Toby: Hi, this is Toby Kreins and Kurt Nan in the yet to be named podcast here.
it's four agencies by agencies, and we're gonna talk through some of the experiences
and stories that we've, gone through.
Kurt, how long have you been at it?
Kurt: I got my WordPress username in 2004.
Toby: That's awesome.
so
Kurt: yeah, then, and looking at your background, it seems
fairly similar, you know?
Mm-hmm.
We, we both come from that same era.
And, I was in the automotive business, built websites as a hobbyist.
When you work in automotive, you work 13, 14 hour days.
Your head is still wired when you get off of a shift.
And I kind of used this internet thing as like a distraction, like maybe to go to
sleep at night or something like a hobby.
And, I started playing with HTML stuff and Macromedia, before it was Adobe.
Oh yeah.
And was playing with all that stuff.
2000, 2000, you know, three, four.
Then I found WordPress.
And by 2007 I was making websites for other people.
By 2008, ano Nomas was born.
And, I went, I went to work corporately for a while as, as a learning and,
and learning and management developer.
But yeah, I'm right back at it, back at the agency game since 2020.
That's awesome, man.
Did you do flash back in the day?
Oh dude, flash was the bomb gig Getty, man.
I know, man.
The website would open up and things would move around and music would play
and, and you know, people that worked in a cubicle used to hate flash websites
'cause you'd play 'em automatically.
And I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but, apparent.
Apparently, apparently people that run the internet thought that that had to go away.
Toby: Yeah, yeah.
I know, man.
I used to run the Flash user group and it was the greatest
software ever invented and.
And here we are, WordPress,
Kurt: and here we're the second
Toby: greatest software ever invented using
Kurt: the greatest software ever
Toby: invented.
so we're gonna talk in this podcast about our stories with agencies.
you've been at Manana doing manana, Noma for a long, long time.
I've been doing Mighty Mo for a long time.
I'm just gonna throw out a question here to kick things
off and we'll see where it goes.
this is like about, client retention, but not in the usual way.
'cause I've been wondering like.
how do you keep clients engaged for the next project, even when
you're not doing much for 'em?
Or even maybe you're doing maintenance, but maintenance is so like, you
know, here's a PDF autogenerated.
Maybe, maybe I did a little work, and, you know, so how do you line up
that next contract with the client?
Kurt: You're gonna hate me because I'm gonna take it in a
completely opposite direction.
Go for it when, and so this was something I started doing as M Nomas as a startup,
working outta Albuquerque, New Mexico in the Economic Development Center's offices.
I had a ton of unengaged unplugged in clients.
I just had just 'cause every time a new business started in
Albuquerque, they would send 'em to me to get a website made.
And these businesses either made it or they didn't.
And so I ended up with like all this half done or recently done, but never executed.
You know, project work, and I made up my mind.
I said, you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna make a list of all my clients.
I'm gonna take the bottom third for revenue and activity.
And I'm just gonna fire them.
And I literally just sent out really nice emails that said, Hey, Manano,
NOMAS is in an expansion mode.
We're bringing on new clients.
unfortunately won't be able to service your accounting no longer.
Here's a list of five people locally that we would recommend
that you could go to, to maybe get your work performed or maintained.
And people said, I was crazy.
People said I was stupid.
Pe my wife had a heart attack with that idea.
She was like, oh my God, you're gonna, th you know, a third of the
business, you're just gonna throw away.
That year my business doubled, like the revenue doubled and the
margins went through the roof.
I mean, my margins weren't great back then.
But at the time I thought, oh my God, I can't believe I'm making this kind
of money, doing this kind of work.
And so I did it every year.
Every year I fired 30% of my clients and every year I experienced
some kind of growth 'cause I brought on better quality clients.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Now, your wife was said 30%, but it, it sounds like it was 30% of clients very
different from 30% of the business, like
Kurt: Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And I, I'd say as, as we continued to grow.
The scope of our projects obviously continued to grow, right?
So now we do a lot of membership, e-commerce, e-learning centered websites.
And so now we have people that are kind of in it for the long haul.
but what that means is that the clients that came with us for like a brochure
website, you know, we might do the hosting and the maintenance for them, you know,
for their $79 a month or whatever that is.
And then if we don't do any other work for them.
Then that's kind of it outta sight, outta mind.
We just, you know, we have our team manage the, the hosting account and that's it.
do I still fire clients like that?
Not as aggressively as I used to.
Mm-hmm.
But it got me where I'm at.
Toby: Yeah.
How many people are in your team?
Kurt: We use people all over the globe.
And so, I like to say we're about 10 people strong.
you know, and then of course you read about, you know, web dev studios
and 10 Up and, and these really big agencies, and you're, you're
like, oh, wouldn't that be awesome?
And then there's another part of me that says I'm 57 years old,
I don't want those headaches.
Toby: Right, right.
Kurt: Yeah.
The part that I struggle with.
See, I'm gonna go off on another tangent.
Toby, this isn't good.
You shouldn't be asking me questions that I can just, you know, my a,
DD kicks in, but I want to use.
I wanna use freelancers in the states.
I want to use people where English is their first language.
I want to use people that I know I could add value to as a fellow American, right?
Like, like, like I want to be that patriot.
but I can't tell you how many times I've gone to post status or I've gone
within my own circles and I've said, Hey, I've got this, small project.
