Over the last few years, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Awesome Motive, the company I founded in 2011. Many of you want to know the story behind the name Awesome Motive, what our day-to-day operations look like, how our businesses are organized, and so much more.
Several publishers have even offered to turn the Awesome Motive story and my personal entrepreneur journey into a book. Although I’m not quite ready for that yet, it doesn’t mean that I can’t do a blog post about it.
After all, it all started from blogging anyways 🙂
Today, my products are used by over 30 million websites and seen by billions of internet users every month.
This post is my attempt to pull back the curtain and give you the most comprehensive look at Awesome Motive that I’ve ever shared publicly. Think of it as our operating manual – the definitive guide to understanding who we are, how we work, and why we do what we do.
TLDR: Awesome Motive is a global software management company led by Syed Balkhi as CEO with over 330+ team members across 50+ countries. We maintain a fully remote, people-first culture while keeping individual teams small and autonomous. Our mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys.
The Awesome Motive Origin Story
While Awesome Motive was created in 2011, our origin story starts a couple years before that.
In 2006, I discovered WordPress as a blogging platform. I fell in love with the platform and was using it for many of my own affiliate marketing projects as well as my client projects.
Fast forward a few years, I saw a need for a WordPress training resource for non-techy small business owners. At the time, all WordPress tutorials were created by developers for developers.
In 2009, I launched the WPBeginner blog from my college apartment while attending University of Florida. My goal was to help small business owners grow their online presence through WordPress, and WPBeginner quickly grew into becoming the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners.
Around the same time, I also started a few other online ventures which all were generating a decent amount of money for a college student.
I needed a simpler way to hire and pay my team members which were all remote. I didn’t want to have my different companies all being registered as employers because the paper work process is a mess. At the time, I didn’t know about EORs or PEOs, so I decided to create my own management company.
The idea came from my college apartment because I knew that the same owners owned multiple properties, and they were using the same management company to manage multiple properties. I thought well that’s brilliant I should do the same.
The name Awesome Motive was suggested by my then girlfriend and now wife, Amanda Balkhi. The story was that everything I do generally has an “awesome motive” behind it, so it’s fitting to name the company Awesome Motive.
I couldn’t have possibly imagined that a few small blogs would lead me on this incredible journey which I am beyond grateful for. However If I knew the future, I think I may have spent a bit more time thinking about the brand name.
Even to this day, folks that are not in our industry think that we’re an automotive shop!
What is Awesome Motive? (Company Overview)
If I had to describe Awesome Motive in one sentence, I’d say Awesome Motive is a technology management company on a mission to level the playing field for small businesses. But that simple description doesn’t capture the full scope of what we do or how we operate.
This leads to many confusions in how people describe Awesome Motive. I want to clarify a few things.
First of all, Awesome Motive is not a traditional holding company.
It’s a technology management company that oversees the operations of several software companies, online blogs, and miscellaneous projects where I’m involved in.
From the outside looking in, it may seem like we’re a builder and acquirer of software companies that serve the small business market, with a particular focus on the WordPress ecosystem. And I can see why that may be … because we currently manage 30+ brands in our portfolio, ranging from WPBeginner (our original free resource site) to premium software products like OptinMonster, WPForms, and AIOSEO.
A better way to think about it would be a group of small software businesses that operate autonomously, but they share the office park area because I happen to be an investor in them.
This allows each individual company to get an advantage of economies of scale by working together when it’s mutually beneficial, but they are NOT required to do so.
Over the last few years, some folks have tried to label Awesome Motive as a private equity firm because I have done numerous acquisitions. This description is also not accurate for a few reasons.
First, I’m not a financial engineer looking to buy companies, optimize them for a few years, and then sell them for a profit. Second, I don’t have any outside investors. Everything is fully bootstrapped.
When I buy a company, it’s because I believe in the problem the product is solving for the market, and I want to create lasting value for both our customers and our team members.
I am a builder at heart and I love the game of entrepreneurship. There’s no timeline to exit, and I believe the businesses Awesome Motive manages will continue to evolve over the years.
The best way to describe Awesome Motive today would be:
Awesome Motive is a global software management company with over 330+ team members across 50+ countries. We maintain a fully remote, people-first culture while keeping individual teams small and autonomous. Our mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Over 30 million websites use our software serving billions of impressions every month.
To put that in perspective, if you’ve spent any time browsing the web, you’ve almost certainly interacted with one of the products that we manage, even if you didn’t realize it. Whether it’s a popup created with OptinMonster, a form built with WPForms, or analytics tracked by MonsterInsights, the tools we manage are quietly working behind the scenes to help businesses connect with their customers worldwide.
