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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Matt: Hey, Kurt, welcome to the WP Minute.
kurt: Matt, thanks a
lot for having me, man.
This is great.
It's the first time we've really
Matt: Yeah, without the, the,
I'll say the distraction.
kurt: without the round table.
Matt: the round table, without,
the lovely Jonathan Denwood
hosting over at the WP Tonic.
You are a regular there.
You're the official co host, I'd say.
I mean, that's how I perceive it.
kurt: It feels like it.
He sends me invites
every week and I show up.
Matt: You got into WordPress
through an interesting route.
I think I heard you once say that you
were working at a motorcycle dealership
or you owned a motorcycle dealership.
What's the backstory?
kurt: So I have a backstory
in automotive service.
I mean, if we really go back, back, back,
and you know, those are 13, 14 hours a
day, standing on concrete, arguing with
people from sun, sun up to sundown.
And, after we had our first
child, I realized I was only
seeing my baby girl on Sundays.
She was asleep when I went to work.
She was asleep when I came home from work.
And I said, well, this, this
just ain't going to work, man.
Like I'm, and I was getting
older and we had kids late.
And so I was like, this
ain't going to work.
And so what were the things that.
you know, interested in me, I
would build websites as a hobby,
like with Dreamweaver and stuff.
And I experimented with Drupal and
Joomla and a couple of other things.
And I helped some nonprofits out with
some stuff like hobbies, like most
of, most of us agencies do, but then
eventually I found WordPress in 2004.
And I was like, this is different.
I kind of like this.
And then by 2008, the economy
had taken a real hard dip.
That 13 hours of standing on your feet
at the car dealership made you about 35.
And I told my wife, I said, this
is not financially feasible.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
And so I literally just hung my tile
and said, Hey, I'm a, I'm a web guy.
I'll help you make a website.
And I took on a ton of startups
and super cheap projects and,
christened myself through fire.
And, Manana Nomas was born.
Matt: We have a similar background
because I came up in the auto industry.
My family owned car dealerships,
was once Mazda, Isuzu, and Peugeot,
then merged into or migrated
over to General Motors, Cadillac,
Oldsmobile, and Chevrolet at the time.
kurt: That's a heck of a
Matt: Yeah, it's quite,
quite the migration.
My grandfather actually started
one of the very first, Mazda
dealerships in the country, right,
when they first came, to America.
I've spent a lot of time in every facet
of, the auto Industry as as a dealer.
from washing, well, from , doing
landscaping around, the dealership
to washing cars, delivering parts,
service, writer, parts delivery.
And then the consumer internet
came and I was the only one
who knew how that stuff worked.
So I quickly became the, the
internet sales person when
that first came onto the scene.
there's a lot of, I've always said
like there's a lot that you learn.
In that business, right?
So, so long as you're like, you
know, really trying to deliver a
great experience for a customer and
do right by the customer, there's
a lot of great lessons there.
especially in service
writing as a service writer.
Yeah.
I noticed you said you're spending a lot
of time, maybe arguing with folks on the
lot because you're trying to explain to
them how this thing is getting forward.
Fixed what goes into it.
There's literal man hours
that you're tracking.
There's parts.
So there's logistics.
Sometimes you don't have the part, you
gotta go get the part of the parts,
the laid part does not the right part.
Now you're scrambling and you're
getting all this in and you're trying
to do this all under budget, or to
the budget you presented the customer.
It sounds very much like web design.
there's a great similarity there.
kurt: So many transferable skills
there and you really hit on one
of the things that drove me.
And that was that customer relationship,
that customer, you know, interface.
I was so discontent after two decades
in the automotive industry that I
wrote and published a book called
service writing in black and white.
And I didn't write it to sell it.
I wrote it to flush this
crud out of my brain.
And when I did, I just self
published it and put it up and
thought, well, that's it, it's done,
Matt, people bought the dang book.
And, and, and then I panicked
because it was poorly written.
I had to go and do a second version of it.
but one of the customers was Ducati
North America, the motorcycle company.
And I'd worked at a ton of dealerships
and my hobby was racing motorcycles.
And, you know, your dream is always
like, Oh, if I could work for
one of the big, you know, one of
the big OEMs, that'd be awesome.
And out of the blue, they called
up one day and said, can you write
us a course for service writers?
and that led to a decade of working
with Ducati, both as a contractor
and as a full time employee.
And then I graduated
from Ducati to Suzuki.
Branding wise, it seems like a big step
backwards to go from Ducati to Suzuki,
but what people don't recognize is
Suzuki is so much bigger of a company.
So then I was working with
automotive, marine, motorcycle.
I was in charge of publications and
training and that e learning that you're
hearing me talk about now, that became the
foundation for the stuff that I do with WP
Tonic, Lifter LMS, and of course, Manana
Matt: There's an element to, what,
what, what I like about the agency game.
