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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 (00:00)
Hello, welcome to another episode of Agency Action with Toby and Kurt. I was going to say WP Action, but we are Agency Action. That's a whole nother podcast that I don't know. Doesn't even exist. I don't know. Maybe someone will Google it and find out. Kurt, good to see you as always. We had this idea that you kind of generated here to talk about how to build out.
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:09)
It's only been a year. don't need to know the name.
Toby (00:23)
projects. There's this idea of a phased launch over time that you build out where you have an MVP at the core. And then there's this huge waterfall project, or maybe it's agile, but a bigger thing. Let's talk about pros and cons and how to pitch them and different people who might be open to these different approaches.
Kurt Von Ahnen (00:44)
What we as an agency, we've tried some different pricing techniques, proposal techniques, and we fell on one that right now seems to be working really, really well for us. It's, it's enabled us to upsell our packages, you know, put more in, not put the customer really on a payment plan because all the work with Manana nomas is prepaid. don't like extent, like, like we don't invest in other people's businesses by extending them credit. Like we, just don't do that.
We used to, we don't anymore. So everything's prepaid. But when you build, like, let's say you bid a bigger project at, you know, $50,000, 60, 80, whatever. It's kind of hard to say, Hey, give me 80 grand today. You know, and it's going to take me six months to get this done. There's a disconnect in that. And so the way that we've been able to do that is we've been able to say, Hey, here's what we want to do for you. We want to break this into phases, right? And so we say,
Phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, phase one's 15 grand, phase two is eight grand, phase three is 20 grand or whatever. And so people know based on our project management software that, hey, we're coming up, we're completing phase one. If you're ready for phase two, let's get that invoice out to you. You can reconcile that invoice and we can go right into phase two. But it also gives us like these cool milestones to like what we talked about last time, like get sign-offs from people on like.
phase one is done. need your sign off on this so we can move to phase two. And it kind of keeps everything going. But I've also seen a working agency model where they say, yeah, it's a hundred thousand dollars and you can pay as you go in our, and we'll just send you an hours report every month, you know? And I've seen that work almost like a, ⁓ almost like a retainer, right? Almost like a retainer for the agency and we'll build your project as we go. And I was just like, real curious from, from you like,
For me on the bigger projects, phase one to me is launching an MVP. It's like I want something with their brand and their color and a home page and a sales page on the internet for people to find and see. Like the sooner I can get them up with the ability or the hope of getting revenue through the project, the more stickiness I think it has in following that project through to completion. But I don't know if I'm just playing mind games with myself and the customer or if that's real.
Toby (02:50)
No, I think like every project for me is an MVP. Like website is just a marketing tool. and SEO campaigns, a marketing tool, Google ads is, you know, everything's about lead gen when it comes to this stuff. And if, as anybody who's ever done lead generation knows, if you think you're, going to nail it on the first time, you're either super lucky or you're totally wrong. and maybe someone got lucky once, but most of us.
We build something that we think is gonna work and then we iterate on it over months or years or even decades in our case, you know, like what we started with 10 years ago is different than 20 years ago and here we are, you know, 20 years later and we're just today for example, I had a conversation with my SEO guy and we're talking about just changing the role from SEO to lead generation because he's seeing just big changes in the SEO landscape. He's like SEO is one way to get leads and
He's seeing it as like the whole lead generation landscape is changing. And so, I don't know, I think like, and I pitch this to my clients every time to varying degrees of understanding. Some of them get it, some of them don't. We're launching an SEO campaign soon with one of our clients who I don't think they understand that it's an iterative process, even SEO. Like we have a best guess, but our plan is to iterate over six months based on the results and...
And I say that because things that we're talking about right now, we haven't launched it yet. There are things that we're talking about that are slowing down the launch that have no impact on leads. We're talking about like, is this image centered properly in the footer? know, like is the font size the right size? That sort of stuff. Is the spacing between sections the perfect thing? And in my opinion, I'm like, these are great questions, but...
Let's launch and then let's talk about those and maybe we can tighten it up. And because you're not getting any leads right now from these things that are sitting on the shelf that we're going to launch.
Kurt Von Ahnen (04:32)
Yeah.
