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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)
Well, here we are again, folks. Welcome to another agency action show. I'm here with Toby Cryns My name is Kurt. Toby, talk to me about meetings and how much you love having meetings.
Toby Cryns (00:10)
I've realized I really don't like having meetings and going to meetings and holding them. But then it got me thinking like, what would a good meeting look like? And there's a whole like there are business consultancies and whole like a whole vertical of business consultancies that are focused almost exclusively on this topic. and I was looking into one that's called EOS and there are others and I'm sure they're all fine in their own ways. But specifically I was looking at it from a
meeting management standpoint and like what is a great meeting? How do you have a meeting where people leave the meeting and go, thank you. I'm glad we had that meeting, even if you know, in the book and the the philosophy of the EOS, that they're like, you want people to say it's a great meeting, but I'm not aiming for great. I'm aiming like great in the context of business meetings, because nobody really wants to
Kurt von Ahnen (00:56)
Tolerable.
Toby Cryns (00:57)
be in them. but
And so then I got into it. And I held actually, so EOS has a its own meeting agenda template and philosophy. And I actually implemented I'm implementing implementing this agenda at the Mighty Mo for any recurring meetings. This is like weekly meetings between me and my operations team, between me and my SEO team, between operations team and project management team. Like we're implementing that, we're rolling it out. We had our first two today. And I gotta say, it's I felt way better about the meeting.
meeting these two meetings today than I have about any previous one. And I think part of the philosophy behind the EOS thing is that every meeting has its same time every week. It's they recommend 90 minutes, but you know you can decide that I guess. But same agenda every meeting and it always ends on time. And this is like a problem, this is part of why I hate meetings is because they're always going over and I'm always like really like again now I'm late for the next meeting.
And so I did two today. And even though we didn't even plan enough time because like I was like, I want to share this meeting template idea with you. the so the meetings were actually like in in context of that way shorter than they would have otherwise been. And we still I felt like got through way more than we otherwise would have historically.
So wanted to ask you, Kurt, what are some reasons meetings suck in your experience?
Kurt von Ahnen (02:20)
I think in general when you say agenda, that that to me is like that's the linchpin. That's that's the thing. I've worked with a ton, you know, I've that corporate experience and I've worked for a lot of car dealerships. And a lot of car dealerships aren't run by people that are leadership experts. They're run by people that are car enthusiasts. And so I know what bad meetings look like. I've also had the privilege of I know this this everyone's gonna think this guy owes me money.
Chris Badgett at Lifter LMS, I go to his meetings. He's like a master at running a good meeting. it's interactive. You know, what are our wins? What are our losses? What what are our key points? What are our focus points? And, you know, what do we pin to talk about later, you know, one-on-one or something like that. I think one of the things that I hate about meetings is when you're in a room with 10 people and it seems like the meeting is for two people and a dude, you know, and you're sitting there like an idiot.
Like, I don't even know why I'm here. Like that for me is like these are not meetings I need to be in.
Toby Cryns (03:21)
Yeah. I think even with the EOS template, it doesn't solve that specific problem. what it does solve, however, is is let's work on the most important stuff. Let's first define how do we define importance. So there's a lot of like pre-work you do just to define from the from a business standpoint what's important. And then when you get to these meetings, you go like, okay, we now have the context for how do we define important, which of these items, and then you rank them by
order of importance to the business. And and and the idea is like you're not spending a lot of time like talking about what you're doing, but like solving the issues. But I could still see a scenario where two people are going back and forth on a specific issue for a long period of time. It could be the whole meeting, frankly, because the way that EOS sets it up is like you have your most important thing first and you don't stop until either that issue's done or the time for the meeting's done. And and so
You could potentially have two people talking the whole meeting. And I I yeah, I don't know how you solve that.
Kurt von Ahnen (04:20)
So,
so in those instances, and and I'll drive this back to my work at Suzuki, right? I was in charge of a group of six people that did all the publications and training for Suzuki. If I was concerned, if my number one priority was an e-learning module being done by Michelle, me and Michelle would book a room and have a meeting, right? Like, like that would be the meeting. And here's my agenda for the meeting with Michelle. I wouldn't bring, you know, Bill, Tristan, and Ron into the meeting with Michelle to talk about.
the e-learning module, right? if there was a something that had to be edited for a service manual, I would meet with Ron one-on-one, but I wouldn't bring in again the whole team, right? For those, and that's why the agenda thing is so important, because if I'm gonna have a group meeting, right, what are the what are the top most important things that affect the group? And then boom, boom, boom. So I think when we have a team meeting, and again I'm gonna drive back to the Lifter LMS example, when we have a team
meeting.