How Awesome Motive is Organized
One of the most common questions I get from other entrepreneurs and potential acquisition targets is about how we actually organize and manage a portfolio of more than a dozen different brands. The short answer is: very differently from how most people would expect.
Traditional holding companies or private equity firms typically impose a standardized operating model across their portfolio companies. They might centralize functions like marketing, sales, or customer support to achieve economies of scale. They often install their own management teams and implement uniform reporting structures and decision-making processes.
We’ve taken almost the opposite approach. Awesome Motive operates more like a federation of independent companies that choose to work together because it benefits everyone involved.
At the highest level, I serve as the CEO of Awesome Motive, but my role is more like a coach and resource provider than a traditional top-down manager. Each brand has its own leadership team that makes day-to-day decisions about product development, marketing, customer support, and business strategy.
For example, AIOSEO has its own product manager who decides what features to build next based on customer feedback and market research. Smash Balloon has its own marketing team that develops campaigns and content strategies. WPConsent has its own customer support team that handles user questions and technical issues.
This decentralized approach might seem chaotic from the outside, but it’s actually incredibly efficient once you understand the logic behind it. Each brand’s team is closest to their customers and understands their specific needs better than any centralized team could. They can move quickly to address problems or capitalize on opportunities without having to navigate layers of corporate bureaucracy.
At the same time, we do provide centralized support for functions that benefit from scale and specialization. Our legal team handles contracts. Our finance team manages accounting, taxes, and reporting. Our HR team helps with recruiting, onboarding, and employee benefits across the entire organization.
We also have what I call “centers of excellence”. These are specialized teams that provide expertise and resources that individual brands can tap into when needed, and they also help facilitate knowledge transfer between different companies to fast-track innovation. For example, we have a security team that ensures all of our products meet high standards for data protection and privacy. We have a revenue analytics team that help our teams understand the impact of each decision.
The key is that these centralized resources are offered as services to the brands rather than imposed as requirements. Individual companies have the option to do the task internally or even work with an external agency for a specific task. They have the autonomy to make that decision.
This approach requires a high level of trust and communication, but it also creates a much more entrepreneurial environment. The brand leaders feel like they’re running their own businesses (because in many ways they are) while having access to resources and support that would be impossible for a standalone small company of their size.
We use a combination of formal and informal communication channels to keep everyone aligned. We have bi-annual leadership meetings where brand managers share updates, challenges, and opportunities. We have shared slack channels, and we do encourage cross-team learning through monthly educational show & tell presentations.
It’s not a perfect system, and we’re constantly refining and improving how we work together. But after more than a decade of building and acquiring companies, I’m convinced that this decentralized, trust-based approach is the key to maintaining innovation and growth at scale.
Awesome Motive Management Company Portfolio
Awesome Motive manages many companies that I have either built, acquired, or invested in over the years.
I will share a quick bullet list for those who’re new, but for the most up to date list, see the full list of companies.
- WPBeginner – largest free WordPress blog and tutorial site for beginners.
- OptinMonster – Instantly grow your email list, get more leads, and increase sales with the #1 most powerful conversion optimization toolkit in the world. Includes powerful website personalization features, A/B testing, and more.
- WPForms – Drag & Drop WordPress form builder. Over 2000+ pre-made form templates to create contact forms, payment forms, online surveys, registration forms, and more. Trusted by over 6 million website owners.
- MonsterInsights – The most powerful WordPress analytics plugin. Set up proper analytics tracking so you can see the stats that matter to grow your business with confidence. Trusted by over 3 million website owners.
- AIOSEO – The best WordPress SEO plugin to help you improve your website’s SEO rankings. Includes our advanced SEO optimizer, sitemaps, schema markup for rich snippets, local SEO, and more. Trusted by over 3 million website owners.
- SeedProd – Create completely custom WordPress themes and layouts without writing any code. Drag & Drop WordPress page builder with 300+ templates, personalization tools, and more. Trusted by over 1 million website owners.
- WP Mail SMTP – Fix WordPress email deliverability issues. The most popular WordPress SMTP plugin with email logs, email reports, open & click tracking, and the ability to control all aspects of WordPress mail. Trusted by over 3 million websites.
- Smash Balloon – World’s leading social media feed plugins for WordPress. Easily create customizable social media feeds for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Over a dozen feed layouts & templates. Trusted by over 1.75 million websites.
