Toby: Hello, welcome to whose WordPress Agency is this.
Anyway, with the legendary Kurt v Onan, the legend in the
flesh over digital and crimes.
thanks for joining us today.
let's jump in.
We are talking with, the OG of Podcasting, Matt Madero.
And, He was asking this question because it was on one of his recent podcasts for
the WP Minute, and the question is, are the days of hand coding websites over?
Kurt: Is it fair to say that I wish they were,
it's not my, it's it's not my forte.
It's, it's, it's not my forte.
But, but here's where I'm gonna tell you it's not over.
I, I do a lot like, so my agency subcontracts for other larger
agencies, and we also take direct referrals from like Lifter, LMS
and WP to, and places like that.
I can't tell you how many times I get on a Zoom call with somebody and I'll
say, oh, what theme are you using?
Or, you know, what, what was this already?
Because they'll ask me to maintain something and they'll be like,
my website was custom coded by such and such, you know, blah,
blah, blah, whatever, you know?
Not from America.
Mm-hmm.
And it's a nightmare.
The stuff that you get get into like, you, you like, oh, they
hard coded the classic editor.
This'll be fun, you know?
oh yeah.
Yeah.
So, so it's not dead.
It's not dead.
I just wish it was
Toby: Uhhuh.
Kurt: I don't know.
How do you feel?
Toby: I think it's perilous either way.
Like I have, every now and then handed like an Elementor site and
I'm like, what is going on here?
Like, you know, like,
Kurt: yeah.
And then you do the update and the site goes blank.
Yeah.
Toby: similarly, we had a very small project come in the other day and
they needed like a slideshow and one of our developers, like, I'd rather
just code it with a CF rather than, because I was like, use this plugin.
He's like, no, I'm no boss.
I'm gonna do it this way.
I'm like, okay.
and his way is better, I think, because what happened was, in hindsight, like.
So he did it and the client's like, great, can you also do this with it?
And I was like, well, I'm sure I'm glad we went with the developer's idea.
'cause yeah, this makes it way easier.
Kurt: because, 'cause now, because we know how we can make
it to all kinds of cool things.
But then that steps into that other conversation, Toby, where everyone sees
influencers on YouTube and everyone sees AI and everyone assumes that
everything we do is with an easy button.
And all you gotta do is.
Right.
And so they see you make the slider and then they, instead of having,
you know, squares with arrows in 'em, they want circles with
umbrellas in 'em or something.
Right?
They're like, well, we'd rather have circles with umbrellas in 'em.
And then you, and you go, okay, we can do that for you.
Right?
And then it'll be this much more.
And they're thinking, well, why would I have to pay more?
You already built the slider.
It should be an option.
It should be, I should just tell AI that I want circles with umbrellas.
Toby: Yeah, exactly.
And this kind of leads to another question.
That maybe will touch your, your fancy, fancy bone.
I don't know.
hypothetically, let's say someone coded something in chat, GPT.
They're a client of yours.
let's say they're a client of mine, hypothetically coded, hypothetically
coded a plugin in chat GPT, and they said, Hey, Toby, I think it'll work.
You make it work and do, it should be easy.
Kurt: Yeah.
How do you respond to, all you gotta do is, all you gotta do is load up the, I
asked Chad, GPT and chat, GPT said all, all you had to do was load up these files.
and, and it should work.
Right.
now I'm not really sure how to do that myself, but, I'm sure
for you it's gonna be easy.
Yeah.
How do, how do you respond to that?
I, well.
My response is, believe it or not, I'm actually, I'm, I consider myself to
be a pretty diplomatic person, Toby.
So normally what I'll say is, you know, I see this a lot.
A lot of people are referring to AI to be this magic, you know, easy button.
if you really want to use this product, that you've developed, we can try it.
But to do that, I'm gonna want to create.
A staging site, I'm gonna wanna try it in the staging site.
and then we're gonna have to basically run it, troubleshoot it, make sure
there's no issues or glitches with it, make sure there's no conflicts with
preexisting plugins that are on the website and all those other things.
And once we validate that, then we could load it up to the live website.
So you're probably looking at about seven or eight hours.
Toby: And
Kurt: at $150 an hour for agency time, that's gonna run you, you know,
what is that a thousand dollars?
You know?
Mm-hmm.
Are, are you a player at that?
Are you a player at the, it should be easy rate, right?
