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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)
Folks, welcome to another, another fantastic episode of the Agency Action Show. ⁓ my name's Kurt Von Ahnen. My co-host, Toby Cryns is with me from The Mighty Mo. And we're gonna spend the next half hour or so talking about things in the agency world, which hey Toby, let's just get right to it, man. when you were building your agency, and I think we call ourselves agencies, w were you intending to build an agency or like just create a job for yourself?
Toby (00:24)
I d I was just creating a job, Kurt. Like I I really was just wasn't thinking beyond today and tomorrow and like I I didn't well first of all I didn't know th if I could for sure do it. I had enough confidence to where I quit my job and started doing it. But I I think part of this like in hindsight is like let's define what an agency is and what a job is and
One way that we could look at it is an agency is a sustainable thing. Like it's an entity that you you know, you're growing a garden versus planting a plant, versus a job is really like you're limited by your time your time and energy. an agency, you're you're not really limited by your time and energy. So that's kind of like one way to define it. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (01:07)
Yeah.
Toby (01:08)
Where do you sit today with your with your business? ⁓ with that definition. Are you age you know, how do you consider yourself agency or job? And a job can be I should say too. There are there's a guy I know that does like value-based fees and he makes a killing, but it's a job. It's just him. Maybe he has an assistant. And you know these people in podcast land, they're making millions of dollars, they have a few assistants. Without them, the empire dissolves immediately.
Kurt Von Ahnen (01:25)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It's it's such an interesting conversation because to me, an agency doesn't necessarily have to be a full time team of people sharing cubicles. Right. So I think that's where some people are having this this mental break, right? So I run an agency, I have
A team all over the globe, right? And they're contractors. I bring them in as I need I have relationships with these people. When something comes up that falls within their specialty that they can help me with, I hire them and we knock it out. We get it done as a team, right? So me and the team. and that terminology makes sense to me, but I think a lot of other people would have like a mental break with that. Like they would feel like that's not really your team, Brock, because they're doing things for other people when they're not working for you. They're not really your people. I think
In today's workspace in this gig economy, we have to be open to what that looks like. To me, the real definition of am I creating a job or creating an agency is when I talk to a client and I'm selling a job, I'm talking to a customer, let's say it's the last week of the month. When I sell that job, am I selling that job for the bare minimum so I can make my rent or my mortgage on the first? Or am I selling that job at a value?
That anybody on my team could do that and we're still profitable and it and it goes into growing a business. That's like so your analogy with the plant in the garden. Like, like am I growing a am I growing a jalapeno plant to make one jalapeno to say I grew a plant? Or am I growing a garden of jalapenos and coming up with a hundred and fifty, two hundred jalapenos and sharing them with the neighborhood? to so to me that's it. Like is it economically sustainable? Do I charge enough and do I provide a service that's good enough?
that I can I can charge that rate and then financially sustain not only myself, but pay others to do some of the work that I'm not gonna do.
Toby (03:18)
Yeah, and I think part of it is agency when with an agency, you're building overhead in your business so that you can buy back your time. The overhead in theory protects your time and your energy and gives you room to grow if you need it, room for the business to grow. So if you're not doing value based fees, for example, you can't grow an agency beyond or you can't grow your job beyond your hourly rate. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (03:42)
Yeah.
Toby (03:43)
With an agency
you can still potentially do hourly and grow beyond your hourly rate.
Kurt Von Ahnen (03:47)
So so here's a a yellow flag slash red flag that I see when I talk to like freelancers in the space. comes up a lot, like especially talking about software. And I joke, I always say, I'm a sucker for a lifetime deal. But it I say it as a joke, but it's a hundred percent real. Like I have a ⁓ I have a lifetime license with Lifter LMS, you know, I have a lifetime license with and it we can go down the list. And it's ⁓ I have a lifetime license with Presto Player, you know. I just I just said signed up for that.