- Duplicator – Popular WordPress backup & migration plugin. Over 1,500,000+ smart website owners use Duplicator to make reliable and secure WordPress backups to protect their websites.
- Thrive Themes Suite – Popular growth suite for WordPress, including tools like WordPress quiz maker, WordPress course creator, landing page builder, drag & drop theme customizer, popup plugin, and more. Over 22,000+ websites use the Thrive Themes growth suite to improve their conversions.
- SendLayer – Easily connect and send your website emails with our API and SMTP relay for maximum deliverability, reliability, and scalability. Works seamlessly with 1,000+ platforms.
- WPCode – The best WordPress code management plugin to help you future-proof website customization. It lets you easily add header & footer scripts, conversion pixels, custom code snippets with conditional logic, and more. Over 2 million websites use WPCode to improve their workflows.
- PushEngage – The best web push notification software in the market. Easily communicate with website visitors after they leave your website. Great for increasing traffic & sales. Over 15 billion notifications are sent each month on PushEngage.
- SearchWP – The most advanced WordPress search plugin. Completely customize your WordPress search form and search results algorithm to improve your content discoverability and increase sales. Trusted by over 50,000+ website owners.
- RafflePress – The most powerful WordPress giveaways and contest plugin. Turn your website visitors into brand ambassadors. Giveaways are the easiest way to increase traffic, get more social followers, and grow your email list … without buying any paid ads.
- Easy Digital Downloads – Top-rated WordPress plugin for selling digital products and subscriptions. Easily sell eBooks, software, music, and more, protect digital downloads, accept payments, and more. Trusted by over 50,000 website owners.
- AffiliateWP – The most popular affiliate management plugin for WordPress. Easily launch an affiliate program for your store. One-click integration with WooCommerce, WPForms, and 20 other payment plugins. Unlock a new growth channel without the middleman fees.
- WP Simple Pay – Easily accept payments online without a complex shopping cart setup. Great for simple one-time or recurring payments. Built-in support for credit card payments, ACH bank debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more.
- Sugar Calendar – An event calendar management plugin for WordPress. Create events, sell tickets, sync with Google Calendar, and more. Great for churches, conferences, paid webinars, and more.
- TrustPulse – Leverage the power of social proof to instantly increase site conversions by up to 15%. Automatically show real-time purchase notifications and other website activity notifications to increase trust, conversions, and sales.
- WP Charitable – Top-rated donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress. Over 10,000+ non-profit organizations and website owners across the world use Charitable to create fundraising campaigns and raise more money online.
- UserFeedback – Optimize each user’s experience by collecting feedback with interactive surveys. This plugin offers easy installation, unlimited questions, simple reporting, and powerful integrations with analytics tools.
- Envira Gallery – Create beautiful, responsive photo and video galleries in minutes. The plugin gives you a drag & drop builder, pre-built gallery templates, social media integrations, and more.
- Imagely – The best photo gallery plugin to customize, manage, and sell your photos like a pro. Offers plugin extensions for photo proofing, print fulfillment, auto tax calculations, and more.
- Photocrati – The original and best WordPress theme just for photographers. Get beautiful designs, blogging, galleries, and eCommerce in a single package built with SEO in mind.
- Soliloquy – Create beautiful responsive sliders in minutes with this powerful WordPress plugin. It comes with a drag & drop builder, slider templates, dynamic sliders (for Instagram images, testimonials, etc.), fullscreen lightbox mode, a product slider, and more.
- Beacon – Build professional lead magnets, opt-in forms, and libraries of gated content. You’ll get tools for every part of the lead magnet life cycle.
- BuddyBoss – This is an all-in-one online community and social learning platform for WordPress. It gives you unlimited members, courses, groups, events, admins – and possibilities!
- SEOBoost – The best SEO content optimization tool. It uses AI to provide detailed content briefs, topic research, content audits, and more.
- LowFruits – The best keyword research tool that allows you to find low-competition, high-potential keywords that you can easily rank for.
- OnePageGA – A simple yet powerful dashboard that breaks down complex Google Analytics 4 data into beginner-friendly reports.
- WPConsent – An easy to use cookie consent and privacy management suite for WordPress.
- Uncanny Automator – The #1 no-code automation plugin for WordPress. Create powerful workflows to save time. Think of it like Zapier for WordPress without the high costs.
- aThemes – leading provider of WordPress themes including well-known themes like Sydney and Botiga.
My goal is to offer small businesses with the best tools and training at affordable prices, so they can grow their online presence and compete with the big guys.
