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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
Toby Cryns (00:00)
Welcome to the agency action podcast, starring Kurt von Ahnen, the legend, and myself. I'm Toby Cryns.
We have a great show today, but I wanna start with giv telling us happy birthday. We ⁓ have been going for over a year now. We started May fifth last year, twenty twenty five, and
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:21)
I
can't I can't believe Matt hasn't signed in as one of his like surprise guest visits to sing happy birthday to us yet.
Toby Cryns (00:24)
⁓ Exactly.
⁓ where are you at, Matt? but also thank you all. Thank Matt. ⁓ I think Matt's ⁓ he's just like ⁓ a core part of the WordPress community globally, or at least in the US. you know, ⁓ I think he's been that for a long time and this podcast is just part of his legacy and efforts. And so thanks to Matt, of course, but also thank you, Kurt. ⁓
It's been a great year and ⁓ you know, let's keep going.
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:57)
Yeah, right back at you. I you know, it it's it's funny because you know, iron sharpens iron, all those great phrases. But I really look forward to our conversations because it it just like the listener, it's it's great for me too. Like it's just fun to interact and have the conversation and ⁓ this would be a great time. Encourage people, like, share, follow, obviously. But we really need your comments, your questions, your concerns in running an agency so we have so we know what content to come forward with.
So it'd be awesome if you would just participate. All right, now let's jump in. What would you do, Toby, now that now that you are a seasoned one year in podcast professional, now that now that you're in the game, what would you do if you received a cold email where a company said, Hey, really love some of the content you're putting on the Mighty Mo, and we think that your content's extremely relevant and you would be great on our podcast.
We'd like to break the ice and schedule a call with you. What would you think?
Toby Cryns (01:59)
so let's assume you've already sc done some research and determined it's not a scam spam. So ⁓ yeah, I'd be flattered. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do this. This sounds fun. I already do podcasts. This sounds easy and interesting, and I never get invited onto new podcasts. So this sounds great. ⁓ that would be my gut reaction. ⁓ but then what happens, Kurt, if you go on there and you find out it's it's a pitch.
Kurt Von Ahnen (02:21)
⁓ yeah.
it's a pitch. So ⁓ I told the guy, because I'm sure everyone re anyone that listens to this knows I'm a pretty direct communicator. So we get on this the Zoom call and I say to this guy, go, hey Brandon, ⁓ be honest with you, got no idea why I'm on the call. Like, I I don't know if I don't know if you're trying to hire me. Like, do you need me as the talent for your existing show? Or are you trying to pitch me, you know, a podcast service? And then
He didn't really answer the question. We ended up talking for 30 or 40, pardon me, 30 or 40 minutes. Gotta tell you, super nice guy. I really enjoyed my time with him. He asked a lot of really great questions that really helped me identify like my avatar, my audience, who I want to talk to. Like it was great. But in the end, it was a pitch. They wanted to pitch me a done for you podcast service to launch a new podcast to the guy that is already on five podcasts a week.
Toby Cryns (03:18)
Mm-hmm. Great.
So
I had a similar scenario just this week where I was invited out to coffee and with somebody that I don't know well at all locally, but ⁓ you know, I I actually really appreciate some of their senses of humor and like I've just kind of followed them online a little bit. And same thing. We had a great conversation. We're at coffee, and at the end he's pitching me. I'm like, is he pitching me? Like I thought we were just here to talk and have a good time.
What's going on? And yep, he's pitching me. And he's like, How about I get back to you? And da da da. I'm like, wait, what? You're you're pitching me? Like is everybody pitching these days? Why is everybody pitching?
Kurt Von Ahnen (03:58)
I I've
Everybody's pitching. It is, it is a nightmare. I spent you know three years promoting LinkedIn as my like number one connection tool, right? And my inbox in LinkedIn is an absolute smoking heap of disaster. ⁓ everybody's in there with six or seven paragraphs about why they're awesome and I should hire them. You know, if they could get me 10 or 15 qualified leads a month, what would that be worth to me? You know, ⁓ so
Toby Cryns (04:26)
Right.
Kurt Von Ahnen (04:31)
I I I did something interesting when I talked to Brandon with the podcast thing and I and I don't know this is something that I do and I don't know that other people do it. Like when someone's pitching me, I think to myself, if I wasn't already self-sufficient in this space, is this somebody I'd like to work with?
