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Hosted by Toby Cryns and Kurt von Ahnen, the Agency Action Podcast (Part of the WP Minute Podcast Network) dives into the real-world ups and downs of running a WordPress agency. Each week, Toby and Kurt share open, honest conversations about the challenges and victories that come with building client relationships, pricing projects, finding the right tools, and growing a sustainable business.
Whether you’re just launching your agency or refining your systems, you’ll get practical insights from two agency owners who live it every day—along with stories that remind you you’re not alone in this wild WordPress world of global teams, AI disruption, and constant change.
Follow the show and explore more at TheWPMinute.com/podcasts
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:00)
Hey folks, welcome to the Agency Action Show. My name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I'm here with my co-host, Toby Cryns from The Mighty Mo. And we're super excited to be here again. Thanks for listening, watching all those things. Like, share, follow. I want to hit all those things at the very beginning. And to make Eric happy, I'm going to tell you that ⁓ everything's all about artificial intelligence and AI. Now, past that, Toby, we run agencies.
And we were going to talk about hosting and we kind of gave people a tease, but I think we want to develop that for another episode. Let's talk about things that are really affecting us today. Talk to me about being tired.
Toby Cryns (00:34)
Yeah,
man. So I'm tired. But not the normal tired. I'm like the tired you get when you have a 14 year old kid and you realize you haven't slept since she was birthed. That's the kind of tired I am. I'm and my my ⁓ agency, am deeply involved in pushing it forward. And by that, mean, I've this I've noticed a couple of big
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:36)
I'm tired.
Toby Cryns (00:57)
issues that I want to resolve in my agency with the humans and with our processes, just some really deep things that we're going to improve. And I'm realizing I'm in meetings all day. And then I come home from meetings and it's nonstop. I'm carting kids to school or to activities. Well, first of I have to bring the kids to school. like today I was up at 5 a.m. I'm working on an app I'm building.
then I get the kids to school, and then I'm on calls. And now I'm here in this. And I still haven't done any of the work, really. The meetings is the work. And it's tiring, And so I...
How do you deal with this, Kurt? Are you ever just feeling totally maxed out and you still gotta show up? This is why we've been in business as long as we do. We have this gene where we just keep showing up.
Kurt Von Ahnen (01:41)
Yeah, I don't know. That's, that's the stupid side of my gene pool. so I told you this morning, this morning, you know, I've been, I've had a week also where we sold a large project and in order to sell the large product project, put it into phases and phase one had a very short window to launch an MVP. Right? So the customer has a launch date in mind.
And we spent so much time negotiating the scope of work before we actually started phase one that when we, when it came time to exchange funding and sign the paperwork, it was like, Oh crap. You know, we only have 10 days before we got to launch this MVP product. And it's, it's not, it's, it's not an E the minimal viable product we're launching includes a full seven courses in it. So it's, it's, there's a lot of stuff. And I've been up till 12:30, 1 o'clock.
every day this week, checking work that the team does doing work, the team hasn't done and communicating with the client. And let's just be honest. This is one of the bigger projects that we've sold lately. And it's like, I definitely want to keep the customer happy through phase one. You know what I mean? Like we want to launch on time, under budget, good quality. And I know an MVP implies you can skimp on quality a little bit, but I want to come to them.
I want to knock it out of the park. You know what I mean? Like same as you do, but it exhausts you. You're like, my God, I'm exhausted. So today instead I turned on the computer and I stared at it for 20 minutes and didn't do a thing. And I said, you know what? Today's the day. I got two roasts on the smoker. I lit a cigar and I mowed the front yard. And I think that that physical activity puts me in the right mindset to come in be able to have a conversation with you. When this is done, I'll be able to turn on the,
Toby Cryns (03:00)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (03:24)
the browser and do some work.
Toby Cryns (03:25)
You brought up a neat thing about that you just skimmed over because it's probably what you do every time. But I got to say, this is not normal for a lot of people. What you described was a process where you front load a lot of the planning. Because there's a scenario where you just say, we'll get to it when we get there. And I think a lot of people do that. I was thinking, like, along those lines, one thing that we've been improving at The Mighty Mo that
Kurt Von Ahnen (03:39)
Yeah.
you
Toby Cryns (03:49)
We're in the process right now. This is part of what I'm describing is I realized that my team doesn't have enough holistically. Like if I pulled my developer on a project, he probably hadn't read the contract. Like this is interesting and news to me because I'm like, it's been there and we have a project brief. And I'm realizing over the last few weeks, like we don't, I haven't been requiring our team to have a full understanding of all that. Like what's, what did we promise? What, what's, what's
Kurt Von Ahnen (04:05)
It's been there the whole time.