This might.
Not come off sounding too good, but
there's an element to the agency
space where you sort of you build up
a portfolio You build up some brand
recognition and it gives you a little
bit of confidence and you can say
things like well Hey, you know when you
come to me the website costs 5, 000.
Well, the guy down the street says it's 2,
500 Yeah, okay great, but the guy down the
street is not us and it's not our process.
It's not our portfolio mine is 5, That
was something that I learned, literally
selling parts at, for, for General Motors
because it was when you presented the
problem to the customer, hey, you need a
new, whatever, carburetor for your motor.
you go, do you want the General Motors
part or do you want Whatever the, I don't
remember the name of the parts, AC Delco
parts or whatever the, those parts were
and you were selling on, do you want the
brand recognition that's five times more
expensive or do you want the cheaper one?
And it just gets you into this, this
mode of presenting the problem and
massaging the brand and upset upselling.
And I know it sounds tough, but these are,
these are things that you go through in
the automotive world, at least back then.
Where that's what was profitable selling
these parts selling this experience
selling the service and ultimately if
the customer trusted you They invested
their dollars with you and as long
as you're fixing the problem In the
right way and delivering it back.
And it's a nice clean car.
It smells fresh.
You don't hand it back to them
filthy from the technician or,
you know, or like oil stains.
Like these are things that you just,
people might just go over their heads,
but from a brand and customer experience,
these are, these are great stories.
kurt: And it all stems from, you know,
your, your root skills in communication.
And leadership and I became a
lifetime student of leadership and
I studied, you know, all the big
names, John Maxwell, especially I
went and got my certification with
that for public speaking and training.
And that to me is what drives,
you know, the root success of all
of these different verticals and
platforms that I've had experience in.
Matt: The, I'd imagine, like, so
writing the book, like you didn't
have any expectations of selling it.
Were you doing any other sort of online?
Communication or blogging or
podcasting at that time when you did
kurt: put out a couple of Twitter posts,
you know, back when it was Twitter.
So that was 2007, right?
So I put out a couple of Twitter posts.
I made a website called
service writer book.
com.
I thought, well, That sounds like
it's SEO, you know, powered, right?
What is it?
It's a service writer book.
and like I said, people
just started buying it.
And then I didn't even have it on
Amazon for like the first five years.
I just, I was just letting
it do its own thing.
And then finally, I said, you know,
I should probably put it in Amazon
and see if it does anything there.
And what's really weird is sometimes
I'll see used versions of it for sale.
And I'm like, someone actually
bought that paperback.
And then wanted to sell it used.
I'm kind of flattered,
but I'm kind of mortified.
Matt: Imagine if you signed
it, how much more valuable that
kurt: And that's weird.
I used to have students at Ducati, bring
me a copy of the book and ask me to
sign it in class when I was the trainer.
And I was like, it's such
a surreal experience.
I wrote my second book
and published that in.
And that one's a general leadership book.
And I did the same kind
of game plan for that.
I made a website.
I put up a sister course,
obviously e learning is my game.
put up a sister course and put out a
couple of posts about action leadership
from the edge and copy started to sell.
In that case, I made it, also
a digital book that you could
download off of, Amazon.
And it's, I just let it do its own thing.
I didn't do any of that, you know, any
of the scams to become a number one rated
book or bestseller or any of that stuff.
I just, I just let the book
naturally organically do its thing.
And I just focus on my day to day
running my agency and my business
Matt: I want to talk about what you do at
Lifter and what you do at, Manana no mass,
where you've titled yourself web dude.
But before we get there, there's.
I mean, what's in the WordPress air
these days is, what is WordPress?
WordPress is too challenging.
WordPress doesn't know where it's going.
There's a lot of, you know,
debate back and forth of, are
we still a publishing system?
Are we a content management system?
Are we a web building workflow tool?
Are we a lifter or an
LMS, basis for an LMS?
What's missing here in your opinion?
Like I had lengthy conversations.
Is it marketing?
Is it education?
Like.
What's missing, if anything,
in your eyes of like, where
WordPress sits for the end user?
What is it?
Who should be using it?
What's the missing link for this stuff?
kurt: to me.
And these are just personal
thoughts of Kurt, right?
So, all those things that
you said, what is WordPress?
Is it a CMS?
Is it this?
Is it that is the sad part
of it is, is that yes, yeah.
Yes, yes, it's, it's, it's all of
that, which makes the messaging
horribly muddled and spread out.
I do challenge people that are
seriously opinionated though.
Like the folks that go, this is broken
and this user user interface is wrong.
And this is two clicks to get here.
And, and I see that and I get that.
I do.
I, I, I've been in the platform since
2004 and I do understand a lot of the,
you know, armchair quarterbacking that
we can do on the product as it's built.
But I've also introduced WordPress
to literally hundreds of clients.
As a new product.
