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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 an exciting episode of the agency action show with your stars Kurt Von Ahnen and myself, Toby Cryns Kurt, let's say you had to do all over again. let's say you had to rebuild your agency from scratch today. what would you refuse to sell?
Kurt von Ahnen (00:15)
I feel like this is the antithesis of what we discussed the last time we met. Last time we were like, these are the things I would do. And now it's like, wow, if I didn't have to do some things, what would I what would I pull the the rug out from under? I'm gonna tell you, I've really grown to dislike the whole idea of doing a site audit to sell a job.
Like so I I don't know that I would ever get involved again in site audits or even quoting a rebuild for a website. Like I think a new website, like a new website is is I should say I wouldn't sell like a remodeling job. You know, you get into someone else's playground and start messing around and find out, well, I didn't realize they had, you know, these custom fields or or these these, you know, custom CSS blocks or any it it's I think
What I wouldn't do is play in other people's gardens. I would just do fresh builds and no more sales off of site auditing.
Toby Cryns (01:09)
Interesting. I actually think I might do the opposite, honestly. but the one thing like in terms of not selling, there's this idea of like random one-off chaos. The idea that like someone comes in and I don't provide them with a firm procedure and process and firm boundaries. And we still struggle with this, and we're always trying to like like I'm pushing my team continually. Like, how can we better define these boundaries so we don't get stuck in this thing again? And it it seems to like
just be a
moving target in some ways, but I think also we're tightening it up every time we do it. and so I think like that would be, especially given what I know now, I don't think it would be possible to do this when I started because I didn't have the experience. But now that I have the experience and the knowledge, I would come in with a much more firm process and probably sell less things that, you know, my offering when I started would probably be very specific. And I'd say here's the tools I use, here's our process.
Would you like to hire us still? You know, and you know, I actually the the process and the tools would be a selling point. Yeah, it wouldn't it wouldn't be like a request, it'd be like you need us for for our process and our tools.
Kurt von Ahnen (02:12)
Yeah, it's such an interesting question because on one hand, you and I have had very distinct conversations about we are sales companies, like we need to sell. Like, so, you know, we're not about saying no, we're about trying to find a way to say yes. But then there's certain boundaries. And like for me, I found that like as an agency, when we take on reconditioning someone's previously existing website.
I have found that there's usually lots of pitfalls that we fall into. But then maybe, maybe re-examining that is the answer, right? Because now I'm trying now I'm trying to put my Toby eyes on. My Toby eyes would be like, hey, just tell the customer right up front there's going to be hidden pitfalls in this thing. And let's let's just let let's plan on scaling this this project out an extra ten or fifteen thousand dollars. And if you've got the budget to handle that kind of stress, we've got the we've got the energy to put into it.
Maybe that was maybe that's my downfall. Maybe I maybe I was trying to sell to exacting and not account for the pitfalls that would happen in those projects. And so I could definitely see where maybe there's not a lot of things I would say no to. For for instance, a lot of us, a lot of people are gonna listen to this. At least I think they're gonna listen to this. Let's hope a lot of people listen, share, follow, all that thing, right? Subscribe. But they're gonna say, I don't want to do cheap work
anymore.
I don't want to do the cheap stuff. And I I have a sneaky suspicion that you're like, I'll sell cheap stuff.
Toby Cryns (03:34)
What
I think like the cheap stuff if it's a gateway to more better stuff, like better relationships, I'm open to it
Kurt von Ahnen (03:41)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (03:41)
with the current client. Like I know a lot of agencies just say no to the cheap stuff, even for existing long term clients. And if we have a process for it, like I'm totally open to doing the cheap stuff. And I think where
Kurt von Ahnen (03:52)
Yeah, let's
let's break the ice and then upsell something down road.
Toby Cryns (03:55)
Yeah, and I think where I've been burned in the past is like where I don't have a process for something and I sell it for too cheap, and then I feel like, this is blown up and I didn't like have a process that like they could jam into for the cheap stuff. and you know some of the other things we have in our spreadsheet that the vis users can't see or that our listeners can't see, like site rebuilds, hosting, site audits, copywriting, social media services, user support.
I think like for me, these are all things that reputable agencies can sell, but it's you could pick one of these and have a very successful career, even today with AI and all that. Like you gotta figure it out, of course. But I I do think there's value when I think of niching down, I think of it more like in product niching down, not like audience niching down.