'cause if, if the it should be easy rate doesn't work for you, you can
always try it yourself or hire someone on five, Fiverr to give it a shot.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
I think this is like, like one of those places where especially like
if you don't have an established company yet and you're like.
I could see you getting pulled into that.
I know, like when I was getting started, like the, I get got pulled into the, this
is easy, this should be easy projects you gotta do for low amounts of money.
Oh well you gotta do.
'cause because you know, there are people, and this is part of like the trickiness
of starting a business, really like, it's like you get, when you're starting,
you just are saying yes to everything and you're gonna get people who don't
wanna spend any money on anything.
Yeah.
And, so you, you're, you're in a position where, you know, like
they're gonna go to Fiverr and pay someone what they think is five bucks.
That's gonna end up being 500, but, and none of this money they
get, maybe you lose the client,
Kurt: you know, the, the part that is, So I've been public with this before.
Like I used to work at Suzuki.
I was in charge of all the publications and training at Suzuki, and that's
motorcycles, automotive, Marine, like it's three huge divisions.
It's a, it was a big company when I got the job and the vice president in
charge of my division, my department, It says, he would come up to me all
the time and he would say, well, we need to create this new module.
We need to create this new e-learning thing.
We need to create this new whatever.
And I'd be like, okay.
Okay, boss.
Okay.
And I'd be taking notes and stuff.
And then he would say, so all, all you need to do is, and as soon as
he, that phrase came out of his mouth, I was like, we're doomed.
We're doomed.
This is gonna be a 300 hour project.
Right.
And I would just literally start like.
Trying to figure out what the Gantt chart was gonna look like
for this project that I knew was gonna morph into something giant.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
And
Kurt: that's when people come to me with these easy solutions for,
you know, these AI easy solutions.
That's where I, I start to go, okay, let's Gantt chart the sucker out and
see what this is really gonna cost.
Because even the easy, all you should have to do is still takes time.
And when you multiply that time against your rate, you go,
well, this is how much it is.
Because the numbers are the numbers.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
There's another interesting thing about this AI doing your initial
building, like, not even prototyping, but like, hey, we're gonna build an app
with ai, and it's like our prototype and then it's gonna be our app.
that like, you have no idea what, how it was built.
And you know, when you go to add a feature later, there's no, you don't
know that chat GPT is, or whoever, whatever you're using, that it's
gonna know how to add a feature even.
no.
Kurt: the, the, and here's me not knowing what I'm talking about.
Right.
Which I know is, is one of, I'm just, so I'm just gonna break
one of Matt's rules right now.
I'll say something about something I have no knowledge of.
somebody was just putting up on social last week about some tool that
verifies whether content is AI written or not, because you can look at the
code, like you copy the text and then you look at the code for the text.
And within the code for the text is like this repetitive,
alphanumeric sequence that chat GPT puts in so that it flags it as ai.
Right.
And so I always wondered how does Google know that that was ai?
Right?
Well, they know because there's some code in the text that's saying, Hey, this.
This seven digit or six digit code pops up in every third paragraph.
So we know this was AI derived and so you have to ask yourself if that were true,
because again, I'm not the authority.
I don't know if that's really true or not, but let's just assume that it is.
'cause it sure does make a lot of sense.
So if that was true, what would chat GPT be embedding into your plugins
or into the things that are going into your website and then you
don't really know what's in there?
Mm-hmm.
You don't know what ties they're gonna make.
You don't know if there's a feedback loop of data coming out of your
website for something like chat.
GT's whole mission is to add more learning sources to its feed.
Right?
And so it's like, how much trust do you wanna put in this thing?
I was at an event yesterday with young people and young people don't
have, I shouldn't say it like the way it's coming outta my face.
I should change the way I'm phrasing this.
young people don't seem to have any reference points for the
things that make us giddy, right?
But they also don't seem to have any knowledge about
what it is that we're doing.
And so that was a huge wake up call for me.
I was, I was hanging with a bunch of young people yesterday at a
high school, and I was in charge of doing three separate presentations.
Each was 20 minutes long.
And I was supposed to like convey what having an agency was like, which
aligns very well with this podcast.
And, and I didn't realize it at first.
And I don't know if I, I don't know if I wrote this to you or not in
the note, I didn't know how the students got assigned to the groups.
I, I just thought they randomly got selected.
'cause there was like 50 businesses locally that volunteered for this
day of sharing with these kids.
And so I ended up with three classrooms, 15 to 20 kids in each class.
So let's, you know, round the number up and say there's 60 people
I have access to for the day.
Right.
And so, they came in their 20 minute session was like, boom.
Like, like I'm Kurt.
This is what I've done.
You know, I've raced motorcycles, I've worked for Suzuki, I've worked for Ducati.
That gets their eyes going, right?
Like, oh, okay, what, what, what does this guy do?
Mm-hmm.
And I run my own agency.
And for like less than a thousand dollars, you could start an agency like, you know,
'cause WordPress runs 43% of the internet.
It's open source and blah, blah, blah.
So I have this presentation, right?
The first class I was like, show of hands, how many kids in here have
heard the word WordPress before?
And in the first class.
Nobody's hands went up.
And I was like, wow, WordPress runs 43% of the internet and nobody in this
room has ever heard the word before.
and I, and I thought, well, this is weird.
Maybe the class just isn't participating.
I asked some other questions and they all participated.
So it was like, it's not that they're afraid to participate.
They really don't know that not a single one of 'em ever heard the
term open source before, and they didn't know what open source meant.
So I ended up having to explain that and then of course, as you
can imagine, 20 minutes was up.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Right,
Kurt: right, right.
Yeah.
So I didn't get a lot of chance for a lot of feedback and stuff, uhhuh.
Now, what was cool about this though, is after that session, a couple of
kids came up and said, Hey, how can I get in touch with you after this?
Like, I'm interested in what you're talking about.
I said, okay, well that's, that's cool.
That's great.
That worked.
In the second session, I switched things up a little bit.
It and turned out two kids heard of WordPress before.
No one ever heard of open source, and I left more room for questions at the end,
and there were some good questions, but it was like, it was pretty interesting.
In the third session, I changed my delivery completely.
I inverted the order of my presentation, and so I started with, Hey, if I could
show you a business that you could start up for less than a thousand dollars.
And show you how to make six grand with it before summer.
Would that be interesting?
And they were like, yeah.
I said, great.
Stay tuned.
'cause we're gonna go through the rest of this and I'll get you that answer.
And then they paid attention.
But then one person in the room heard about WordPress and still
nobody knew what open source was.
And this, this was alarming to me because I, I assume students
would know more about the stuff.
But Toby, here's what I don't think I shared with you.
I asked my son who goes to the school, I said, Hey, how'd your talks go?
He said, oh, they went great.
I said, how did you know what classes to go to?
How did you know what groups to be?
And he goes, oh, we picked them.
And I said, what?
Hold on.
You picked who you wanted to listen to.
And he said, yeah, we, they gave us a list of everybody that was coming and we got
to pick the classes we wanted to go to.
And so I'm very optimistic because my classes were full.
Right.
My classes were full.
Yep.
And the kids picked the subject.
But the kids have no idea what WordPress is or what open source
is or how to even get started.
Right?
And so you and I are now running this podcast of whose WordPress agency
is it anyway, and I'm talking to an entire audience of young people that
have no idea what we do, which means, in terms of the Stephen Covey process
of always Train Your Replacement.
We haven't trained our replacements because they don't even know what we do.
Toby: Would, we might not know the answer to this, but if you said build a
website, would they know where to start?
Do they know any of the like, Squarespace, you know, would they,
Kurt: so they know the commercials for Wix and Squarespace, but they don't
really have any experience with it.
I started asking questions like, what does the school teach?
Because one of the kids that knew what WordPress was said
that Hutchinson Community College actually taught WordPress.
And I was like, so what did they teach about WordPress?
And they basically teach like, this is WordPress.
You can go to wordpress.com,
you can go to wordpress.org,
you can install WordPress and you can use it to build websites, sites
like mm-hmm.
End of 40, right?
Yeah.
And so I'm like, wow, you know, and this isn't a week when.
At the risk of changing the channel again, did you see the post from Matt
Mullenweg on X, where he was asking for, does anyone know a good marketing solution
for WordPress to get better known?
Oh, wow.
You know, and I was, and so he's getting a lot of.
He's getting a lot of the normal Matt Mullenweg feedback on X about that.
Yeah.
Right.
But the, that's a really great question for him to be
asking as the head word press.
Yeah.
Here we are exposing ourselves from an agency perspective who,
who propagates more websites.
Right?
Agencies, right?
Mm-hmm.
So it's a one to many call rather than a one to one call.
And then we have all these young people that don't even know what the product is.
Toby: Right.
It makes me wonder, like, I don't like.
How, if you, if they asked, like what percentage of our high school graduating
classes went into web development, I don't, it's probably a very low percent.
Right?
Like
Kurt: a lot of 'em.
So yeah, I asked some of these questions like, so what are they teaching here?
Well, they're teaching coding.
Mm-hmm.
Coding.
Okay.
What's coding like?
What kind of coding are you guys talking about?
Mm-hmm.
You know, is it PHP?
Are you in c plus plus?
Like what?
Like what, what are you guys doing here?
and then a lot of it comes down to these are basic languages to stair
step into something else later.
And most of the kids are interested in gaming, so that ends up talking
about like how to, no code and low code, these different gaming platforms.
You know, as if they're all gonna make a living someday with, eSports or something.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: But there, that leaves our whole segment of what, like you
and I do, like up in the air.
Toby: Yeah.
It, and it's the, the lack of any mention or any knowledge of, open source, it
seems like a fail of a civics education.
Like
Kurt: I didn't hear the term open source until I was like 28 years old.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: And so I don't know how old we should, we should have done
some research before the show.
I don't know how old the term is, right?
Mm-hmm.
But I didn't hear it until I was about 28 years old.
And when I first heard it, I was like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
What do you mean this stuff is free?
You know?
And I was like, trying to like figure out like, mm-hmm.
So what's, so what's the business model there?
Right?
Right.
How does that work?
And, and, and I was, and it was a confusing subject for me at that age.
now I understand things much, much better.
But still the idea that the schools aren't covering it all, like they're
not even touching the subject and they're leaving these kids with this
like, so the other thing was, have you ever seen the movie Rain Man?
Yeah, sure.
Mm-hmm.
How much is a Snickers bar?
I.
I don't remember that part.
Thousand dollars wasn't it?
Or 50,000?
It was.
Raymond was like, Snickers bar.
$50,000.
Okay.
And, this kid in the room said he wanted to start, he wanted to, he
wants to own, an automotive dealership.
He wants to own a car dealership.
Okay, great.
Like a new one.
And he goes, yeah.
You know.
Okay.
how much money does that take?
I ask him.
He goes.
Oh, about a hundred thousand dollars.
And I'm like, for one of the cars, you know, one of those new
trucks that you're gonna put on the lot is a hundred grand Uhhuh.
You know, I'm like, eh, it's more like $10 million.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you have to be liquid, you have to be 10 million.
You have to display on paper that you could get $10 million so that
you can leverage yourself to build a project of that size and magnitude.
And he was like, oh, I had no idea.
You know, and I'm thinking shame on the school system for
letting them get that far and.
The dream process without even understanding what, what's at play, right?
Like just in basics.
I asked a lot of kids what, you know, Hey, if you could make $60,000 a year,
do you think that would be good money?
And half the room was like, yeah, it'd be all right.
And I'm like, do you know what the average person makes the United States?
Do you know that you live in Hutchinson, Kansas, which is next to Wichita, Kansas?
What's the average earnings in Wichita?
What's the cost of living here compared to California or Portland or New York City?
And they were like, oh, I really don't know.
And I was like, you guys need to know this stuff.
'cause it's how you make your decisions.
Like for me, when I think about agency life as a WordPress professional, going
from the California economy to the Kansas economy changed our game completely.
'cause we lowered our overhead by 60%.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
One thing that's promising about the, the three classrooms full of
kids, it's the three classrooms full of kids who presumably.
We're interested in web development of some sort, is that they chose it, right?
Mm-hmm.
Kurt: And so I'm not, I really need to do more research 'cause I wanna
find out how did the school really present those talks to those kids?
Mm-hmm.
What was the buzzword that made 60 kids wanna sit in a room that I was hosting?
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: You know, what was the, 'cause they don't know who I am, you know?
Unless.
They're really progressive and did like, looked me up on the internet.
Kurt went on and on their phone and went, oh, this guy's got
80 pages of Google reference.
He must be famous.
you know, it, it's, I'm not sure how they picked the rooms.
Mm-hmm.
So I'd kind of like to know that.
But to your point, 60 kids signed up to hear about what we do for a living.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: That's exciting.
Toby: Yeah,
Kurt: that's really exciting.
The idea that they have no base knowledge in what we do is disappointing,
especially for people that.
Hm.
Take it classes at the high school.
but I don't even know if I fought the high school for that because who
approached the high school and said, what does your curriculum look like?
How come WordPress isn't included?
How do we get WordPress included in your curriculum?
And how do we show people how to leverage WordPress to make
money as an agency owner?
Because schools are really in the business of getting people ready
to go to more school, not mm-hmm.
Jump out of, jump out of the school cycle and start your
own business and make money.
Toby: Right.
Kurt: See, I've opened up a whole can of worms here, Toby.
Toby: Yeah.
And, one thing that struck me as interesting, so you were in
California, had an agency in California come to Hutchinson.
couldn't you have kept your California rate or did you keep your
California rates when you did that?
Kurt: Yeah, of course I did.
'cause our customers are from all over the globe.
Mm-hmm.
That's what I was trying to talk to the kids about.
I was like, 'cause I said, how many of you can't wait to get out of this
small town when you get outta school?
You know?
And they're all like, I'm getting outta here.
You know?
It was like one of those old Tom Cruise movies about
playing football in Pittsburgh.
Right.
I gotta get out of this town.
And I'm like, so why do you think you need to leave this town?
We have the fastest internet in the country and the lowest cost of living.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Right.
This is the
Kurt: perfect place to.
Put down the roots and grow an agency.
Yeah.
Grow digital
Toby: agency.
Kurt: you know, newsflash, I'm working with the city and with
an organization here in town to start an apprenticeship program
for kids that want to do an agency.
Right.
Like, like, but figure out like, how does the college have a, have a stake in that?
How does the city have a stake in that?
And the, the goal is if we could convince more young people to stay here.
Put down roots and grow a business.
It adds to the tax base and, and all those positive things that,
you know, a community, you know, any kind of civic thing needs.
Right.
so there's a lot going on in the background there.
So I loved doing the talk and I loved getting access to those
kids, but it was really interesting to see like, where are they at?
Mm-hmm.
Like their interest level is here, their base knowledge is here.
And their motivation is really somewhere in between.
Like what, what's the real motivation gauge for them to take what they learn
and actually take an, take action with it and become, you know, become the owner.
Right?
Because a lot of these kids are raised with employee attitudes,
not with owner attitudes.
Toby: Yeah.
I, I, I think, I have this hypothesis, It's probably borne out in some data, or
at least can be provable with existing data somewhere that, or disprove.
But like the idea is like if you come from a family of entrepreneurs,
you're gonna be an entrepreneur.
and if you come from a family of nine to fivers, you're probably gonna be a nine
to five or, and I wa like, when I hear like, like there's also, we could go a
number of directions with how would to train youth and what, you know, like.
There's probably different opinions, like I would say like yeah, train
'em to be entrepreneurs, like, yeah.
yeah.
And then add, add the context of, well, and then there's this other
thing called full-time, and you know, you can fall back to that if you need
to, but to fund your other thing.
Kurt: Well, I think, I think geofencing, the idea has a certain merit, right?
Because in California.
I, I would be hard pressed to tell somebody like, get outta school
and start a business in California.
It's not a friendly place to start a business just being real.
I mean, I lived it, so I can tell you firsthand, it's not a
friendly place to start a business.
You have to say yes to every single deal that comes across your desk and
you have to work your pants off to, to try and make the rent payment, the
$900 power payment, the, I mean, it's just, it's just huge to live there.
Whereas here.
Your point, like you could look at full-time or you could do this kind of
thing where you have ownership of it.
Right.
And it could grow organically and you could still make your, your
minimum required funding to eek out your existence while it grows.
That's interesting.
Toby: Like let's say you're an agency that's a year or two old and you're
struggling, maybe you're in the wrong location 'cause you could pack up and go
somewhere cheaper and make a go of it.
And the, the thing that I think like.
in hindsight, like, the, maybe, maybe the only quality that makes a
business go is, is did you make it?
Like, did you survive another year?
You did.
Great.
That's all you had to do.
Survive one more year.
And then you'll be, you know,
Kurt: you know how they, they would say things like, if you make it more than
three years, you know, your chances of success, you've made it more than
five years, your chances of success.
Mm-hmm.
And then I look at this, you know, my agency started in 2008, and while
I put a pause on it for corporate employment, I never fully shut it down.
It was always kind of in the background, had a couple of things going at a time,
you know, trying to stay fresh, trying to, and then when I got laid off in 2020.
Sure I looked for another job, but I also was like, I gotta ramp this thing up.
Like this thing has to create revenue quickly or we're gonna run outta
money and we are in California, so of course I had to ramp it up quicker.
We're gonna run outta money.
And what I found out was my ability to ramp something up and generate revenue was
a whole lot more positive than sending out resumes and hoping and praying because it
was at a period of time when there weren't a ton of jobs out there in my space.
So I was really glad I had the ability to ramp up and do the things that I do.
Toby: Yeah, I think about that a lot.
'cause I have some friends that are looking for jobs right now.
High, very talented one's a coder.
Yeah, one's marketer just, and they're like senior level type of people,
like in the organizations they, they've been in and I look at 'em
oftentimes, I'm like, just go freelance.
You're investing eight hours a day looking for jobs.
Just consult, go look for clients for eight hours a day, you'll do well.
Like trust me,
Kurt: people like you.
I tell people this all the time, like when people say, what does your agency do?
A lot of times I'll say, we help people launch their ideas.
We help people launch their messages so that everybody can see it.
You know?
And it sounds very simple when you say that, but.
Every time I see somebody like looking on LinkedIn, I think
to myself, oh my goodness.
With that skillset and that background, you're 52 years old with 35 years
of actionable experience, you should be a consultant for $300 an hour.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: Like you should not be trying to get the next job for $42 an hour.
Toby: Yeah.
Yeah.
Or, you know, or, or go sell a project.
Kurt: Yeah.
Yeah.
Or become somebody's, you know, seat fractional, CTO, fractional, CMO.
Mm-hmm.
Fractional, you know, all these other things.
Toby: I think like, what are some of the, the things that get in
people's way, let's call 'em, some of 'em are probably in their heads.
some are probably, most are in their heads, I'm guessing, at least if
you're in the United States, like, let's say you're somebody with that.
Experience.
What's getting in your way?
Kurt: Two things.
I hear security and benefits, and I always go straight to security.
Can't be the reason because you're looking now, so how secure was the last thing?
Toby: Right,
Kurt: so security's off the table.
You don't get to talk about security.
There's no security from corporate America any longer.
You don't.
Mm-hmm.
You don't get your desk and then stay there for 30 years.
It's, that doesn't happen anymore.
And so security's out the window.
The other thing is benefits, and I always, it's so weird, Toby.
I had a really cool job in Albuquerque running an automotive center.
And the benefits were costing us, and I'm guessing now 'cause it was a long
time ago, but let's say it was $865 a month to keep the family on the, mm-hmm.
On the benefits package, when I knew I was gonna leave that job.
We had a young daughter and I knew that my wife liked the pediatrician, and I
knew that if I was gonna leave this job, I had to keep that pediatrician, right?
Mm-hmm.
I had to keep some stability in the household, so I called the hospital
directly and I said, Hey, I'm gonna leave this job, which means I'm
gonna lose these benefits and I don't wanna pay for that cobra nonsense.
So, I need to know how much it would be if I wanted to self support seeing the same.
People.
And she said, well, what, you know, where do you work now?
What do you currently pay?
And then she goes, oh sweetie, you just need to go to our website,
which is blah blah blah.org.
And, and you'll see a list of our plans there.
You're probably gonna be a little upset when you see the plans.
She goes, but you qualify for those and, and select the plan
that you want and you'll be fine.
Toby, the plans were like 400 a month.
Toby: Uhhuh.
Kurt: My employer was making $450 a month off of me selling me medical insurance.
Yep.
Like, who knows if the employer was making it or that was some kind of weird rate.
But insurance is like this crazy thing.
Yeah.
Where the rates change based on your employment status.
Mm-hmm.
And a lot of times when you're employed, you're just getting ripped off anyway.
Toby: Yeah.
Well, the employer's selecting options.
Yeah.
and I only know this 'cause I, I bought insur, usually my wife has insurance
through her stuff, but this year she's like, my company isn't offering it.
And so I went out there and got it.
And it, one thing that was really interesting, so I bought it and
like the options are really weird.
It's hard to figure 'em out, but I ended up buying one that, it wasn't that
much more than the others, but it was like a little bit more, but it's like.
I, I went to my first therapy session and he's like, I think
you're gonna get this for free.
I'm like, what?
Like, no, I think it's free.
What?
And it's like, it has unlimited free therapy.
Like, I'm like, okay.
And like I'm paying out of pocket.
It's not.
That would probably never be provided by an employer.
It's too generous or something, but it's too generous or something.
Kurt: Well, that's the, the thing that I keep going back to when someone says,
when I go, you should be a consultant or You should run your own agency, or you
should, you know, why are you, why are you fighting so hard to sell your talent to
a boss when you could just run this thing and have some freedom that comes with it?
And they'll say, they'll, they'll go, well, it's the stability.
Well, stability doesn't count anymore.
It's the benefits.
That doesn't really count anymore either.
Like what is it that really keeps you from it?
And then it comes down to that imposter syndrome thing, right?
Where it's like, well, I just, I don't think I have the skills
to run my own entity, you know?
And it's, I got news for you.
Go out and create the revenue.
If you hate bookkeeping, hire a bookkeeper.
If you hate marketing, hire a marketer.
If you hate talking to customers, hire a va.
Like there's so many ways that you can incorporate yourself.
To, to really take advantage of something that, yeah, I, I think
I'm emotionally unemployable now.
Toby, just listen to me.
I'm
Toby: crazy.
Yeah, I know.
I'm listening.
I'm like, never, I would, nobody's gonna hire this guy.
Except, except for some reason on a weird freelancing basis, like I.
Like an agency basis, you know?
Yeah.
It's weird.
You're right.
Like, like could you get employ, maybe you, maybe you are unemployable,
but do you know how to sell projects that, you know, create a living?
Sure.
yeah.
And I wonder if that's it.
Like there's some like weird mental hurdle.
I've seen lots of friends go through this where they're like, I'm gonna
go for it and do the agency thing.
Or not even agency's probably too strong a word, but consulting,
and they can't figure it out.
And I'm always like, what's so hard about this?
Like, you gotta sell.
That's the whole job, basically.
a lot of people hate the selling
Kurt: part.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: But they don't realize, for instance, my meeting last week with a
local business wasn't me selling at all.
They had hired somebody to make them a one page website that.
Was grossly overcharged and doesn't work.
I mean, it literally doesn't work.
You click on things, they don't go anywhere.
I mean, it's just like, and when he called 'em and said, this
website's not working right.
The guy said, well, if you would've given me more money, it
would've been a better website.
And so, you know, I didn't have to sell anything.
This disgruntled client went to the Chamber of Commerce
and said, oh my goodness, I'm between a rock and a hard space.
I just paid this guy 2,500 bucks for a website.
That doesn't work.
I don't know what to do.
And they said, well, have you talked to Kurt?
Yeah.
Like, it's just because it's, the more you associate and network and meet people,
the more the work just comes to you.
Toby: Yeah.
And another story about, how easy it can be to sell.
Like selling is not always what you see in the movies.
Like, I got a call, let's say month and a half ago from a guy he called at like
7:30 AM I called him back at like 8:01 AM and turns out it's you know, he's
like, I need a website, da da da da.
And I'm talking to him and on the phone.
Yeah.
On that call without me really doing any pitching.
he, he bought, he gave me his credit card, took thousands of doll, you know, he paid
me thousands of dollars on that call.
Never met him before.
He's ready to pay, you know, like you just gotta like, be there
when they're ready, half the time.
Like, well, but you did the,
Kurt: the, the
Toby: thing
Kurt: that you did was you called him back.
Toby: Yeah, no, that's what he said.
I talked to him today.
He's like, I'm sure glad that you called me back.
Otherwise, who knows where I'd be.
Yeah.
Kurt: Because I talk to other customers all the time, and one of
the things that, so Ana Nomas was born outta this weird scenario, right?
And that's why we have the name we have.
But Ana Nomas, like, we, we get it done, we get it done, and
customers aren't used to it.
They're not used to like, oh, there was a date on the calendar and that
date's coming and the job's done.
Or You didn't ask me for more money.
Like, that's so weird.
Most, most every time we've contracted with someone before,
they've always come back and asked for more money, and it's like, no.
Like I did the needs assessment.
I knew what it was gonna cost to get it done, and I knew how long it would take.
Mm-hmm.
All I did was do what I said I would do.
Toby: Yeah.
But
Kurt: because I did what I said I would do, they referred me to three more people.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: At higher paying gigs.
Toby: Yeah.
You know what else I was thinking?
there's a fear, I was reading this today, like there's a, a mental blocker,
that applies here and it's like people are afraid to like, tell people that
they're freelancing or consulting.
Yeah.
Like let's say on your Facebook page you're like, I can't post that.
I, everybody else is posting baby photos and food photos or whatever.
Yeah.
and the, the gist of the article was like, no, post it.
Own it.
Just lean in.
You're, you're now looking for work.
Here's what you do.
Like, yeah, you're gonna lose some Facebook friends, but you know, so what?