Awesome Motive exists to fulfill that mission.
For full list of my companies, see My Companies page.
Awesome Motive’s Culture and Core Values
Culture isn’t something you can fake or manufacture through corporate retreats and motivational posters. It’s the sum total of how people actually behave when no one is watching, how decisions get made under pressure, and what principles guide the organization when faced with difficult choices.
At Awesome Motive, our culture has evolved organically over more than a decade of building and acquiring companies. It’s been shaped by our mission, our experiences, and the values of the exceptional people who have chosen to join our team. But it’s also been deliberately cultivated through the policies, practices, and priorities we’ve established as we’ve grown.
People First, Always
The foundation of our culture is a genuine belief that all businesses are built by people for people. This might sound obvious, but it has profound implications for how we operate.
When we’re making product decisions, we don’t just think about features and functionality – we think about the real people who will be using our tools and how we can make their lives easier and their businesses more successful.
When we’re dealing with customer support issues, we don’t just try to resolve tickets quickly – we try to understand the underlying problems that customers are facing and how we can prevent similar issues in the future.
We have a total of 5 core values which are listed on Awesome Motive website starting with People First, Do the Right Thing, Fight for our Customer’s Success, Commit to Excellence by paying attention to Details, and Labor for Simplicity.
Remote-First and Global
Awesome Motive has been a fully remote company since before “remote work” was a buzzword. When I started WPBeginner in 2009, I was working from my college apartment room, and as we grew, it felt natural to hire the best people regardless of where they lived.
I truly believe that talent is everywhere but opportunities are not.
Today, we have 300+ team members spread across more than 50 countries. This global distribution isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a core competitive advantage that influences everything from our product development to our customer support. (Yes, we’re hiring).
We’ve invested heavily in tools and processes that make remote collaboration effective. We use asynchronous communication by default, which means people can contribute to discussions and decision-making regardless of their time zone. We document everything, which ensures that important information is accessible to everyone and doesn’t get lost in hallway conversations that only some people can attend.
We also make a deliberate effort to build personal connections across our distributed team. We have regular video calls that aren’t just about work, we celebrate team members’ personal milestones and achievements, and we create opportunities for people to collaborate across different brands and functions.
Autonomy with Accountability
One of the most distinctive aspects of our culture is the balance we strike between autonomy and accountability. We give our team members significant freedom to make decisions and approach their work in ways that make sense for their specific roles and circumstances. But we also have clear expectations about results and standards.
This approach requires a high level of trust, both from leadership toward team members and from team members toward each other. We hire people who we believe will make good decisions even when no one is looking over their shoulder. We provide the context and resources they need to succeed, and then we get out of their way.
At the same time, we have clear metrics and goals that help everyone understand what success looks like. We have regular check-ins and reviews that focus on outcomes rather than activities. And we provide feedback and support when people are struggling or when we see opportunities for improvement.
This balance between autonomy and accountability extends to how our individual brands operate within the broader Awesome Motive ecosystem. Each brand has significant freedom to make decisions about their products, marketing, and operations. But they also have clear responsibilities to their customers and their team members.
Continuous Learning and Growth
The technology industry changes rapidly, and the only way to stay competitive is to continuously learn and adapt. We’ve built a culture that not only tolerates change but embraces it as an opportunity for growth and improvement.
We encourage team members to experiment with new tools, techniques, and approaches.
We also try to learn from our mistakes rather than just moving on and hoping they don’t happen again. When something goes wrong, we conduct post-mortems that focus on understanding what happened and how we can prevent similar issues in the future. When we have successes, we try to understand what factors contributed to those successes so we can replicate them.
This commitment to learning extends to how we approach our business strategy. We’re constantly testing new ideas, measuring results, and adjusting our approach based on what we learn. We’re not afraid to admit when something isn’t working and try a different approach.
Transparency and Communication
Trust is built through transparency, and transparency requires clear, honest communication. I try to be as open as possible about our strategy, our challenges, and our decision-making processes.
This doesn’t mean we share every detail of every discussion – some information needs to remain confidential for competitive or legal reasons. But I almost always err on the side of sharing more rather than less, and I try to explain the reasoning behind our decisions even when we can’t share all the underlying details.
We also encourage open communication throughout the organization. Team members are expected to speak up when they see problems or opportunities. Managers are expected to provide regular, honest feedback about performance and growth opportunities. And leadership is expected to be accessible and responsive to questions and concerns from anywhere in the organization.