And I think it's 25 sites that I can do with Presto Player, right? When I talk to freelancers or people that have created a job for themselves, they buy the software one license at a time, one project at a time. And they they might have the customer buy it and then they install it and and manage it and run it, right? Like that. Or they might buy it and then do a slight markup and and you know bill it back to the client somehow. But it's like they're only planning for that project.
Whereas when I'm if I'm on the hook for software, I'm immediately thinking, you know, is this a duplicable situation? Is this something I'm gonna be able to sell to multiple clients? What's gonna be my what's gonna be my possible margin on this if I embed this on 20 sites, 25 sites? And is it gonna be part of the hosting package that my company offers? Like that's business thinking. That's that's scalable business thinking over multiple clients. And
I don't see a lot of freelancers or like the Fiverr economy come into bat with that mentality. I see them come into bat with, well, your project needs WooCommerce and subscriptions. That's $299 a year for you, Mr. Customer. you need Lifter LMS, that's $1,500 a year for Infinity. Like I don't see them buying the Infinity bundle for themselves and then duplicating that install over 10 clients.
Toby (05:33)
Yeah, and I think part of it too for me is like what kind of services do I want to offer my client? And so I'm thinking like response times is one service. So one way that I judge my team's output is response times. And the the number of you know, how do we limit the email lengths, like the threads? Like so one way that I track my team's success or not in terms of metrics is like how many phone calls did you have compared to how long were the email threads? In theory, phone
Calls should shorten the email threads and make stuff faster and more efficient. And so I actually put a high value on phone calls internally. And hopefully my clients like appreciate that. And part of that's why they're paying us what they're paying us, which is more than they'd pay someone on Fiverr that you'll never talk to. And it's all going to be emailed. The email thread's going to be really long. And it's going to be managed on the Fiverr platform. You know, like like
What part of what they're paying me for is that and a response time. I'm promising them one business day or less response times on things. And I think is if I were to approach this as a job, I shouldn't say I think, because I did this 15 years ago and I could not deliver on one day response times. I could not deliver the type of service I wanted to until I built my team. And then I was like, now I can deliver this service since I'm not responsible.
Kurt Von Ahnen (06:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, now I can deliver the service, right? And so I think that's a really refreshing way that you look at that, right? Because just in talking about response time and and people on your team doing phone calls and emails and stuff, I mean that is all very descriptive of agency work right there, just j by definition, right? There's the customer has more than one contact point, things like that. The way I run my agency, I prefer
To be the main contact. I don't like the clients having access to my team. For instance, let's say I have a graphics girl, right? And I don't know why I say graphics girl, graphics person, right? But on my team, she just happens to be female. So I so I have, she's young, she's great, she's full of energy, she's very, very creative, very artistic. I'm thrilled to work with her. I think she's phenomenal. but but, but, but if she talks to a client,
Let's say we're doing logo development, right? We're doing a like a style guide. Logo development, style guide, color palette, and font. For me, I'm like, just give me the logo girl. I'll pick a font. I'll pick some colors. That we'll we'll match things up. It'll look great. I'll get it done. Lickety split. But if she gets on the horn with the client,
And the clients start saying, Well, I like some of this with sans serif, some with serif, some with this, some with that. I want to have ⁓ multiple color palettes. I want one for mobile, one for desktop, I want this for my print work. I it it next thing you know, this simple thing, this, you know, that I'm charging $2,500 or three grand for is really a nine thousand dollar project. But the artist sells all that in the call without realizing there's money attached to the commitments they're making, and then they'll put in the time.
And they'll send me the invoice for their time and I'll go, Well, what happened to my margin? My margin's gone. Cause you you sold stuff, but you sold you sold the work, but not the money. Like you sold the work, but you didn't know how to collect the funding. And ⁓ and you we can't exp I don't well, maybe w some of us can expect, but I don't really expect people on my team to be able to or or to be in charge of the revenue.