And like I said, Brandon was a nice guy. He asked a lot of good questions. He his pitch actually wasn't that bad. I'm just, I'm not his customer. And so I made it very clear. I said, Brandon, I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm not your customer. I'm not your customer. But that doesn't mean I hate you, right? So let's figure this out.
⁓ let's say I'm an agency, which I am. I'm an agency and I have a lot of e-learning projects and community projects, and I deal with coaches and community managers and all these things. Some of those people might wake up one day and go, Holy crap, I should start a podcast. But they don't know how. And I'm not in the podcast business. And newsflash, Maniana Nomas doesn't want to be in the podcast business. So
What if I just referred those people to you? And he was like, that'd be great. And I said, But hold on, hold on. It's a two-way street, Brandon. So if you have people that have a killer podcast and they and they say the podcast is doing awesome, we we should really have a community site or we should really, you know, start some online training with the subject we do the podcast about. Well then I'm your guy, right? Like, can we have that agreement? And he goes, That sounds perfect. And then
I did something that's a little different than I think other people. ⁓ he started talking like affiliates and like bird dogging and stuff, and I was like, No, that's too messy, that's too sloppy. Just make just make a warm introduction, take the client. When you when you send me a client, I'm taking the client. Like trying to chase down or get upset about paid or unpaid affiliates or referrals is a pain in the rear end and I don't do it anymore.
Toby Cryns (06:19)
Yeah. ⁓ I had was told a story yesterday by someone else. ⁓ they were a marketer, a mid level marketer at an eighty billion dollar corporation. And they would get the right, yeah. They would get these calls from, you know, like, what would you do if I get you thirteen leads? That sort of thing. And he was telling me you get these calls and you know, he was like, I'll just hear it. It sounds kind of interesting. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (06:33)
What's mid level there?
Toby Cryns (06:48)
My this my friend has no decision making responsibilities at the company, mind you. But like you take the call, the person will be like, Okay, okay. How much do you have a budget for this? He's like, I don't really have a budget. And he's like, Well, well what what's like your you would you say like you have a three to five million dollar budget? My friend's like, Yeah, probably. Yeah. So like this is my friend telling this where he's like, 45 minutes in the guy's like, So what do you think? What do you think? He's like, Why I don't make any decisions here.
Kurt Von Ahnen (07:05)
We have eighty billion dollars.
Toby Cryns (07:17)
I just thought this might be an interesting conversation.
Kurt Von Ahnen (07:21)
Ugh. My experience in corporate has me so jaded because I was on the inside for so long. Like I can remember the vice president I worked under at a large company being like, Hey Kurt, we need to run out and get some bids on X, Y, and Z. And I go, Are we doing X, Y, and Z? And he's like, Nah, we just need the information. Like, look
Toby Cryns (07:43)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (07:44)
Dude, why are you wasting my t you're wasting my time. You're wasting their time. You're making me look like an idiot. whatever, dude. So I would just tell people, I just need a quote. And then I tell them right away, like, no, we're not doing this. We're not a customer. We're just, we're just fishing.
Toby Cryns (07:58)
Yeah. let's talk a little bit more about ⁓ just like I'm thinking like hiring. Like
And specifically like like let's I'm changing the subject by the way, in case in case 'cause I'm like, this is great. It seems to have run its course. Let's move on. ⁓ you know, George Carlin used to do this thing. He'd finish a bit every now and then he'd be like, I have no finish for this, so I just take a bow. And that was like his transition. And he he would say just say that. That's listening. Just taking a bow. I have no finish. But ⁓ okay. So you're an agency. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (08:16)
Yeah, okay.
Take a bow.
Toby Cryns (08:40)
You you need to rebuild your website. This is a common thing. You need to redesign, rethink your messaging. You could do it internally, and maybe you've tried and tried five or six times over the last decade and never really did it. And this is common. By the way, I've experienced this at big agencies too. Like they have the same problem, and their solution is usually to hire it out. Like they go, We know we do this for a living, but we can't do this internally because of all the pressures we have.
Kurt Von Ahnen (09:08)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (09:08)
And so
they go and hire a different agency that does exactly what they do. And this is big agency world. Like they do this. And ⁓ so I'm curious, Kurt, ⁓ what would you do hypothetically if you wanted to rethink your website, branding, design, content?