Toby Cryns (04:16)
Not you, you know, your job. Do you know what this person's job is? Do know what the artist is doing? And so that's one improvement we're making at the mighty Mo is we're front loading a lot of the learning and the process. And we're really shifting it, ⁓ pushing more and more to the front so that when we start the project, our team has a better. Just collective understanding of where we're going. And it right now, this is part of the tiring part. I'm building that into the company and it's not a straightforward.
Kurt Von Ahnen (04:36)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (04:43)
It's not a straight line to that. Like I have to get buy-in from the team and we're going there regardless. It's just like, team, you have to figure out how to buy into this and I'm going to be pushing you.
Kurt Von Ahnen (04:53)
Well, you hit on a couple of things just like I did, I guess. Right. So, for me before I can implement any process and, I, you know, I train in the power sports industry, the Marine industry. So I'm working with retail dealerships and distribution companies a lot. Right. And they all want the easy button. Like when they sign up for training and consulting with me, they, they think I'm going to come in with some easy button, like, we just fixed this one thing and everybody's making money. And I'm like, no, no, we have to improve.
The leadership and communication at all levels through your business, right? I believe in a 360 degree leader. Everybody's a leader on the team in some way, or form. Right? So we have to improve the leadership and communication that's going to restore or build that internal culture that we need. Like everybody has to feel like they're on the team. Like if, if you don't have that internal culture, you can make all the rules and policies and processes you want. Nobody's going to follow anything. Right? And so it's like, you have to have that.
that teamwork family buy-in kind of sensation. And people hear me say this and they go, ⁓ he's full of it, know, crystals and pyramids nonsense. And I used to be the guy that said, that's crystals and pyramids nonsense. I was always a work harder, work faster, we'll figure it out. We got to get it done guy, right? But I found out that most people aren't wired that way. Like I'm wired that way. And I sense that you're wired that way. But a lot of people on our teams aren't wired that way. They got to feel like they're part of the bigger scenario.
And so when I talk about this project, signed up for with the four phases. I literally spent the whole first day of the project, building the project in our project management software, inviting the client and his partner to the portal. Everybody on the team and, and the con customers have a full view of every milestone and task of the four phases. There's a Kanban board that says, you know, what
what's waiting, what's been assigned, who it's assigned to, when it's due, and what process it's in. Is it working? Is it ready to be reviewed? And is it completed? And we follow all this and everything has a drop dead date, you know? And some people would say, well, gosh, Kurt, for a website, that seems like overkill. But when you have this many moving parts, you gotta have the process.
Toby Cryns (06:59)
Yeah, I'm also realizing.
My team has been coming to me with questions forever. And I'm like, just this last month, as I've been totally maxed out, I've been taking stock of the questions they're asking. A lot of them are, Hey, should we send this invoice to the client or should I bill for this? How, what type of conversation should I have with the client? And I was thinking like, and I, took me 19 years to get here, but I'm like, why are you coming to me with these questions?
Kurt Von Ahnen (07:25)
Yeah, you're the accounts payable lady.
Toby Cryns (07:26)
And one, yeah,
one thing I'm like, one that I think we're gonna, that I think will help. And I was talking to my project manager specifically, I was like, because she's like, should we bill them like a half hour for this thing? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what conversations you've had with them and, or the state of the relationship. But I was like, look, I need to provide like a, I'm thinking it's like a values statement that says like, here's
what we're after. We want to create a sustainable business for us, create a lot of value for our client, do it fairly, know, something like that. And if you, if I create that statement or we work on it together, we have a statement that you, the project manager, or you, the developer, have a question, first go there. And if that can answer the question for you, then don't come to me.
Kurt Von Ahnen (08:12)
Yeah.
Our goal should be to build a self-sustaining kind of autonomous thing. Like it should be cool. Like it should be awesome that we show up for a meeting or shake a hand with a customer or, you know, ⁓ push a project along like, like as an added benefit, we should be able to supplement the processes and team that we've put in place, but we really shouldn't be in a position where everybody is wholly dependent upon our every decision and whim and all those things.