Why We Keep Teams Small and Independent
One of the questions I get asked most frequently by other entrepreneurs and business leaders is about our philosophy of keeping teams small and independent. In an industry where many companies are obsessed with scaling rapidly and centralizing operations, our approach can seem counterintuitive or even inefficient to outsiders.
But after more than a decade of building and managing bootstrapped software companies, I’m convinced that small, autonomous teams are not just more effective, they’re essential for maintaining the innovation, speed, and customer focus that made our companies successful in the first place.
I believe this is going to be even more important in the upcoming age of A.I.
The Future of Awesome Motive
As I write this in 2025, I’m more excited about the future of Awesome Motive than I’ve ever been. While we’ve accomplished a lot over the past 16 years, I genuinely believe our best days are ahead of us.
The small business landscape is evolving rapidly, and the opportunities to help entrepreneurs and small business owners succeed online are expanding in ways that would have been hard to imagine when I started WPBeginner in 2009.
The Expanding Market Opportunity
The global shift toward digital-first business models has accelerated dramatically, especially since 2020. Small businesses that might have resisted online tools and strategies in the past have embraced them out of necessity, and the trend is worldwide. This has created an enormous market opportunity for companies like ours that specialize in making powerful technology accessible to non-technical users.
But the opportunity goes beyond just more customers for our existing products. The definition of what constitutes a “small business” is expanding to include creators, influencers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs who are building new types of online businesses that didn’t exist a decade ago.
These new business models require different tools and approaches than traditional small businesses. A creator building a personal brand needs different capabilities than a local restaurant trying to attract customers. A freelance consultant has different challenges than a product-based e-commerce business.
This diversity of business models and needs creates opportunities for us to develop new products and services that serve these emerging markets while staying true to our core mission of helping small businesses compete with larger competitors.
Technology Trends and Opportunities
Several technology trends are creating new opportunities for innovation in the small business space:
AI and Automation – AI is making it possible to automate tasks that previously required significant time and expertise. We’re exploring how AI can help small businesses automate many of the day-to-day tasks that come with growing their web presence.
The key is to implement AI in ways that enhance human capabilities rather than replacing human judgment. Small business owners still need to make strategic decisions about their businesses, but AI can help them make those decisions with better information and execute them more efficiently.
Integration and Ecosystem Thinking – Small businesses are using more software tools than ever before, which creates both opportunities and challenges. There’s significant value in creating tools that integrate seamlessly with each other and with the broader ecosystem of business software.
Why I’m Optimistic
Despite the challenges facing small businesses: economic uncertainty, increasing competition, rapidly changing technology – I’m incredibly optimistic about the future.
Small businesses are more resilient and adaptable than large corporations. They’re closer to their customers and can respond more quickly to changing needs. They’re more innovative because they have to be. And they’re more motivated because the success of the business is directly tied to the success of the people who built it.
Technology is making it easier than ever for small businesses to reach global markets, automate routine tasks, and compete on capabilities rather than just resources. The barriers to starting and scaling a business continue to decrease.
Most importantly, there’s a growing recognition that small businesses are essential to healthy economies and communities. Consumers increasingly prefer to support small businesses over large corporations when given the choice.
All of these trends create opportunities for companies like Awesome Motive that are genuinely committed to helping small businesses succeed.
A Personal Note
As I wrap up this comprehensive behind the scenes look at Awesome Motive, I want to return to something personal. Building this company has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. It’s allowed me to work with incredible people, serve millions of users, and hopefully make a positive impact on the world.
But what I’m most proud of isn’t the revenue numbers or the user statistics or the awards we’ve won. What I’m most proud of is the emails we get from customers who tell us that our tools helped them start their business, grow their revenue, or achieve their dreams.
Every time someone uses WPBeginner to learn how to build their first website, every time OptinMonster helps a business capture a lead that turns into a customer, every time WPForms processes a contact that leads to a new opportunity – those are the moments that make all the challenges and hard work worthwhile.
That’s what motivates me to keep building, keep innovating, and keep growing Awesome Motive. And that’s what will continue to guide us as we work toward an even more awesome future.
If you have questions about anything I’ve covered, or if you’re interested in learning more about our products and services, I’d encourage you to explore our portfolio of brands and see how we might be able to help your business succeed online.
And if you’re an entrepreneur building tools for small businesses and think there might be opportunities for us to work together, I’d love to hear from you. The best way to reach me is through the contact form on this website or through our M&A page at Awesome Motive website.
Here’s to helping small businesses grow & compete with the big guys.
Syed Balkhi
Founder & CEO of Awesome Motive
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