Kurt Von Ahnen (09:24)
Let's take hypothetical right off the table and just talk reality. I got I I got hit with a cold email and I'm usually not big on cold emails. And not only that, he sent the cold email to my wrong email address. So it really caught my attention. ⁓ but as I read the email, they had done the research. Like they
Looked at all the pages on our site. They did like an SEO kind of an audit kind of thing. Like, what are your keywords? What are trying to sell? This is why people are leaving your page. This is why you have a bounce rate of such and such. And like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And went through and pointed out some very specific things. And ⁓ yeah, you nailed it. ⁓ we've redone our website like six times in 10 years. And sometimes it's because I feel like
We changed the page builder we were using, and I thought, well, if we're recommending this to clients, we should represent it through ourselves. And so let's redo this. Or let's change, you know, our focus message is now on enterprise e-learning. So let's make sure we focus on enterprise e-learning and we redo something. ⁓ the messaging is muddy, and I am ⁓
Even though I'm on all these podcasts, and even though I do all this stuff, I still hesitate to like shout from the rooftops, like, I'm the expert. I'm the expert. And so I was taking like these really nice, like implied statements and trying to think that those were like great marketing things. And the guy's going through my website and he's like, This isn't specific. This isn't a real feature and benefit. This isn't a and and he's right. Like everything he said was right. ⁓ dude's from Pakistan.
We jumped on a call. He immediately does a whole review of my website with me, without charging me anything. Does this whole review on screen share, does this whole thing, and he's right. Like everything he says is right. And it just ticks me off because I'm the agency. I should have had this right to begin with, right? But I'm busy working on big projects. I've got, you I've got Art of Makeup, I've got PF University, I've got all these things, and I'm helping them with their copy. And that and I know what I noticed. And maybe
Maybe you're in the same boat, and I know I'm talking long, so I'll make this quick. I can say the most courageous, bold, confident things about my clients on their websites. But when I'm talking about my own projects, I'm like falsely humble. And so this guy comes along and he's like, You're not using strong enough words and phrases, man. We need to close these people. You need closing content that takes people to schedule a call or swipe a credit card. And I'm like, I agree. Okay.
Toby Cryns (11:42)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (11:55)
And so he gave me his rate, higher than I wanted to pay. But then I thought, you know what? I give people rates all the time and sometimes it's higher than they want to pay. So I just agreed to it and I said, let's see what happens. We'll do the homepage first and 30, 60 days later we'll look at the results and maybe I'll hire you to do the rest of the site. And I'll probably add him to the team at Manana Nomas. We'll do client sites too. Why not if he's good?
Toby Cryns (12:14)
Mm-hmm. That's awesome.
Yeah. And there's there's both like this problem of being humble about our own stuff, but also we you people have other ⁓ experiences like that ⁓ and other perspectives. And so like we are currently doing a redesign and rebrand at the Mighty Mo where we're ⁓ previously focused on a certain type of clientele and now we're changing it to a different type of clientele. And
For the first time ever in 20 years, I hired a brand and copywriting person to like figure out what should be our messaging be on the homepage. And we've traditionally also been highly all of our leads not all our leads, but a good portion of leads have come from SEO. And so we're really good at that. And our SEO ⁓ expert is really uncomfortable with the current direction. And it's been interesting. I've had a number of conversations with him because he's he's saying, look, if you do this.
this branded experience, we're gonna lose some SEO, probably significant SEO footing. And ⁓ but I feel strongly like that we can convert more and convert better if our homepage copy at least is ⁓ brand branded towards that that by brand I don't mean like about us. I mean like that the content is very like action oriented towards them, towards the people that are there. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (13:17)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (13:41)
One thing that we're experiencing now is that pull get pull that pull between our brand conversations on the website and the SEO metrics. And we've kind of landed at a middle ground where I've framed it up and said, look, I've made a decision. We're going with the brand. The brand is going to win this conversation and we're going to lose SEO rankings. and what else can we do now that you have that framework in mind? And he's like, Well, I have ideas that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (13:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (14:10)
We're gonna have to invest more in third party linking, let's say, like or like maybe we have to buy ads. And so like we're figuring it out. ⁓ but we wouldn't have gotten there had we just done the same old thing.
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:19)
Yeah.