It's really to educate the team as to what all of the stakeholders are actively doing or the process or the progress of things. And so we'll take a look at, like, you know, the the flow chart for sprints or the Gantt chart, whatever you want to call it, right? So development's working on this, sales is working on this, da-da-da-da-da. Customer services knocking it out of the park with these five things. Here's three new testimonials. Sales is good. Here's the the you know, the bundles we sold this week. And then all of the
Details get handled in individual meetings for development with those individual stakeholders.
Toby Cryns (05:50)
I think I'm just guessing here, maybe and from experience, like that I've seen at the Mighty Mo where that model potentially has a shortcoming that would need to be addressed is oftentimes the issues surface in these conversations with the team. That the issues, even though they're really important, wouldn't otherwise surface. I'll give you an example. recently
I've been having these like one-off conversations with people on my team like about a specific project and asking questions about how it's going and I'm getting different answers from different people. it's going great, going great. The next guy's like, no, it's going off the rails. And I'm like,
I think if we had had a team meeting that would have surfaced and like, hey, how's it going? Going great. Sucks. Like it'd be like going off the rails. Like like
Kurt von Ahnen (06:36)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (06:37)
maybe I don't know, without it it yeah. I had to do a lot of legwork to get there, you know. If we
Kurt von Ahnen (06:38)
Well, I see, I I do see your point. If we again using
Lifter as the example, because that's, you know, my my most recent experience, Lifter just came out with the events add-on, right? So you can do live Zoom events or in-person events attached to your website. And during one of those team meetings, Chris unveiled to the rest of us underlings that, you know, the this events add-on was going to come out. Now I work on the customer service team.
And so I'm responsible to like show it to people, you know, teach people how to use it and all that kind of stuff. But it was still in development. And Brian, the developer, was like, yeah, the events thing's kind of cool. It's gonna XYZ. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Like the feedback we've gotten from stakeholders already is that we wanted to do X, Y, and Z in addition to what you just said. And then he goes, that's a good idea, right? But then we took that discussion to Slack for some details between him and I.
And when they released the events package, it did exactly what I wanted it to do when Brian knocked it out of the park. So to your point, there there are things that come up, you know, through the agenda and through sharing things with the team. There are things, there, there's elements that come up, but we don't absorb the meeting with those things. We give the opportunity for fine tuning outside that meeting.
Toby Cryns (07:51)
Yeah, I I also think one thing I noticed today in my two meetings that use the new EOS format. I noticed because I was in charge of leading the meetings and we have a firm schedule firm agenda and we have places to put things that like and this is just me and one other person in both meetings, and I noticed they were either them or I were bringing up things that were tangential to what we were currently dealing with. Like we're talking about an issue and they say
Well, what about this? And it's like I can see how it relates, but it was really nice to be able to say, like, thank you for sharing that. I'm gonna put that at the bottom of the issues list. And if we have time later today, we'll get to it. Otherwise we'll deal with it a different way.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:28)
It's like our show notes.
Toby Cryns (08:30)
Yeah, it is, yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:32)
We'll we'll drive these these crappy notes down to the bottom and if we run out of time we'll talk about it.
Toby Cryns (08:36)
And I think the reality is is that like those tangential things probably weren't as important. Like, first of all, and probably they're, you know, they don't deserve to be injected at the top. And we notice this all the time, like in our company, that like perceived emergencies push everything down, but there's no like we don't currently have like a great triage system to say like slow down. Let's think about where this emergency fits amongst our other priorities. And I think like this meeting agenda handles that.
for meetings. It doesn't handle it for our business necessarily, but like that happens at meetings all the time where someone brings something up and in my view derails the whole conversation of whatever was being brought up or conversed about.
Kurt von Ahnen (09:15)
That's so important from a business perspective. I was doing some study. I I don't want to get in why, right? But but one of the required readings for this study that I was in, and I'm going back like I think it was 2007 or eight, was a little tiny book. It was like the size of a pamphlet, little tiny thing. And it was called Tyranny of the Urgent. I mean, you could sit on the toilet and read it, like you boom, done. Tyranny of the Urgent.