Kurt von Ahnen (04:39)
Yeah. It's so interesting that you mentioned the the user support. We just launched a project this week, and our agency provides the user support for this client because they pay for it. And so it's a launch, and immediately somebody tried to sign up for the lead magnet. everything in the website worked. The the forms were sent, the the site tour was sent, how to log into the course that was the lead magnet, all that was sent.
And we have proof that it was sent through the SMTP tool. but the customer couldn't find it. It's in the spam box. It's it's somewhere, right? It went somewhere other than the inbox. And so our team jumped in, you know, and took a screen share video, showed that everything worked, showed that they were actually the automation work they were enrolled in the course. We answered the customer.
Very politely with like, hey, sorry, you're having a problem. You know, I'm part of the team. I'd love to get you. Here's here's a video on how to use the website. Here's how you get to the course. I've already confirmed that the automation worked and you're enrolled in the course. I gotta do is change your password and log in. Boom. So they're handled. But then we sent, you know, confirmation that everything's working and that everything that the agency built is working as it should, and sent that to the customer. And I don't think we'll ever have a problem getting that invoice paid moving forward, right?
Like it launched this week. Here's how we took care of your customer. Here's how we prove the website's doing what it's supposed to do. Boom. Everything's justified. And we could send that invoice for the next five years. And I don't think that it's ever gonna get paid late.
And it's just easy money.
Toby Cryns (06:04)
So one question,
one question I have about that is, and this is another thing that we could potentially put on the removing from the you know the thing we're we're not gonna sell this anymore, and that's you as the secret sauce or me as a secret sauce or somebody
Kurt von Ahnen (06:17)
Mm.
Toby Cryns (06:17)
who owns the company as a secret sauce. So my question is, how much of that user support process were you deeply involved in, whether it's creating after the sale, basically is what I'm thinking. Like after the sale, how much input did you have in the product that you're delivering?
Kurt von Ahnen (06:30)
So I
have team members that I pass these support duties to. So everybody, everybody that is a is a player on the team gets one of these packages that they manage. So they get the notifications, the responses, and all of that. That said, I'm still the secret sauce on the first week of a launch every time. Just because I need to see it firsthand. I want to make sure I'm I'm
integrated in the process and I'm fully knowledgeable in case there's some kind of customer follow-up meeting that has to happen, something goes wrong. And I realize that's wrong. Like I realize I probably shouldn't be that guy. I probably should have a really good number two or a really good number three on the team that fills my space in in that kind of a role because it's very hands-on and I shouldn't be hands-on. I should be very hands-off. I should be
I should be running more sales meetings and generating more revenue rather than following up on a on a user support email. But I feel like I'm really driven to be involved in that first week of a launch.
Toby Cryns (07:27)
Here's a question. This builds on what we talked about last week. And so if you're listening now, go back last week and you can hear all about meeting agendas. And this is directly related to that. So this is an alternate reality where you you have a big hand in launching the product. You sold it, you kind of lay out the path for like how it's going to be delivered. You hand it off to your team. There are agencies out there, I know them, I know the founders, and they would say, let's
let the chaos happen. I'm gonna put it on my team, these this person or two or hey, you're in charge of the count. Like it's just one more responsibility. I I don't know. And you know, you're you as an owner have to be okay with that discomfort that you're gonna feel. And the idea in related to meetings agendas, like the EOS agenda, for example, that we talked about last week, has a space for that feedback for you to hear the issues and
Kurt von Ahnen (08:15)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (08:16)
and so the the question, you know, you said I know that's wrong and that
made me think because I'm not saying I I wasn't putting a value judgment on it for others or anyone really, but like what you said you did, you said that was wrong for you that came out, you know, I think I heard you right. And so it, you know, I just wanted to point out like there's a reality where a founder has to be you know, in order to to take extract themselves there, they have to be comfortable with the chaos and disorder that will happen
without them.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:42)
Yeah.
There's there's a John Maxwell principle that says if you can replace yourself with somebody that does something eighty percent as good as you do it, you need to replace yourself with that person, like bar none. Like like you realize they're not gonna be exactly like you, but if they can do it 80% as good as you can, you need to take yourself out of the process. And the last few, you know, larger enterprise level deals that we've rolled through Manana Nomas.