And to me, it is like handing and
it's like hand handing a toddler
an iPad, you know, within 5 or 10
minutes, they figure out what they're
going to touch, click on or get to to
make a cartoon go across the screen.
And I find that almost.
The dumber someone is, the more fresh they
are to the platform, almost the easier the
adoption is someone that has come up with
classic editor and then been through the
block editor and the growth pains of that.
And then to get into full site editing,
it's almost like there's so many
facets of things that have worked.
In their past that create
mental blocks to go forward.
If I'm making any sense, I,
it's for me to articulate that.
And then you add to that, you know,
you got the bricks conversation,
the Elementor conversation, the Divi
conversation, the beaver builder.
It's, and, and sometimes I
think, Oh, I definitely need a
page builder to knock this out.
And other times I go, you know what?
I'm just going to try cadence and see
what I can do in cadence and magically.
Cadence seems to work pretty dang good.
Matt: WordPress has been
around for 20 years.
I'll oversimplify this and then
love your thoughts on this.
So, for the first five years,
like, you had to be hardcore.
Techie developer like you weren't you know
for the first five years was there the
magic five minute install I'm not really
sure I forget the first five years But you
really had to be like super techie to get
this thing off the ground From, you know,
years five through 10, then there were
folks like, I think me, we're not, when I
came into it, who I was not a developer,
but I was able to use a lamp stack,
Linux, Apache, my SQL and PHP, and like
put this thing up there because remember
there wasn't a managed WordPress hosting.
Like we all enjoy today, there was a
C panel one click installer, but not
every web host was using that back then.
so you had to be like a power user.
Ultimately you were curious
and willing to learn.
And then the.
Back half of the second decade is when
we really saw, the user who came in
through, let's say the Elementors and
the page builders of the world that
really exposed WordPress to building
websites through their particular lens.
Again, whatever it was, Beaver
Builder, Elementor, Divi, Bricks.
And what I, my theory is, Why folks are
so vocal in year 20 is that it's been 20
years Which is an infinite amount of time
in tech land, but it's this new core user
of WordPress who came in from a product
perspective who had all these issues that
we all learned in the past smoothed over
by UI and And UX albeit still challenging
but much more easier to use than our first
10 years of WordPress Who are now like,
Hey, I've been using this for five years.
When is it getting better?
And these folks, it's a largely attached
to their livelihood, their web business,
their marketing firm, their SEO practice.
And they're like, we need
to make this thing better.
And they're a lot more vocal.
Maybe not in the best ways, but they're
a lot more vocal and they're doing
it in pockets across the community.
Facebook groups, YouTube live streams,
like it's a whole new set of user.
That's my feeling.
That's why it's so pronounced these days.
What are your thoughts?
kurt: I agree with much of what you
just said, but I drive back to use case
and overall audience and community.
Right.
So like a lot of times I hear things
about, and I'll just go right into
like automations and CRM integrations.
And, you know, is it's going to
be a Zapier thing or a WP fusion
thing, or why do I have to do this?
And how come this doesn't come out of
the box and you get these, Assumptions
or these dang near entitlements, right?
Where people are like, this
should be this way out of the box.
And there's a really major part of me.
That's like, no, that's not what
this was built for decades ago.
Like even through its
development, the idea that.
Every single site can be a do it
yourselfer, out of the box success,
plug and play kind of thing.
To me, it's kind of crazy.
I mean, that's why there's experts
and agencies around that do builds.
A lot of times I find that I
find myself telling potential
clients how to do something.
And this is a big mistake for me.
I'll say, Oh, well, in this case,
we're going to plug in the CRM
and then we're going to take that
CRM and hook it to an automation.
We're going to use this recipe
to automate this with this.
And then people that sign into this
form are going to get this tag and
this tag is going to, and so, you
know, the rest of the story, right?
I'm, I'm telling us all out
audience that I'm talking to
doesn't care about any of that.
They have a pain point.
They want a web professional to fix it.
And I think when we get
into those level of.
Conversations.
We have to remember that we are the web
professionals and we are the people that
can answer those questions, solve those
pain points and turn a profit doing it.
I think we make the mistake like I've
done multiple times myself of trying to
explain all of this stuff to people from a
do it yourself or perspective when that's
not, if I was building SAS platforms, I
wouldn't be explaining to everybody that
bought the SAS platform, how I put it
Matt: Right.
kurt: I'd just be
saying, what do you want?
You want an automated calendar
thing with an email function?
I got that.
Here you go.
And that would be it.
But in the WordPress space, we seem
to get hooked on which plugins,
which tools, which this, which that.
And I think to the point that we
drive a wedge of communication between
professionals and potential clients.
And when you give people That level
of information that they didn't
really ask for, you imply to them
that they're responsible for their
own website or that they must
assume a do it yourself perspective.
And sometimes we drive them away,
we drive them to another source.