I need some customization done for this WooCommerce store, or I need, this
custom page laid out with custom CSS and.
It's stuff that, could I figure it out?
I probably could, but it'd be smarter for me to have someone else do it.
And I get these things back, like, oh, well one page custom CSS,
you're, you're looking about $3,200.
And I, and I go, and then I got a guy in Vietnam that's like, sure thing, Mr.
Ana, and have that done for you.
Tomorrow it'll be $80.
Toby: Right.
Kurt: And it's like, oh, please help me make this make sense.
Toby: Yeah.
Kurt: You know, and that's like, in some cases I'm not even charging
$3,200 for the whole project, right.
Let alone that one page.
Toby: Yeah.
I
Kurt: actually think like,
Toby: you know, with all the tariff talk recently, like if I were president, I
would tariff overseas labor immediately.
That would be my first tariff order.
'cause like, 'cause you that would immediately bring all the work back.
Like right now, like so much work's going abroad.
You know, and, I would like you, like I would love to hire locally.
I would like to hire everybody in Minneapolis, and I know some people,
even affordable people, but they're nowhere near as affordable as.
Other countries
Kurt: and, and I do crazy things.
I, I'm sure in a, in a business only, you know, spreadsheets discussion.
There, there's organizations called 20 clubs in the automotive and motorcycle
space where, you know, groups of I.
Business owners get together and beat each other up about their spreadsheets and
their margins and their numbers and stuff.
And so if we did the same thing in the WordPress world, could you
imagine getting together with 10 other agency owners and being like,
how many websites did you make?
How many clients is that spread over?
how many pages was each website?
And you really drove down through like key performance indicators of
each project and then said, what did, what was, so what's your labor rate?
Right?
So what, what's your, what is your agency rate?
And then there's a really cool term in the service world for automotive and power
sports called the effective labor rate.
Effective labor rate is how much money did you really collect per hour, right?
Mm-hmm.
So you, maybe you bill the job out at $10,000 and you thought it was gonna
take 200 hours to do it, but it really ended taking 600 hours to do it.
Well, you take the 10 grand divide by 600, that's your effective labor rate.
Mm-hmm.
And so if we really had like 20 club organizations of WordPress agencies and
really drove our, our KPIs in that way, I think it would be really, really shocking
to see what people are working for.
Toby: Yeah, that's true.
I also think like the, the other side of the market is without
any like, governmental controls.
Like if we, if ev, if all of us had, full-time or just US workers,
our prices would have to go up.
And so our, would our customers even wanna hire us anymore if
we were like priced up there?
Whatever there is, you know,
Kurt: well, but see, that's, that's that whole other conversation, right?
And that's why is it that.
President Obama came out with the Affordable Care Act, and then they
hired his wife's college roommate to make the website for that
project and paid her $93 million.
Like in what planet is a medical directory website worth $93 million?
na: Yeah.
Kurt: You know, I can't tell you how many times I've stumbled into
a, a package or a deal, or a, a contract, and it's been a referral.
And it just comes to me like, oh yeah, this is, we've already
pre-bid this at $52,000.
And I'm thinking to myself, oh, crud, you know, I probably
would've bid that at 26 grand.
now in the end for some reason it always ends up working out that that
was probably the right dollar amount.
but I've got other projects I've done for 8,000, 5,000, 4,000 and you know what,
somehow Toby, it always seems to work out.
Toby: Yeah.
Well I think that's like, like, That's how, how you last 18 years in the
business or you know, in your, you know, like you've been around what, 15 years?
Something like that.
eight 18.
I dunno, but whatever.
it's like, like yeah, you have to figure it out.
You know, like as we talk about like content for people who are listening
who might be agency owners or freelancers looking to like, scale up.
That's the game.
Like did you make it or did you not make it to next year?
Kurt: I always.
It sounds so trite.
May, maybe it's the believer in me.
Maybe it's too much time at church, but I have successfully navigated
every obstacle and temptation that's come my way in life so far.
You know?
And then that's just the way it is with business too.
It, it's, there's so many times where I'm like, ah, man, I should just go get a job.
And then I gotta tell you over like the last three years, Toby, I have
become emotionally unemployable.
Yeah, there's, I live in Hutchinson, Kansas, and there is a job in Hutchinson,
Kansas right now that multiple people have tagged me on Facebook for,
like, you need to apply for this.
You would be amazing at this job.
You would, this city would be crazy to not hire you for this job.
And then I think about it, I go, I should probably, I should probably,
I should probably apply for that job.
And then I think about it and I go.
Answer to a board of directors,
na: right?
Kurt: Yep.
Hours in the office, events after hours away from family, right?
Travel to other cities for events, representing something
that's not my own, right?
And, and then I'm just like, man, forget it.
Like I'm not signing up for that.
I'll volunteer and I'll help that.
Whoever takes that job, whoever gets that job, I will volunteer and I will
help them with projects and events.
But I'm not gonna take that job.
Toby: It's a weird thing.
there's, I, I was collaborating.
I was brought on with a, a startup and, so I've, I've owned my small business
forever, you know, like for 18 years now.
But let's say year 13, they came in and they needed CTO basically.
and they ended up having like.
Legitimate hockey.