Launch and tweak to me is like, that's part of the magic of what we do, right? Launch and tweak and kind of look at things and see how it plays or get some feedback from people and go like the latest MVP that we launched as an agency. The customer doesn't even have a logo. You know, it's just the title of their project on the website and it literally there's a title of project. That's it. No logo, no nothing. their corporate colors or what I chose.
for the sample website and they said, man, that's pretty. I said, okay, well then these are your colors. And it's interesting because we pitched a branding style guide as part of the full agency experience, but their goal was to really just get something up as an MVP to let their stakeholders know that they were moving forward on the project. And I think what happened, and maybe I'm putting words in their mouth, but I think what happened is they went with another website provider.
They tried to source and they've been working on their content and working on their stuff. It's an e-learning project. And so they have years worth of content they've been building and, and like their life dream, their life's work, their legacy. Right. And then when it came time to put it on a site, they hired someone that failed. And then they got in touch with us and the timeline had been greatly reduced to get an MVP up and let people see it. And what it just worked out.
I mean, it's not that we're the geniuses. You could say we're geniuses, but I don't think we're geniuses. I think we just do hard work and ⁓ we got it up and the response and the result has been really incredible, which is nice.
Toby (05:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's another magical thing about this MVP idea or this very phased approach. Part of the premise is good is better than nothing. And the other thing is once the project is launched, whether it's a website or a campaign, the meaningless details become meaningless. People all of a sudden lose interest in a lot of the meaningless stuff. And so I think there's something really
constructive about launching an imperfect thing because it helps figure out helps you and the clients figure out what's important what's not Because all of a sudden like all these things we're working on now like if we were to launch today We would never hear about them again, so not important
Kurt Von Ahnen (06:38)
Yeah, yeah, that that's a big, that's a really big concept. When if you break that out, like, because you think about, you know, as an agency, if you're working on 10 projects at a time, 15 projects at a time, and you've got eight of them bogged down with niggling details that are, you know, inconsequential, that's a lot of wasted potential that you could have used to drive revenue or productivity somewhere else. You know, I think about the one and done, bigger projects, like I think about the people that
Typically in the agency space and correct me if I'm wrong Toby, but I think people are still doing this They're like give me 50 % down and then give me 50 % when it's done like 50 % upfront and then the rest when it's when it's done and so they do this one and done kind of theory right they say oh, it's a $50,000 project give me 25 grand up front and 25 grand whenever we get it done and
I think it sounds good. think it sounds like you're working with the client. Like, Hey, we're invested like you. It's a 50 50 thing. but it's not a 50 50 thing. The customer's responsible for a hundred percent of the, of the cost. Right. And I think when they do the one and done and it gets launched, I think that that approach leads to disconnection. Like I feel like the agency's already set it up with the client through word speak and through, and through culture that like,
we're to get this giant project done and then we're done, right? Like, like as opposed to when you go take a phased approach, newsflash our last phase, like phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, phase four is a recurring billing system. That's like, these are the things we're going to maintain for you until you fire us, right? Like, so phase four goes on forever and ever. I'm always trying to build relationships and stickiness with the client, not, not a project that's done.
Toby (08:19)
You inspired me a couple weeks ago. You had this idea of, let's hypothetically, we get ⁓ someone who's like, hey, build this thing for me. And you had pitched this idea to me about, hey, why don't you do good, best? just like, good is exactly what they're asking for. Better is like that plus something, and best is that plus plus. And the pricing escalates accordingly.
I really like that as a way to set up this MVP conversation. Because you can say, oh, your MVP is exactly what you're asking for. But that's only a portion of what we can do. That's phase one, or the MVP is here. But look at all this other stuff. And now you have a roadmap for the future that they're inspired by. Even if they choose the base package, at least they can see that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (09:04)
Yeah, I was hesitating. I didn't know if I wanted to put this in the notes or not, but I say we just throw caution to the wind and we just chuck it out there and see what happens in the show. If you're building bigger projects, chances are you're using lots of tools, lots of plugins, lots of lots of things. And there was some big news this week where people that might have used give WP or learn dash or the event calendar. They went to that website and that website was gone.
And then people on X freaked out and people just went nuts, right? it shut down. Everything shut down. And then slowly it started to come out that things weren't shut down. They were just kind of moved and everything redirected to liquid web, the website. But like all the blogs and all that support information is gone and. Something really unique happened to me, Toby. I was doing a mastermind with the Lifter LMS crowd and the topic came up.
But like 99 % of the people on the call had no idea that anything had happened with stellar. And you know how people in the WordPress space, think the world revolves around WordPress and then you get out into the real world, you get out into the wild and you realize nobody cares. it was like that, like nobody on the call even knew, even knew that there was something that had happened, but it, it brought up a lot of questions for me. Right. So we're agencies.