You know, it's, know you and I talked about this a show or two ago, but like you were like, well, Kurt, what, do you consider success? I'm like, success to me is looking at the schedule, realizing I've got three or four open hours. And that if I want to, I can go for a bike ride. Like for me, my I'm getting older and my, my mental wellbeing and my physical health is more important than any dollar I'm going to bring in through the agency. And.
Toby Cryns (08:39)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (09:04)
And for me, that's, that's bicycling and getting outside. And, um, I don't know that a lot of agencies put themselves in that position. I think they set themselves up thinking that's going to happen. It's like when I sell a membership or a learning product to a new course creator, they've somehow watched some content online and they, and they think they're going to build an online course. People are going to flood it and give them credit cards like crazy. And then they're going to go sit on the beach and look at their phone and just count the money.
And I'm like, that's not how any of that works. And I think a lot of agency people feel that way. think agency people think, well, I've been making websites for a couple of nonprofits or a couple of people in town, right? And they go, well, I think I'm going to make it official and start my own business. And then they throw up a couple of ads on Facebook and then maybe they even hire a couple of people, right? But when it doesn't automatically inject itself with cashflow and revenue, I think they start to panic.
Toby Cryns (09:57)
Yeah. So the question that I I've been struggling with, not struggling. Well, it's, been a continual struggle, my whole professional life, how it's like how to build this business, not that self-sustaining, but that's sustainable. And like, I've always been in state, you know, I had my first baby, my, my first, my daughter, and, it turned my whole, everything I thought I had under control was just thrown out its head. And so like, that was one of these, like, as I talk about
It all, all feeds in there, but I think like when you, you were talking about 360 leadership and I always, I think we're talking about the same thing when I say ownership and I try to like, I'm trying to figure out in this values statement conversation is one those, how to give the team autonomy and ownership over like where we're going. and one thing I, a couple of wins we had. we have over the last couple of years placed a project management layer between us and the client.
thinking that it would improve everything. Hey, the client doesn't want to talk to a bunch of people, like throughout a project. They just want like to know what's, what's going on. And there's advanced pros and cons, but for the type of work we're doing, I'm realizing that like, it's just too much on project management who doesn't know development. We're doing development primarily. so there are a lot of times translating development talk to the client and getting it wrong. like timelines are stretching unnecessarily. So what we've been doing just in the last few weeks to
Kurt Von Ahnen (10:53)
Yeah, single point of contact.
Toby Cryns (11:17)
Uh, both build the three 60 leadership idea and ownership and also like, hopefully at some point give me the ability to go for a walk in the sun. Um, uh, I've been, for example, this is just one example, been putting our dev team and designers in direct contact with our clients and effectively like, and I've been as a directive, I've told our project managers do that to do this. And I've had to like course correct a couple of times.
No, you just email them, stop emailing them. Just tell them to call the, tell the developer to call them, you know, just introduce them. And, and we've also started, we haven't done this for the same reason that I thought was helpful. we haven't brought clients into our project management system. We're doing that now just in the last week or two and already the feedback. Well, the feedback's irrelevant. I'm feeling like already that's helping and something that hadn't happened.
Kurt Von Ahnen (12:01)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (12:09)
maybe in five or six years was someone other than me called a client and it was a developer. In fact, we had two developers in the last two days called the client and just like solve an issue that like, and again, I thought I was doing myself and them a service. thought I was providing better service by like providing a buffer there, but I think I maybe wasn't.
Kurt Von Ahnen (12:31)
You got to sample that, right? So, so if you don't try, you'll never know. Right. A lot of people make assumptions. It's kind of like, well, for instance, you, you have in the notes here, you know, we had to reset our delivery process. And then your next note is why agency QA is broken. And it was funny because you and I were discussing the notes before this, the show. And I was like, how many agencies have a QA program?
And so, but that layers now that layers things in for you and what you just described, because if the developer is talking directly to the consumer, then you get into the kind of this weird kind of flow where the developer might actually deliver the product to the consumer at the end instead of the project manager. So then the question is using the four eyes process, meaning somebody else looking for mistakes and errors, right? Cause if you make a mistake or error, your chances of you finding it yourself are pretty slim.