I have I have recognized going through it. Like I'll and it's always like I'll complete something, I'll do something, and then I'll go, why did I do that? Like I should have delegated that. You know, I should have taken that email and forwarded it to a team member. I should have, you know, added it to we have a project management software. So I sh I should have delegated that task or assigned that task in that management software. And instead it's almost like I became the the the
the one minute manager, right? Well, if I could do it quickly, I'll just knock it out. Well, I end up just knocking out a lot of things. And I should be focused on the funnel, new contacts, new sales, marketing, networking, you know, and to be clear, networking backwards, like with existing customers. You know, are are you still happy? Is everything great? Who do you know that we should know? You know, and try and grow through referral that way too, which if you're busy doing tasks, you're not doing that.
Toby Cryns (10:00)
Yeah, even those one minute tasks, like that one minute you could spend and it's never one minute by the way, fifteen minutes
Kurt von Ahnen (10:05)
It's never a minute.
Toby Cryns (10:07)
for that fifteen minutes or thirty minutes could have you know, imagine the sales opportunities you could have generated just through like or the relationship building and the value of
Kurt von Ahnen (10:15)
This segues perfectly into our next question though, and that is is your agency, so this is like to the people that are listening, right? Like, share, follow. is your agency making decisions based on what's profitable or based on what you really enjoy doing? And that's that's a struggle.
Toby Cryns (10:31)
Yeah. I think it's a common struggle. I was conversing with someone today who owns like a number of very successful businesses. And he was telling me, like, I'm gonna hire a a a web developer or a developer to manage one of my apps. And I asked him straight out, I was like, Are you doing this so you cause you hate your business, basically? Like he was like, I don't know, maybe. and I think this is a problem that
It's like I experienced it too. It it's a struggle. And it goes back to what kind of like earlier what we were talking about. There's like this point where you have to delegate. And at the point you're delegating, do you even like yourself? Do you like your work? Do you like your job? And I think people get stuck there sometimes. And I'm I'm I deal with that question regularly in myself and in my heart. I'm trying to figure out like what is it that I need to be doing to live a happier life?
Kurt von Ahnen (11:19)
I know that I have issues because I will see my wife load the dishwasher and not be satisfied. Like, like I know we can load that dishwasher more efficiently. Like it's I know that I have issues in this space. And so, like when I said I like to run things for the first week, it's like I w I know the I know the voice, I know the character that I want to come through, that I want to be portrayed in that first support ticket. You know, I know.
What I want to convey to the client to show them that the website works and all the hard work we did and the design we did over the last four months was correct. and I struggle with giving that over to somebody else. And then I have to ask, is it because I'm obligated to, or do I enjoy it? And that's the that's the the crux of it, Toby. I enjoy it. Like I enjoy making the screen share videos and showing off the product and hey, look, we did this and it works.
Like those are great win celebration moments, and I really enjoy it. But to your point, in that question, does that drive profitability? And and I I'm on the fence about whether it does or doesn't. I think it makes customers really happy, and that could net referrals and help grow business in that way. But in the moment, does that activity generate profit? And I'd have to say it does not.
Toby Cryns (12:30)
Right, because you've already sold it. And you should be
Kurt von Ahnen (12:32)
I've already sold it.
Toby Cryns (12:33)
like you can make way more money selling the next thing to that happy customer than doing the actual work. And I think there's this thing that this is the hard part probably of what we're talking about. When we talk about delegating, it seems easy. Like you can make a task list, but to truly delegate, you have to be very comfortable letting the other person do it their way. And you cannot like
jump in when they ask for support. This is my experience anyway. This is what I try to do. They're like, Toby, what should I do here? I always try to like, this is my this is the best version of me.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:03)
What should you do there?
Toby Cryns (13:04)
Yeah, I don't know. What should you do there? that sounds good. Go do that. Even though everything in my brains tell me that's a horrible idea. Don't do that. But the crazy thing is is that a lot of times the thing that I thought was not a great idea works fine.
And maybe it's, you know, like and but it's very uncomfortable to let them do that thing. and I think it's it you know, if we were to like judge like net positives on the business, it's probab I mean, it's almost definitely a net positive for the Mighty Mo to, you know, let people do things their own way, let our team create like so I don't get deeply involved in process anymore. Like I put that off to our project or our operations person. You know, had a great conversation with our sales guy today.