And we've represented those products to clients and put them into projects. So how do you address that? How do you approach that with your clients? Do you have a process?
Toby (10:21)
Yeah, well, this is actually, this is a great transition because the process is that this is an iterative project. Like it started as iterative and here it is. A challenge has been presented. Like, let's talk about it and figure it out. So like when stuff like this happens and it happens with every industry I imagine, like, let's say you're in car parts, such and such part gets discontinued. What do you do? You know, it's like, I always see these things and this is why, like, I think having a relationship with
Kurt Von Ahnen (10:32)
Here we are.
Toby (10:49)
your team, like me as someone who provides a service for you. Like having that relationship and having like, we can call it like monthly maintenance, but that relationship means something to me. And hopefully it means something to them where they can reach out and be like, what's going on? You know, I need help. Like, can we talk through this before we do something crazy? So I always, that's how I look at it. all iterative and like, it's all built on the relationship that we have with our clients and hopefully that they have with us and
better that relationship, the better these conversations go. The more trust that we have in each other, the more we can open and like, hey, I learned of this today. We can be that frank with them and be like, yeah, let's figure this out. I don't have an answer, but maybe tomorrow I can get you more info.
Kurt Von Ahnen (11:32)
Yeah, it's to me this is where the real value of, you know, having skin in the game and being in this for a little while, right? You and I have been around the block a few times. And so if I were to just take an example, right? Let's say I have a customer that has learned dash as their as their product within their project, right?
some people would look at this and go, my God, what a nightmare, right? Like, I just want to get out of this. And so they go, okay, well, what else can I use? I can use, you know, tutor LMS, I can use lifter LMS, I can use all these things. And so obviously, I work with lifter. So I go, Okay, well, let's let's do the lifter thing. So many people would think of this and go, my God, what a nightmare, I got to copy and paste all those lessons and all those quiz questions and all the assignments and I got to rebuild the certificates and other. But if you know the products, like like if you've been around,
So I can do a learn dash to lifter migration. There's a plugin that can help me do it, or I could use Claude and literally take an export and import and move everything over. but at that point it becomes a, okay, is that part of the relationship of using me as your agency where we prepay maybe a retainer or some maintenance fees, or is that like a mini project that gets built out at the agency rate because it's above and beyond maintenance?
You know, so so when these things happen, plug in dies, right? Like let's say you're using some kind of calendar plug in and it dies. Is that an upsell opportunity or is that like a maintenance obligation for the agency?
Toby (12:57)
Right, it probably depends on your agreement and your relationship. if I were to offer advice, I think sometimes it's hard to set boundaries until stuff like this happens. And I always think unknown events are another good time to set the right boundaries, whatever those are for you or your agency. And I think history has taught me that when something like this happens,
it's probably going to be a bigger project and therefore will require a conversation and probably another scope. I think part of like experience for me is that we're more comfortable today presenting this as a new scope and a new project than maybe we were five years ago.
Kurt Von Ahnen (13:32)
I essentially that you said five years ago, I'm trying to figure out if something changed in 2021 besides the pandemic that made us more brave. Or if you and I have just, you know, our, our life cycle in the industry is kind of paced itself in that way because you know, I hang out on post status a little bit and I see a lot of other agency owners that would be like, Oh my God, what are we going to do? I don't have the kind of time to update these 10 websites. And it's like, why are you upset? You can charge these people like,
Toby (13:58)
Yeah, right.
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:01)
I'm
confused, man. You should be selling this. is 900 bucks a change. Um, you know, so, so I, I'm curious, do you think there was like a fundamental change like 2021, 2022 where, where agencies got a little more businessy and how they approach customers? Or do you think you and I have just have that much skin in the game that we figured it out over time?
Toby (14:25)
That's a really neat question.
I like to think because like any human, I like to take the credit for myself and like that I figured it out. But I do wonder now that you're saying it, did a bunch of people figure it out at that exact moment? Was it like the time in history? You know, let's say Facebook was, let's say Mark Zuckerberg never was born. His mom went on a date with some other person that night or whatever. He was never conceived. Somebody else, the time was right for something like Facebook. We already had Myspace.