Toby Cryns (12:52)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (13:21)
So then you have to wonder, okay, so what's going to be our QA process from developer to consumer? You can't let them build the project and then deliver it to the customer and no one else internally check the work.
Toby Cryns (13:31)
Yeah. So we're figuring this out too. Like, like we've had a QA process, but it has a lot of room for improvement. And recently we've really failed a specific client in our QA and it was that we didn't have the right process for the project. And we are, this is part of all the meetings I've been having. like, we need to fix this QA problem. And it's a lot trickier than I originally thought specifically. We, this is a new.
New thing for me that I'm now pushing our team to get client buy-in on the QA documents. So here are the things we're going to be checking in QA. Do you agree? And if so, we're going to send you a form that says you agree to this QA process. Cause where we recently ran into, we ran into, we created problems for ourselves and that like we got buy-in from who we thought was the stakeholder. And, but another stakeholder is like, what are you talking about? That's I never signed that. So like we're, we're like.
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:21)
Yep.
Toby Cryns (14:23)
Shoring up the QA. I don't want to say it's simple. we have like think about QA. You're delivering You have like a design type of QA doc potentially and we have that so like here's how many pixels are between here and here if we're redesigning a page or a site we want to have some standards here's how we're gonna like add CSS classes to things and Then we have QA for
non-technical people. Like here's the things, here's how the links should work. It should open in a new window or it shouldn't, or it should have its own image instead of like bringing the global image, that sort of thing. And then there's like, you you talk about other things we sell, like SEO needs its own entire QA process. So I say QA, totally needed, totally difficult. How do you handle QA, Kurt?
Kurt Von Ahnen (15:10)
Well, I think you definitely touched on one thing and that is we have a visiting dog that visited unexpectedly over the fence. Bye dog. So.
Knowing the stakeholders is so stinking important. We have a client that we, okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to describe this in a way without giving up their whole personal life. was partners and this one is all designed to make things pretty. And this guy was all function, what tools, what plugins block, like all that. Right.
This guy is like, I want a shopping cart because we're going to sell hard goods, soft goods, digital goods, all these things. This person's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. They separated and the cart never got developed. Like we installed it, but they never set up the cart. And this person decided when, when, when this broke up, this person was like, I don't know what they're talking about. We don't sell any product other than digital products. And I said, well, then we don't need the cart. We'll just use the native payment gateway in the, in the LMS.
You know, and so we set it up. We launched now it's two years later and come the questions. Well, how come the same person can't sign up for the same course more than once? And I go, well, how would you track the same user account twice in the reporting system? Like what you're asking doesn't even make sense, but her expectation of what this website should do is completely not what was built because there were two stakeholders involved. then when one isn't there anymore,
Toby Cryns (16:23)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (16:34)
You end up with a mess. And so we ended up having to put a shopping cart back into the website and then redoing the entire user experience through the site. Like, because of course the whole website was littered with custom payment links and buttons and all kinds of weird stuff instead of just using it like an LMS. And so it was quite the project to switch everything over. And it comes down to a stakeholder thing. When I worked at Suzuki,
You know, so thinking about things from an enterprise perspective, the marketing department had a relationship with a, you know, developer marketing company, whatever you want to call it, you know, a firm and they did the websites. And so the marketing people would be the single point of contact for that agency. But if you think about the size of a company like Suzuki,
You've got fixed operations, you've got sales, you've got marketing, you've got a supply chain, you, you've got the legal department. And so this poor agency would build something and marketing would go, well, it looks good to us. And then the legal team would be like, absolutely not. You can't put that on the website. And it was boom, boom. And I now again, this is outside looking in.
I don't feel that that particular agency had the proper QA process because they would have said, we need input from each of your stakeholder departments before we publish any product. And it's going to cost you an extra $25,000 to have those meetings.
Toby Cryns (17:58)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that's one thing we're one lesson we're learning too is think about website maintenance. Everybody's like, yes, 50 bucks a month or whatever. Like just to throw in and we, what we're learning every day is, and this is part of our, showing up our QA. We were doing a QA process for one of our, monthly maintenance clients. And I'm looking at it and our, cause something broke and I was like, why did this break during, during our updates? And it was like.
And there I was talking to our developer and this is like this long series of conversations I've been having. It's been deep and very like minute details. And he's like, well, ideally in an e-commerce setup, we would have a staging site that's hooked into their same payment gateway. And we can test transactions. like, uh, yeah, that doesn't exist here. And so he just did it without that. And we didn't have a testing credit card, you know, from the client and that sort of thing.
And you can imagine a scenario where you go from like click update and WordPress and assume it's good to we're going to have a staging environment that's connected to a payment gateway that's separate from there. And we're going to test it here. Then we're going to launch and test it there. That's a big project every month. I mean, 30 hours maybe to test to fully QA that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:13)
And people don't recognize the steps of the work. They hear something, they go, that's easy. And you're like, no, that's 10 hours of work. 10 hours at, you know, $200 an hour. That's $2,000. I can't just give you two grand every month. Here's one where, again, stakeholder information is so important. We build a lot of e-learning and membership websites. So the implication there is it's a dynamic website with lots of users.
Toby Cryns (19:25)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:38)
So I have now become very accustomed to asking them, what's your plan for internal support? And they go, what do you mean? And I'm like, what do you, well, you're going to have 2,500 people in here. You're going to have 4,000 people in here. How many.
Reset my password can't log in my credit card didn't go through how many of these do think you're gonna get every month and how are you going to address that or handle that and they go well the website should I go well hold on with what the website should we're talking about people so you have these people that have a problem with your product your delivery your content tell me how you plan on handling that because I can't let it be a problem three months into the project that we didn't address and more times than not we've been able to sell them a ticketed support
platform to put into the website where I assign someone on my team, you know, like a support at whatever their URL is. And that gets forwarded to someone on my team. And my team takes care of all the support that their company has except for things that the company really has to answer. So payment gateway problems, password problems, not seeing the right form or not getting access to the right membership. Like that's all handled by us.
And then like someone that says, you know, I want to do a link exchange with your marketing department. Well, we forward that to the client, but that's become a good profit center for us as an agency. But I want to roll that back a little bit. We're talking about QA. Well, now I've got my team giving customer service to someone else's customers. And so we have to create reports on that and report on that.
and meet with our clients about the results of the support so they know who's happy, who's upset and all that kind of stuff. So that QA process has levels to it.
Toby Cryns (21:17)
Mm-hmm. Changing gears a little bit here. I've been building a lot of, well, I've built four internal tools using AI, vibe coding basically.
Kurt Von Ahnen (21:26)
It's those meetups you go to.
Toby Cryns (21:28)
Exactly.
There's I'm realizing. And so was talking to my, my get SEO guy today and we're probably going to build another internal tool specific for SEO reporting because, um, you know, the, tool we want to use is going to cost us, uh, about $25,000 a year to use. already paying quite a bit for SEO tooling. And, and so we're probably going to build it. It's probably going to take a week.
Kurt Von Ahnen (21:49)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (21:54)
and I'll probably be deeply involved. the question is kind of like, I guess it's a reality. Like this option is out there. And when I think of QA specifically for us at the Mighty Mo, we've built a contract app recently, in the last month or month and a half. It builds our contracts. And that's a QA issue too, because what we were discovering is
From contract to contract, the language was different. Our sales guy would slip in something. I'm like, we can't do that. Like I was like, I have an insurance company to worry about that doesn't like that. And so I've started just centralizing all of our clauses. built a tool. we built a tool. That's my 30,000 foot tool that I, this was my, my, my new project management tool. In addition to click up where I just like, I talked to my project manager. I'm like, let's slowly fill this out for me. Like what's blocking it.
What's the payment, where are we at? You know, like what are the phases here? And so that's a separate tool. built a, in addition to the contract app, we now have a, approval app where it's, we send a link to our client. They say, I approve this homepage design for the next phase. You know, the click they submit, we have a digital record of them signing that. And so now we're talking about building an SEO tool. Have you thought about building an internal tool? Like, is there a process that it,
Manana no mas that you could see perhaps handing over to a tool that you build or maybe a tool that you're paying for. You're like, hmm, I think I could AI build that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:20)
I'm a sucker for a lifetime deal. Note the plugin developers. I am a sucker for a lifetime deal. So I, years ago, bought a lifetime deal with a SaaS platform. And it does more than I even use. I mean, I probably use 20 % of what this platform will do. And I use the proposal feature fervently, very, very aggressively. So I have proposal templates. And those proposal templates
Toby Cryns (23:24)
Hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:44)
get leveraged to share information for proposals and for projects with clients. And the third page of the proposal in the template is a digital signature for approvals. And so we've leveraged that quite a bit. Now converting that proposal into a contract, I've actually been doing outside of the platform. So when you were like, we created a contract app, I'm like, ooh, that sounds sexy.
Because I still do that in a much more manual process And I maybe it comes down to trust like when I think about building something with AI and it's like a contract with terms in it Makes me really nervous. I feel like I want to be more manual in the process just to know what's actually in the dang document I'm afraid I'm gonna hit you know, update and send and it's gonna say yeah, you know You can have my house
Toby Cryns (24:30)
Yeah.
I think like there was another, another one of these stories just yesterday, I think where, ⁓ AI deleted our database. was some huge SaaS service and they had a backup from three months ago that they restored, but they're like, lost three months of clients, money bills, you know, like, there's a real thing with AI that, it, there's a real reason to be scared about integrating it with all the things I think at the same time I go, it's going to
Kurt Von Ahnen (24:40)
Yeah!
Toby Cryns (24:55)
potentially save me 25 grand for a week's effort, for one week effort of my part.
Kurt Von Ahnen (24:59)
AI is a great tool, but I feel that people get overconfident and then they MCP this thing into all kinds of tools. And then like you said, can lose data, can lose things that are very important. speaking of lost data, and maybe this is part of a QA thing. We recently migrated a client from one host to another host. and it's one of our hosts to another host, right? So it's not a,
And I decided before we migrated anything to go in and take screenshots of all the pertinent pages and certain things and make sure that we have valid backups of the project. Because I'm paranoid and I'm, I am more paranoid of clients than I am of the actual migration process. And so they have 136 courses in their website and some are in different languages. And so we did the migration. Everything was great. Like the website was fast, you know, everything, like everything was great.
But then like two weeks goes by and the customer says, I have an emergency. These two courses are missing. And I'm like, so out of 136 courses, we migrated and all those lessons. have two courses that are missing. And so I go into the website and I find one of them. Like it's right there. Maybe she didn't, maybe she didn't search it correctly, or maybe she fat fingered the title. I don't know, but I looked it up and it was right in there.
The other one was never published. Like we have backups that go back like six months. And so we're looking at all the backups and I'm like, can you find this anywhere in the data by title? And no. So I did find a similar title, but in draft mode, like it was never published, right? And that comes down to, you know, again, QA process. If we didn't have the backups, if we didn't have
You know the ability to look at the things that we can look at and troubleshoot things for these clients in this way They would have literally thought ⁓ well, they dropped the ball They'd they you know, they lost one of my products and it's like can you tell me specifically? When you had this product published and when you had people sign up for it because they're trying to say it's lost revenue And I'm like, how did you lose revenue on something you never published? You know, it was never I mean according to the data
Toby Cryns (27:01)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:04)
This was never on your website.
Toby Cryns (27:06)
Yeah. There's some, something to be said for taking regular snapshots of a website that you're working on. the ideal scenario is you're like full, of readily accessible. They're, they're all here. can just scroll a folder. And the, the reality is like, like we do really three months back up the worth of backups of all the sites we're working on, from the date we start. And then we,
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:13)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (27:29)
keep them for three months, but these are zip files that are like sitting on a cloud server that we need to, it's, takes time and energy to restore them, but I can't tell you many times. A client will be like the story you told. I'm thinking it, you could be right, but I'm actually kind of skeptical. And we've, we've just recently went back to a backup and we had that scenario or like, okay, we have backup from two months ago from February. We're going to take a quick look at it. And you know, when we moved forward from there.
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:43)
could be right.
Toby Cryns (27:56)
But yeah, as we think of QA, like it includes that too, doesn't it? you kind of.
Kurt Von Ahnen (28:01)
It's
QA requires you to think of ways that the customer will get confused or lose confidence. You know, I mean, if we think about it and they could be great clients too, they don't have to be bad clients. I don't want people to think everyone's a bad client. I don't know that there is a bad client. I think we cultivate bad clients sometimes. so what do you do when a good client gets frustrated and how do you recover that trust?
Toby Cryns (28:08)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (28:22)
For us, we've learned over the years, because we didn't used to do all this stuff, but we've learned what are some things where the client's going to get confused or overestimate our abilities or have a higher expectation than is real. And we will proactively collect data. So we have it if it comes up. And I'm not saying it always comes up, but when I was on PC, cause I recently graduated to Mac, I haven't duplicated this a Mac yet.
But when I was on PC, I created a ⁓ node JS automation through my computer where I would put in a URL, you know, hit go, and it would go to that URL and take a screenshot of every single page of the website and dump it into a downloads folder in my external hard drive. And so part of our process up until two months ago, when I switched operating systems was every project we worked on, I had a full scale.
Screenshot folder of their entire project before we did any work on it And so if they were like this page is different. I'd be like Let's take a look Boom but I think that that lens Recently we added a security feature to all of our hosting clients and I didn't charge extra for it I mean I charge extra for new clients, but I grandfathered the old clients in just providing the service we get a security report from this plug-in provider that we use and
Toby Cryns (29:17)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (29:39)
I take the report and I just send their invoice. send the report. say, congratulations. You've had a great month. Your website's doing awesome. And it just gives them, I feel that it gives them that added confidence of like, wow, my Yana no Mas has my back. Like they said they were going to maintain the website and here's a report that says they maintain the website.
Toby Cryns (29:58)
Yeah. It makes me think like, when I think of things that clients get confused on and us too, frankly, if you're, if we're not in alignment, what does done mean? You know, like this is the big one and this is really what QA is about. Like define done in a way that we can both agree on. And that's one reason why I built this sign-offs app is because we were, there was one project where there was confusion and it was, it was like,
Kurt Von Ahnen (30:10)
Yeah.
When
Toby Cryns (30:23)
One person agreed that it was done, the other person later. So we move forward thinking we had full agreement. And then the person's like, no, that's not done. We're like, but this person said it was done. And so now we're like, that's why we're like, okay, I know it seems weird sometimes, but we're gonna send you this form to fill out that says it's done.
Kurt Von Ahnen (30:27)
Yeah.
That is actually part of my proposal process. And I know this came up on a previous show, right? But I'll factor into the proposal. I'll say this is going to be an estimated eight month project. We're estimating we're going to have 12 meetings up to 45 minutes each during those eight months. And we're going to have four phases and each phase will have a sign off process before we move to the next phase.
And it's all articulated in the proposal. So the client knows, like, it's not a surprise when I go, hey, you got a document in your email. I need you to sign that before I can put the team back to work on your project. And if you delay signature of that, you delay the completion of your project. It's not, we're extending the deadline. you can't act in a timely manner, we'll just extend the deadline.
And deadlines to me are like super serious. the whole Manana del Mas thing is we don't miss deadlines and we don't go over budget. And so since 2008, we've never missed a deadline and we've never asked somebody for more money unless they've changed the scope of work or didn't do their own homework.
Toby Cryns (31:42)
All right, let's send it there. This has been a great conversation about QA primarily. Who knew? But here we are. A whole podcast about QA.
Kurt Von Ahnen (31:47)
Who knew?
Well, you know what? Both of us are tired, so maybe it was due to have the conversation.
Toby Cryns (31:55)
I think the reality is this, it underlies a lot of what we do every day, this QA thing. It's there, it's ever present, and you either deal with it head on or you let it attack you, basically.
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:08)
Yeah, it'll fester. This is the difference between you managing your agency and your agency managing you. Like you have to put yourself in a position to manage the beast that you created. wow. That sounds good. I should record that and put it somewhere. Hey folks, like share, follow. If you have a friend that's in the agency space and they haven't heard of the agency action show yet, send them an email with a link. And if you like what you hear to hear, if I'll say it like Matt Maderas.
Toby Cryns (32:19)
Mm-hmm.
I wish that was recorded.
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:35)
If you like what you here, look up the WP minute on YouTube. Toby, how can people reach you?
Toby Cryns (32:42)
at LinkedIn, T-O-B-Y C-R-Y-N-S or on themightymo.com T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com. Kurt, how can we find you?
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:52)
I'm on LinkedIn too. I'm the only Kurt Von Ahnen makes me easy to find and click and ⁓ do the connection thing. Don't do the follow thing. Do the connection thing so we can meet each other. And Manana no mas is the company name and it's all the socials and the .com. We'll see you next time folks.
Toby Cryns (33:05)
All right, we'll see you
all next time.