My name is Spencer Forman, from Chicago Illinois! I’m the founder of LaunchFlows, an expert in WordPress, Marketing Automation, ECommerce, and Sales Psychology.
I have degrees in Psychology, Law, Real Estate, Insurance, and Aviation, but I have been an entrepreneur my entire life. Since the age of 10, I’ve found it fascinating to discover problems that people have and create profitable solutions for these problems.
I was developing real estate at the time and realized I needed to move into a business where I could be available ALL THE TIME for what I needed and wanted to do. Working remotely with WordPress has made the possible and then some!
The Journey Began
I was involved in several social networking platforms before 2006. My partner and I developed widgets and solutions to help members of those communities to add new features and capabilities to their hosted sites.
Around that time I discovered WordPress, specifically bbPress and BuddyPress plugins, and was immediately impressed with how much control and ownership one could have over their own WordPress solution versus a SaaS solution.
From that moment onward I began to build relationships with other creators and customers in the WordPress community, helping them to understand how to build and market their products and services… all with the benefit of complete ownership and control.
The Need for LaunchFlows
LaunchFlows Logo
LaunchFlows was specifically created to solve the lack of Sales Funnel solutions in WooCommerce, the most popular and powerful transactional engine available on WordPress today.
I was originally inspired by the work of other plugin authors before me, several of whom had retained my services to help support and teach their particular plugin’s capabilities.
It became obvious to me, however, that their method of solving the Sales Funnel problem was different and “heavier” than what I envisioned if I were to do it myself.
As a result, I ultimately decided to write LaunchFlows from scratch in order to achieve the outcome and features I believe are beneficial for solving the problem.
LaunchFlows is what I called a “second-tier” plugin, in that it amplifies a primary plugin such as WooCommerce or WPFusion. I work very closely with many authors, particularly Jack Arturo at WPFusion, and wanted LaunchFlows to “fill in the gaps” between the capabilities of the plugin stack that most of our consulting clients require.
The challenge is knowing when to leave off features because they are better accomplished with another plugin that already exists versus throwing in the “kitchen sink.”
My primary business is WPLaunchify.com which serves as a free discovery tool for anyone looking to use WordPress as a platform, so they can easily learn which of the thousands of plugins are part of their own unique “recipe” for success.
WPLaunchify also provides follow-up consulting, training, and troubleshooting for those who wish to get immediately to the end result of a modern WordPress website with Marketing Automation, E-commerce, and Membership.
Myself with my Brilliant Team
I work with Luke Stacey, who joined me around 2018. He is based in England and I am here in Chicago. We work almost exclusively in a remote capacity.
Advice for Business Owners
Yes. FIND THE PAIN. Today’s environment is changing daily, and this is an enormous opportunity for anyone willing to move a few steps ahead of everyone else to learn how to solve problems, translate them into solutions or services, and pave the way for those customers still doing things the “old way.”
I would focus on the E-Commerce and online services space, as most everyone has evolved their brick and mortar businesses to some form of online interaction and I only see this expanding exponentially.
Stay in Touch
WordPress & Beyond
We focus on being the experts in the “latest methods and tools” for any online business. I foresee a future where WordPress evolves into the consumption of information and services via many other types of devices beyond phones, tablets, and monitors. Things such as wearable devices, audio, and more.
Likewise, I see a future where WordPress is the “back end” of a more dynamic front-end display, using techs such as Javascript and jQuery. This would allow sites to be created on the fly from the client-side, merely connecting to the data and admin capabilities of WordPress.
It appears to me that WordPress will fork into specific page-builder versions, and in particular, I see this coming from Elementor first, with others to follow. At some point, the open-source nature of WordPress will be the fuel that is ignited from the friction currently existing between popular page builders and Automattic about the direction and politics of building and maintaining the WordPress core code.
My Love for the WordPress Community
I love the WordPress Community, but do not often attend WordCamps or meetups. I prefer instead to make it my regular habit to personally introduce myself and have a zoom video call with anyone who is an author or contributor or personality in the WordPress community.
It is through this method that I’ve found myself, after fifteen years or so, in contact with almost every one of the influential “players” in WordPress today. I love to learn more about what they are doing and how it fits into the bigger picture.
How I Keep Myself Updated
I am a voracious reader and student of all the online resources for marketing, strategy, coding, and more. I think for anyone curious about writing WordPress software, StackExchange is invaluable… as nearly everything you would need to know is there in little snippets you can piece together.
I Have a Life Other Than the Work
I’m a single dad to three boys ages 10 to 20 and am very involved with their sports, hobbies, and education, as well as the mundane tasks of feeding them fun and healthy meals or getting them where they need to go.
I’ve been a pilot, and aviation enthusiast my whole life and that’s what got me into online technology, along with my love of photography and video editing/production.
I enjoy urban locations in major historical cities, as well as anywhere there is a beach and blue water (Mexico, Hawaii, Greece).
Presently we have no pets in our home, but have had hairless dogs, cats, hamsters, and moreover the last twenty years 😉
I Reward Myself by
My favorite reward is the satisfaction of knowing I have nearly 100% control over my TIME. That is something I had to conscientiously create when I went through divorce and child custody.