This happens overnight. Google wasn't the first. weren't, they just kind of emerged from that plethora of search engines. And now there's AI, there's 10 AI things. And at some point there's going be one or two. Same with Amazon, you know, like maybe the time was right and all the circumstances were converging that like, agencies kind of figured this out at the same time. So I'm open to that. I also think like it was in hindsight, it was stupid to not figure it out earlier.
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:52)
Yeah.
Toby (15:17)
one of many, you know, looking back.
Kurt Von Ahnen (15:17)
Yeah.
I can remember when I, when I was first launching my agency and by the way, not charging near enough for the projects I was building, there was like a weird sense of responsibility and ownership to the project. Like I built it, so I got to make sure it stays good forever. And whether people paid me maintenance or not, like people would call me up and go, my forms not working anymore. I need you to fix that. I paid you for that. And it's like, and so, and there's something weird that happens, right? Like,
the lower the income, the lower the revenue from the project, the crappier the client seemed to be. Right. So I paid you for that. You got to make it right. It's like, you paid me 500 bucks to build you an e-commerce website. Like you should be thankful you made any money off the website. Um, but that's not back then. That wasn't the mentality back then. It was like, Oh my God, I can't have this person say something negative about me. Right. It's in the small little community I've been selling these sites in. And so you would get like bullied into like fixing these things.
Toby (16:14)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (16:15)
as if
like you invented the software, right? And then reality hits and like you go into the website because they're not paying you for maintenance. So go in and there's, you know, 27 updates and you know, the run an old PHP and, you know, so you end up having to update the whole stinking thing. And then magically everything starts to work again. And then you hit him back with, I fixed it as a goodwill visit this time, but please know that, you know, you have the option to buy, you know, maintenance from us. And then they never buy the maintenance. And two years later, they hit you with another mad email.
Toby (16:17)
Right.
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (16:44)
⁓ somewhere along the line, I was able to distance myself from that whole nightmare. Like I don't own it's the website's yours. I built it for you, but the website's yours. You own it. The software is not mine. We license it from a provider. Right. And so everything's got licensing. Everything's got support. If you don't want to hire, if you don't want to keep us on retainer or pay us support.
Here's all the websites and emails that you can go let your fingers do the walking and DIY this thing or if you want to leverage me as an expert you can come on back and we can talk about how much this will cost for you to have us handle this for you.
Toby (17:17)
Yeah, you know what's something that's really present for us right now that we're going to move forward with. just don't know the exact specifics. So we've been offering, let's call it website maintenance, WordPress maintenance, generically for X amount of dollars. And maybe it's everybody gets a different price basically based on their site, but we've never defined what it is from a developer perspective and a testing and QA perspective until just recently we started to define it.
once we started to define it and I started looking at, started with me having a conversation with the developer where I just kind of overheard and passing like, ⁓ this took four hours to update this site. I was like, tell me what you did. And I was like, okay, I see why it took four hours. And in my head, I'm like, I would have just done 15 minutes worth of testing, you know, it would have been a much smaller. And so as I did that, I was like, but there are sites that are going to require four hours or more every month to maintain. I'm thinking of WooCommerce sites with 30 plugins and
We're going to have a staging site with credit cards connected and we need to test credit cards. know, complex scenarios that potentially require way more money than we're currently charging them for that. And then there are sites that probably could get by on a very basic plan. And so part of this, like what I heard you say that I really resonated with is like, it's okay to reset the expectation with your clients whenever it makes sense and is logical. And so
Kurt Von Ahnen (18:10)
Yeah.
Toby (18:34)
Part of the question that I like to ask is these days, it's like, I consider the relationship. They have a request. Hey, can you just swap this image out? And obviously, it's like 15 minutes for somebody to do. And I say, in my head, I'm thinking, at a base level, they need to pay for this. But is it a one-time fix, or am I creating a precedent? And if I did it for free or paid, how would that impact the relationship?
Part of it is like, sometimes when you set, and this is the 2020 learning maybe, like sometimes when you set that payment precedent, it actually improves your standing with the client. And it makes them appreciate you more and consider you more of an expert. so I really, the older I get, and I don't know if it's age or that 2020 thing, but I think there's real value in charging, like for everyone, you know, like.
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Toby (19:23)
sets the right tone, the right message, it closes a lot of communication holes that might have existed.