Toby (08:47)
Yeah. One way we handle that specifically, because that historically I should say I historically I've been the guy promising too much. And I actually saw things turn around when I hired my project manager initially a couple of years ago, and they were billing for things that I never would have billed for. I'd be like, yeah, I'll just do that, you know, I'll get to it tomorrow and just do it. And sh and they were looking at it, my project manager was looking at it like, No, like
We have a team that does this. We have to pay that team. Let me send an invoice. So I was like, great. And so now I've trained my project. Well, I should say they've trained me to send the invoices. anytime they feel like it should be invoiced. So I don't put hard barriers around it. I tell my team, think about the relationship with the client, think about the work we're doing, think about the sustainability of our company, and make the best call you can within.
a read within re with using your best judgment and that's really the only framework I put on them. So sometimes they they will say that yeah this seems included in the in the contract. Sometimes they'll say, No, I need to bill for this. But I gotta tell ya, their view is way better than mine in terms of putting the boundaries on invoicing. Like they just do a such a better job than me.
Kurt Von Ahnen (09:56)
Well, you and I, we've had conversations on the show about how you like sales.
Like you prefer sales, you want to do sales, you like being in sales, but sales is relational, right? It's it's less it's less factual, it's less process oriented, right? Sales is more relational. And yeah, you're gonna be more flexible. And hey, let's knock this out for them. Let's do this. Let's like I when I do my training ⁓ corporately, I talk about the emotional bank account, right? We always wanna make emotional deposits with customers because sooner or later we have to make an emotional withdrawal. and so for you, I could see where you're like super flexible, and then your project managers.
like that's that's the scope of work. Once the scope of work is reached, you know, we're we're we're in new territory. so it's awesome for you to have that.
Toby (10:37)
And also I've been teaching my
All this has led to like I have the same parameters for my developer team too, because they talk directly with the clients. So does our artist. And I always think like I I try to teach them like, hey, we have relationships, we have contracts. So what I've done recently is given them access to all the contracts and say, like, before you do anything, read this contract, before you have that call, read the contract. And also leaning into this idea of like, scope it. If it's not explicitly stated, at least scope it and let's have that conversation internally.
Internally before we do the work and promise the work. But I gotta tell you, Kurt, 15 or so years ago I had a project where I was brought in at an agency, it was a big project, and they said, Here, we're gonna give you X amount of dollars to do this scope of work. I said, Great. They brought me in and do a call with a client, and the client's like, that's good, but I want to push a little further and do that. And I was on the call, I said, No, we can't do that. Because my contract with the agency, I didn't explain it anymore. And the the person.
probably didn't even know I was a subcontractor, the client, you know. And I got chewed out after that call. The guy's like, No, we're gonna pitch that work. Don't tell no, tell them you'll think about it.
Kurt Von Ahnen (11:39)
Yeah.
Yeah. See, that's the hard part with letting subcontractors communicate with clients directly, right? Cause in my case, the person says yes, right, with no details. In your case, you said no, like with no details. Actually, you gave the extra detail, right? Like I'm a subcontractor. The contractor's probably like, ⁓ they thought this person worked for me. ⁓ the the perspective, the perception that people have or what they're trying to to
Toby (12:06)
Right. Right.
Kurt Von Ahnen (12:12)
manage behind closed doors sometimes can get really muddied up. And that's why I think it's so super important to to be that for me, it's that I gotta be that center point of contact.
Toby (12:23)
There is another piece of this too, and that's is growth a trap? So like most people who try to grow for for growth's sake, and some people who do it for other reasons, you know, you you sometimes realize that more clients, more employees, more revenue doesn't necessarily mean more profit, more freedom, more happiness. Sometimes it means the opposite.
