazing WS Form plugin for WordPress.
