Eileen Lonergan

My client coined the headline Teaching an Old Dog New Clicks, so I can’t claim credit for being clever.

Through the magic of chit chat and social media JP Powell, half owner of local icon Salt Marsh Pottery, and I were connected.  The Powells and their staff create hand made ceramic pottery that is made by pressing flowers from the south coast of MA into clay, hand cutting, shaping and drying the pieces, then ultimately hand painting, glazing and finishing them.  They also have a process for capturing baby feet and hands in clay.  The Powell’s are told repeatably that if the house was on file the baby prints are what would be saved.  JP was looking for some guidance on redoing his existing e-commerce website and was assembling a team of consultants.  His plan was very clear:

• he was speaking with many,
• may not commit to any,
• wanted to feel empowered, and
• he wanted to own his site and the process

I am not really an e-commerce expert, but during our initial conversation I told him that I know enough about it to be confused and that I do know a lot about WordPress, hence I got past round one and made the team.  JP jumped into WordPress and building his site with both feet.  He dragged his lovely wife Betsy and members of their staff into the digital abyss and together they assembled a very impressive e-commerce website, with a few hundred products!

The process of coaching JP was very rewarding for me, similar to the reward that I had from working with Lynn Davison on We Had a Great Vacation.  I enjoy teaching one and one and I feel very proud of their success.  Even though there are many great resources online for help (Expand2Web experts group, WordPress.TV, The WordPress Codex, How To WordPress blogs – ie mine) sometimes it is really nice to have a real person that can listen and answer.

JP lives close to me, so we did meet in person once, and he took a class that I taught at the Elizabeth Taber Library, How to Build a Free WordPress Blog, otherwise we would meet on Skype.  We typically would book a class and meet via Skype and we could share screens, which would allow me to see what he wanted to do and allow him to visually show him how to do it.  I also used Jing to create screen casts for “how to’s” and Skitch to mark up images with “click here” and “type here” type of directions.

You may have seen Salt Marsh Pottery featured  on the local Boston program, Chronicle, which does a terrific job of capturing the magic of the shop, it is worth the trip if you can visit in person.  Or, visit them digitally and browse their online hand crafted pottery shop, which, just like their pottery, was created by the owners through trial and error and with a lot of time and love.  I think you will be very impressed with JP’s transition from physical artist to digital.

If you would like some personal coaching on WordPress, please be in touch, 508.317.7355.