It was just like this weird scenario, hockey stick growth where like,
they ended up selling for 200 something million like a year after
I left the company or something.
but what I learned, like the reason I left is 'cause I was no longer a fit.
Like I was fine when it was me, three owners, one or two other teammates.
But as soon as we started growing, I just got so tired and
anxious, like probably tired.
'cause of the anxiety of like.
This, infrastructure that we, that I helped build.
Like, but just like, like, ah, I don't even like this work.
Yeah.
You know?
Wow.
I was really good at building something I hate.
Right.
And it's funny when, when, I ended up getting fired from that job.
'cause I, I was kind of like, a cantankerous little jerk at one point.
And, I was on the, the phone on a Google meet with the, the owner and
the another owner, the, the main owner and the, you know, secondary owner and.
And they're like, well, how do you wanna handle this?
And I was like, I told 'em like, just do me the dignity of firing
me using the process that I built.
It's like, okay, at least fire me with my own
Kurt: tools.
Right?
So they did.
It was great.
C corporately speaking, one of, so I love power sports.
I, I've been in the motorcycle industry forever.
I raced motorcycles for 20 years.
I just love bikes and I ended up getting the job of a lifetime and I got hired
away from my agency in Albuquerque by Ducati North America, and they put me in
charge of their whole training program.
And, and before I knew it, I was traveling the world and doing things
that I never thought I'd get to do.
Like it was just an amazing opportunity.
But what people don't recognize is even though almost everybody
recognizes the name Ducati.
That office was run with like 30 people.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: And so I was in charge of the entire training division.
Yeah.
Someone else was in charge of the entire customer service division.
Someone else was in charge of, you know, accessories.
And, it was a really cool place, to work because the director
level management was kind of like.
Well, it's your division.
You have a corporate credit card.
If you need to go buy something to keep your division running,
you know, you go do that.
Like there was, there was certain things that you could just do.
I left that job and I went to Suzuki.
Uhhuh.
Suzuki is, you know, when I started there, I think they had like a
couple hundred people in the office.
Uhhuh, you know, they had an accounting division, they had a marketing cluster.
They had my, I was in charge of training and I had five people
that worked underneath me.
Toby, I'm gonna tell you the amount of meetings that they scheduled,
and I watched my vice president just walk back and forth through
the cubicles to a meeting room.
Then he'd come back out, then he'd go back in, then he'd come back out and I
asked him one day we went to lunch and I said, Steve, at what point do you actually
get to take action or do any of the work that you discuss in these meetings?
Like, I never see you get to do it Uhhuh, how do you stay awake all day?
You know?
But it, it was what you described was it became so ineffectual, it became, just
this giant boat anchor of process rather than anything that you kind of enjoyed.
Toby: Yeah.
I think of like dream jobs.
'cause you mentioned that, that's an interesting thing.
I have two jobs that stand out as dream jobs.
One was, sports writer for the Northwest Herald.
loved it.
Did it for six months and then I moved and that was the end of my career.
the other one was front desk manager at the University of
Minnesota's, full-time MBA program.
Did that for a couple years.
Loved it.
I was the lowest level employee, but it was one of the
greatest times of my life and
Kurt: my dream job, the job I enjoyed the most.
And people will say I'm crazy, was when I was young, I worked the outbound at
one of the UPS hubs, loading trucks.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: And it was real life Tetris to me, and I really got good at it.
I held the load record in, in the Willow Grove hub for years, as far as I know.
Toby: Congratulations.
Kurt: Yeah, it was amazing.
I just, I was like, and, and the, you know, they always try and tricky and throw
like a box in that has the wrong zip code on it, you know, ring it back off the back
door, you know, and they're like, P we can never get 'em, you know, it's like.
It's like, ah, I'm good at this job.
And it's like when you're really good at something and it's physical and it's
almost like a mental break to do it.
It was like, it was just like this awesome job.
And I trained other people.
I volunteered on the training staff.
That's probably my first experience with corporate training.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: I just love that job.
na: Yeah.
Kurt: And now I'm old, right?
Mm-hmm.
I'm 57 and I look at.
Younger people and I'll say things like, oh, you should get
a job loading trucks at UPS.
Yeah.
And they look at me like, I've got six heads.
Yeah.
There's, who would do that?
Toby: A real misunderstanding, like, I don't think I would've
called it my dream job when I was, maybe I would have, I don't know.
But, it's funny how many people our age, and I think part of it is like,
like we look back and at these simpler times as like the better jobs in a way.
but part of it I was thinking.
Back when I was doing those jobs, I had no external forces on my time.
Yeah.
Like it was just like, how am I gonna use my time today?
And I devoted all my energies to like running the full-time MBA front desk.
I went to all the events and knew everybody and I stayed late and
showed up early, did weekends.
And as you get older, like people are like, what's your work life balance?
But I think like.
What that question fails to capture is you don't need a work life balance
when you're, when you have no external pressures and you're young and you're
physically fit, and you know like, yeah,
Kurt: yeah.
Just go, go, go.
I'm curious, what was your first venture into like, entrepreneurism?
What was your, the very first inkling, not your first job or your first
company, but what was the first time that you thought I could leverage the
efforts of others for my personal gain?