The messaging in that book was so strong. I was like, this answers so many things I've dealt with professionally in my life. Like, you are so busy putting out fires and dealing with everyone else's emergencies that you never get to address what's important. And when you look at people that really build successful, you know, enterprises, these are people that have the ability to go, that that's a distraction. You know, I got to focus on what's important.
I I know that you think that's important, but that's a distraction for the overall goal. And that book, Tyranny of the Urgent, really helped me to kind of refocus that that's where the time blocking idea came from that you and I discussed weeks ago. It's like time blocking is for the important stuff. And then the urgent stuff, I kind of fill in where I can.
Toby Cryns (10:25)
Yeah, and it it takes real discipline to to to slow down and re reposition, you know, to file that urgent thing wherever it belongs. Maybe it's not actually urgent. That takes a lot of like a lot of discipline like from whoever's whether you're project manager, business owner, whatever. There's another thing here that is related that this new meeting agenda did for me and it added
Transparent accountability. First it clear calls out the issues transparently and we discuss them transparently. But then like there's a clear to-do list coming out of these. So okay, we address the issue it converse conversationally. What are the to-dos that came out of that discussion and who's gonna own those to-dos? And the the thought is that like these are weak max to-dos. Like so you're gonna have them done by the next week or the next month, whatever your cadence is for meetings.
Kurt von Ahnen (11:11)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (11:12)
and then you transparently you'd write those down and say by the next meeting you're gonna do these things. and ever and everyone sees it, everyone commits to the next meeting at the top of the meeting. We we don't start with that, but it's in there as like a done or not done. If it's not done, then it becomes an issue to converse about. And so it adds this accountability layer that we were lacking in our at the Mighty Mo, I would say, like from a meeting to meeting. You know, people would promise things and sometimes they get lost, sometimes not, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (11:38)
Well,
I think one of the things that you're hitting on here is like the the difference between like two elements of a meeting. Some people treat meetings like they're an exchange of information, right? Like it's we're just meeting and we're exchanging information. So everybody knows what's going on. And then there's the idea that we're having a meeting because action is tied to the meeting. And what you described is action is tied to the meeting. And that to me is is like the only reason to really have meetings.
we're very proactive at Mañana Nomas about disclosing status of a project or things like that to clients. We're we're very outgoing in that way. So we don't get a lot of like, hey, we should meet and have a, you know, discuss the status of my project. so when I get like Zoom requests from clients, I'm very protective of my time because I'm like, hey, you know, we factored in like 10 or 12 or 15 meetings into your project. Like I factored that in when I bid the job.
And you want to now you want to meet every Tuesday at three. Okay. Why do you want to meet every Tuesday at three? Like you have access to you have access to the client portal. You you know what the milestones are, you know that we're ahead of schedule, you know that we're under budget, we have all of your assets. What do you want to meet every Tuesday at three o'clock for? And then you find out that it's just some kind of weird like emotional security blanket for them. Well, if you've got some weird emotional security blanket and and you're not happy with the tools we've already provided.
We can do this, but it's gonna be at an added cost.
Toby Cryns (13:03)
I wonder too, like, you know, so you counted for twelve meetings. if there was more formality about or more description, 'cause I'm sure they're formal, but like it's like if we communicated why we chose twelve meetings and what's on the agenda for each meeting, like if that would alleviate some of the anxiety
Kurt von Ahnen (13:20)
Angst.
Toby Cryns (13:20)
that yeah, like say we have a place for your concerns, they're here, they're on
January twelfth, you know, like or July 13th, you know. we're thank you for sending that. I've added it to the list, you know. That's what I wonder. well, it's it's one way like I think that this thing I'm doing now is gonna be helpful for our team.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:40)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (13:40)
I also think like having this formal agenda and the way that we're gonna be doing it, like
I can't tell you how many times I've shown up to meetings and just been frustrated because there's no agenda and like it's not even clear to me why why we're there, what we're gonna talk about. Almost every time, frankly, internally. and and I think this agenda, let's just say it'll help me, but also like it forces all the attend or the at least the leader of the meeting to show up prepared.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:06)
I wish you the best of luck with this. The hard part is managing it and keeping it, right? Because just like everything else that we do, you assign it a process. And then if you get weak or lax or you know, on the process and it and it starts to lose its form, it can morph real quickly on you.