I mean, not for nothing,
I'm in the e learning space.
So, I thought, you know what, everyone
keeps asking for the Udemy experience,
I should probably put a course on Udemy.
What a nightmare.
Like from a user perspective, you
know, I had to add the course.
I had to tick all their boxes.
I had to verify who I was.
I had all these things
to do, and I'm not lying.
I put that course up six months ago.
And to this day, I'm still getting spam
from putting a course on that website.
Everybody wants to help
me sell my Udemy course.
I had a friend jump into Kajabi.
I jumped into the back end of Kajabi
to try and help them with something.
And I thought, how in the
world does what I'm seeing on
the back end of this website?
Resemble anything from the
front end of the website.
You know, it's just a huge disconnect
compared to our experience in WordPress.
But we've all made this assumption
that SAS makes it easier.
And that's not necessarily the case.
I think it's very use case driven and
we have to examine who our audience
is for each instance, and in a lot of
cases, the audience that we're talking
to isn't even concerned with the stuff
you and I were just talking about with
the development of WordPress and the UX
and the UI and the this and the that.
They just want something that works.
Matt: So from a user's perspective,
especially in the learning, e learning
world, is it, do they choose WordPress
because they found a professional and
that professional says, well, I only
use WordPress or they look, or have they
tried those other platforms and found
the limitations and, and instead found
WordPress to be much more flexible, but
I'll be it with a bigger learning curve
and maybe they need to hire somebody.
What do you think from
the user's perspective?
Do they see, you know, choosing, you
know, lifter and then hiring you at
your agency, like from the user's
perspective, where do they come in from?
kurt: From the user's perspective,
I am dealing with two very separate
audiences, Matt, pardon me.
And my agency, as far as I know,
is one of the only ones really
going after the second one.
So for agencies in the space,
I'm giving you my magic sauce.
The first one, those are course creators.
Those are people that, you know,
have, have either seen the dude
posing next to his Lamborghini,
you know, e learning is growing
and you can make a million dollars.
Right.
And everyone goes, Oh, I want to do that.
And they do the research and they come up
with learn dash, Lifter, LMS, tutor, LMS,
you know, being your top three searches.
And then they, they start, you know,
going down and then they start the,
you know, feature benefit, right.
Feature benefit versus dollar spent.
What are they going to pick?
And so in a lot of cases,
I see people come to Lifter
LMS from that type of search.
And a lot of times, they really don't
even know what they really want.
They just heard somewhere that
they can make a side hustle out
of producing an online course.
The other audience is completely
the opposite of what you think.
It's someone that doesn't
want WordPress at all.
Right.
It is.
So the first group is, they're the
ones that may have sampled Kajabi or
Udemy, but realize they need their own
platform, which leads to WordPress.
The second group are people
that don't want WordPress.
They explicitly do not want WordPress.
And that's the group I am
specifically targeting right now.
Those are enterprise level,
Corporations that have very, I'll
say technical, but I don't believe
it's technical, SCORM content that
they make their learning content in.
So there's a very specific,
course authoring software.
And typically these enterprise
corporations would have a, special built
learning management system SCORM content.
Typically those are very expensive.
And newsflash, they usually kind of suck.
So, they don't look good.
They don't function good.
They, they, they play the content and
they do the reporting, but everything
else is horrible and it's super expensive.
So when I learned that I could
take that SCORM content and I could
effectively run it through a Lifter
LMS website, for instance, and
I'll just give you real numbers.
I have a corporate client that spent
500, 000 developing their LMS, 400,
000 a year for maintenance and hosting.
The website barely worked and they
only had 2, 500 users enrolled in the
Matt: Hmm.
kurt: By the time I worked it out, I
told them, I said, you could hire me
to drive across the country and teach
people in person for that kind of budget.
Look, what, what are we doing?
That's crazy.
And then I was like, you know, we could
do this in Lifter LMS on a WordPress
build, even with really good hosting and
get you down to about five, maybe 50,
000 a year, and they were like, we're
not ready for that kind of change yet.
And that was.
The inspiration moment for me to
go, I need to make this more public.
I need to let more corporations understand
that there's agencies like ours, that
you don't have to be a do it yourself.
Right.
We can give you the service and
the maintenance and the hosting,
and we can do all that for you,
but it ain't 400, 000 a year.
It's like 50 grand a year.
We update your plugins.
You, you give us the content.
We'll load it up for you.
It's good to go.
Matt: There's that whole enterprise
world or bigger business side
of, of, WordPress world is, is
one that isn't explored enough.
Um, I mean, as a decade long agency
owner and then somebody who worked in at
Pagely for enterprise hosting, I kind of
know why, like technically, I know why.
I also look, there's a lot of
agencies that, that, that push
into marketing for enterprise.
This is a deeper conversation, but
I, at the end of the day, I think
it sort of boils down to maybe
a lot of people are just afraid.