Toby: Okay.
so I was not, I was afraid to be entrepreneurial.
but my dad delivered little Debbie's, that was his job.
he had a little Debbie truck, and the way little Debbie works is
you buy a route and little Debbie does not make a lot of money.
I think his salary the one, he was like $25,000, you know?
So like, and we had a family of nine, you know.
So like, but he had the truck and with little Debbie.
Now this is different for hostess and bread companies and a lot of
other companies where the company will buy back your stale product.
Their, their idea is like, push more product, push more.
With little Debbie, you're responsible.
You buy what you think you can sell and then you keep the rest.
so we had a garage full of little Debbie's.
I used to bring them to school in high school and sell them like for.
I don't know, a quarter a box or 50 cents a box.
And my dad's like, whatever.
They're just gonna get eaten by raccoons in our garage.
So like, so I'd say that was it.
Selling little Debbie's for a quarter, a pop or a box or whatever.
I remember, there's one guy who loved honey buns and every now and then I would
get like a box of the gas station honey buns, which are larger than like you'd
get in the regular box of 10 or whatever.
So how about you?
What was your, like those big honey buns?
Kurt: Yeah.
Mine was, I lived in Philadelphia, in the suburbs, and I had a paper route,
and it was the seventh grade and it was the old school bicycle canvas, sack,
bicycle, you know, newspaper route.
And one day a kid didn't show up to do his route.
And the It's gonna sound mean, but, but the adult in charge of the
newspaper center, he was not all there.
He, he was a special needs person for sure.
na: Mm.
Kurt: And he was like, you know, hey, the kid didn't show up to do his route.
And I said, just gimme the route and I'll take it.
And he was like, oh, but you already have a route.
I said, don't worry about it.
Just gimme the route.
I'll take care of it.
And so, I delivered all those papers, right?
And so the next day, same thing.
Same thing.
So a week goes by, I got two routes.
Another kid quits.
I pick up a third route, I pick up a fourth route, I pick up a fifth route.
This poor dude is like, I have no idea how the seventh graders delivering,
delivering these papers, but they're all getting delivered, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And so, what he didn't realize was I had hired a bunch of fifth and
sixth graders to go and deliver the papers, and all I did was, go around
and knock on the door and collect.
Right.
So gimme the money, gimme the money, gimme the money.
And then I would pay the kids out, right?
Mm-hmm.
And then I'd go buy myself a couple Mountain Dews at
the beverage store, Uhhuh.
And then I just gave what, whatever was left to this dude, the newspaper
general manager, guy Uhhuh.
And a couple of times I was short, you know?
And he said, Hey, you're short.
And I said, well, that's.
What happens when you hire kids?
What'd you expect?
Go find some more kids.
What'd you expect?
You know, all I know is I got my Mountain Dew, bro.
And it was such a, such a surreal experience.
'cause when you find, 'cause he goes, how are you delivering all these papers?
And I was like, I got all these kids delivering papers for me.
He was like, you can't do that.
But then I was like.
you know what?
I think I was meant to be a businessman.
na: Yeah.
Toby: Yeah.
That was what I, I had when I got fired from that job that I told
you about, they go, I think you're just a, a business owner, Toby.
Yeah.
I was like, yeah, that seems about right.
Yeah.
You're, you're too independent and free thinking for the rest of us.
Right, right.
so, if we can just turn that last thought around, like the idea of like, Some
employees are gonna be better than others.
Now this person was like, he's doing the job.
I'm gonna ask no questions.
how do you like, tell me about an experience where you had an employee,
maybe it was a part-time contractor, maybe it was a job and you realized they
weren't do getting it done, and then you had to like figure out a way to get it
done and maybe you found another person.
And you know,
Kurt: that is always, always difficult.
So during COID, someone that I had added to my, my staff, if
you wanna call it that, you know, and we're all contractors, right?
We're all kind of moving and grooving.
but she had really embraced this idea of multiple paychecks.
Like, so she had a full-time gig working for another company and was remote.
And then she would say, oh yeah, I can do that for you, Kurt.
That's not a problem.
And then I found out she had another company she was full-time remote for,
and then she had a third company.
She was picking up contracts for.
Now, kudos to her because she had figured out how to live in
California and make $400,000 a year.
The problem was I was getting really sub quality work and Ana Nomas
isn't known for sub quality work.
my whole agency is built on the idea of.
on budget and ahead of deadline, but you still have to meet
a quality standpoint, right?
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: So, you know, that's that always thing.
Do you want it good?
Do you want it fast or do you want it cheap?
Right?
But it's at, at no point am I telling people I'm gonna give you
crap, but get it done on time.
Mm-hmm.
And I was getting some bad stuff and it just had to be a real conversation.
Yeah.
You know?
And that's.
I have, a John Maxwell certification in leadership and speaking, and I've
read his whole stinking library and as well as a couple of other authors.
And I think if you're gonna be in business, you have to come up
with some word salads, even if it comes from other authors on how to
approach these difficult topics.
You know, and I found that being direct is the best way.
You know, like, Hey, I was looking, hey, I was looking at what you sent over.
just, just a couple of things.
I mean, it's not, it's not meeting our quality standard.
So I don't know if you didn't spend enough time on it or if you have other
contracts that you are distracted by.
But, if you're not able to meet our quality standard,
I'm gonna have to move on.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: And that was it.
