Troy Dean is the co-founder of WP Elevation, the world’s largest business community for WordPress consultants and freelancers. He is also the co-founder of RockStar Empires, an online education platform that helps entrepreneurs use the Internet to scale their businesses. He is a proud university dropout, and freaking loves the Internet.
Troy is also a voice-over artist, singer and guitar player. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife, who runs a psychology podcast on WordPress, and his dog Lucy, who is more of a Drupal kinda gal.
Troy’s keynote topic for WordCamp Atlanta will be Seven Figures from Scratch: How I used the Internet (and WordPress) to build a seven-figure a year business with no money in the bank. He’ll be touching on freelancing, client services, digital products, online courses and building communities.
Back in 2007 Troy built his own CMS as part of a website assignment for a client. Even he admits it was pretty clunky. Then a friend of a friend turned him on to WordPress. He resisted at first, but after he tried it, WordPress became his tool of choice.
To help his clients manage and edit the WP sites he built, he created a 100-page tutorial with careful instructions and screen shots. A friend, impressed with the effort, suggested turning it into video tutorials, and that’s what Troy did. Then he built a site so people could sign up for the continually-updated videos. Eventually, that turned into WP Elevation.
Today, The World’s Largest Business Community for WordPress Consultants is an amazing repository of genuinely smart and useful knowledge. And Troy is very happy if other people use his resources on WP Elevation to build their own success.
Troy’s immense value to the WordPress community has made him a sought-after speaker around the world. Based on his own experiences, he has developed all kinds of ideas, tips and insights, which he loves to share. Among his list of guidelines to struggling entrepreneurs, one item that recurs over and over is this simple mantra: “Don’t Quit.”
I am so honoured and humbled to be giving the keynote at WordCamp Atlanta. I can’t wait to meet you all and experience your amazing city which I have heard so many good things about.
Let me know if you have any specific things you’d like me to cover in my presentation and I’ll do my best to weave it in. I’ll even give you a shout out!
We are thrilled that you are able to participate, Troy! Atlanta is a diverse metropolitan area, so you might not hear as many Southern accents as you anticipate. However, in the spirit of Southern hospitality here are a few tips:
– The most famous Southern expression is y’all, which is an abbreviation for you all. The greeting Hey means Hello. Very often, you will hear “Hey, y’all.”
– We are laid back and that is reflected in our speech which has drawn-out vowel sounds.
– You will also notice words that run together like gonna (going to) and lemme (let me).
– The word get does not rhyme with yet here in the South. We say it like git.
– Cut the light off means turn out the light.
– In the South, when you are fixin to do something, it means that you are about to do it: “I’m fixin to go into mah (my) office.”
– Bless your heart is not a compliment.
We’ll introduce you to sweet tea, grits, collard greens, fried chicken, bbq, and cornbread at the after party. Down home cooking must be experienced and relished.
Oh, this might help too.
Excellent. I think I’ll fit right in 🙂
This is awesome news! Looking forward to attending your presentation and getting to meet you in person. We love WPElevation and are huge fans 🙂
Looking forward to meeting you to Lori.
Great News Troy! I’m looking forward to joining you guys as a WP Elevation member this year. All of your free content have been amazing WordPress resources and I’ve heard amazing things from others in the industry.
Thank you Frank.
Troy:
Looking forward to your comments and suggestions. See you next month!