Kurt Von Ahnen (12:42)
I'm seeing this over and over and over again. And and this is I'm just gonna be transparent with the audience. This is the exact spot that I am in right now. It's we are launching in August, we're launching an apprenticeship program here locally, and we're working, you know, hopefully working with the college. I'm actually speaking at the convocation for the education ⁓ people here and and
As they launch into the new school year, we're going to launch this new apprenticeship program. And that's going to kind of warm the bench for us as an agency, right? We're going to be able to run the apprenticeship program, get access to fresh students, see who performs the best or who's got the best commitment, and then have the possibility of possibly adding them to staff here locally. Now,
Some people would say, you gotta hire offshore, you gotta this, you gotta watch your margins, you can't, but but we're in Kansas and the cost of living's really low. And so I'm not gonna have to pay somebody a hundred grand a year to babysit a cubicle, right? So it's it it it'll be a good thing, I think. But that puts me right back in is the growth, like you said, is growth a trap? If if I hire these people, bring these people in, and we scale up, you know, we add another 50 clients in a year, by the time I cover
Office, hardware, software, meeting time, lunches, am I gonna be further ahead as an individual or further behind?
Toby (13:57)
Yeah. And then there's another piece to this, which is hiring low skill, cheaper labor, perhaps versus high skill, high experience, expensive labor. And pros and cons there, and you can imagine I mean everybody's made all the arguments, but it then there's there's like I said, lots of pros. Like for example, in your case, even if you do nothing else, you're building the community there. Like that's kind of one way I see it. Like whatever happens to business, wow. Thank you, Kurt, for building your community there and making your community.
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Toby (14:25)
stronger. But from a business perspective, you know, these questions come up. So can you share a little bit about what your current thinking is on long-term interns graduating into employees, you know?
Kurt Von Ahnen (14:36)
Well the main thing the whole thing was inspired 'cause I was speaking at the schools and the students at the schools, you know, they like computers. They took some coding classes. They they took some graphics classes. But none of them and this is what surprised me the most, right? None of them
had any inclination of like, I'm gonna run my own agency. Like they it make this assumption that they're getting a certificate in something, they're gonna get out of school and they're gonna have to go find a job. Well, I mean Wix just laid off, what was it, 20% of Wix got laid off, right? And and we see what happened at Stellar WP and and we can take a look at some other things. what jobs? Like like
You went to school, you got a student loan, you've you've got this where where are you gonna go generate and so for me, I never think in terms of jobs, I think in terms of revenue. So how am I gonna generate revenue? And it occurred to me, I'm like, we live in this really great small town and people come to school here and then they leave here and we have an aging population. And so I was like, what if we could entice the younger people to stay?
Create businesses and enterprises that are remote. They can serve people anywhere in the world, but they can live here, enjoy the lower cost of living, and add to our tax base and and help things, you know, increase for our community. And that's where my heart's at. I mean
I'm fifth I I I tell people all the time, I'm getting old, I'm fifty-eight, I'm not gonna do this forever, right? So I'd like to warm the bench. Maybe I expand Mañana no Mas and I let other people run it for me and I go mountain bike. I don't I don't know what the end game is. but that's where I see that. And I want them as the apprentice in the apprenticeship program, they're gonna get to negotiate with clients, make proposals, do invoicing, follow up on billing that's not paid, you know, run some onboarding and and training classes. Because at Mañana no Mas whenever we
We build a project, we also include a couple hours of Zoom one-on-one training with someone on the staff. This is your new website, this is how it works, blah, blah, blah. You might pay us forever to manage it and run it for you, but I want you to understand how it works and what it does, just for that client, you know, knitting things up. So teaching them how to run a business, how to grow a business, and how to do it, I think that's just the smartest thing I could do.
Toby (16:39)
And that it's possible. You know, a lot of people don't even know that it's possible.
Kurt Von Ahnen (16:43)
That's the strangest thing. Is w well, we started out talking about are you creating a job or creating an agency? And a lot of people that get started, when I got started, I was building websites for five hundred bucks. I mean, it was I gotta pay the rent on the first, so I gotta figure out how I'm gonna make five hundred bucks before the first. I mean, that was literally how I was running things. I wasn't thinking in terms of value pricing or
you know, ongoing recurring income beyond the original project. I I wasn't thinking in these complex terms. And I'm seeing the young people get out of school and they're not thinking in complex terms either. And so if we can if we could help people not make the same mistakes you and I made coming up, then how much better is that? But let's let's take a look at something else. Let's let's switch the subject because I don't want to make make this a commercial about my apprentice program. let's say
Toby (17:22)
Right.