And she's a great lady.
I really like her.
She's a fun person.
I just, you know, I couldn't keep up with her thirst for earning.
Toby: like, it's weird because I had a, an employee that was doing
that too, something like that.
I'm pretty sure I was a second or third job.
And it's a strategy, it's a, it's a whole strategy where like, you, like
basically say, I'm gonna deliver crap.
And I'll get fired when I get fired as it happens.
I knew a guy when I was 19.
He was 17.
He was like a high school friend.
and he lied and got a job at a medical laboratory doing
something that required a PhD.
And so he was making huge dollars.
He's not like, he's just graduated high school and, I mean, I
don't know, thousands a week, whereas like, like I was making.
$8 an hour at, you know what, whatever.
And I had a good paying job.
and, but I remember it took them weeks before they figured it out.
And meanwhile he's just like throwing money around like, look how rich I am.
You know?
Or maybe it had to be month, like at least two weeks 'cause he got at least one
paycheck and bought like a fancy camera.
Like, then he got fired.
Ah.
I think like it's easy to pull one over on people 'cause we have to trust 'em.
You know,
Kurt: you, well you wanna think that the good's always gonna win or you want to,
you know, we wanna believe these stories.
But the truth of the matter is, having climbed the
corporate ladder like I had, I.
I witnessed a lot of people in control or in charge of a lot of
things that they had no business to be in control or in charge of.
to the point where, you know, we, if you're working for a motorcycle
company or an automotive company or, or some, and, and you're like,
you know, hey, as far as I knew.
That vehicle didn't pass emissions, but we're still
selling it in the United States.
na: Uhhuh,
Kurt: that's, how does that happen?
Right?
Or, hey, what, what, where did that car go?
Remember that car that got dropped off by the manufacturer and we were supposed
to look at, where did that car go?
Uhhuh.
It's just gone.
You know, it's like, I can't tell you how many things have just disappeared,
you know, under someone else's watch, and, and you're sitting there like, how?
How does this continue to happen?
How is this permitted?
but then we all sit back now in, in our political landscape and we see Doge at
work and finding, you know, billions and trillions of dollars misspent, and it's
like, well, those are people that got to the top of the food chain and just made
super poor decisions and got away with it.
Toby: My buddy was at a, 3M huge corporation, one of the world's
five biggest maybe at a meeting.
He's telling me he's in marketing.
He has.
Eight people on a call and not a single one was accepting any
responsibility for the project that they were all collaborating on.
He's like, so like, you know, it'd be like, so who's gonna do this?
And just silence.
Next.
Just move on.
Next topic.
Who's gonna do this?
Nothing.
na: Yeah.
Who's
Toby: in charge?
Kurt: Nobody.
I think, like, I was gonna bring this up and, and you kinda led to this, what.
Was there a moment where you realized it, the money, that
the dollar amount didn't matter?
Like, like, like we, we say it matters, but did you hit a, like, were you
ever on a call or something where you were like, holy crud, that's a lot of
money, and then you're like, all of a sudden you were like, oh, I guess
money doesn't really have a value.
It's all perception.
Toby: Sure.
I, I did a project once, And the, the person doing the, the paying, like
make, you know, not the payer, but it was an agency in town, a bigger agency
in town, and they hired me and they said, Toby, we'll pay you any amount
you want, like, per hour, you know?
Yeah.
And you can work as many hours as you want.
I was like, what?
Like, they're like, it doesn't bother, because they were just funneling
it through to the next person.
Yeah.
Like they were paying all the bills.
They were just scraping some off the top and.
Kurt: It blew my mind.
Yeah.
I
Toby: mean, yeah.
Kurt: And, and, and inside you were all being legit, like, well,
our agency rate is $123 an hour.
Totally.
That should take about 10 hours.
Toby: Yeah.
Kurt: yeah.
No, I was on, I used to have a, a business doing stuff in power sports and I wanted
to go to an event, but I needed to be fronted about $30,000 in merchandise to
go represent this company at this event.
And it was the Patronus Oil Company.
So.
I asked my people and my people said, oh, we're gonna be on a
call with Patronas next week.
Just jump on the call and ask them.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
And I was like, that's weird.
Like I'm just Kurt.
I'm just Kurt and I get invited to this call.
And my learning experience in this call changed the entire way
that I did business from then on.
Like there's a reason why I wrote a course on how to sell work in the service
industry because money doesn't matter.
I'm on the call.
Carl Fogarty, who's a world famous road racer, ran the team.
he, they said, oh, Carl's got a question.
And he says, you know, and he's British, so he is, got an accent.
I won't ruin the show by doing it.
And says, Hey, I just need another $50 million for more research and development.
Right.
And they went, no problem, Carl.
Just fill out the form, fax it on over.
We assume it's gonna be the same account.
Right?
And he was like, righto.
And I was like, boom.
And they said, okay, well it's been a great call.
And then my guy Neil says, oh no, no, there's one more person on the call.
I.
I'm asking for 30 grand.
I'm scared to death, right?
I'm scared to death to ask for $30,000, and someone just
got $50 million on the call.
And so I was like, I want to go to Laguna Seca.
I wanted to represent the company, but I'm gonna need about $30,000 in, in
merchandise to put on display there.
and they almost laughed at me.