So it just it takes
Toby Cryns (14:26)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:26)
discipline to maintain these things. And you're
Toby Cryns (14:28)
It does. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:29)
and the personalities of your people group kind of infect the way that the outcome happens.
Toby Cryns (14:35)
Yeah. And I think one cool thing when reading about, you know, we're considering going some hybrid EOS and hiring an implementer to help us do it. part of the their bigger picture is like, how do you know you have the right people at at the company? In the in even if you have the right people, are they in the right position and role at the company? and so like when I hear
the language you use and I don't know if this right but like infected, there are people at companies that poison the well for everybody. And they can po they can do that quickly. And I think like part of our job as like owners of agencies is to like figure out ways to find those people, ferret them out, and, you know, fire them actually or, you know, get them out as soon as possible. if they exist. And I I think like there's degrees of this too, and this is what makes it hard that like
For example, a new employee takes a while to ramp up. And you don't know if they're let's say they're slow to get to where they need to get. You don't know if they're if they have the talent and ability for another three months.
Kurt von Ahnen (15:35)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (15:36)
I think the well poisoning is like that where you have to like really it's hard, but you gotta figure it out.
Kurt von Ahnen (15:42)
It comes with a certain comfort level, right? it falls into like those whole four stages of competency and things like that, right? But when they first start, they're they're still getting their feet on the ground, they're still getting a foundation. But once they feel like they've got a foundation, then they start growing opinions, right? And those opinions are like, Toby's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing, he's meeting suck, blah, blah. Right. And then all they do is repeat that to two or three people. Next thing you know, you got nine people that aren't happy and you're going,
What happened a year ago? Everything was going great, you know? And it's and then you
Toby Cryns (16:13)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (16:13)
have to do some root cause analysis and then unfortunately liquidate somebody.
Toby Cryns (16:18)
And part of part of this too is like the how you roll it out is important, particularly with the bigger team, probably, but like one bad experience as you roll something out internally can ruin it forever. Like, you know, you let's say the fur you have a meeting and like you did it wrong or something, and there's somebody in there says, This sucked, I'm never doing this again. And yeah, then you run into this thing and you go.
Is it a poisoning of the well or is it just like this human tendency to be like, That sucked, I'm never doing that again, you know?
Kurt von Ahnen (16:48)
All right. go ahead.
Toby Cryns (16:48)
There's a there's a company I
work with, by the way, along with the poisoning. there's a guy who's been there forever. Every time I talk to him, he's like, God, I hate working here. This sucks. Such and such of the comp and I don't even work there. He's telling me like all the things he hates about the company, you know? and he's been there forever. And like I I I don't know for sure, but like I can't I believe that he's probably like hurt the business significantly, just this one guy. And he's still
Kurt von Ahnen (17:15)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (17:15)
there.
Kurt von Ahnen (17:15)
I think back to my corporate experience and how many times did I share cubicle space with people that hated being there every day? You know, and it just drags you down. It affects your productivity, it affects the way you deal with clients, customers, coworkers, everything, the way you deal with vendors. yeah. And it's amazing because there's that little switch in our own brains where we can change our perspective or our perception of something and we can see it from a completely different per.
The facts don't change, but our reaction to those facts changes. And then all of a sudden everything's better. And it's like it's so hard to pinpoint how the human brain can do that, right? But like you wish there was a magic switch you could hit externally for other people to go, man, stop being so negative, you know, see the positive here. Like you got a job, you have a house, you drove a car to work today, like you're
ahead of you're
Toby Cryns (18:03)
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:03)
ahead of the rest of the planet. but people just struggle with trying to see the positive in things.
Toby Cryns (18:09)
Let's transition to a another topic here that's not at all related.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:12)
I'm if
you if you're tired of running a business
Toby Cryns (18:18)
Hypothetically, we and you can listen to last week's episode that for the the conversation that spurred this, but the question from last week was basically like, hey, I'm having a lot of trouble finding work. I'm a freelance, you know, I'm an unemployed freelance developer. That was kind of the question. How do I find work? Let's let's be generous and say that's what it was.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:39)
Yes.
Toby Cryns (18:41)
And then we got to talking after the show. So I'm going to pitch this question. pretend you were on Billion Dollar WordPress Boss, which is a new show we're inventing for the agency action.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:51)
On the Discovery Network.