If
Kurt: you run into somebody on the street at the grocery store who
tells you some horrific story about how they just had to hire a stranger
to do something that you do because they thought you worked somewhere
else and that you were unavailable.
Right, right.
And, and, and then they tell you the project's going horribly
and they're getting overcharged and it's behind schedule.
And in your mind, you're hearing all this and you're like.
Why didn't they hire me?
They didn't hire you because they didn't know you were available.
Right.
So shame on you.
Mm-hmm.
Shame on you.
They're having a horrible experience and you're not making any money.
Right.
And so it, it's, it's the worst scenario that could possibly happen.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
When people, people in town meet me at like a Sandhill Brewery where
Pippen Williamson owns that place.
Right.
So if anyone knows Pippen, shout out to Pippen.
I go down to Sand Hills and, and people say, oh, hey, are you on Facebook?
And they'll, they start looking.
They don't follow me on Facebook, and I just tell 'em straight up.
I go, I post a lot of content.
If you don't want to be my friend, that's okay.
Toby: That's
Kurt: okay, because I still post all my stuff on there,
Toby: Uhhuh, you know?
Yeah.
You know, what'd be fun?
as we close out here, we're about out of time.
let's hypothetically say we have a listener or two with a story.
About how they sold something.
Maybe it was easy, maybe it was hard.
I would love to hear that story.
Kurt: I would too.
Especially ones that get like, that just seem to go a, A pathway off.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: Right, right.
When you think so nothing's gonna happen, and all of a sudden, bam.
It happens.
Yeah.
It's usually the happiest thing in the world.
Yeah.
Before we get off the call.
What was one that surprised you?
One where you, like you entered a conversation and next thing
you know, you were like, where'd all this money come from?
Yeah.
Toby: okay, here's an example.
It happened recently.
I get a, a, a phone call from a, a client that probably pays me $300 a
year for hosting or, you know, whatever.
And they're like, I need a website.
I needed it done yesterday.
No, no, no.
What happened was, another person on their team called me month ago and
was like, yeah, we're thinking about building a website, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And I, so I, like, I sent them a contract, was like, here it is.
If you want it, let's do it.
A month and a half later, the owner calls me.
He is like, I don't know what happened there.
Where, where's the contract that I can sign?
So I said to him, he signed it, and they're like, you know that,
you know, I'm sure he paid me that day or the next day or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Kurt: that is good stuff.
Toby: Mm-hmm.
Kurt: I have a couple of books published and every now and
then doesn't happen often.
I wish it did.
Every now and then someone out of the blue will call and say, are you
the author that wrote this book?
And I'll say, yes.
And then they'll say, well, we wanna hire you for X, Y, and z.
And it comes outta nowhere.
Wow.
And I just, and then sometimes I say, okay, well, based on that short
conversation, just to be clear, you want this bullet, this bullet, this bullet,
this bullet, and then I've learned over time, I don't give them a price.
I say, my guess is you're not the person with the budget for this project.
I just wanna let you know that I can take care of all the bullets we
just discussed, but I need you to get back to me and let me know what
your budget is for that project.
And it's always more than I would ask for.
Toby: Interesting.
Kurt: Yep.
Yeah, that's great point.
That's become one of my sales tools.
It's like mm-hmm.
I'm not gonna give you the number.
I need to know what your budget is for this
Toby: uhhuh.
Kurt: and usually the work equals the budget.
Yeah.
Like, I'm not saying I get away, like making millions of dollars,
but it's, there's always something you didn't foresee, right?
Yeah.
There's something in the communication that doesn't come through.
So if you're thinking, oh, this is worth six grand, and they say,
well, we've got $12,000 for this.
Take the 12,000 because something's gonna happen as you roll that out
where they're gonna be like, oh, we thought this was gonna be automated.
And you're like, oh, crap.
Also, it's run, run the chat GPT and write a plug for that.
Toby: I should, I should I?
You, I would probably add, semi begrudgingly, take the 12,000.
Ah, I guess I can do it for that for you, because you're such a good client.
Kurt: I always go like this.
Hold on.
I gotta see if I can pull it off.
Ready.
Toby: That's great.
Kurt: Well, the good news is, you know, for 12,000, I'm pretty sure we can
check off all of those bullet points on your, on your needs assessment.
Toby: Love it.
And on that note, this has been an episode of whose WordPress agency is this Anyway.
With, Kurt Vanna.
I'm Toby Kres.
We'll talk to you next week.
Have a good one.