They were like.
Dude, just send over, just send over a tick list of what you need.
We'll take care of the shipping.
It'll be there waiting for you.
Like I, and I was trying to think, well, how am I gonna get from Albuquerque
to California and carry all this crud?
na: Yeah.
Kurt: And they were like, oh no, we'll just have our, you
know, we'll have logistics.
Drop it for you.
Everything.
And of course, we sold everything out that weekend.
So there was no debt to carry.
It was, it was all profit.
But that phone call.
Change the way I handled every financial conversation after that.
That's because now I just add up the numbers and the numbers, the number's, the
number, doesn't matter what the number is.
Now the customer can say yes or no.
Toby: Right?
You know, when I worked at the u the boss of my department, amazing person,
I think I asked her once, like, we were having a conversation about budgets
and she was saying like, what's to stop me from spending way over my budget?
Nothing.
Like what?
So like some accountant a year from now is like, you went over budget, then what?
Is the university not gonna pay the bill?
Like, they'll figure it out.
Like, that was her attitude.
She was awesome.
They'll figure it out.
Yeah.
Like some, they'll get money from somewhere.
Kurt: Yep.
Yep.
'cause someone's over budget and they'll, they'll scrape it from somewhere else.
Toby: Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're right, like, money, And that's what my, my dad always told
me, like, never feel bad about taking someone spending money.
Like for a legitimate purpose.
Like Yeah.
You know, like for little Debbie's.
Yeah.
Little Debbie's and I used to like, play in a band and I was selling my tape.
I'm like, like, should I sell it for five bucks or $2?
He's like, just get the five.
Yeah.
Like, you know, like, yeah,
Kurt: ask for nine, see if you can
Toby: buy.
Yeah.
See what happens.
Kurt: That, that's good stuff I can remember.
And now this is gonna be like, kind of a crossover from a, a different
show that happened last week.
I don't know if you saw it or not.
But, Kevin Geary and Robert Devore had a big, I'm not gonna say
argument, but they had a disagreement about the value of a website.
And, I thought that whole conversation was extremely interesting because I used
to be the agency in Albuquerque that made $500 websites and had a list of deadbeat
clients that couldn't pay their bills or, you know, couldn't afford hosting
at the end of the month or, or whatever.
And now we're the agency that, you know, bids on enterprise level work.
And gets paid before we do the work.
And the number is the number, and we're not bashful or shy
about sharing the number.
And, I, I was very intrigued by that whole conversation.
What, what does it look like on, on your end where you, you know, I've
Toby: gone up and down over the years, like in terms of how, or I round the,
round the ROY with how to do that.
I've kind of come to the conclusion like, for me, what I need is.
the guaranteed money.
So how I solved that problem was not to like scale up or level
up, but to just demand the money upfront before any work is done.
And so there are two clients that I have right now that are always late.
One of 'em is naturally going away, like it's just not working out naturally.
I didn't have to fire them.
I've like sent them some nice emails like, and, they're leaving.
another one.
I don't know what's gonna happen.
They're really nice.
They're late all the time.
They, I'm like bending over backwards, like for payment plans, but it's just
one and like, and like part of it for me is like, is it, I think they're
paying 50 bucks a month and it's like, is it worth this headache for
50 bucks a month, one time a month?
Yeah, right now it is.
I'm not, you know, I can stomach it at some point it probably becomes untenable.
Like we had one guy that was with us for a long time, like years,
and he was paying $30 a month.
He always paid on time, but he, what the deal we made with him years ago was
like, we, small thing for $30 a month.
And I like, I tried to get him up to like, how about one hour a month?
Because like.
That just makes more sense to us.
yeah, and he didn't wanna do that, so it's like, all right, we can't do it anymore.
Like it was just too much headache.
'cause it was like a totally different, like, 'cause my team would always be
emailing me, what's one small thing?
Is this a small thing?
It's a small thing.
Be like, I don't know.
so I will still do the small stuff.
Like, like, in fact, what I've been doing recently, I sold two
of these in the last month and I didn't do it prior to last month.
So I don't know.
I've actually sold over the years, I've done a ton of these.
But it's the idea like, what if we get together, you and I business
you, you're, you buy or me website guy, and we build you a website.
how long will that take?
And so what I've decided is it's, it's five sessions, 90 minutes each session.
I'm calling it a workshop.
And at the end of these five, you'll have a website.
And I've priced it in a way that makes sense for me.
And, it's weird because like I feel like it's, that doesn't.
It's really like, so I have this other team working on all these
other random projects that come in.
and I haven't quite figured out how this fits or if it fits.
Like is it a waste of my time?
Is it just paying their bill and like creating this fake money flow that,
you know, like, could I just make more money by firing the other people?
And, you know, I don't think that's true by the way.
I, I think, I think the other people are profitable in their own.
You know, that business of the company.
But, at the end of the day though, I'm looking at it like, I'm like,
if I could sell a lot of these, this would be really interesting too.
A lot of these, like, you know, if I could do two or three of
these a day, it'd be awesome.
Kurt: Yeah.
So yeah, we went to kind of a productized, templated offer for startups.
We are.
Consciously avoiding the like five to $15,000 sites right now.
And then we have a different vertical that is all like 20 K plus projects.
But they're e-learning.