Afraid to give away the secret sauce
and give away maybe that blueprint,
because they're also trying to approach
that like they don't want to tell other
people that there's a lot of opportunity
in the upper markets of WordPress.
You also have to deliver
and be able to, to.
to, to, package and present
yourself where, an enterprise
is going to say yes to you.
Like in that example, where they
might be spending half a million
bucks, maybe somebody comes in
and goes, I can do it for free.
And they go, no, please, there's
no, there's no time for that here.
Right.
And bigger business.
I was just having this conversation with
Mark Szymanski on, one of the recent
episodes is what once a, a, a big corp,
enterprise client says yes to WordPress,
that's an investment for many years.
Right.
So it doesn't always.
It's always, I think.
The service provider in the
WordPress space who's just learning
these new levels of, of, client.
You know, don't undercut yourself.
Don't undersell yourself
because there's a lot here.
You might be thinking, Oh, the
software is free, but managing and
working with these clients is going
to be a whole different ball game.
Just to get through them to say
yes and sign your contract is going
to be an experience that you said,
Oh, I should have added another
zero to the end of this thing.
kurt: the sales pipeline is
Matt: Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Do you have any, what is the
experience when they say, Oh, you can
do this stuff, but it's WordPress?
Do you ever get that kickback where they
go, Oh man, WordPress, but then you say,
Well, I'm going to make it better for you.
But is there an initial
pushback on WordPress?
Just the brand?
kurt: I'm going to say five years ago.
yeah, definitely.
in 2024, not so much because now we're,
now we're into pain point selling, right?
We're, we're into what's your pain point.
I can help fix that.
You know, especially with COVID, a lot
of these corporations were locked into
these building deals and sent people to
work from home and then they had these
other expenses and, you know, in a lot
of cases, Well, I worked at Suzuki and
Suzuki right at the beginning of COVID
had large layoffs, just huge layoffs.
They closed the entire training division.
You know, when you look at what some
companies are having to make decisions
with, when you can come in and say,
Hey, for about 14 percent of what you're
currently paying for your training tech,
I can not only maintain it, but I can
actually make it better, I can make
it a better experience for your users.
And if they give you any, you
know, If they say, what's it on?
And that conversation rarely comes up to
be honest with you at the corporate level.
They just want to know
that the website works.
But if they say on what platform and I
say WordPress, if there's any backlash
from that, it's gotten a lot easier when
you say what was good enough for the
White House, it was good enough for NASA.
I'm pretty sure we can make,
you know, your website work.
And the thing to remember when I'm
talking about enterprise e learning
projects on SCORM, I'm not talking about
millions of users and high bandwidth
requirements and stuff like that.
They typically have
between one and 5, 000.
Users and active users in a month
might be four or 500 people.
So I'm not dealing with
huge, huge numbers.
It's not like I'm running
Facebook on WordPress.
Matt: What, what are some use cases
for these, these more enterprise types?
Sales enablement comes to mind
where there's a, there's a team
that needs sales enablement training
and education, typical onboarding,
like, Hey, welcome to the company.
Yeah.
You know, take these five
courses to learn what we do here.
What are the samples of, of use cases
that you've seen through your work?
kurt: So my number one sales use case
during COVID was exactly what you just
said with the onboarding, because I
would target companies and I would
say, Hey, your ads are advertising
that this is a remote position.
How do you onboard people?
And they would say, Oh, we bring them
into the office for a week and blah, blah.
But I said, so you hire
someone for a remote position.
And the first thing you do is bring
them to the office for a week.
It's probably not a good optic.
What if we could take all that, make
it digital, and you could do all
that stuff through zoom and digital
signatures and offer it through a
course and lesson structure better yet.
What if I could put those zoom calls and
embed those zoom calls into your course
and lesson structure so that you keep
everything organized and recorded properly
and they're like, you can do that.
And I go, yeah.
And then when you say that's 15 grand
or 18 grand or 50 grand, it's still
a bargain compared to what their it
department was paying before they met you.
And that's the other thing to remember
is that the numbers, the number,
never be afraid of sharing the number,
whatever the number is, you throw it
out there because it is what it is.
And, and amazingly, it's
been pretty successful.
The, the higher the number,
the less aggravation I seem to
have with the client as well.
Matt: You might have a
different answer, but I, I.
I would imagine that it's less, this is
going to be funny, but it might be less
painful on the design side of things.
Like when I was in the business, I was
just largely selling marketing sites
and it was just like, Oh, that shade
of blue is not what, Can we look at
many shades of blue and I'm like, Oh
God, why do I keep doing this business?
I would imagine building out
these structural applications for
people is a lot less painful on
that side of things or maybe not.
kurt: The better the enterprise
is, I shouldn't say better.
The more developed the enterprise
is, the better the experience for the
agency, meaning they have a style guide.
They've got a branding guide.