I can ask.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Kurt Von Ahnen (17:30)
W we're talking about growth, right? We're talking about growth. Is growth a trap? Blah blah blah. What happens when what happens when you've done it for five years? Now you've got you've got a team, but what happens when you've got a team of twenty-five people and and you've gotta come up with one point six million dollars in billables every year to pay for them and y you look and you go, I'm paying them, but I'm only making forty grand a year myself now. What do you do when you've been trapped? What
Toby (17:53)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (17:56)
How do you how do you simplify it?
Toby (17:57)
Yeah, I mean this is so hard. I mean, I I've I've gone up and down of over I've been in business twenty years and so like I've seen I've gone through the higher and fire, you know. and it's part of it's tricky because there's no answers out there. Everybody's gonna tell you something different based on their experience and
Kurt Von Ahnen (18:12)
Yeah.
Toby (18:14)
I think the one thing that successful businesses let's dive define success as existing. The businesses that still exist have have figured out like ways to exist. And that's that's the trickiest part of owning a business. And so I think, you know, one thing I focus on now, because I'm currently in growth mode and I'm trying to do it smarter than I did the last two times that failed for whatever reason, you know, they're
external and internal reasons where the why the growth was halted. But ⁓ I'm trying to do it smarter. And one of the ways I'm doing it smarter now, hopefully, is I'm just very first of all, I'm very curious about the operations and our relationships and how people are interacting with clients and coaching them more than I did in the past probably in our last iteration like 10 years ago.
I'm actually not super plugged into the finances. So that is actually less important today in terms of this iteration of growth than it was last time. I I am focused on, hey, is there enough money to pay the bills? But I'm not like as focused on profit as much as I am on delivering the experience. And part of that for me is making sure that I have the right team in place to do that. And so I'm
Bringing my teammates in on calls, as part of our training for our team, for our developers and our project managers is like, we're gonna bring you in on calls. I'm gonna thrust you into the fire and I'm just gonna watch and see what happens on the call. You know, and a part of that, because that's part of the job at the Mighty Mo is like, hey, how do you handle yourself in front of a client? Is it
Kurt Von Ahnen (19:44)
Yeah.
Toby (19:44)
⁓ and so right now we're hiring a project manager position and the in I part of the application is like, hey, just give me a three-minute video of you talking into the camera about I'll give them a prompt or two and just say, just talk about this. I just want to see how you talk about it. And ⁓ there was this company, a bank in California years ago, that they did something similar. They brought a bunch of people in and they basically like took a
Three minute video and said, okay, who's smiling in these videos? That this three, there's 20 people in a room, which ones look appear to be smiling. And they're there the whole gist of it was that there are people who, in their views, they're gonna be the first interaction you have with this bank. They're gonna be the teller. And so do you appear friendly or not? Like, you know?
Kurt Von Ahnen (20:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Toby (20:30)
And that's their fur this is this bank in California. That was their first qualifying interview, basically. Do you look happy or not? And I think like there's something to that. And so when I'm looking at these videos, I'm I'm thinking like, is this someone I want in front of a client? First of all. And if they can pass that initial test, then I'm handing it off to the our project man our lead our lead operations person who's gonna do the initial interview and we're gonna have process from there. But
I think all this ⁓ kind of leads to another question is like what kind of agency so as you think of like getting you know how do you how do you how do you continue to exist? There's this question of simplicity, complexity.
Kurt Von Ahnen (21:07)
Yeah.
Toby (21:07)
How do
you look at that, Kurt, as you like consider bringing on these interns and converting them into full-time employees or part-time employees? Like, how do you consider because you have to add complexity? Like that's I think a given anytime you grow, you have to add overhead to grow. And so how are you approaching that?
Kurt Von Ahnen (21:23)
I I think this
is another area where you and I have a difference of opinion. because I know that you're you're like, hey, I'll just vibe code something and I'll, you know, I we do some custom development. I go out of my way to use pre made things and to become an expert in those things. I have a very limited stack.