I mean, they're, they're involved projects, right.
You know, we just bid on a job that was like $240,000, but it's, we're gonna
help create the learning material.
We're gonna, you know, we're, we're doing curriculum development,
so, so it's, so it's a big thing.
The productized offer was only because I moved to Hutchinson, Kansas.
I moved to Hutchinson, Kansas, and it's like, man, there's
a lot of food trucks in town.
None of them have a working website.
There's a lot of coffee shops in town.
None of them have a working website.
And by working, I mean anything better than a digital business card.
Mm-hmm.
And and some of them like you would just be, you know, critical error
screens or all kinds of stuff.
Yeah.
And I thought, you know what?
Let's make a sample website for a food truck, a sample website for a
consultant, a sample website for a construction company that does remodeling.
What are the tools that each of those would want, like make
appointments or charge for this or have a menu or whatever.
And then we, through our hosting, have a thing called blueprinting, which is
like a, it's like a multi-tenancy idea where you just clone that, that instance.
They name it, they put their URL on it.
They can change whatever they want to change.
It's an independent site.
It's not a multi-site and it's theirs.
And so we offer those as a super affordable startup package and then $79
a month for hosting and maintenance.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: Because we update all the plugins and, 'cause they're, they
wanna run their food truck, right?
They don't wanna know how WordPress works.
Toby: How much of that is standardized?
Like for, for the plugin and theme mix across, let's say you have 10 food truck
sites, do they use the exact same plugins and themes, or are they Ver variety of My
Kurt: goal
Toby: mm-hmm.
Kurt: Is to put them all on the same thing.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: Right.
Because let's face facts, like that's, the sample is mostly
like yellow and orange, right?
So it looks like an Oscar Meyer side, I guess.
But, Someone else comes in.
Okay, we're gonna change that primary color to blue, the secondary color
to red, the primary color to gray.
The secondary color to yellow.
The the, and then the site looks completely different.
Mm-hmm.
na: And then
Kurt: you throw in tacos on one and hot dogs on another.
They're completely different websites.
na: Mm-hmm.
But.
Kurt: so all the client has to do is change the images and the text.
and then we give them training, like I forgot to mention that, but
we give them training on here's how you update the shopping cart.
Here's how you update, here's how you add your stripe contact information.
you know, I saw Matt's thing.
He did a, a video on making a, a brew house.
A tap house website using.
Gravity form and gravity square, add-on
Toby: uhhuh.
Kurt: And I was like, man, that was clean.
That was clean.
Yeah.
Toby: So you, it made you think.
Kurt: Yeah.
So, so I might steal that example and, and do a different project with that.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
na: But
Kurt: I like having these different projects where they're, they're
kind of templatized and then they go, oh, well I, I'm a consultant.
Great.
Right?
Here's a consultant website.
It makes appointments, it charges people for things.
It has a CRM built into it.
It does this, it does this, it does this.
It's 1500 bucks and it's yours and it's 79 bucks a month to host it and maintain it.
And they go, okay.
And it just makes it, it easy
Toby: a question.
It's kind of related.
it popped in to my, my head.
so
the reason, the reason we're able to make our businesses work.
Is 'cause we've figured out how to sell this stuff.
Mm-hmm.
Would it be, I haven't seen an example of that with someone from,
let's say, Pakistan, figuring out how to sell in Hutchinson,
Kansas or Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Like, what's the blocker there?
Kurt: You are gonna make me sound mean, Toby, when someone like, for instance.
I have a couple customers.
I, I've one in the Netherlands, one in the uk.
I have one in Spain.
I, nope, they're not with me anymore from Italy.
They're not with me anymore.
And those are like people that knew me from something, right?
So they knew me from the power sports industry, or they knew me from,
maybe the podcast that I'd done with WP Tonic or something like that.
But if I didn't have that connection, I wouldn't have those clients.
There's no way I would be able to jump into the, into the fray,
you know, in Spain and become the number one web provider in Spain.
Yeah, that's a great way to look
Toby: at
Kurt: it.
So it, it just wouldn't happen.
And so the expectation that they would come here and find
success is pretty slim unless.
They get notoriety some other way,
Toby: but why couldn't it happen for you in Spain?
I'm, that's what I'm trying, that's the question I'm asking like, like
you or me, like what's stopping us from, and or, or here's another way
less extreme example, and this is, I'm talking about this with my SEO guy.
Like he's like, maybe we should like open a fake Atlanta office and capture
some of the Atlanta local Google juice.
What's.
We haven't done it yet.
We pro, I don't know if we will or not, but like, what's stopping us?
Or you, or you know, just from, you have Hutchinson, why not Kansas City?
na: Like,
Kurt: you
na: know?
Yeah.
Like,
Kurt: yeah.
Well there's a girl that jumps on the post status calls from Kansas City.
I really don't wanna tick her off.
She seems like she's full of energy.
She come after me.
But you know what?
So.
Take it from another example.
You're in your town, right?
People know who you are.
We see you around, you're getting on a podcast, you're doing, you're, you're
spreading your mojo around, right?
There's other WordPress people in your town doing effectively, little
to nothing, but somehow still have a business tile over their door.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: When I go to Grok and I say, who are the best, agencies to get a WordPress
website made in Hutchinson, Kansas?