To to me it's super interesting, right? Because it's like fresh eyes, new perspectives. ⁓ like I mentioned, confidence in the in the in the you know, none of that fake humility stuff. And it's not fake humility. I mean, it's honest humility from my standpoint, but other people might see the content and go, what's with this guy? And I think it's interesting, Toby. I I do every now and then, when we see, you know, what we would call an influencer online, you know, and you could name any of the names that you see in YouTube, all the people that have a lot of followers, they'll talk about
heightened design sense or you know ⁓ the professional way to do something and I go okay well let's go look at their website and I do I go look at their websites and I go blow me away show me something that's absolutely amazing if I was a customer what would make me want to buy from you and a lot of times I don't see that there. Like I think sometimes we put an undue pressure on ourselves like everything's gotta knock it out of the park. ⁓
So I don't want to like make it sound like it's a do or die thing, but I do want to have the best representation possible for my company. And so ⁓ I I did the outside route. And it was funny because I walked out of my office kind of in shock. I made the decision myself. I told my wife, I go, I just hired someone to rewrite the Manano Nomaz website. And she goes, What? It's like she goes, Aren't aren't you a writer? I was like
Yeah, yeah, published books and everything, but that doesn't mean that I can get people to buy something off my website. I need to I need to have someone else give me some input. And ⁓ if I did it inside, in-house and I made compromises, like you had used that word compromise, I would get what I have now. You know? And
You have a team, I have contractors. And so you have a team and you can talk about compromise and everybody's in the same boat kind of thing. But I'm working with contractors and I don't have their full attention like that. And so it when I make a compromise, it really comes down to me. And if I'm making the compromise, I'm gonna end up with the mush I've already got. So I'm like, I just gotta pay this guy. And like I said, if it works, if the if the content's that stinking good, if it's worth what I paid.
I'll hire to do some of my client sites and we'll we'll upsell it to people and make it a profit center.
Toby Cryns (16:40)
I d this sparked an idea that I've been thinking about but wasn't on our agenda. And I'm gonna ⁓ go here. And what you just said is like brilliant because what you're talking about is like you hire someone who has expertise and you trust them to do the thing despite what your gut is telling you should be there and your experience and your you know ⁓ and this is very very difficult for a business owner to
Kurt Von Ahnen (16:47)
Well.
Toby Cryns (17:08)
Do, by the way. If you work at corporate America, you might not feel it the same because you're like used to being told what to do and your your butt's not always on the line and you're you're used to shirking responsibility, maybe. Like try to it I feel like one goal of your of every corporate American is ⁓ a corporate American worker is to take as little responsibility as you can for everything. That's that's your like primary objective.
Kurt Von Ahnen (17:34)
Yes.
Toby Cryns (17:35)
Now, when you own a company, it's the exact opposite. You own everything whether you want to or not. And so, like, as a business owner, the longer you're in it, the less you trust other people. Cause you're like, your butt's not on the line. I I have to live with this decision tomorrow, next week, next year, 10 years from now. ⁓ and so I've been working on this as a skill set internally to me, to be like, I have experts, I'm gonna let them run with it. And so this brand person is one, the SEO person is another, my project managers. I've been really
It's this has maybe been the toughest thing is to kind of let go of the relationships with customers and understand that even though, and this is gonna sound like this old record that you've heard, but even though they're doing it differently, and I'm really uncomfortable sometimes with how the conversations go and what they're doing, that the relationship might be stronger because of it. Like that other perspective and that other experience, because what I'm seeing is like even though all that
Might be true. I'm very uncomfortable sometimes with the conversations that we're having with our clients sometimes, not always, but like and I'm not talking like the directional conversation, but just the actual words that are being spoken. Sometimes I'm like, oeah, why do we say that? But I've also it it it allows for other things, like it allow allows space for fruits to bloom that if I just let go of that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (18:48)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (18:59)
And in your case, maybe you just let go. You say they're gonna write the copy in my case the same. But like, I'm just gonna live with it. We're gonna publish it. Let's see what happens.
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:09)
Let's let's evaluate the results. You know, and that's that's the cool thing about what we do for a living, Toby, is is we'll we'll get results, right? We just we need to be able to evaluate them and then go, okay, was that a good decision or a bad decision? You know, if my web visits, because here's the thing that surprises me. I am not so huge on SEO. I mean, do I use SEO? Yes. But am I living 15 hours a week in the SEO mindset? No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm just not.
⁓ and then I talk to people that are. And they're like, ⁓ impressions are up, conversions are down, this is this, this is that. And then they share their numbers with me. And then I go look at my my my Google console and I go, I'm right behind them. And I am not stressing out. I'm like, I'm like, because I've always thought if I just have good content, good copy, I stay on target, I you know, I have, you know, the the URL's been around for 18, 20 years. Like it's
Certain things affect obviously stability. And I think if we if we offer value through our content, SEO recognizes that whether I'm trying to game the system or not. And then gaming the system, I don't put a ton of effort in. I just I tweak a couple things, tweak a keyword here or there, tweak a title. If I, you know, if I read a title and it looks weird, I'll I'll tweak that. But I don't spend an inordinate amount of time on it, and I'm not that far behind from people that do.