Where he was like, well, and this is an ongoing conversation where I'm like, I need to get out of being a blocker on stuff. And he's like, How about this? You don't talk to me at all. I'll just do the sales. I'm like, sounds great. How can we, what do you need to make that happen? And he just kind of outlined it to me. I'm like, okay, let's do it. and I know like it's not like I'm not fully comfortable with the risk, but I'm 80% comfortable with that risk. and and he, the sales guy has kind of
communicated that he is aware of the risks and that's probably all I can ask for anyone from anyone.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:16)
Yeah. Yeah. That is super interesting. Now, when when we're talking about, you know, is it profitable or do we enjoy doing it or any of that kind of takes you back to the root question, right? Like when you're trying to optimize your business for growth, Toby, I know that we talk about revenue a lot, but is it like growth? Is it profit? And I think a lot of people get those confused because they're different. Growth, profit, or
Peace of mind, mental health, mental stability. Like I'm at a phase of life right now where I'm all about peace of mind. Like I need enough revenue that like, you know, the weight's off my shoulders, but I don't overpack the schedule. I make sure I got time to do things. I I want to relax. I want to go mow the lawn at two o'clock in the afternoon. Like I don't want to be stressed out about stuff. So I'm all about peace of mind right now.
Toby Cryns (15:01)
Yeah, I think for me it's been really hard to define peace of mind. Well, frankly, it's been hard to define growth and profit as well. Like really put some firm boundaries
Kurt von Ahnen (15:09)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (15:09)
around it. and like same with happiness. To me, I go, I don't know the last time I felt happy. Like probably I was twenty years old or something, twenty three years old, really. Like not to say I haven't had moments of great joy and like I have a passion for things, but happiness, I go.
To me, ha and I don't know that this is true, but in my head I tell myself like the story I tell myself is that happiness is a lack of responsibility. Like there's something if I can just get a lack of responsibility, like a lack of like people depending on me, then I'll be happy. But I know deep in my experiences that that's probably not true, 'cause I every time I think I've solved the equation, it's n hasn't been true.
Kurt von Ahnen (15:50)
Yeah. It's a real tough one. It it it's trying to figure out like so a lot of people are in the freelancer space and then they're like, I struggle with calling myself a freelancer or an agency, right? Okay, well, you know, then they say, Well, I'm gonna start adding team members, then I'm gonna you start with contractors. And that's always super hard because let's say you sell a job for ten thousand dollars, but now you gotta pay a subcontractor six thousand dollars to execute the ten thousand dollar job.
Right. And then you go, well, man, I'm only going to keep $4,000. Well, four grand to do a couple of Zoom meetings and track some things on email. Is that really a bad profit margin for you? Like, like you have to start think, but it's people inherently don't have the ability to pull themselves out of equations like that. And and so they struggle with, well, if I sold all this money, I really could have just done the work and kept it all. Well, you could have.
But then where would the room for growth come from? And then so that comes into you know cash flow versus profit versus margins versus all the there's all these verticals on a spreadsheet to look at. and it's almost like having a cost of goods, you know, if you're if you're a real retail business, right? What were my cost of goods? Right. So what is the labor? What is the software? What are the subscriptions? What are the and if you're not careful, the the profit squeaks away and then
You lose the peace of mind as well as the profit.
Toby Cryns (17:08)
Yeah. I think that it's very difficult to appreciate. so with growth, the math changes in ways you can't appreciate until you're there and you're like, holy cow. And this is a probably a problem lots of people get into where they get stuck. They hit the ceiling of, hey, I I want to hire a developer or someone to help my team, a marketer. But now, like to your point, now I have to sell. So let's say you're only making 40%. That means you have to
sell
Two and a half times more what you were selling to just to have the same amount of money. And I think like it's really hard. And this is where that you go, do I want to be selling all day long? Does that sound interesting? You know, go for it. But and you might know until not know until you try it too. And but then you go, like, what am I after? That's more chaos in a way. Maybe it's more chaos,
Kurt von Ahnen (17:53)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (17:54)
maybe not. But like the potentially a lot more chaos to to
change your business in that way. Cause it's really you have to change your whole way of thinking, way of operating. you don't have to, by the way. I say you have to, but you don't have to. I know a guy who does it. He's pissed every day about all the people he hired and like, you know, like he doesn't like delegating. He runs it, you know, he's just you can just he's just angry all the time. And you so you don't have to. You can still operate the same way and just complain all the time about how about everything. Because everything changes. That's the thing that's hard to appreciate is when you start hiring people,
Everything needs to change in terms of how you're operating.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:28)
I used to have an office at the South Valley Economic Development Center in Albuquerque. And the big phrase then for people would they would help people start new companies, you know, they'd be like, Well, this person's realistically based on their business plan, they're building themselves a job. Like they would say that all the time, right? This guy's just building himself a job. He's not building, you know, he's not building something that's duplicable that's gonna grow a team and hire people and create jobs. And of course, it's the economic development center. So they really wanted to focus on.