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:30)
Yeah, I was subcontracting for somebody that was selling. He was calling him like maintenance. He was called. It was like maintenance. But he was selling it like you could buy three hours, you could buy five hours, you could buy seven hours. And what was happening is. Customers were like scheduling a zoom call to tell me their project, right?
thinking so they either thought the zoom call was free and they could just talk to me and get free advice for three hours right and then I would still have five hours left to do the whatever they asked for or people would be like the clock's running right and it's like a race like how fast can you go Kurt how much can you get done in three hours and I'm like hold on you are trying to leverage my 25 years of expertise
And obviously you're the customer. trying to get the best bang for your dollars, but I am not running a sprint race for you on your project and killing myself, you know, for what in my little world turns out to be a couple of hundred bucks. Like, like let's just be, cause it's a subcontracting thing, right? I'm not charging my retail agency rate to do this stuff. And so I really didn't like the whole idea the hour selling thing because in the real world as an agency owner,
You and I have the conversation with the client. get the scope of the work. Could you knock it out in two hours? Could I knock it out in two hours? Yeah, maybe if I give it to someone else on my team, is it going to take three hours, five hours? like, so it's really hard to go by the hours thing. I try to keep in mind how much time would I spend on this and what is that equal to in an agency rate? And then I try and pitch the job based on the value it provides. And in some cases, the value is like a 10 X value where you go.
Well, if I do this for you, you're going to make an extra $80,000 this year. So it's not going to be 1500 bucks. It's going to be $12,000, right? And we have a huge margin on it. but again, that's value based pricing, not hourly pricing. And I really struggle with that hourly thing in the world because let's just face facts. I can make an e-learning, I can frame up an e-learning website in minutes and it's going to take someone else that's new to the space three weeks to do it.
And it's like there's a reality that happens with experience and you can't. A mechanic gets paid two hours to put brakes on the front of your car. He can do the job in 18 minutes. Should he be paid 18 minutes or paid two hours? Is he is he penalized because he got better at it?
Toby (21:41)
Yeah. And I think over the years we've moved mostly to fixed bids for this reason that my, me and my team are experts and hourly. If we're going to sell hours, you know, we got to think about it in a way that makes sense. And so I know there's an agency in town with very senior developers that charges hourly. And I think, maybe the hourly thing makes, you just need the right client.
right business, everything needs to align for that. And same with the other way, by the way. I do one way that we pitch hourly. We do very little hourly pitching. But here's an example. Just this week, someone called a very small business. Actually, it's a local developer. And they're like, hey, here's this bug on this WooCommerce thing. they found a website. Maybe they Googled AI. And they're like, here's a solution. But I have no idea what to do with this solution. And I told them like,
I see the solution, I'm gonna spend one hour implementing that solution. I don't know if it'll work, but I'm only gonna bill you for one hour and then we'll see where we're at. And I was like, in that scenario, I was comfortable with that, framing it in that way. We also sell with our maintenance a lot of times, we'll sell like one hour of miscellaneous help. Hey, you need an image swap, you need text. But I like that because...
Kurt Von Ahnen (22:39)
Yeah.
Toby (22:48)
doesn't communicate what it is. Nobody knows what an hour's worth, but at least it frames it up in a way like, we're going to do some small things if you need them. It's only one hour. And if you need more than that, it'll be a conversation. And we kind of control, like, does it need a conversation or not? So I think like, while the one hour thing doesn't make sense, even in that context, it does set some sort of a framework for a conversation.
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:09)
Yeah, I kind of view it almost like like to me a one hour thing is almost like a like a paid discovery needs assessment. You know, it's like you're going to pay me to do something for you, but it's going to result in a conversation where I try to charge you more. Like I'm just getting the information. I need to know what's really going on.
Toby (23:16)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I was on a call yesterday with somebody. They were taking way too, so their site's down because they can't figure out their hosting situation. And they were going with a super cheap host. And I was like, look, just pay us way more than they're charging and we'll solve it today pretty much. They're still on the fence about that. Their site's still down.
But the relevant point here is that on the call, they pulled up the Cheap Sites packages and they're like, how does your package compare to this? How does your package compare to this? And this is part of like, this is part of respecting my time and my experience. was like, I literally told them, go, I have no idea. Like all I know is, I'm guessing if you tried to get them on this phone call, they would not join this call.
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:53)
Yeah, it doesn't.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of validation in that. And it's hard because like when you're like, yeah, you pay us more and we can fix it today. It almost sounds like you're holding their website hostage, like for the, for the payout, but it's not, it's not even your gig yet. You know? And, and if they, and if they're crying, if they're crying, poor and broken, no budget coming in the door, you probably don't want them anyway.