Toby Cryns (18:53)
Matt, Matt, Matt's gonna produce it. It's gonna be great. and and it's called Billion Dollar WordPress Boss. And the idea is like we set you in the middle of a city somewhere that where you know nobody and you have to use another name and you can't call on your former resources and all that.
and the question is like, how do you get leads? How do you get sales? Where do you start, Kurt?
Kurt von Ahnen (19:15)
I loved that we this is so much fun for me because like just just the thinking of it, right? Like that whole billionaire boss show that I think Discovery did. I think Discovery, with Grant Cardone and a bunch of people, they drop these people off in a city with nothing like a piece of junk used car and a hundred bucks, right? And then you have to build a million-dollar business in 90 days or something. so yeah, let's say you don't even have.
You don't even have access to the internet. You got a laptop in your backpack. You got, let's say you got 200 bucks and you're starting from scratch.
Dude, I it's such a fun challenge because you and I are so used to the agency world and dealing with all the bells and whistles of things. Like if you could start from scratch again, from a clean slate, like boom. Like I immediately, I immediately would find the whatever the economic development office was for that area. in Hutchinson, they call it Startup Hutch. in Albuquerque, it was the South Valley Economic Development Center.
But there's always some kind of like city or county subsidized organization that helps people launch new businesses. And those people always need startup websites. And so that gets your foot in the door. That helps you break the ice. people that that that old show, American Pickers or whatever, where they would go to people's junkyards and and and he would that one star would say, you gotta break the ice, buy something small.
And then you can work on getting better deals on bigger things, right? It's like that, I think, in the web space. I'm gonna get in with one of these organizations. I'm gonna get a couple of startup packages going. I'm gonna launch them quickly at super affordable rates. I'm gonna break the ice. And then I'm gonna start asking, who do you know that I should know so I can get better jobs?
Toby Cryns (20:59)
Yeah. I think one thing that you brought up that's kind of universal is like you gotta build relationships first of all. And I think one thing to keep in mind is just show up to the thing, choose the room you wanna be in, whether it's BNI or, you know, a local meetup or whatever. could be the library you show up to every day, but like go somewhere where there are people with money to spend or or that have relationships. It could be the gym, frankly. my dad once told me like he goes, You should just join the
Priciest gym in Minneapolis and show up every day. That'd be your your your whole marketing plan. Like I'm like, there's a lot of logic to that. and so part of it, just show up regularly. You got to keep showing up. People, you know, there's this human thing where you show up, people trust you. It doesn't matter if you're trustworthy or not. Like, you've been here 10 times in a row. I trust you. Like, it's just a very human thing. get clear. So you're there, you're talking to people. I think like
Get clear about what you do in specific so they can help you. You need to give them something to bite onto that they can maybe hire you or maybe introduce you. And and also the thing to be specific about might be, hey, I'm a freelancer who does WordPress work and I need help finding people who want to hire me. Like that could be the conversation. You don't have to like sugarcoat it all the time.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:15)
You you're you're scratching the surface of one that that everyone says I'm crazy. Everyone says I'm wrong. like for instance, I got the Hutchinson, Kansas. I immediately looked up, who else thinks they're an agency in town? And you and you would think Hutchinson's small, there's no agencies. Well, do a Google search. All of a sudden there's agencies. I met these people. In in one case, I went to their office and said, Hey, I just want to introduce myself. You and I are in the same space. because what you find out is like you just said, get clear.
on what you offer, get clear on what you do. I just got a referral two weeks ago from my competition in town because they messaged me on Facebook and said, hey Kurt, I got this lady that wants this e-commerce website. It's more complicated than what we like to work on. Can we just refer her to you? Yeah, I'll take it.
Toby Cryns (23:00)
Yeah. Also like as you're looking at places, like I would look at where as I go to places. So you have to kind of go to understand it and maybe you can figure out some clues from people, but you want to go where the energy is. Like there
Kurt von Ahnen (23:12)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (23:12)
are places that are boring and lame and nobody ever shares business. But if you go to a place that you know it almost right away. Like you go in there, you start talking to people and stuff is happening. And like somehow you gotta figure out where those places
are.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:25)
The energy's good. I joined it's so this sounds very self-serving. And and and so I'm thinking about
Toby Cryns (23:32)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:35)
how I would do it. Like Kansas has, you know, counties and cities like everywhere else, but each of these cities and counties has programs, leadership programs or business development programs, or things like that. And I found that.
A you could sign up and be a free student, right? Because they're subsidized. So you could take the course and become a free student. What what are you going to do? Well, you're going to be in a room with eleven other people that are launching a business and you know how to make websites for startups. Like, so that's one right there. And you're going to get to know those people because you're going to be in class with them, you know, once a week for 12 weeks or something silly, right? So so there's that. there's a leadership cohort in the county that I'm in. And so bunch of people.
Get together and meet. And they're from all over the place. The different levels of executive leadership to, you know, a relator is there. I just I I think about it's such a cool idea, right? Go to a city, you don't know anybody, you can't use your real name, you can't use your contact list, you got 200 bucks. What do you do? Right? Well, you go to where the internet is, go to the coffee shop, go to the library, go to those places, connect to the web and s and start doing stuff.
Get active on social, make sure that you, you know, use some like local SEO talent, you know, to kind of drive things to what you're working on and that you're new in town and that you're feverishly, actively looking for work. I'm not saying beg for work. I'm just saying make sure people know you're available.
Toby Cryns (24:59)
Yeah, and I think anytime you go somewhere these days, you usually know who else is gonna be there. Like there's usually an attendee list, like if you do meetup.com or something like that. You
Kurt von Ahnen (25:06)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (25:07)
can usually get a good sense of who's gonna be there. Do your research on them, you know, like figure out who they are on LinkedIn. And you know, it's not easy, it takes some time, but like, and I'm not saying get creepy, but like come prepared to talk with topics that might be of interest to them. Like if you're going to an event with a lot of startup people.
Maybe look up some recent startup e articles on some startup website that you know, some news site. similarly, you're at the meeting and if somebody's looking to be connected in a similar way, connect them with someone else at the meeting. This costs nothing. I just talked to him. Hey, you should meet each other. Like be a good host, even though you're a guest there. You know, you can you
Kurt von Ahnen (25:46)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (25:47)
can you can make a lot of friends just by helping people.
Kurt von Ahnen (25:51)
I think it's fun to make a customer by being a customer. Like go in and and and you know, you got those $200 to spend, right? So you go in and you buy the coffee. I'm in the bicycling. You know, maybe I'm gonna go and buy a bicycle tube at the bike shop. But that's gonna create A, I'm doing business with them. I'm breaking that ice.
I'm going to create a relationship. I'm going have a conversation. I'm not just going to buy the tube, right? I'm going to be like, hey, it's a really nice store. How long has it been here? You know, how many bikes do you guys sell every month? this is so cool. I didn't even know that this was here, right? You're having this conversation. That conversation is going to build equity in your relationship. And so they might not need a new website, but you know what? They do business with 25 other people in town, and somebody's going to want something done. And hopefully you're the name at the tip of their tongue.
Toby Cryns (26:38)
Yeah. I also think like coworking spaces, like throw that that on the list of places you might go. specifically talk to the front desk people at co-working spaces. They know everybody there. They they're connectors usually. maybe ask them for a job. Like you know, tell them what's up. Tell you need work. And a lot y I think if you find the right place and right people, like people want to help, I think, but you gotta ask and you gotta be specific.
Kurt von Ahnen (27:04)
You you gotta get involved, right? So I think that that is, and you know, and that's something that AI can't do for you. AI can't replace you. people want the relationship, they want that, you know, human in the loop experience. And so, you know, I I really drive back and I look at like where did the success of Manana Nomas really come from? It didn't come from Facebook ads, it didn't come from fancy tricks and stuff, it came from networking, shaking hands, going to meetings, getting on podcasts.
you know, again, I've networked with a lot of people that would say that, you know, that's my competition, but I usually get work from the relationships that should be with my competition because we have niches, we we have niches that are different than each other. So we're able to share and refer work back and forth.