Companies that were building jobs for other people. but we run into a lot of people in our circles, Toby, that quite honestly, if they added to their team, they would bankrupt themselves personally, even if the business was doing great. Like they just don't have the ability to sell at a level that creates profitability that pays everybody else and still pays themselves well. And so I I've had people just recently, and and maybe this leads us to a segue of our next thing.
We price things certain ways because we're taking care of a whole business, not just a freelance economy. And so I personally had a hosting client that asked me for some services. I quoted it to them, and then they went and found a cheaper source somewhere else. I'm not mad that they found the cheaper source somewhere else. It's just a real struggle to keep those boundaries in place when the emergency support requests start coming in because that cheaper source can't perform at the level the client's gotten used to.
Toby Cryns (19:48)
Yeah, and I think you gotta be ready to let go of some of these things. Like it could be that hosting has become such a commodity that it's gonna be hard to make it worthwhile at at the scale that for the example, the scale we are doing, which isn't a ton, you know, it's not it's our hosting stuff, it it on a feature basis, it's way better than anything you can buy for the money. but I don't know that like the sales points are in the right place or make sense a lot of times, you know, where you have
a hosting company that can do X, Y, and Z. And that might be enough and it's done at a rate that makes sense. And but I think like part of the problem that we're talking about is knowing what to stop doing. what do you think is one thing that every successful agency stops doing?
Kurt von Ahnen (20:30)
That's a really tough question. What's the one thing that every successful agency stops doing? I almost want to say, and this is gonna sound crazy, but it's like they're not advertising anymore. They're not actively advertising or promoting or buying Facebook ads or or you know Google ads. They've got enough, they've got enough foundational work within their circle that there's
There's constantly su a referral or some kind of growth markets coming to them. They're more like inbound instead of outbound.
It's probably
Toby Cryns (21:01)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:01)
a really good marker for whether you're successful or not.
Toby Cryns (21:04)
It's potentially one, but I could also you know, this is the problem with ever having everybody in this question that there's a successful agency that buys ads, buys a billboard. You know, Target still buys billboards, are they or you know, like Walmart has a billboard. Are they a successful company? Like, it's hard to pick out one thing. But I was thinking too, like, similarly, like, or different but like here's something that I think maybe most successful founders do is they lose the ego. And at some point they focus on like
key performance indicators and things that actually move the needle and and maybe to the extent that their ego's involved, it's to serve the marketing effort, you know, like they kinda they're like, Fine, I'll talk about that dumb thing again and everyone's gonna laugh at me back at the club, but at least I'm gonna sell a move a million more widgets. Like
Kurt von Ahnen (21:49)
no, it's pretty interesting. What are the let's talk about the work that is coming in. How are you seeing your like request for proposals and quotes and stuff coming in?
Toby Cryns (21:58)
Been really interesting, Kurt, because we've noticed recently we're getting a lot of well, the same amount of RFPs perhaps, but when we respond to them, the responses are clearly AI responses. And so like we respond like wholeheartedly with our whole whole self whole human self forward, invest a ton of time. We're like answering all the questions, how we've always done it. And we get it questions back, we're like,
You have no business asking these questions. Like we know the people we're talking to are like, you have no idea what you're even asking. Like one was like, Do you, you know, do you offer it was some advanced level of hosting security? And we're like, yeah, but why on earth would you want that? Like stuff like that. And so we respond and we try to like again. And so like what I think we're heading towards is like all this RFP stuff is gonna be AI, but it comes to us as AI.
We're gonna r have our AI engine respond. It'll come back, respond. Like we're at the point that we've kinda like talked about but haven't seen where computers are now talking to computers, doing all the business of communication.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:58)
Your your responses are gonna start out with that was very insightful and you're right to ask that.
Toby Cryns (23:03)
Exactly.
Yeah. Exactly. And they won't read it. They're just gonna copy and paste and
Kurt von Ahnen (23:09)
From from an e-learning perspective, we get a lot of requests to to kind of play in the game. And to your point, i as soon as I open the email, I go, Well, this is this whole thing is AI. They just sent me an encyclopedia of bullet points with these are the needs that your needs, what's your use case? You don't even know what what you don't even know what this stuff is. And so a lot of times because we answer with our whole human selves on these things.
A lot of times I've written back and said, hey, I've, you know, I've taken a cursory overview of your request for quote. this appears to be AI generated and not specific to your project. if you could let me know specifically, you know, what you're looking to do or jump on a Zoom call and have a conversation, I'd be more than willing to help you iron this down or get, you know, get to some kind of point of conversation. But it's it I don't even I don't even want to play the game anymore with trying to answer these things because
If I put in the time to answer an encyclopedia of questions, I'm not even gonna get the job because now they think they need something that's not even remotely feasible.
Toby Cryns (24:10)
What if there's a middle ground where you say, hey, this seems like an AI response. I'm gonna reply with our AI response below, but if you'd like to have a real conversation, here's my zoom link or whatever.
Kurt von Ahnen (24:20)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (24:21)
It's
Kurt von Ahnen (24:21)
It's it's sometimes sometimes the AI request is almost on the mark. Sometimes it's reasonable, right? Where where maybe they had an idea of what they wanted to do and AI gave them a reasonable rewrite or something. Like I could tell, right? Like, you've you've actually done some research. But a lot of times the people, well, at the enterprise level, the people shopping for a an learning management system aren't the same people that are going to be using or managing the learning management system. They're just
part of an IT division in charge of finding a vendor to do something. And so they just ask the most inane, silly stuff that AI directs them to ask. And and when that happens, I know I've got the wrong person. I've got someone that can't make a an educated decision.
Toby Cryns (25:04)
But haven't RFP response RFP processes, haven't they always been just horrible? Like people always asking for crazy stuff that they don't need. And that their brother-in-law said, Hey, you should add this to that. Did you ask them about this thing? You know, I I can't tell you how many RFPs we got. And at some point we stopped responding until we got a sales guy. Then he's I'll take them. He's like an expert at responding. And like it just seemed like they were asking for stuff. And what we found, and this is what my sales guy taught me, is like
Yeah, they send this stuff and you get through the first layer of administrator administration. But the goal you need to get on a call to really pitch it. Like the and you're not gonna pitch what the RFP is asking for. And he he taught me that. And I was like,
Kurt von Ahnen (25:45)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (25:46)
that's interesting.
Kurt von Ahnen (25:47)
Yeah. It's there was a a a story that I was told in high school and who knows if it's true or not, but it was like you have to understand when you're negotiating, you have to understand the details of what you're negotiating. So the government had asked for to have a road built to some Department of Defense thing. And they said they wanted the, you know, they wanted to have so much asphalt that led to this facility. And so a bunch of companies bid on like making a real road and some other dude
Like a company said, asphalt, that's just crushed rock. We can deliver crushed rock. Easy, that's cheap. And so they bid on the job and they won the job. And then they laid out all that crushed rock. And and the government was like, No, no, no, we need a road. These are like these are trucks. Like this it needs a real road. And they That's not what the bid was for.
That's not Yeah.
Toby Cryns (26:31)
Right. This is what your RFP said. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:34)
Yeah, we we answered the bid. We got the job. The job is done. You know?
Toby Cryns (26:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:39)
Now if you want a road, we we could redo it.
Toby Cryns (26:42)
You just asked for asphalt.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:44)
Yeah.
Yeah. So it it's that way in the web space. It's like people come to us and they ask us for these crazy, strange things. And and like I said, sometimes when it's just AI generated and I know I'm on some mass mail somewhere, I just don't even want to play. And that takes us back to the first part of the conversation. If I wasn't busy doing those, you know, one minute manager tasks, maybe I would have the energy to put into those RFPs and get through the first level of stuff and grow and and make those sales.
But at this stage of the game I'm just like, I don't even want to deal with this. This person's you know whoever's in charge of this is an idiot and I don't wanna deal with them anyway.
Toby Cryns (27:16)
Yeah, and do think potentially for a lot of people that that would be a lot of small like solopreneurs who want to grow or small agencies, like that's a I do think that's a ceiling that's gonna be hard to break through. That's been my experience. Like the the deeper I am, the shorter distance I can travel with the business, I think.
Kurt von Ahnen (27:36)
That was very philosophical. It's a shame it's so early in the show. That would have been a great way to end it.
Toby Cryns (27:40)
Let me ask you something, Kurt. change in topics, but also it's I think it's related. tell me about the this question about cheap client outsourcing cheap talent for like a hosting client. Tell me about this. What happened? What where's this coming from?
Kurt von Ahnen (27:53)
Well, we we we started to get into it, but I didn't really drive too hard on it. This comes down to like to your point, what is the depth that we've sold? So I explained earlier in the call on a show. We have some hosting clients where we provide user support, right? course curriculum support, like all these things, in addition to the hosting. Makes sense. We have some that are on some preexisting grandfather cheaper plan where they can just, you know, they can host their website with us because we built the website.
And then we've been working with a customer for a few years now. And and he's a super nice person. I'm not I don't berate them. I'm not trying to give them a hard time, but they wanted some other services. And I said, Sure, we can do that. And and I bid for it. And I bid very f favorably. Like took what you and I would normally charge and probably cut it in half, right? I said, you're a pre existing customer, I could do it for this much. Just get you done, you know. that's that's a lot of money. Okay, well
If you feel that way, I'm sorry, but that's that's the best I'm gonna be able to do. You know, shop around, do what you can. And they hired somebody who is based on what I've seen, based on the responses, based on the questions I've been forwarded from the client, this person is not a professional. This group or whoever she's hired, they're hobbyists at best. Like they're a marketing company that doesn't know what SendGrid is. Well, if you're a marketing company and you don't know what SendGrid does, you're not a marketing company. Like that, just in my mind.
they've built forms on the website that don't go anywhere, that don't do anything. And then she sends me an emergency request that says, Well, the site's not structured properly. They told me the site's not structured properly, and these forms don't even work. And I'm like, Well, they didn't use the form tool that's on the website. How did they build these forms? I'm I'm just pointing out the obvious.
And we could jump in and fix things. We could jump in and say, yeah, that's because this, that, and the other thing. Let me fix this for you. Or let me let me point the SMTP to that. Or let's move. But I'm not. Like we're just done. I've said, hey, there's no obstacle. If you we can create a full backup of the website, you can migrate this thing. You can do whatever you want with it. It's your website. You can do whatever you want with it. But we quoted it. You hired somebody else, and this is the result of your decision.
Toby Cryns (29:56)
And I think we've all run into that, anyone who's been in the game a while. And I think what's important, and this is what we're trying to do better at the Mighty Mo. And really, I like I'm deep diving in this this week. And the idea is like for those I'd call that maybe not an edge case, but like how do we put a boundary? What is the right boundary for that type of thing? Somebody who's like, I have emergence, maybe they're like, I have an emergency website support need. And emergency can vary, but we have some product.
That we can send them to a page and say, look, let me let's get on a call. I'll share our options. There's ad hoc, maybe you fit in that. There's quarterly maintenance, hosting support, just you know, monthly maintenance, there's emergency support. And like, so part of what we're trying to do now to kind of address this sort of thing is like, let's put everyone in a product bucket that is clearly outlined, that we already have processes for. We're already doing the work, but like, how do we have those conversations in a way that like
That person feels like at least they know the options really well and that we're not just like ripping them off or just saying, This is what we charge everyone.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:54)
Yeah. Yeah, it was it was interesting because I was like, you're not I said you have hosting support, but you don't have website support. And websites don't come with unlimited warranties, especially when you have a third party come in and alter things. So we can fix it, but you would have to pay us. So do you want us to quote, do you want us to quote repairing the damage that's done? Do you wanna like how do you want to proceed next? Or are your feelings hurt and do you want to move your website? Because you could do that too.
Toby Cryns (31:20)
I really like this idea of the unlimited warranty. And like I'm like, hmm, maybe we should sell that. And what does that mean? It means we host it, we do all the edits, but you get an unlimited warranty. Like we will if something breaks you know, like that's the scenario. I kinda like that as a product offering.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:36)
Well, and that's completely scalable, which is interesting when you think about like if you were to say, yeah, we're we're gonna offer an unlimited warranty, we take care of all the all the maintenance, all the updates, all the thing. just send us your content, we make it happen. I mean, that's four, five, eight, ten thousand dollars a month. Just depends on the scale of the product project you're working on.
Toby Cryns (31:55)
Mm-hmm. Very interesting.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:57)
I told you in the e learning space we have user support
Toby Cryns (31:58)
But
Kurt von Ahnen (32:00)
we provide and that's that's a good source of income.
Toby Cryns (32:02)
Kind of support? User support? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (32:03)
User support. So we create ticketed
support in the websites and then the students can fill in ticketed support. we give twelve to twenty four hour responses guaranteed and
Toby Cryns (32:14)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (32:15)
thousands of dollars a month just to take that weight off the customer shoulder.
Toby Cryns (32:18)
Yeah, I mean that's pretty cool too. Like and if I were like again good like if I were starting a business, I would consider the e learning space for like that sort of reason. That there's likely gonna be way more requests for support, whether it's from the founder or from the the clients or from the end users. Like I see that as a bonus similar to e-commerce. Like I've s wrestled with the Mighty Mom. I'm like, maybe we should just do e-commerce support. And like, cause e-commerce is hard, it's valuable, like you don't want some
run of the middle company doing it, you want somebody who knows what they're doing if it's impacting your your business income.
Kurt von Ahnen (32:52)
That's
so this takes us back to there's a difference between a hobbyist and a professional. I just had to do support for a client in an e-commerce situation. It's LMS related too. But they had Lifter LMS, the Lifter LMS payment gateway through Stripe activated. They also had the Stripe payment gateway activated through WooCommerce. And then it had worked for a while, right? But then they had had a a gap where two orders didn't go through in WooCommerce. And then
They did this AI deep dive on their own and came up like, we need to know specifics about our hosting and the data and the website and the logs. And I'm like, where are all these questions coming from? What are you really having a problem with? Right? Well, we got these two orders that didn't go through.
Toby Cryns (33:30)
Yeah. Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:34)
Okay, well, let's take a quick look. well, you've got two payment gateways activated. If you sign into your Stripe account right now, I bet you're gonna see where the website didn't even send the request to process the order.
Because your webhooks were cancelled out by one another.
Toby Cryns (33:47)
Yeah, and this is where niching down where I where I think where I think like it'd be cool to be in like for the Mighty Mo is like, let's say we only did e-commerce and we only did WooCommerce is something we're actually considering. And like, and we do unlimited warranties. So when those requests come in, we're like, we built the system, we understand the tooling, we can get you a quick answer. Maybe we have live to support 24-7, but it's it would be exciting to build a business around a smaller niche like that. Cause it
In some ways it's more complex, but in some ways it's simpler. And it's really interesting. I think actually the people who talk about we are only service air conditioning companies or like these exist, like like these companies like we only do web development for plumbers. That's a real
Kurt von Ahnen (34:27)
Lawn care.
Toby Cryns (34:28)
thing, a real thing that people do. And or we only do advertising for roofers, like it's a thing. Like there are whole businesses that are built on that type of niche, but I think what they're after is the same thing we're talking about, like
You're trying to like build a process that's smaller and more straightforward, even if it's not a simple process that that you can replicate it. You can now scale, because you can just you have these processes. We just need more people to deliver to more people. And that's exciting. I and I think like part of what we're talking about here is that. Like, how do we if we were to start over? And and by the way, we can start over today. And we don't have to like throw everything out the window. We could slowly
narrow it down too and that's an option too. but that's kind of like like
Kurt von Ahnen (35:08)
Today's the first day of the rest of your life.
Toby Cryns (35:10)
Yeah. And so one of the questions that is tough to answer that would be great to answer is like, yeah, what does a a more lean, mean, mighty mo look like or Manana no mas? You know, what what what could you stop doing that would strengthen everything else, you know?
And I'm not asking the questions, more just like a hypothetical question, you know, like for everybody. What could you stop doing today that would strengthen everything else?
Kurt von Ahnen (35:34)
That would be a wicked good. Put your comment in and let us know what you're thinking.
Toby Cryns (35:39)
Yeah, please leave a comment. Tell us what you would stop today that would strengthen everything else in your agency.
Kurt von Ahnen (35:45)
Yeah, that's perfect. Let's end there, Toby. how can people find you?
Toby Cryns (35:48)
I'm on LinkedIn. Last name is C-R-Y-N-S. You can find me there. you can also find me at the Mighty Mo, and that's T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com, where we do WordPress, WooCommerce, and SEO. How about you, Kurt? How can people find you?
Kurt von Ahnen (36:04)
The company name is Manana no Mas So we're at Manana No mas dot com and on the socials, Manana no Mas And I'm also really active on LinkedIn. Good spot to connect. I'm the only Kurt Von Ahnen in there. Easy to find. I think that's it. Toby, this has been great.
Toby Cryns (36:17)
Okay, well thank yeah, thanks everybody.
Yeah, thanks, Kurt.