Toby (24:27)
Yeah, well, you know what's interesting too? In this case, so they wanted, what they were gonna pay was let's say a hundred bucks a year for hosting from a cheap provider. And I pitched let's say three X that roughly just for hosting and on the call and they're like, okay. And I was like, know what? You're also gonna need someone to update this thing. And so ultimately they came out of the call and you're gonna need to secure it and all this. What I ended up pitching was
20X what they were going to pay that hosting company. And I still think I might win the business.
Kurt Von Ahnen (24:53)
Yeah.
You might, you absolutely might because there's value in that. So we recently interviewed an SEO person on another show. And this is the, these are the things like, cause you hear from other verticals all the time. Right. And the guy's like, I launched this two years ago. Now we have a waiting list of people that we can serve with SEO services. And it's a minimum 20, I think it's $2,000 a month or $2,200 a month or something like that. Right.
And so it's like, he's established himself as an expert. There's a waiting list for his services. $2,200 a month, right? It's it's it's we're not doing. We're not fighting for people that have $150 a month to spend or $250 a month to spend. You have to come ready to go with your business if you're going to get the support from an expert. There's a certain cost of entry to working with experts. It's
I think I've said this on the show before, but I've helped other larger agencies and that's really opened my eyes because they'll ask me for support on something like like a technical call or something. And then after the call, I find out that like, I'm getting a few bucks, but they charge somebody 10 grand for that call or they charge somebody, you know, $600 for that consultation. And it's like, wow, I got to start charging. I got to start raising my charges.
Toby (26:10)
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, if you talk to or price out projects with the bigger agencies and even in the WordPress space, I was on a call with, behemoth in the WordPress space. They're a company, everybody who listens to this has probably heard of, and what the, the one question they asked me, they're like, they're trying to get pricing out of me I wasn't, didn't have enough info to deliver it. And they're like, do you charge what?
This big company charges them like, no, for sure we don't charge what they charge. And like, the thing is, if you found out what they charge, I know for a fact it'd be at least, I mean, probably 10X sometimes, at least five to 10X for the same exact work, same exact project, same exact deliverable. Five to 10X. So think of what you're charging. Multiply it by five, multiply it by 10. That's, it could be your competition.
Bye.
Kurt Von Ahnen (26:57)
Yeah.
Yeah. It's super interesting, but, and, and, and I'm looking at our time. Let's, let's just touch on it. Maybe we expand on this on the next show. When we talk to large agencies, now your agency is bigger than my agency, right? But, but let's just say like you and I are in the same group and we talked to larger agencies. I think it's foolish for us to think that they bootstrap that whole thing and just like maxed out their master card. Next thing you know, they've got a hundred people in cubicles working for them.
I think it's safe to say that there was some kind of investment money or loans or some kind of influx of, of revenue. Somehow it didn't just, you didn't, you didn't make a few phone calls, get a couple of customers and then have a three story building full of workers. Right. So at what point do you think Toby that you would consider an external influx of, of cash to, help you with your growth or your expansion?
Toby (27:36)
Right, exactly.
Yeah, this is tricky because we've all gotten about thousand of these spam emails this last month asking, you know, here's my free money. Yeah. Here's the thing. Like I barely know what to do. It's an, and we're not making a lot of money. It's like, I don't know if I'm spending my current money correctly. The last thing I need is more of it. That's that I have to pay back, but I still don't know how to spend properly.
Kurt Von Ahnen (27:51)
It's been crazy lately. Yeah, I'm getting a ton of people trying to give me money. What in the world am I going to do with $500,000?
Toby (28:13)
So I think for me, like, I'm not interested in more money in that sense. Like, I would love to make more profit and, you know, sack that away in my kid's college fund, but I have no idea what I would do with any amount of cash that somebody gave me beyond what I'm already doing with it. And I don't know, this is a question for you, Kurt, maybe like...
I suspect that a lot of people wouldn't know what to do with it, but some people do know what to do with it. you know, like, do you know what to do with it? If you got it.