So I go to them and I say, you
have a marketing department?
They say, yes.
I go, excellent.
Send me a copy of your style
and your branding guides.
I want to make sure that what we
create for you meets your style
and branding guides and that your
marketing department is going to be
happy with what we develop for you.
And then they're like, Oh, and then when
they learn, cause remember most companies
have A training site or an HR site and a
sales site and a CRM site and a, and a,
and a, and when you start to develop your
LMS product, and then you start to say,
Hey, this is an LMS, but it's also a CMS.
And if you want to surround your
learning, your learning channel with
some of your marketing messaging or
some of your sales pages or some of
your landing pages, well, then you can
start to see some of those windows in
their brains open up and they go, wait a
minute, we could do everything on this.
Well, yeah, we're a full service agency.
We can fill all the, we
can fill all the blanks.
My main focus was on getting
your learning stuff up.
And then we found that, this is
Chris Badgett's line, by the way.
I'm stealing from Chris.
He says, Oh dude, I just love
the way you land and expand.
Matt: Does he say it in that voice?
kurt: He doesn't say in that voice,
that voice is kind of creepy.
You know, Chris is much less
creepy, but he says, I just love
the way you land and expand.
but that's it.
It's it's, you know, see a
need, fill a need, right?
That's the thing with sales and just have
a good relationship and provide value.
Matt: Solution based selling.
there's a lot of folks.
that get into, into
their WordPress services.
Then they start building those, those
websites and they really start to dislike
that experience and they give up, right?
It was just so stressful.
They've, they've said, I, I started my
web, my WordPress web agency because
I didn't want a full time job and
now I have this full time job and I
don't like dealing with these clients.
This is why I like this.
Like the agency structure you've
built, the model you've built,
because it's, it takes away or it can.
I mean, it obviously depends on who you
are and what you want to do, but when
you're excited about solving problems
with WordPress, it doesn't always have
to be, let me make you a brochure site.
It can be a Lifter LMS site.
It can be e learning.
And I talk about this all the time
with my work at Gravity Forms.
Gravity Forms allows you to do that too.
You start selling, the ability to connect
to different add ons that we have.
And it just ranks you up.
Like you, one day you're selling
a website to somebody because you
have a great MailChimp add on.
And then the next day you're like,
Oh, there's a HubSpot add on.
And now I'm in this whole other
echelon of, Of customers that I'm
servicing because of gravity forms
of this add on, et cetera, et cetera,
solution based selling fantastic for
the WordPress freelancer who's like,
I'm not happy with where I'm at and
I can build up this other solution.
So kudos to you for, for finding
kurt: Well, one of the most important
things, distinctions and what you
just said is the difference between a
freelancer and an agency and I was a
freelancer for the longest time and I
was contracting with lifter and WP tonic
and I was, you know, to your point,
pumping out all these crazy hours.
I would say yes to these projects
and I thought we're going to be
easy and then they all expanded
or scope creep or something.
yeah.
And then I realized what were my
strengths in the corporate world.
I was a really good project manager.
I was a really good, I was really
good at, at identifying people's
skill sets and putting them
to work on what they did best.
And that's when I realized, Hey, just
cause I'm working out of my home.
Doesn't mean I can't leverage the skills
and talents of other team members.
And then I started adding to the team and
I started networking with other people
in the WordPress space in the community.
Right.
So me and Michelle Frechette,
so like she actually referred
me for a talk that I got.
I mean, it's like, there's so many
people, positive people in the
space that you can connect to.
And it everyone assumes
it has to be for money.
It's not for money.
It's about making that connection.
Who's good at what?
Who's best at this thing or that thing?
And there's been a lot of work that's come
in through money on the no mosque that
I've been able to farm out to other people
through, you know, through post status
and through the networking that we do.
And, It's positive.
It's positive net for everybody.
Everybody gets the work.
Everybody works in their strength zone.
And in some cases, some of the
profit sharing comes through
money on an almost as an agency.
And in other cases, it's just a referral,
but I know that's going to come back
to me tenfold for being the right guy.
Anyway.
Matt: Do you have a, a
team at your agency or
kurt: Yeah.
So, I say this, I say this publicly
a lot and I should probably stop
saying it, but I'm, I consider
myself graphically handicapped, Matt.
I am not creative.
Yeah.
If someone, if someone gives me the
style guide, gives me the branding
guide, gives me a color palette, I
will make you an amazing website.
But if you come to me and go, Oh, we kind
of got this idea for chicken sandwiches
we're making on pretzel buns or whatever.
And we, you know, we need you to come up
with the logo and the, and the hero image.
And I'm like, no, no.
What you need is
Matt: Yeah.
kurt: Michelle's a
graphic girl on my team.
She is amazing.
She's the only person I've met in
my life where I can speak to her.
Yeah.
And the next day she'll show
me a storyboard of what I said
Matt: Hmm.
kurt: I mean, she's just amazing.