So I feel really strong in that space and I feel like if this copywriter does their job and I get the same amount of impressions, right, but my conversions go up five percent, it's paid for itself.
Toby Cryns (20:52)
Well, here's another flip side of that. Let's say they do it and it fails and your pressions don't go up. Maybe you get a little fewer. It's still that experience has freed up quite a bit of time and headspace for you. And how will you use that headspace which in that time, which is probably way more valuable than you know, if you had controlled the whole process and had more, slightly more leads or the same leads or whatever? ⁓ and so this is kind of like like
What how should you use that headspace and that time in in some of this, you know, y this could be person how you maybe you do personal things? What how would you think about that?
Kurt Von Ahnen (21:28)
We we don't we don't even need a George Carlin segue for
this. You went right into it. ⁓ that's a great concept. So if I free up time and space and I have the mental aptitude and I'm physically able, how much and this was really like a question I wanted to ask you rather than me taking the lead on it. How how much of like that life happens, you know, BS quotient do you tolerate in your day or your week? Like I know you take the kids to school.
I know there's a coffee shop down the street you probably frequent, right? But like how much of like life happens do you let interrupt your productive week?
Toby Cryns (22:09)
Ton, honestly. It's my my family right now for me in ⁓ is my top priority in the sense well I you know I would say it's mixed priority because I I do have to earn a living to pay for the pleasure of serving my family. But but my family ⁓ claims I have very ⁓ limited boundaries around.
when my family puts a claim on my time. I'll say that. Like like if they want to do something, my kids, my wife, I generally say yes. Like I I default to yes. And ⁓ I'm not saying that's healthy or, you know, the thing that everyone should do by any means, because there's downsides to that too. ⁓ but generally life happens and croaches every single day, ⁓ probably multiple times a day. And I I generally plan everything else around that. And so
That might mean that my most productive hours are spent bringing my kids to school rather than working on the mighty mo. ⁓ it might mean that I'm working later one night.
It's tough and I'm not happy with the decision, but I think it's the best decision for me right now. You know, I'm not satisfied.
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:21)
That that that's you know, I think that's an interesting way that you say that. ⁓ I I have, you know, I'm a person of faith, right? And so so I go, well, that this is just the lot in life that I've been given and I've got to figure out how to deal with it. You know, because my wife will say, you know, because I do get pretty upset about the cars. We we we have a fleet of cars in our driveway that seem to constantly need my attention. ⁓ and somebody's always in a hurry to use one of the broken cars to get to somewhere important, right? And so today, perfect example.
Power steering hose is coming in, we got a power steering leak, and when UPS gets here, I gotta jump out there, crawl under a car, install the hose, you know, flush the system, blah, blah, blah. The hose is a hundred and twenty bucks, and then it's my time.
If I were to have that car towed to a shop, it would cost a thousand bucks at the shop and 200 bucks for the tow. So on one hand, I go, Am I saving, am I saving a thousand or eleven hundred dollars doing the job myself? That's one way to look at it. It could be costing me five grand a day to not be at my desk answering the phone, answering emails. So how much life happens do you have an appetite for?
Toby Cryns (24:25)
Right. Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (24:33)
And it's so so in some ways I go, well, this is my lot in life. Like my wife will say, you know, you have a lot of patience with this, that, I go, babe, I've just made the acknowledgement. This is you know, this is my lot in life. I've got to figure this out. So she's off on Mondays and Tuesdays now with this job she has. And Monday, she's like, What's your schedule today? You know, do you wanna run the do you wanna run the Sam's Club? Do I want babe? It's it's a work week. And then I realize in her heart of hearts, it's her day off.
She wants company going to Sam's club. So guess what? We're going to Sam's club. And then she'll go to bed at nine o'clock at night and I might be embedding videos in somebody's course at midnight, you know, getting caught up on work.
Toby Cryns (25:14)
I get so frustrated by the scenario that you described that I experience every single day. Like this thing we're talking about where like my fam my immediate family here might is putting claims on my time, usually unannounced and usually at an annoying time for me.
Kurt Von Ahnen (25:20)
Yeah.
Hey, what's your schedule today? What are you doing right now?
Toby Cryns (25:34)
No, well ha it's more like, Dad, I need
I need you to do this right now. Okay.
Kurt Von Ahnen (25:42)
I go back to when I was corporately employed. ⁓ like when I worked at Suzuki, I had to be at my desk at eight o'clock in the morning and we left at five o'clock at night. That was just a r and I was relieved to have that job because when I worked at Ducati, I was working an average of like it was something weird, like seventy-eight hours a week. I was averaging when I worked at Ducati. Plus travel. I was on airplanes all the time when I was with Ducati.
Oddly enough, I loved the job at Ducati. The job at Suzuki was a little more arduous. But ⁓ there were no trips to Sam's Club on Monday morning when I worked at Suzuki, right? There were no ⁓ answering the phone or sending text messages or you know, being available at at a beck and call for anything. You know, there was no, you gotta be home at three o'clock. I'm getting a delivery and it needs to be signed for. Like,
There was none of that. I wasn't there. Like I I am not an option Monday through Friday from eight to five. And sometimes I talk to other agency owners and they're like, I rented an office and I'm away from the house and I I am at work from nine to six or whatever it is. And while I'm tempted to be a hard ass like that, I really enjoy working from home and being able to pet the dog and go get lunch or an adult beverage at three o'clock, or so I do it to myself too.
So should I be angry or lose patience when other people want that time?
Toby Cryns (27:06)
Yeah, and I think part of this comes down to there's this like question of why do you work? And like there's a corporate response to that that is always really washed over, like and dumb really. But like I've been thinking about that a lot and trying to just figure it out. And I'm not I don't have an answer by the way, to why I'm working at the Mighty Mo and the way I am. Like I Mighty Mo exists to cause I enjoy it to some degree and it
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:12)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (27:34)
pays the bills and I'm good at it. Some combination of that. But like most people, I would much rather be at the beach or at minimum working two days a week rather than six, you know.
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:43)
Yeah.
If I'm if I'm bluntly honest with the audience right now, and this is a question like, so this is like a comment-worthy thing. I want people to comment. Like, if you're an agency, what day of the week and what time do you mow your lawn? Like, sometimes I'm working on the computer, I just need a break, and it might be Wednesday at two o'clock. Yeah, I pull the mower out and go mow the lawn. My wife comes home at six o'clock from work and the lawn looks great.
Toby Cryns (28:16)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (28:17)
You know, but it's ⁓ I'm not doing all my I'm not doing all my household chores, you know, Saturday at eight o'clock in the morning. You know, I'm I'm and and I guess if I were corporately employed, like when I worked when I did work at Suzuki, we went for walks three times a day. We had a morning break, we went for a walk, we walked at lunch and we walked in the afternoon. It was something like everybody in the place did. And so I was walking like three miles a day during those breaks.
So if that's not much different, right? Like I need a break at home just as like I need a break corporately, right? So I hop on the mower and I ride that around for forty five minutes. ⁓ but I'm curious to people listening at home, if you're an agency owner, when are you like when do you load the dishwasher? Ten o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday? Cause that's when most people would be working at a cubicle.
Toby Cryns (29:04)
That's a great question. I love it. ⁓ I also want to talk about the this ⁓ point you brought up in our outline. Like the idea is like similar. You you own a business and ⁓ you have outdated hardware, outdated software, it's gonna cost money. ⁓ and you had posted, I love these questions. How long should we push that laptop that gets super hot hot? How long should we subscribe to tool X, Y, and Z that isn't
really meeting the full need. And then I would add to that, at what point do you build the tool you vibe code the tool with AI now? and it's simil it's similar to this because it's about your priorities, why you're working, what you want to work on. ⁓ and for me, I'll say like I've really enjoyed building the AI tooling for our company. And I w I'm trying to free up more of my time at work to do that. ⁓ but how do you make these decisions as a business owner?
Kurt Von Ahnen (29:38)
Yeah.
Well, I blew it. I really blew it when we lived in California. I had a I had a really cool laptop. It was all it was like, you know, it was the cat's meow. The kids would have loved it. You know, RGB keyboard and things lit up and it was crazy fast for the time. But I do a lot of video editing. A lot. And
This poor laptop was getting hot, really hot. And I put a cooling pad under it and it was still getting hot and I was still pushing it. And eventually I looked at it one day and it had started to warp. Like the keyboard was starting to like come up out of the middle of the of the laptop. And I thought to myself, that's bad. But I didn't run to Best Buy that afternoon. You know what I mean? I I was like, I c I can limp it further. And then
Toby Cryns (30:45)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (30:47)
I limped it. I limped it until it almost caught fire. Like it just stopped working one day. The the hard drive wouldn't connect, blah, blah, blah. And there I was without. And I knew that I knew that I knew that I should have proactively taken care of that. And now I'm completely different. I've got a mini PC behind this monitor that's not hooked up to anything. It's like a backup.
For me to have if something goes wrong. I got a mini Mac down here. I've got a MacBook Pro over there. I've got multiple. I've got a 14 terabyte external hard drive. All of my files are backed up on that. Some of the important ones are also on the cloud. I don't keep anything on the hard drives that I need of any computer. I'm always plugged into an external or to the cloud for something. I mean I've gotten a little weird about it, but it's like that's part of that life happens thing, right? It's like,
We're running a business and we're just limping things along. I'll buy a new laptop and my wife will see it and she'll go, Really? You needed a new laptop? And it's like, I use this for work. We run our business on it. You're checking Facebook and your email. You could use some 12-year-old brick if you wanted to, but we're running a business here on this one. Like, like it's gotta be, and that this whole maybe I'm going back to that false humility thing, but it's like,
Toby Cryns (31:46)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:07)
Just cause you're working from home or just cause you're a freelancer or an agency doesn't mean you don't need great equipment. And and I see it go the other way. I see where people bankrupt themselves thinking they need the coolest thing, you know, three three vertical screens and all this nonsense. ⁓ you know, so they can do like Canva designs.
Toby Cryns (32:27)
Right. And this I have a Linux box, by the way, that's probably 10 years old, runs what I use it for is for my team to remote into as a testing box. And so we pay for and this is a great question. We're paying for this remote software that we're not using at all, really. I have this Linux box running under my desk that's big and bulky, makes a bunch of noise, has a separate monitor. Again, we're not using it. And so I'm like, maybe I should invest. And this is the the
And it's much easier to see when other people are making these dumb decisions than when I'm sitting here making a dumb decision myself. ⁓ but now that I'm looking at it and talking about it, I'm like, yeah, if I need this, I should buy that, you know, that four hundred dollar microcomputer on Amazon and just that should be it. Or maybe it's the Mac Mini. Like, you know, like, why, why?
Kurt Von Ahnen (33:19)
Yeah. Why
do I have this thing? ⁓ it it's I hate to make things sound so simple. Do you remember the gimbal called Smooth S M-O-V-E? It was about 300 bucks. It was a handheld thing, a gimbal, you put your phone in it, and you could wiggle it in your phone to go whoop whoop whoop, like stay even, right? ⁓ I bought it. It sucked, it wouldn't do what it was supposed to do. I emailed them, they said,
Toby Cryns (33:33)
No, what is that? Hmm.
Mm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Kurt Von Ahnen (33:49)
We're not we we can't give you a new one, we can't exchange it, but we can give you a second one at fifty percent off, right? And I was like, Well, I feel like I'm getting screwed, but what I bought it. So now one for me, one for the kid. I tried to like the new one, same thing. It's junk. and then I've been I've been dealing with this for years. Like now I have the equipment, but I hate it so much I won't use it. It's kinda like ⁓ some people like GoPro cameras, some people hate GoPro cameras. I am not a GoPro fan. I got a bunch of them, but every time I use them, it's a pain in the butt.
Toby Cryns (34:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (34:19)
⁓
same thing. Like I could just use my phone. What why am I hooking up all this other stuff? I could just use my phone. ⁓ I bought a gimbal off the TikTok shop like six weeks ago. It was like fifty bucks. It does everything. You put it on a tripod, it tracks you in the driveway, you can talk to it, you can walk around, you can hook up a microphone, you can do it's like, ⁓ my goodness. I was like so burnt from the piece of junk that I paid 300 bucks for. ⁓
that I just had like a mental block on ever using a gimbal again, but I saw these other creators using and I was like, I gotta have it. And that's that's like what I said, like, how long should you push something or how long should you, as a professional, go without a certain tool or an upgraded tool because of some preconceived notion?
Toby Cryns (35:05)
Can I just pull this full circle before we wrap up here? You just described a reason to hire a a copywriter to write your website copy. You just described the reason to hire an outside person to build your website. They do it better, quicker, maybe cheaper really when it comes down to it.
Kurt Von Ahnen (35:29)
Yes. Are you gonna say, why don't I hire someone to make my content? Kurt, why are you walking around with a camera?
Toby Cryns (35:34)
Just say it.
No, not that. No, 'cause you're great at that. And I'm not saying you should do that at all. But like this is the blocker that I get too. Like, well, why why did it take me twenty years to hire a copywriter for the Mighty Mo, you know? We've
Kurt Von Ahnen (35:47)
That I I gotta tell you, that's because I spend so much time providing that service to someone else, it felt insulting that somebody would try to pitch me on something that I'm all dude. I have a successful agency. I'm I'm paying for this house with what I do, right? Like, like that's in the mind, right? That that's the that's that's our pride welling up, right? But like scripture says pride comes before the fall. So so we have to like, okay, we gotta keep things in check.
Toby Cryns (36:04)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (36:15)
When I opened my mind and I read what he wrote and I heard him talk, I was like, this guy's completely right. Like everything he's saying, like he would point out mistakes, and and he wasn't very gracious about it. He was like, This is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake. And I was like, he is absolutely correct. So, dude, if you can do better, have at it. Here's the money, get started.
Toby Cryns (36:42)
You know, I'll share one more story and then we can wrap because ⁓ I play in a cake dad band. So there's four other dads and then there's mom. So a cake, mom and dad band technically, but yeah. the guys want to play a song that's not cake. And in my mind, in my prideful place, I'm like, why would we even consider that? We haven't even exhausted the entire cake pl plethora of songs.
Kurt Von Ahnen (36:48)
Yeah.
Yeah, crouched at the starting line, baby. We're going a distance.
Toby Cryns (37:11)
And but ultimately I was like, I went approached it with an open mind, open heart. They recommended a song. Somebody's one of the guys' wives was like, you should do this song. And I'm like, what? Okay, we're now playing request by our wives. Okay, that's the thing now for us. but I went in with an open mind, open heart. I didn't initially like the song, but when I started to learn it, I was like, there's some really neat stuff to appreciate here. And now I'm really grateful for the opportunity. And ⁓ it was we had it just a ball.
Practicing it for two hours the other night, this one song, and it's tough. And ⁓ again, I think like the more we approach this stuff with humbleness, open mind, open heart, the change, approach change, I should say. the change might be hiring someone to do things that you do perfectly well and you sell to your clients all the time, that maybe there's value in.
Kurt Von Ahnen (38:04)
I can't believe you left the audience on the cliffhanger like that. Is it an Adam Ant song? Is it some other extraneous some other extraneous performer from the eighties? Like
Toby Cryns (38:10)
okay. So so
this is the genesis of it. We're playing ⁓ a benefit in town here, and the theme of the benefit is camp, like summer camp, like 4-H camp or ⁓ church camp or whatever. ⁓ and there's like a movie called I think it's called Red Hot Wet Summer or something like that from 2001, something like that. It stars a bunch of famous comedians like Paul Rudd and I don't know who else, but
⁓ there's a theme song from that that's by Jefferson Starship, and it's called Jane. And so I know some Jefferson Starship, I've never heard this song. And I was like, why are we yeah, so that's the song, and it's fantastic, and we're like twisting it a little so it sounds like cake.
Kurt Von Ahnen (38:46)
Yeah.
That's classic.
Of course. Hey,
you could tell you could lie to people and say that you were inspired by Cake's cover of the song.
Toby Cryns (39:08)
Right.
Kurt Von Ahnen (39:10)
And that'll confuse everybody. Toby, let's, let's, let's wrap this thing up, man. First off, ⁓ happy anniversary. Secondly, where can folks get a hold of you if they choose to?
Toby Cryns (39:17)
Happy anniversary, Kurt.
You can find me on LinkedIn at ⁓ search me, Toby T-O-B-Y, last name is C R Y N S. You can also go to the Mighty Mo that ends in ⁓ O dot com where we do ⁓ WordPress and SEO stuff. Kurt, where can we find you?
Kurt Von Ahnen (39:39)
Same thing, LinkedIn, but I'm not under Toby Cryns. I'm under Kurt von Annen. I'm the only Kurt von Annen there. Easy to find. And then my website is Manana no Moss. Manana no moss dot com. Boom. I think that's a wrap, man.
Toby Cryns (39:50)
Right.
Thanks everybody. We'll see you next time.