Kurt Von Ahnen (28:41)
I have some very distinct ideas. Like, so I have some, some training products and other verticals, right? And so the, the potential for revenue on those is very strong, but I haven't put enough work into recruiting clients for those products. So if I took a loan, maybe I would do lead generation for one of those products. Maybe I would hire a salesperson and, and front load, you know, two months of salary for that person, knowing that takes
you know, 60 days to roll up revenue on the project. And if they failed, then I guess I'd let them go. And then I counted up as a loss and a lesson learned. Right. But it's, some people would say, well, you got, you should do some paper, click advertising. okay. Well, is that how these big agencies became big agencies? Did they do paper click advertising? Was that the magic sauce? it's, it's interesting to me to figure out. Like, I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish.
just bootstrapping this thing. You know, I've leveraged a visa and a mastercard in American American Express on occasion. But for the most part, this thing's completely built out of, you know, grit and sweat. And it's kind of cool to be able to say, I live in this house and paid for it with that. Like, that's, that's fun that that's pat on the back. But to go to the next level, would it make sense to take in money and go?
You know what I could pay a couple of apprentices I could I could rent an office with two or three permanent cubicles I could do like there's all these things you think about.
Toby (30:03)
Here's what I wonder, even before you get to would it be worth it, what you need, any CEO needs or founder, I think, let's say I could get a million dollars in loans. I can't, but let's say I could. The first thing I would need to do is free up my time. Whether that's closing down my business and now I have a million dollars to work with for the next year, that's probably the best thing to do. But if you're saying like...
Kurt Von Ahnen (30:04)
Would it be worth it?
Yes.
Flee the country.
Toby (30:28)
At the mighty moment, my current business, how do I free up my time? I have no idea because that's what I've been working on for 20 years. I still haven't figured it out. Like even with a million dollars, I wouldn't know what to do. It's not as simple as hiring someone. Like it's very muddy and complex.
Kurt Von Ahnen (30:42)
No, because you got to train them and onboard
them. And it's, it's, it's, it's a difficult question. And I think it's, I think it's one that's worth putting out. And maybe this becomes an extended discussion at some other time, but it's, ⁓ you know, if you had a sudden influx of money, or if, someone was said, Hey, I want to, I want to invest in you. had a company reach out to me through LinkedIn that said, business invests in smaller agencies like yours. Would you be interested in a partial acquisition or something like that?
And you go, well, that's kind of flattering. And then on the other hand, you're like, no, because if I sold you my business, what would I have left? This is what I do. And what am I going to do? Go get a job at Home Depot, stock and paint? Like, so just trying to think about what would be the potential for growth. And I think this is important. I think this might hit home with both of us from different perspectives. Just because, let's say I added
Toby (31:14)
Right. Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (31:30)
two staff members locally and we rented an office and there's three cubicles and we're all staring at each other all day. And we got a conference room and we do some client meetings and we feel like an agency, right? So this is what I'm saying. We go from me here with my pictures of Italy to I'm in an office and I feel like an agency.
Did I help my family's financial situation? By the time I pay for a building, bring in two people full time, pay their salaries. Am I selling enough work at a high enough margin that after costs, the net profit extends beyond what I'm making currently? Cause I've given myself a ton more headaches. So for all those headaches, did I make any more money personally?
Toby (32:04)
Yeah.
Well, and you still have to pay off the loan. Like you're not at free, even if you're making profit, that's going to them for the next 10 years. And this is, this is the challenge. And in fact, like, this is the whole, my current questions with growth, because we've been growing for ⁓ really two years and growing significantly. My profit is less this year than last year. My bottom line income is way higher. And so like I'm
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:10)
Well yeah, and you still got the loan.
Yeah.
Toby (32:33)
and my time invested in the business is way higher. So I'm like, is it worth it? This is the question. Like, what is the goal?
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:38)
Yeah, so
so is it worth rolling rolling back personally to roll forward professionally?
Toby (32:43)
And to what end? Yeah, my goal is not to, I don't, have a goal of selling the business. My goal is just to make it stronger, more sustainable. And I'm hoping and praying that growth leads me there, but I don't know that it will.
Kurt Von Ahnen (32:45)
Yeah.
Well, maybe you could just redirect the Mighty Mo to the liquid web and they can absorb you.
Toby (32:59)
Hahaha
On that note, that's perfect. Kurt, thank you so much for this great conversation. How can people get in touch with you?
Kurt Von Ahnen (33:05)
Personally, hook up on LinkedIn. I'm the only Kurt Von Ahnen there easy to find and then for business I am at Manana no Mas.
Toby (33:12)
Thanks, and I'm Toby Cryns You can find me on LinkedIn, T-O-B-Y-C-R-Y-N-S, and at The Mighty Mo, that's my agency. do WordPress and SEO. Pretty much it. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.