I've used her for curriculum development,
you know, course development in the
SCORM world and for marketing stuff.
I've got another girl.
I think she's up in Wisconsin.
She is phenomenal.
Young lady.
I met her in the Marine industry.
Turns out she did all the graphics for
the Marine company I was contracted with.
And I said, do you do side work?
She said, yes.
She's been a part of the team ever since.
Yeah, and then I don't do a lot with code.
I'm more of a plug and play kind of
guy, so I've got a guy that I leverage
for code work and customizations
outside of my little home office
here.
Matt: there's, yeah, I mean, I think
the whole, once again, like, this is
really, should be eye opening to those
who might be thinking about expanding
their, you know, freelance work into
an agency or refining the processes.
Cause that was one of the most difficult
things that I would run into at the 10
years I ran the agency with my, with
my father, agency still runs today.
He runs it largely.
He was in the auto, he grew
up in the auto industry, owned
the car dealerships and such.
so there was always this natural,
friction between he and I about like,
you know, the things I wanted to like
go after, which was what, you know,
like a lot of us young foolish people
at the time were thinking about like,
I want to sell products too, man.
I want to sell themes and plugins.
I want to start a SAS business
cause look at all these people
starting a SAS business.
Isn't it great?
And he was just like, service work.
There's, you know, the, the, the folks
that can change the oils and then there's
the, you know, the head technician
and the head technician builds the
custom site and priced at one point.
And then there's the oil change
type people who just put the sites
together and keep them moving.
And it was, it wasn't something that,
I was truly interested in and of course
agency life, you know, you're always like
one paycheck away or one customer check
away from bankruptcy When you're running
like a custom agency So there was that
like challenge of it plus having kids and
like really, you know saying hey I just
need to lower the stress level at home
with kids But it's certainly like the
no code tools where WordPress is headed.
You don't need Custom coding for every,
every solution and you don't need to
have somebody on the, you know, I don't
mean this in a bad way, but you don't
always need to have like an expert
engineer on the team for something
that comes up 10 percent of the time.
Maybe in customer engagements.
kurt: Yeah, I would, I
would go even further.
It's for me and my agency.
It's not even 10 percent of the time.
There's so much out there
that we can leverage.
The hard part is staying educated
on all of the different tools.
What's a good tool?
What's a tool to stay away from?
What tools work good together?
You know, I kind of have a
dedicated tech stack that I'm
familiar with that I'm happy with.
and I think that that is a
big key to what we what we do.
The other thing is, When I'm talking
to a client, for some reason, a lot
of clients just come to the game,
assuming that they need some kind
of customization or they need this.
They need that.
And one of the best words I've
learned, and that, that might be from
Emily Middleton is just asking why.
You just ask the client, why
do you think you need that?
And they'll come up with something, but
it's like, maybe we should just launch a
minimal viable product first, you know,
do, do a proof of concept, make sure
that your idea has traction, and then
we can invest in your customizations
and your dreams down the road.
But, you know, for a lot of folks, what
they're saying is a need at the beginning
of a project is far from being a need.
It's a distant
Matt: yeah, yeah.
Is the is the world of, In your
agency world, it is getting leads
and showcasing what you can do.
Is it done through the, through an LMS?
Like, are you selling a course?
And people are going, aha, this
guy knows how to do a course.
Therefore I will want to hire
him versus looking at a pretty
portfolio of a graphic designer.
kurt: Yeah.
So for me, if my target is that SCORM
client, that enterprise SCORM client,
I do have a course, on SCORMpress.
com and MananaNomas.
com that, tells people how to put
SCORM into their WordPress website.
And so, so I have that, but Lifter
LMS also asked me to make a very
similar course and you can take
that for free right at Lifter LMS.
Honestly, I don't care if people take
the free course or they come and buy the
course from Manana Nomas, because I'm the
author and the deliverer of the content.
So that drives people to me anyway.
You know, in a lot of cases, they'll
see the content at Lifter LMS and
they'll go, who's this Kurt guy.
And if you Google Manana Nomas,
you're going to see 68 pages
of Google stuff on there.
Come up for money on a little mass.
There's just a ton of content.
So I really don't worry
about how the net works.
I just worry that the net does
work and funnels people to me.
Right.
the other thing is I just get as
much exposure as I possibly can.
You know, I, I'm talking to you today.
I'll be talking to Jonathan on Thursday.
work with Lifter LMS every Thursday.
and people are starting to
get to know me and it's Matt.
I've only been connected in the
community for four or five years.
I mean, my first WordCamp
was the one in San Diego.
Matt: Yeah.
kurt: So that was two
years ago, three years ago,
Matt: three years ago, I think.
kurt: three years ago.
Yeah.
So that was my first WordCamp
and I loved it so much that I
started going to WordPress meetups.