Do I have access to the whole world like everybody else? Yes. But when I'm selling work, I try to focus in a niche. And within that niche, I'm an expert on the stack that I use for that niche. I know I'm gonna make this sound very overly simple, right? And I'm not trying, I'm not trying to make it sound like I've got the whole world figured out because I don't. but let's say that, you know, I'm very big in in the e-learning space, so Lifter LMS. I only use a couple of form tools. So
In most cases, I use Fluent Form and Fluent CRM and Fluent Support and Fluent Booking. Like to me, that's a whole suite that all works together. So if I can be an expert in the Fluent space, well, then I know I'm very familiar with that. If they need a functionality Fluent doesn't have, Gravity's gonna have it. So I bring Gravity Form in on occasion, right? So, but by being focused in that stack, I'm I'm able to keep things fairly simple for myself.
It's I find that whenever we get off the rails and someone says, I want to have custom profiles and people make their own events and their own custom profile and then they can sell those events. So I'm gonna need a separate payment gateway so third parties can sell their custom events through the website. Like when that when those conversations start to happen, that's when we start to lose control. And when I lose control, I notice I also lose margin. Now I'm not gonna say revenue, because I can I can play with the revenue a little bit.
But when we get overly custom or overly involved in things that aren't constant, consistent, we tend to lose margin. And that drives us back to the top of the conversation you and I had had. It's like just because you increase clients, increase complexity, increase team members, increase doesn't mean you're increasing margin. And margin to me is what runs my agency, not not necessarily just revenue.
Toby (23:24)
So hypothetically, you're gonna add people to your organization. Do you think you're gonna need to add revenue to support those people?
Kurt Von Ahnen (23:28)
Yes.
absolutely. And that but
that's this is where I think some people have a snap in the thinking based on what I just said. I am looking for projects, especially like transferring an enterprise level client from some SaaS learning platform somewhere, right? They might be paying two hundred and fifty, three hundred thousand dollars a year to host their learning content somewhere. We can come in and say, hey
For only $100,000, we can migrate all this over to WordPress and then we can manage it for you ongoing for 65 or 70 grand a year. And I know that there's other people that'll hear this and go, those are crazy numbers. They're not crazy numbers because we're talking to people in the space that are paying three and four times as much for a service that's not as good or as complete as what we're offering. And we're using project products that are typically out of the box. The design stuff gets involved. Like if we have to match some.
Figma design somewhere. We've got to bring in page builders and stuff like that. And even that I try to keep like out of the box as possible. I think people, I think people make fun of me behind my back for that, Toby. I'm gonna be honest with you. I think there's I think there's people in the WordPress space that think that you have to know CSS, you have to know React, you have to know JavaScript, you have to be able to code these things. You, you know, people want these custom things.
And what I've learned, especially the higher up the the pricing ladder I've gone with clients, it's not the customization that drives the value, it's the professional. So it's what we get to you and I had a t a talk about do you have to brand yourself, right? What personal branding. People want to talk to me because I'm the expert. I'm the consultant that says, you've got a problem, you've got a pain point, and I've got a solution. And we can build that solution out readily with with the stack we've already got. I don't have to.
Toby (25:03)
Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (25:14)
sell customization and all kinds of things because most clients I talk to don't even understand what we're doing. They don't wanna understand what we're doing. We're just building a website. They don't want to know the details.
Toby (25:25)
I guess like as I think about this idea of complexity versus simplicity, and we're talking about personal branding. And so one way to look at the personal branding is hey, you gotta get out there, you gotta create more content, you gotta go to more things, which takes you away from the things you're currently doing, which requires more complexity in your systems and you need more people, you need the systems, you need so one for example at the Mighty Mo, one thing we've done ⁓ this year that we didn't do previous years, we're doing
Kurt Von Ahnen (25:41)
To hire people.
Toby (25:53)
We've added a lot of QA overhead internally to make sure we deliver on time, on scope, and that the customer is signing off on stages. but I saw that you can call that complexity or simplicity, but it's overhead, whatever it is. It's it's an added layer that hopefully makes everybody happier, including our clients.