Ana Nomas doesn't come up on the list.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: It starts naming companies I've never even heard of Uhhuh.
and then I start asking it questions like, why didn't you recommend Ana Nomas?
And it says, well, why would I, you know?
And then it says, I'm like, oh.
And then, but it kept recommending this one company where I know the owner.
And so I talked to her and I said, I said, Hey, you know, you were the
number two recommended person on Grok for, for local website development.
And she's like, oh, that's super cool.
You know, I said, who are these other people?
And she's like, oh, I haven't seen them do anything in years.
Right?
And so then it's like you realize, like you mentioned, the local SEO Juice, right?
It's like, how is AI making these decisions and coming up?
So AI made me a ton of suggestions on how to become more, localized for AI search.
I implemented all that stuff, waited two weeks, did another search to duplicate
it, and I didn't get much better results.
na: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: So it's, you gotta be in for the long haul.
Toby: Yeah.
So the sales thing has always been weird to me, and, and I've realized like.
it takes, it, it's a skill and a talent.
Like anything
Kurt: like, well, how many of your sales are, are what you would call
happenstance or SEO doing its job versus personal connection referral,
some kind of, you know, touch.
Toby: Yeah, I don't, I mean, I would guess half are SEO related,
like cold leads or warm leads from SEO and half are personal leads.
It's a weird thing though, like, like, and I think maybe this is the answer to
my original question, like, why can't you sell in Spain or Kansas City that sales
is like an art form in and of itself, and selling in Kansas City might be way,
way different in a way than selling in Hutchinson and saying here, you know,
Kurt: well there's that famous saying, right?
Says If all else is equal, people will do business with people
they know, like, and trust.
Right?
And so we're super involved here in town, we're, we are involved with Startup
Hutch, all our entrepreneur activities.
We go to all the after hour parties with the local Chamber of Commerce.
Hutchinson in a very strange way, opened itself up to us when we
moved here almost two years ago.
And just.
Soaked us up.
Like I, I got in touch with Startup Hutch.
I said, I love the city.
It's a great place to move.
I can't believe all the opportunities that are here.
And, they put me on a podcast right away.
And then the city invited me to speak at City Hall for a entrepreneur class.
And then I spoke at the high school and I spoke at the college, and
now I do stuff at the church.
And it just keeps snowballing, like we are integrated into the community so quickly
here that it makes it hard to fail.
Toby: So how, let's say you're, let's say, 22 years old, you're kind of
getting into WordPress and you wanna make some money, you wanna, you wanna
transition from your job wherever to, you know, making some part-time and maybe
full-time cash doing WordPress freelance.
And what's the biggest bang for the buck for getting that first sale and the
second sale in terms of time, not dollar spend, but like, you have no money.
How are you gonna get your first sale?
Where, what would you recommend for like.
You have 10 hours this week, where should they invest 'em?
You know,
Kurt: I always go back to, and this is gonna sound like
some weird guru stuff, right?
But I just always go back to what's your niche?
What are you interested in?
How, how do you find your people like.
Ju.
So what if you're 22 years old, right?
Are, are you into mountain biking?
Are you into bicycling?
Are you into skateboarding?
Are you into, you know, dj, you know, music?
Are you into video games?
figure out what you're into.
Then get into those groups, whether they're live or virtual.
Get into those groups.
Add value.
Right.
So, so give away some free information or, you know, show
that you're a knowledgeable person.
And then through passion and affiliation, leads begin to erupt.
Mm-hmm.
You know, and once you do the first gig, you get that person to give
you a testimonial, and then you got two or three gigs, and then out of
those two or three gigs, you end up with one or two more testimonials.
And then you just leverage it.
You just start going, you just start moving, and then you increase the
scope of your niche after that.
So like for me, a lot of my work was based on, some fitness stuff.
I got real big into like Spartan races and Century rides on bicycles.
I'm really big in power sports and the Marine, with boats.
And so a lot of my work is centered in those areas.
Toby: Great.
We are just about out of time here.
wanna thank everyone for listening, Kurt.
Thank you.
Toby.
Thank you.
I'm thanked.
Kurt: Well, let's, let's do this, Toby, for the, for the
new listeners and viewers.
how can they best reach you?
Toby: you can find me on LinkedIn.
my last name is C-R-Y-N-S.
that's probably the best place You can go to the mighty mo.com.
If you google the Mighty mo WordPress, you'll get me.
Otherwise, you'll get the famous Battleship or, or, in Missouri.
I think it might, it's not Kansas City, but it's some, some place by Hutchins.
na: I didn't understand that.
Toby: But, it's a radio station, the Mighty Mo, but go to the mighty mo.com
WordPress, you'll find me.
How about you, Kurt?
How can people find
Kurt: you?
like yourself, I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm the only Kurt van on and on LinkedIn, so if you find me, you know, you got me.
And, I guess we can also ask the listeners and viewers if they had
a really great name for the show, that would be awesome, right?
Mm-hmm.
for, for agencies, by agencies and, I guess that's that.
Toby: And then also show your love to the WP Minute for sponsoring this podcast.
Matt and his team do an amazing job.
They've been doing it for 15 years or something like that.
they keep on trucking.
They're like the little engine that will never, ever stop.
So there you go.
So thanks everybody.