Toby Cryns (27:49)
Yeah, and I I my experience has been like that y it's almost like less of a you don't it's not complex. Like getting work is about human relationships and we're all have a certain level of talent and ability at human relationships. And I think like the more you lean into that, and this is where last week we got we were yelling about marketing versus sales, like
Mean the one thing we're hitting on a hundred percent here is we are in a sales mentality when with all this. We're saying how do we sell? We're not saying how do we get our brand out there or how do we market? Like the sales mentality, I think is everything. And I it's probably where businesses fail and succeed, just generally speaking. Like if you take the organization as a whole, how big of a sales mentality do they have? You know, it's probably it'd be an interesting study like to see, like, let's take
Every twenty person organization in the country and rate them on a sales how big a sales personality do they have? And I'm not talking about what they do. Like they could they could be a fix it shop for your local automobile, you know, like but how big of are they do they because salespeople have an urgency about them that is br it's a magnet.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:00)
Yeah. I think you hit something very important and I don't want to glaze over it. Sales is like that's the first thing. A lot of people say, I'm gonna build a website and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna market that and I'm gonna do the other thing. And and we get all excited about all these distractions, but distractions don't put a dime in your bank account. To me, like again, if I'm dropped off in a city with $200 in my pocket and a laptop, right? My number one goal is.
How many people can I meet? How quickly can I meet them? How many conversations can I have? And which of those conversations is going to lead to conversion? Each of those conversations, I'm going to be identifying a need and supplying a solution. And if someone says, hey, that sounds like something I need, or hey, you need to talk to my nephew, or you need to whatever, I'm going to follow that up. Like the number one thing is sales and revenue. See, I'm getting excited. I can hear it in my own voice. So the number one thing is revenue. As soon as I get that little bit of revenue, Toby, well, well, now I can go, okay, I've
Got revenue. Now I can think about how I would market this and scale it and increase it and continue my sales.
Toby Cryns (30:02)
Yeah, maybe. I I don't even go there. I just go, let's go get more
sales.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:05)
I just keep
selling.
Toby Cryns (30:07)
The one thing you brought up that's really a as we're as I'm thinking back through this conversation today about the billion dollar WordPress billionaire, whatever, we haven't talked about marketing at all. Like that it what didn't even occur to us as a thing to do, which instead we said
Kurt von Ahnen (30:23)
No. Hit the ground running, baby.
Toby Cryns (30:26)
we didn't mention websites, we didn't mention like colors or logo and because
When I think about this, you've dropped somewhere you need work. And this is this person who maybe it's you listening. You're like, I can't find work. this is how I approach. I go, I find I would find the people, and I hear someone say, Hey, I really need a WordPress WooCommerce site. Do you do that? I would, you know, because I have that spill skill set, I've said, yes, I do. Do you have a website? Yes I do, but let me email it to you later.
And now that I have their info, I have their contact info, I have what they need, I run home, I build a WooCommerce marketing site, I say, here's my website. and it's exactly what they need. It looks professional. You know, like I I wouldn't overthink the marketing piece until I have someone to sell to.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:15)
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm a hundred percent I don't know why I'm so focused on revenue lately because things have gone pretty decent. But my last few lives and shows have really been based on like revenue. Like we've got to get back to being focused on sales and revenue and all of this, all of this other stuff. Like I'm hearing I'm seeing a ton from people in our space, Toby, with I'm gonna vibe code this and I'm making these tools and these plugins and this and I'm experimenting with this page builder and I'm doing all and it's like.
Okay, that's great that you want to be at the threshold of advancement in our space. Like that's great. If you want to be at the top of everything, that's wonderful. But I don't think the message today is driven to those people. I think the message today is like, don't waste time getting distracted by all these superfluous activities. WordPress by itself, out of the box with like five or six key plugins, you can run an entirely profitable agency off of that and just get going. Just create revenue.
Build projects and get going. And you can always get to this other stuff when time comes.
Toby Cryns (32:18)
Thank you. That's a great way to segue to the ending of our show here. Kurt, how can people get in touch with you?
Kurt von Ahnen (32:24)
Well, you can reach me at LinkedIn. I'm the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn. I encourage you to connect. for business, our we are Manana no mas and manana no mas is the call sign for all of our socials and our dot com. Toby, you?
Toby Cryns (32:37)
I am on LinkedIn, Toby, and the last name is C R Y N S. You can find me at themightymo.com. That's T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com, where we do WordPress stuff and SEO stuff. So thanks everyone for joining us today. always like to have you please like send us emails, comments on any wherever you're watching or listening, send us a comment if you have a question or an idea for a new show. look forward to seeing you next week.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:03)
Awesome. This was a fun one.