Kurt Von Ahnen (25:58)
Yeah.
Toby (26:10)
And but like the this is the question about ⁓ one way to frame the complexity. I I I think it's like a white whale. You're gonna chase simplicity and never get the not you personally, but like I've been chasing simplicity for twenty years and I I always end up with something that's not simple. It's it's more straightforward, but there's a big difference between a straightforward process and a simple process. And I that's
Kurt Von Ahnen (26:35)
I'm gonna give you an example from this week: complexity versus simplicity. so it's an e-learning client, they've got a CRM, they've got a form tool, they've they've got stuff in their website. And they reached out and they said, We wanna have a we want an AI chatbot, right? I'm getting this all the time, I'm sure you are too, right? How can I leverage AI for my business?
But I was like, what do you think the AI chatbot's gonna do? So we started having like a conversation. And I and the more we conversed, the I was like, I am not putting an AI chatbot on your website. Like, you're the client, I get it, you're the client. If you really want it, I guess we'll build it and put it in there. I said, but what do you think it's gonna do for you? Like, you don't have enough content in your website to train the AI chatbot to answer a real support question. Like you just don't have enough supporting content thinking about all the questions that people would ask.
Because realistically, and we drove back to simplicity. I said, realistically, the the members that you have, they only have what, eight to ten questions that are common. And they're like, Yeah. And I said, But you have a frequently asked questions page already. Yeah, but we need people that can see that whether they're logged in or not logged in, or this, that, and then then the AI chatbot. What I said, whoa, whoa, slow down. You have content restriction in the website. So you can show content.
Very simply, that that is shown to the masses and you can show content that is restricted for members only. And you can put that in the same page. It just depends on whether they're logged in or not, whether that block shows up on the page or not. And they were like, I forgot. Like, that's so much easier. I'm like, you could literally have a members only frequently asked questions block and that'll answer anything that's your top eight to ten questions.
You don't need this AI chatbot thing. And if you let an AI chatbot connect to Claude or Open Chat what open AI or whatever, and it sources the internet to answer your support questions, well, now you're gonna have members asking you questions about your training and it's gonna respond with like quotes from Tony Robbins. Like you just and they go, Yeah, we don't want that. And I'm like, so you you need a restricted chat bot, but you don't have any content that would answer the questions.
So let's just build the frequently asked questions and have it done. And they were like, that's so much easier. That's so much smarter. And that to me is that's the simplicity, right? So what people are paying me for, you know, again with the personal branding, is I'm the expert in the space, I know my tools, I know your business. You and I have a relationship, you've got a pain point. You immediately leap to customizations and AI and vibe coding when we already have the tools here to build space.
qu elegant elegantly something simple that answers your your pain point.
Toby (29:01)
Yeah. Another way to just building on that, one way to think about simplicity is a smaller team. It's it's just less to worry about when you have a smaller team and a that's in communication with each other. As we think about that, let's close this out with this question of what's the right team size? How how should we think about team size? You know, at the Mighty Mo we have I think we have twelve people right now. ⁓
on the team, something like that. People ask me it's out you somewhere around there right today. and we're gonna hire another one today, ⁓ soon, probably next week. ⁓ and so the question you know you have a smaller team, then there's variable variable, senior talent, niche expertise, higher margins, you know, like there's all these things that go into that. But let's just talk about the team. And you're you're considering it now. ⁓
Kurt Von Ahnen (29:46)
Yeah.
Toby (29:49)
But regardless of the size and who's in it, like is a five person agency actually better than a fifty person agency? And how about a one person agency? You know, this is the kind of the the question.
Kurt Von Ahnen (29:59)
Yeah.
So if I think about my team, my team's probably half the size of your team, but our our billing and time usage is different. Here's where I struggle with the whole idea of the teams and the size of the teams. And this is why I think things scale and get out of control pretty quickly. There are things that I can't r I don't feel comfortable turning over to AI that seem tedious. