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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
Kurt von Ahnen (00:00)
Hey folks, this is Kurt and I wanna welcome you to another episode of the agency action show. And I really want to give kudos out to my co-host, Toby Cryns who's willing to call in for the show from the road. Toby, welcome.
Toby Cryns (00:13)
Thank you. for those video people watching on video on YouTube or whatever, I want to apologize for being in a car. I hate it when podcast hosts do this, but here I am. And what do do?
Kurt von Ahnen (00:28)
We we gotta get the content done, man. We gotta get the content the people. The we have to fulfill the people's needs.
Toby Cryns (00:30)
Yeah, exactly.
And honestly though, there's probably a lesson here that we've talked about, which is like, I'm taking a weekend with a couple of old friends in Iowa. So I'm going to Iowa, nothing fancy. I'm going to be off the grid for two nights. And for me, that's a huge win, both like we can say personally, but also, you know, we've talked about this sort of thing, like an agency land. Like it's important to like, why else are we doing it? Cause it's like a whole lot of BS to run an agency. And if you can't get...
Kurt von Ahnen (00:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Toby Cryns (01:04)
two nights away, then what's the point?
Kurt von Ahnen (01:07)
What is the point? I took off last Friday, drove the camper van with my wife to Colorado and my met my son in Colorado, and we signed up and we did downhill mountain bikes all day Saturday. Like four runs down the mountain, just had a blast, and then had a wonderful dinner and we camped. So so we had a we had a blast. And yeah, you you gotta reward yourself. You know, the reason we do this and we put in the hours and we put in the time is so that.
we could actually invest time with our families or friends and do something we want to do.
Toby Cryns (01:40)
There's a whole other thing, if you don't mind me hijacking the whole agenda for this, I've been thinking about that's directly related. And the question I've been asking is, what would it take for me to take a three month sabbatical? where I'm totally unplugged from the business would be the goal. And three months doesn't sound too wild and crazy, but I've been asking that question.
of chat GPT really. Like how do I do this? And chat GPT is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a big deal. How about you go for like one week or two weeks first? And I'm like, okay, let's try that first. So, you know, we don't have to get, you say, yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (02:23)
I was thinking more like thirty days.
Because th thir so a I don't think a week is long enough to see if your processes really hold up under stress. I th I think a week would s would be like you would still have a chance to come back and band-aid something, right? Like like I don't think that's enough of a test. I th cause you're you're not like a one or a two person thing. You're a ten person thing, right? You've got you've got staff. And so I think in order to really test the processes.
You probably need to do a 30-day sabbatical where you put one or two people in charge of certain elements and you go, I'm out. I am unavailable. Unless this thing's on fire and burn into the ground, I don't need to hear from anybody. And if we lose 10 grand in the process, we lose 10 grand. But here's an opportunity for you guys to take the ball and run with it. And if I've been, if I've been the the funnel holdup, if I've been the bottleneck, maybe this exercise will show us what the team could really do without me being the bottleneck.
And in some cases you might see growth. I think it's a really good experiment. And your family would probably like to have thirty days alone with you.
Toby Cryns (03:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's interesting. So I actually think it's harder now that I have a bigger team. When I was solo, it was actually pretty easy, I think, to pull off. I would take a week or a month here. Probably not a month. Let's say a week here and there. You just email people. You're like, I'm going to be unavailable. If there's an emergency, here's the process. But now I have like, people need, like my team needs access to stuff. My team needs to be paid. Like there are these like things that, and also like,
Unknown. So one thing I'm starting to do is just document places where my team needs me for stuff. And my goal is ultimately to get me out of those workflows. And so like, could be like, hey, I don't have access to this, Toby, can you get me access? So I'm documenting that like, okay, how do I not give him access, but get myself out of the flow when someone needs access?
Kurt von Ahnen (04:23)
Yeah. Yeah, I think the hardest part for me in that is it always comes down to a control issue on my end. And I I don't want to think of myself this way, but I am this way. Like like it's you know, you I reg I regret that I am this way. I I just turned over my email management of one of my email accounts. I'm still in a trial process here, but I'm like one of my email accounts is being handled by AI right now.
Like filter out the garbage, get rid of the newsletters I don't read. If it's if they're trying to sell me something, just archive it. I don't even want to see it. I only want to see the emails of people that I communicate with currently and that and that you know deserve to be in my inbox. And so I have AI doing that that filtering for me on a daily basis. I've been doing it for a week, and I gotta tell you, it's like out of sight, out of mind.
Toby Cryns (05:21)
You know, I discovered too, this is I think a new feature of Gmail maybe of like a month ago. Like they have this thing, it's like Google Workspace Studio, I think is what it's called, but it allows you to add workflows like that. So you don't even need to plug a third party into it if you're using Gmail. And I think it's included. Like we're not, we're on the lowest Gmail tier and, or the Google Workspace tier. And like, you know, it's like seven bucks a month and it.
all of sudden, like I was complaining to a friend and I think it was one of these things where I think it heard me and then it was like, hey, have you seen this? I was like, I hadn't seen that. That's exactly what I just talked to my friend about today.
Kurt von Ahnen (05:57)
Yes, I love the intrusive nature of AI in my phone.
Toby Cryns (06:00)
Yeah, right.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:03)
So, you know, that kind of takes us into a into a tangent and and I'll take us there. as the segue, as it were. I feel like I owe you an apology. I feel like I owe a lot of people an apology. Chris Badgett from Lifter LMS, he he did a video and basically vibe coded with Claude an add-on for Lifter LMS. And he showed exactly how he was doing it, what his prompts were and all those things.
And I thought, you know, I've been so reticent to jump on this vibe coding bandwagon. I I I really don't like the idea of customers, clients trying to vibe code stuff with no coding knowledge whatsoever and then ask me to put stuff in their website on my server. Like I I really struggle with this whole concept. I do. And I still struggle with that. I want to be very clear. I still struggle with that. but I was looking at Chris and I was thinking about and I said, okay, let's jump into Claude together, Kurt. Let's let's let's explore, right? I said, hey.
Take a look at this video that Chris has done. here is the here are the files for this plugin. I run an agency. So I told Claude, you know, I run an agency. We serve customers in this regard, blah, blah, blah. What add-ons would you foresee as being possible gaps that we could fill for our clients? And give me a bullet list of those and let's let's let's pick a priority list of what we want to build together. And one of the things that popped up was a timer for lessons and courses.
And an hour later, I had a working add-on for Lifter LMS that was a timer for lessons, for courses, cumulative timer. Only track the time when you were active on the tab, so you couldn't leave the tab and still track time on it. And it added a column to the reporting for the administrator. And it did everything. I've had customers asking me for a timer for five years, right? And now I've got one. Like boom. And it took me an hour. now to your point.
Is it done in that hour? No. There's some some things I want to clean up. Like I want, I want this to look bigger. I want this to have a a more beveled edge. I want like so I wanna I wanna dress up the UI a little bit. But for intents of purposes, man, it worked. And now I feel like I owe the world an apology because I'm on all these shows saying don't use AI. I don't say don't use it, but I I I I am very cautious.
Toby Cryns (08:25)
I think the question is becoming or will become in the next year or two. It's like, how does the world change for everybody when software is free, when it's free to create custom software? Cause effectively that's where we're heading. Like right now you or I could go in there and vibe code it. And it's probably out of reach of a normal, let's say business owner, WordPress user. like right now you or I can pretty much do what you just described. you need this fancy feature that would have been really expensive eight months ago.
or six months ago, now it's basically free or, you know, like it's a low cost for me to build it. How does that, you know, this is the question I'm struggling with and it's impossible to foresee the future, but it's like, how does that change everything we do? Like from an agency owner to really any business operation thing, really.
Kurt von Ahnen (09:16)
Well, from an agency perspective, it you can't help but have this conversation in your mind, right? Like you said, a year ago, what would that have looked like? Well, a year, two years ago, it would have looked like, yeah, we can custom develop that for you. We're probably looking between four and five thousand dollars. You know, it's gonna take us thirty days, you know, to have a prototype for you to look at. We'll put it on staging first, and then we'll, you know, we'll test it and make sure it's good for you, and then we'll put it in production. Like that sounds
That sounds responsible. That sounds equitable. That sounds like what an agency should say. And now we're in this space where we say, huh, you know what? That's a good idea. Why don't you let me poke around and do some research on that? And I'll get right back to you. Right. And then you plunk around. Like, I got a working model in an hour. So what do I do? Do I go, hey, I've got a working model that we could put on your website, you could try for a while. It'll cost you 300 bucks, cost you 500 bucks.
That's a whole different discussion than five grand. And I know that there's people listening to this podcast or watching this podcast, and and they might be agency types, and they're thinking, no, you still tell them it's custom development. It's still $5,000. And now you make $4,700 profit. But I don't think that's I don't think that's fair to the client either. So I'm in this weird space now where I'm like, how do you proceed? What is, what's just, what's fair? And
There's there's a business model for a lot of people that are sales focused would say, you know, the fair price is what the customer is willing to pay.
So how d is is use of AI our margin or is it something we we pass along as savings?
Toby Cryns (11:05)
think like the efficiencies are always our margins. Like it could be AI, but there's always been more efficient. There's efficiencies with WordPress. There's efficiencies, you know, anytime we change our operations potentially. So I don't get caught up in the, you know, like I'm kind of like.
Fair is, it could be, so like people interpret fair very differently. There's, have clients who are like, wow, your high rates are very fair because we know we can count on you. And then there are people who are like, your rates are way too high. I just need this thing. And they, never work with them. you know, so, and people will figure it out too, over time. Like clearly there's other WordPress developers within my area code, you know, like, and,
I don't get too concerned about pricing. We've lost gigs because we didn't price it high enough, and that was the only reason we lost it. so I don't get too caught up in that. I think it's also ephemeral, especially with AI, because people's perceptions, we're still in learning mode. marketing people out there who are currently testing it and building amazing things, but getting 80 % of the way there and getting stuck,
or maybe their 80 % of the way is good enough for them, they're learning right now. And that hasn't filtered down to like Joe business owner, or Joe the plumber, you know, like those guys aren't trying it in that way. And so it'll change. it'll probably, you know, when you think back 20 years, even before WordPress to build what the equivalent of a marketing site might've been 20 grand using HTML and
Kurt von Ahnen (12:36)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (12:52)
Maybe it was 40 grand if you wanted a CMS, new custom CMS that you built and sold. And so it was like, you know, let's say three to four X once WordPress got going, the prices dropped three to four times or, know, they were used to be three or four times more. and that could happen again. And then the question is, okay, what, you know, we could look at that as a model. I know of guy who was put out of business. He couldn't figure it out. He didn't want to learn WordPress. He's like, no, I have my own CMS. I don't want to learn a new one, you know, and put.
He was kind of priced out of the market. Maybe it wasn't priced out. Maybe he just didn't know how to sell to the 40 grand website market or something as it changed.
I'm curious why you feel there's an ethics to pricing this stuff because there's a lot of potential mobility. Like the market will determine what you can get, know, generally speaking in this space because it's so, people can take a website, it or rebuild it over there. Like they're not locked in with this stuff, generally speaking.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:46)
Yeah.
Yeah. I I struggle a little bit. It's it's I am driven a lot by ethics and I and I want to be fair to people. So, but I also want to maximize my margins and treat my family the way I want to treat them. So you you know, you get these two competing ideologies, and they don't necessarily have to compete. Like I get it, they don't. There are enterprise level clients, and let's just use the example I gave, making the timer, right?
making the timer designed the way they want it. Do they want it red? Do they want it blue? Do they want it orange? Do they want, you know, drop shadows? Well, like, like, okay. So that's going to add complexity. Then you build the stupid thing. And then let's say Lifter LMS does an update in six months, and the thing's either outdated or it's replaced. Maybe a lifter comes out with their own timer, right? So then you you're kind of on the hook, then, right? Like, now what do I do? Do we keep using the Manana no Mas timer or do we use the
Lifter LMS timer. And I think s when you build these things, you're like obligated to maintain, keep it going, that that kind of thing. And so
That's where the struggle is. If if I sold it as if I let's say I package it up and I add it to the repository and I sell the plugin, right? It's it's free, but I put in some special feature where you can change the color of the buttons on the on the pro model and it's 50 bucks. how many people making Lifter LMS websites would want to buy a functional, you know, flexible design timer from me for 50 bucks? And then is that is that fair? I think that's fair.
Like I don't know why I think that's okay and then I struggle with selling it to a customer for twenty five hundred bucks, you know, as a as a custom application. It's weird.
Toby Cryns (15:48)
I think like, yeah, I mean, like, let's take that scenario of the timer. Everybody knows now, well, everybody who is a developer, basically, not everybody, but it's getting there. It's getting to the point where all the developers at least know they could go to chat GPT or Claude and build that timer in an hour. Well, anyone listening to this podcast now knows you can do that. Take an hour to build that. And by the way, I've built a number of those things where like, know, so here's an example just happened to me last week.
Kurt von Ahnen (16:09)
Ha ha.
Toby Cryns (16:17)
I needed to delete 3000 WooCommerce products from a WordPress site. There are a number of plugins that do this, but the WooCommerce feature is always an upgrade, a paid upgrade. And I was just like, screw it. I'm just going to ask Claude, without any other thing other than a sentence prompt, I need to delete 3,600 products from a WordPress WooCommerce site, build a plugin for me that can do this. And within 15, no, not even, let's say five minutes, I had it installed.
click delete and it was a fantastic plugin. I didn't pay for it. So like those guys paying with the premium upgrades, they're still going to capture a little bit of traffic, but like that's going to drop precipitously because I'm no longer going to pay for it. I'm going to first go to Claude, have Claude try to build it. I'm going to install and go, yeah, it's pretty good.
Kurt von Ahnen (17:09)
So now I'm curious when when you do these types of activities, because my comment on Chris's video was very much like it the way he made the video looked like he was working on a production website, not a demo website, right? And I'm and I'm like, I was very clear with people. Like when I built this timer, I built it in a demo website. It's it's I'm not production, not live, not customer data, not any of that stuff. So when you play like this, are you like
Hey, let me build a staging site. Let me try it in staging. And if it works in staging and it doesn't damage or lose anything, then I'm gonna do it in production. Or are you like, hey, that's what backups are for? Let's play.
Toby Cryns (17:49)
Well, it depends. I mean, yeah, in this case, if I was doing that on a live WooCommerce, I would not do that on like a live WooCommerce site. That's for sure. But I also think like part of why people pay more for agencies is to offload the risk to us. Like whatever that risk is of breaking stuff or destroying the thing or like, like they trust us and pay us a premium to take whatever actions protect their, the integrity of their business.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:06)
Yes.
Toby Cryns (18:19)
And so like, that's another thing that like, if we're talking, this is why I don't think ethics is really part of it. It's just like, what's valuable to you? Do you want an experienced pro to manage the security and, you know, let's say we're going to delete a bunch of stuff or we're going to add a timer. Do you just want it? You could build it with AI, but you have no idea what's in there. At least in this case, Kurt's going to take a, you know, sift through the code, at least maybe for, maybe it's going to be a quick eyeball, but like oftentimes you can catch.
malicious stuff really quick with a quick eyeball, or maybe you'd take that code, take one extra step and say, okay, now run it through a security audit. know, like even if you're just doing that in cloud, normal people, marketers will not do that. They will not take it one step further to check for security vulnerabilities, for example. And that's why you
Kurt von Ahnen (18:56)
Yeah.
Yeah. Hey what's
what's what's this dot r you URL here?
Toby Cryns (19:12)
Right. Yeah.
Well, you know it. Like people contact us. They're like, there's a .ru thing in my site. And I'm like, well, that's because you've been hacked. They have no idea. But I don't blame them. That's great. I mean, they got their expertise too. And then we got ours. But that's why I feel like the pricing thing, go, that's part of the pricing. If you're charging way more than that other person, who knows if they trust that person or that they can
Deliver the trust, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:44)
Well
I I feel I I I'm still I'm still in my struggle zone with AI, but the apology is that I understand the value of the vibe coding. I I've experienced now, I I've seen it very quickly generate something that I found useful. And so I'm I'm I'm in that space. I've always been an implementer, not a developer, kinda like Chris At Lifter is a is a, you know, he's a he's an ideas person, but he he's never been the developer, right?
It's it's an interesting space. Whereas when I like you are a developer, I talk to other people that are developers. I think there's a different level of confidence, you know, in that classification. Whereas for me, it's like I know enough about custom CSS, I know enough like to see some code and go, that looks wonky, but I'm not I'm not seasoned in that, you know, I know all the abstractions and all that stuff. So
Toby Cryns (20:42)
But I don't think you
need. I think the key is though that this like we're getting learning. We're moving to a vibe coding world. We're there already. If you're not there, you're going to be there. There's going to be no choice. That's my opinion on it. Like we're all going there and what you're going to learn as a developer is like. What are the they call it harnesses and prompting? You know, like the idea is how do you ensure that what you're doing is secure? Like let's just start there.
Kurt von Ahnen (20:54)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (21:09)
And that's going to be the developer's responsibility, you know, because like average Joes are not going to go there. so I don't, yeah.
We got a future yet, I think is where I'm at. So I was at the vibe coding.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:23)
All right.
Well let's let's talk about
let's talk about something else you did this week. You didn't you go to a note code thing?
Toby Cryns (21:32)
Yeah, so I go to this monthly no code meetup. It's a vibe coding thing where they put on display. Usually it's some marketer or some business owner who has no idea what they're doing with AI, but they're tightly integrating AI with everything they do. That's the gist of it. This week's was a bank CEO who also has no idea what he's doing. And he's integrated AI with his process to
verify whether or not they should give a loan to somebody. Input in, AI takes all that very sensitive personal data and spits something out at the end with a recommendation and maybe some other stuff. If that doesn't scare the heck out of you, you're not alive. This person was assuring us that they took all the security precautions.
but not a single other human hand has touched anything. Just him. He's the CEO and he's implementing it throughout his bank. And I'm just like looking at it going, this is insanity.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:43)
You know, there's a reason they want to build all these data centers. I mean, the the AI already works, right? It can already process what we want it to do. Now now the trick is to store all of the data that it scrapes from every transaction and query. And it's and that that bank's query is getting stored somewhere.
Toby Cryns (22:46)
Yeah
yeah, yeah, well in...
Kurt von Ahnen (23:06)
Yeah. Your socials, your earnings,
your what you spend your money on, your budget, how much was your utilities every month for five years?
Toby Cryns (23:11)
And well,
and check this out. How much trust do we have that these tech bros are being very appropriately sensitive with our data? have zero trust that I don't care who it is. Sam Alton, Elon Musk, like these guys are slurping the data and using it to power their business. Like there's no doubt in my mind that that's happening. I have no proof. I haven't researched it, but like, come on, who's going to, who's going to slap them on the wrist and it'll just be a slap on the.
if they get busted. they know all this. Like there's nothing sensitive. I mean, if you put anything, this is my opinion, if you put anything in any of these AI cloud-based services, know, open AI cloud, whatever, it's at high risk of being slurped up in real time. We'll say that. There are however, as you might, I'm kind of going down this path now with the local LLMs where it's the idea is you like,
Kurt von Ahnen (23:59)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (24:08)
the equivalent of Claude on your computer. That's the dream. Like where your data is stuck on your computer, but it has all the processing power of Claude or OpenAI, Chat GBT. idea, but right now the problem is that it's super slow. Even with a super expensive computer and all the setups, it's still, this is what someone told me recently. Basically the highest you can get is let's say I'm going to get this wrong, but it's like 30 tokens per second or something like that.
on your local, and that's if you have a very expensive machine that's highly configured for AI locally, 30 tokens per second. If you just log into like the free cloud, 200 tokens per second. And so, you know, there's a huge difference right now between the cloud and your local machine in terms of speed. And then just to get it to do anything, can't, basically it can't compete right now with the cloud.
Kurt von Ahnen (24:50)
Yeah.
Well, for the second time ever, I I used up all my tokens in less than a month. So I was like, Huh, I I must be I must be using this more than I thought I was.
Toby Cryns (25:19)
Yeah, and the other thing that I'm learning is like the token usage. So all these companies have an incentive to use your tokens faster. And anytime it puts a letter, apparently like words are token, like letters are tokens or something like, so like I've been noticing in Claude, like more words are showing when I'm coding. There's just more visual output. And I'm like, each one of these visual outputs is costing me tokens, isn't it?
Kurt von Ahnen (25:48)
Yeah. Yeah. In the in your prompt you have to tell it to give you the shortest answer, you know, that's relevant or whatever.
Toby Cryns (25:55)
Right,
right. Yeah, but I don't know. I'm hoping to get to the point where I'm going to try it locally and have some first-hand experience.
Kurt von Ahnen (25:59)
Yeah.
Well
Toby Cryns (26:07)
But I think it more ran. Yeah, well, yeah, it's way easier in many ways to faster.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:09)
I'm still very much in the browser.
And I am still a fan of some of these pre-prompted tools that, you know, I'm sure developer types would make fun of me for. But I I love a pre-prompted tool that's like take this, you know, take this long-form video and cre create a blog post and format it this way and add it to the back end of my website as a draft. Like I'm all about that. I I'm like, this this is just you know, this is 30 bucks a month, and I can do 15, 20 articles a month in this thing and and
Toby Cryns (26:38)
yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:46)
Still have the opportunity to to proofread it, edit it, add my own story, and hit publish. Like and but give me 30 hours back a month.
Toby Cryns (26:50)
Yeah, but here's the problem.
Sure, but here's the problem with that. Now, it's not actually a problem today. Like, if you max that out, great. But at some point, every business is going to have that. And then what? And it's all going to be slop. And this is where I'm actually hopeful for our industry. But the people who are nimble and thoughtful and have their eyes open are going to have to pivot in a big way.
Like I have no doubt the mighty mode is going to have a huge pivot coming up at some point. I don't know when, but like just because that's the world is changing. This is changing everything in digital. And so.
Yeah, like, you know, we'll get there to where it's all slop again.
Kurt von Ahnen (27:38)
Well, I think that's where the video content is gonna be the cream that rises to the top and all of this that this race for content, you know, like like cause there is definitely a difference between AA AI slop and then, you know, AI foundation that's been human in the loop, touched and and massaged, right? There's definitely a difference there. so you create so you create more content, but I really feel like it's the video content, kind of like what we're doing right now, that's
Toby Cryns (27:58)
But that's,
Kurt von Ahnen (28:07)
Everyone knows I'm talking, everyone knows you're talking. This is our, you know, our thoughts, our content live, not AI. And then maybe AI does the transcript or creates a summary out of it or something like that. But but the con the or the origin of content is most notably verifiably human. And I think that it's that content that is going to rise to the top over the next few years because everyone's going to lose faith in anything they read.
Toby Cryns (28:27)
Okay.
What you're talking about is trust, and that's what people are going to pay for.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:40)
Exactly. Yes.
Toby Cryns (28:43)
And maybe they're already paying for that. Maybe they've been paying for that for 10 years and now it's just gonna, they're gonna figure out how to trust you differently.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:52)
So if if we were like, gosh, I feel like I feel like we've put ourselves in this position now. Like as the agency action show, if we're giving advice to people that are getting started in the agency business or have been in it for five years, but really haven't grown it yet, like I I wanna say like get in the content game, you know, make some videos, focus on content that that builds trust or makes you an expert in your niche or your space. And
Just two weeks ago, three weeks ago, maybe it was, we got referred for a job from a local agency. So a local agency met a customer and said, you want to do something that's too complicated for us. We're we're not in that market right now. You should probably talk to Kurt. And then she went to the website and she did a Google search for me. And of course, all these podcasts pop up, right? And then she by the time we met, she had already decided she wanted to do work with us. Like there was no closing, there was no selling. At that point, it was just how much is this gonna cost? Because I already know I want to.
you. And that's as an agency, that's the space you want to be in. You want to be in that space where when you meet somebody, they already want to work with you. Now you just got to figure out the needs and the cost.
Toby Cryns (30:01)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. There's a book called Million Dollar Consultant, and that's the top level of consulting where they say, give me Kurt, give me Toby. I don't care what they cost. Give me Toby. That's where you want to be. And that's like where like the example is like Deloitte. Apparently there are CEOs of large corporations that say, don't even do research, just get me Deloitte. And Deloitte comes in and says,
Kurt von Ahnen (30:17)
Whatever it takes, we gotta fix this.
Toby Cryns (30:27)
It'll be an exorbitant amount of money and they're like, well, the boss said to get you. So, okay, here's your money.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:34)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's so so when when I think about kind of like mid pandemic is where I really started to shift gears and go, you know what, I'm gonna take these opportunities, I'm gonna do these podcasts, I'm gonna put my face out there, I'm gonna do more and more, you know, live content. And that was kind of my motivation, like I said, from like mid pandemic forward. And so now it's been three years, four years, but I think I think there's been a payoff in that space.
Toby Cryns (31:03)
don't think anyone's ever been hurt by integrity driven marketing of like whether it's you, you know, going to speak at things or just putting facts out there, writing things, posting it wherever you make sense. Like, so like to your question, your original question, let's say you've been in it a few years and you're like, how do I grow? If I knew I would be doing that and I would be collecting all the work. So I'm not going to tell you what, how to do it, but like,
It would certainly be to your benefit to get your face out there with integrity, content that has integrity, whatever that is. So like you and I doing this, this is an example of we're doing our best to just share knowledge. And we're as real as we are willing to be and trying to be. And that's all you can ask, I think, of anyone really like in the marketing game.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:57)
Yeah.
I think there's I think there's a big change or difference also in whether you're someone that shares information or someone that sells. I've had this conversation with somebody close to me recently, and you know, your name came up, just to be transparent. And I said, Yeah, but Toby admittedly is a salesman. He he enjoys sales, he likes to sell. I
I I am more of like a I'm more like share information first. Like my core is like, I just want to add value to people. Like I'm John Maxwell training all the way through. I just want to add value to people. But I've had to train myself over the years that, like, no, I have to sell. Like, if I don't sell, there's no revenue. And and so this conversation came up because I talk to people in the agency space. They're like, my clicks are up, but my conversions are down and I'm this and I'm working on this and I'm working on that. And I don't see any business coming. And I'm like,
When have you shook hands with somebody? When have you made eye contact with somebody and and done a needs assessment and sold them something? Well, but my SEO this and and and my my my my hits, my this stop telling me about your marketing, tell me about your selling. And and people are really, I mean, roadblocked on the mental subject of selling. And and so people have said to me,
Cause recently we've had some pretty decent sales and people have said, my goodness, you how are guys doing this? And I'm like, lots of content, lots of referrals, and not wasting the referral. Like, I used to let people schedule a 30-minute like icebreaker phone call with me. And during that call, they would pepper me with questions. I would answer all their questions and I would say, I hope that helps you out. Maybe we'll talk again some other time. And I don't do that anymore. Now I'm like,
You already know I'm the expert. That's why we're on the call. So tell me what your needs are, and I'll figure out how much that'll cost you. I'll send you a proposal and then you're in the position to say yes or no. And that's people would say, Well, what's the difference? Well, the difference is I'm making sure they know that that time we spent is a needs assessment that's going to net a proposal and an eventual check to write, as opposed to, hey, you're just going to ask ask me a bunch of questions, I'm going to answer for free.
Toby Cryns (34:17)
Yeah, I think your initial comment there really struck me as something I've heard over and over and over from people who are struggling and they always go to marketing. Like, I'm marketing. And that's what you described. Well, I'm SEOing, I'm marketing, I'm marketing. And this is what I always tell people. OK, did you talk to somebody and say it'll cost X amount of dollars to do that thing? And if you haven't...
Had that conversation recently, that's the problem. Again, I don't have answers about how to get the conversation. That's the marketing problem. if you're not having those conversations, then there's a problem with your marketing or maybe a problem with you. And that's been the blocker. Because what I always pitch, and I think this is what you're saying, this is my mentality and it's been for a long time. Hey, if you want to get money, you have to ask for money.
There's no other way to get money. So did you ask for money from someone recently? You know, that's what I always say when people are, I'm not getting any business. I'm like, when's the last time you asked for money from someone?
Kurt von Ahnen (35:17)
Yes.
Yeah. And that's an important question. I think, my goodness. Cause I man, I have this conversation a lot. And I'm having it more and more lately, which is kind of freaking me out because people go, Well, the economy, the economy's down. The I'm like, there's still budget, there's still funding. Companies are still paying to have things made. So don't assume there's no money. Like, cause I I hear this, right? Yeah.
Toby Cryns (35:50)
There's more money. There's more
money because they're firing people that freeze up budget. AI is coming in, less money. Now they have more budget, less employees.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:00)
More budget.
So I I keep hearing like these contradictory things and excuses as to why business can't be grown. And I'm like, Munana no Mas had its biggest growth during the initial recession we talk about, 2007, 2008, 2009. That's when we had our our biggest, you know, percentages of growth was right in the middle of that recession. And then the pandemic is when I had to relaunch the thing after losing a corporate job. And and it's it's
We've always had our growth at the what would other people would say is the worst times. And so I I look at that kind of that track record, that swing, and I'm like, well, is that just weird happenstance and and just weird luck the way that worked out? Or is it because I have inherently figured out that to your point, I gotta ask people for money if I'm gonna create revenue. And if I'm gonna feed my family, I need the revenue. So I gotta ask people for money.
Toby Cryns (36:56)
But and we just lost a client who's been with us for over a decade. And I guarantee you the company we lost the work to asked for the money. And I bet you they I mean, I know the company I bet you they charged more than we're charging.
Kurt von Ahnen (37:12)
Yeah, I've run into that in the past. My Power Sport Academy was that problem. I didn't ask for enough money up front. I was like, I was way too humble with what we were offering versus, you know, the value. And we got feedback from dealers that flat out said we wouldn't pay for this because it it doesn't hurt enough. So because it's cheap, it implies that the training's not going to be good. And I was like, well, what do I need to do? And I had a multiple dealers go, it needs to be at least.
10 times more expensive. And so we literally raised the price by, you know, a thousand percent and people started signing up. pricing's a huge deal. But yeah, if if you're afraid to ask for the funding, you're not gonna get the funding.
Toby Cryns (37:55)
Well, yeah, it's the ask because the difference between pricing and asking, there's a huge difference. I have so many conversations with my friends over the years locally who do WordPress stuff. They always peppered me with questions about their maintenance plan. What should be in it? What should I charge? And I'm always like, I don't care what's in it. They don't care what's in it. They don't care what you charge. You got to charge something. So like, this is my feedback to them. I don't want to hear about your what's in your maintenance. It doesn't matter.
Kurt von Ahnen (38:27)
It's and I always go to what do I want to do? Right. So I look at like, so what are our skill sets? What what are we good at? What do I want to do? And make that part of the package. There's stuff that I am not inherently the best at. and I don't want to burden myself with things that I'm not incredibly efficient with or that I'm not creating great margins with. Or again, I'm going to bring up the ethics, you know, if I got a
charge somebody 10x to do something because I suck at it and I know someone else could do it cheaper. I might maybe refer them. I might maybe do like a referral fee affiliate thing, or I might maybe charge the an the knowing rate, the good rate, but then subcontract somebody, you know, and then manage it. So then to your point, the client is using us because they trust us to be like the project manager of this whole thing.
But I've got somebody subcontracted that's doing something that I'm not natively good at. But when it comes to like these maintenance programs and packages, I just pitch what we're good at, what we have good margins on and what I can execute well and that I enjoy doing.
Toby Cryns (39:39)
Yep. It's a great way to end it here, Kurt. How can people get in touch with you?
Kurt von Ahnen (39:46)
Well, LinkedIn's LinkedIn's apparently is doing really good lately. I've had a lot of requests. So LinkedIn, I'm the only Kurt Von Ahnen in there. I know you're on LinkedIn too, and you spell your name Cryns C-R-Y-N-S.
Toby Cryns (40:00)
you spell your name V-O-N-A-H-N-E-N so he's the only Kurt Von Ahnen on the internet.
Kurt von Ahnen (40:06)
Okay, so the Mighty Mo. Give people the Mighty Mo URL because I I have to admit, when I try to find it without thinking about it fully, I get lost too. So
Toby Cryns (40:17)
Yeah,
T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com. And you have to have the the and the mo spelled properly. That's the trick.
Kurt von Ahnen (40:28)
That that is the that is the trick. there's there's a lot of mighty moes where you live, so I want to make sure people get the right place.
Toby Cryns (40:35)
Yeah, well, and I imagine, does anyone ever get manana wrong? Because it is a Spanish word, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (40:43)
All all the time. what one of these shows we'll talk about the foundation of our names and how both of us probably wanted to change our names and probably never will.
Toby Cryns (40:50)
Yes.
Yeah, exactly. That'd be a fun one. Well, everybody. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (40:57)
Folks, we'll see you next time. This has
been Kurt and Toby with the agency action show. Toby, wave goodbye and enjoy your free weekend.
Toby Cryns (41:06)
Thanks everybody.