I didn't even know what a WordPress meetup
really was before I went to WordCamp.
I mean, I was in WordPress.
For what, 15 years before I
realized, Oh, there's a whole
community out here to support us.
And I think that's true for a
lot of agencies and freelancers.
I think so many don't get plugged
in and the opportunity when
you plug in is so, so large.
You actually regret that
you didn't do it earlier.
to the point that I actually run,
Pippin Williamson lives in my town.
I just moved to Kansas.
And so Pippin has a brewery here
in town and I told him I wanted
to do the WordPress meetup for
Hutchinson, Hutchinson, Kansas.
And he goes, Oh dude, if they
give it to you, you could
just use my brewery for that.
So second Tuesday of every month, I'm
at Pippin's brewery down at Sandhills
drinking IPA and talking WordPress.
Matt: That's instant, you know,
instant audience built in.
kurt: Yeah, yeah, but it's just
get plugged in, get connected,
meet as many people as you can.
And if you have an agency that has a
product that's unique, like my SCORM
content, that's fairly unique or LMS
work that's fairly unique in the space.
it's that'll net people in
that'll drive people to you.
And as an agency, I mean, I don't know
what other people are trying to do.
I mean, I see all kinds of weird
things on post status health.
People talk about their successes.
in reality, I only need
five or six clients a month.
You know, I'm not looking to
do hundreds of people a month.
Matt: Yeah.
wrapping up, I want to, I want
to get your thoughts on AI,
especially in the LMS space.
half of me is like, you know, and
I know Chris is, Chris Badgett
is, A proponent on AI, or at least
it seems that way on Twitter.
I'm still very skeptical of it.
I'm curious on how this
whole thing plays out.
Half of me is thinking, Oh God, I
could use AI and build a whole course.
The other half of me,
like that's the evil side.
The angel side is saying, you don't
know anything about that course.
Don't do it.
Like AI will tell you and you don't really
like, do you really know this content that
you really passionate about this stuff?
And I'm worried that, there are
people who are like, Screw it.
Like AI will print this whole
course for me and I will just put
it out there and people will come.
that's the way that I kind of like see
the impact of how AI is working right now.
What are your thoughts on AI?
How it impacts e learning?
Do you have, you know, worries
like I do on this stuff?
kurt: Well, disclaimer, I use
AI tools for certain things.
So for, because what I'm about to say
is going to sound like I'm a hypocrite.
I use AI tools for certain things.
The thing that I've noticed with AI is
you have to, and people aren't going
to agree with this, Matt, but to me,
you, you have to recognize that these
systems are biased in certain ways
and that you have to recognize that
bias, absorb that bias, and then.
You know, adjust, adjust
the rudder accordingly.
So, I can remember when open AI first
came out, chat GPT, I immediately
jumped in, I was so excited.
I'm an early adopter of a lot of things.
And so I jumped in and I was like,
Oh, let's ask it about this topic.
And it said, I can't answer
that question that way.
And then I would ask it from another
perspective and it's, Oh, here's
an encyclopedia worth of stuff.
And I was like, so it won't answer.
Questions from one angle, but I'll answer
all the questions from a separate angle.
I said, that's definitely a piece of bias.
And then when people started saying that
AI was going to train on stuff that's
available on the net, and then we were
publishing content now at an exponential
rate, that's AI generated and it keeps
generating content eventually based on
its own content, when, how much further
until none of that content is really true.
Like, I really worry because it's, there's
a lot of hallucinations and all these
things that they talk about with AI and
I go, so when I use AI, I only use AI
on things that I consider myself to be
knowledgeable, almost a quasi expert
in, I use it to like,
maybe make the outline.
Maybe expand the outline and then I proof
it, adjust it and edit it from there.
often there are mistakes or
there's verbiage or there's
words I would not have selected.
and it also writes at a grade level that's
usually outside my scope of influence.
So a lot of times I have to adjust
the wording so that it meets.
My projected audience
at their grade level for
Matt: Yeah.
kurt: So there's a lot
of work to do with AI.
Like people go, Oh, it's so easy.
Just plug it in and go.
And it's like, no, that's not,
it's not really how you use it.
It's a great tool and
it can save you time.
But if you really use it correctly, you're
going to come out with a superior product.
But it's going to take
almost as much time.
Matt: Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
Kurt, thanks for hanging out today.
Where do you want folks
to go to say thanks?
Thanks.
kurt: Well, manana nomas.
com is where I want everybody
to go and visit sooner or later.
That's the website for us.
Manana nomas.
com.
That's like tomorrow.
No more.
it's because I believe we should
get everything done yesterday.
but if it's on a personal thing and
you just want to connect, I'm the
only Kurt Von Ahnen on LinkedIn.
It makes me super easy to find,
Kurt Von Ahnen, LinkedIn, hit the
connection button to connect and, we'll
connect, maybe have a conversation.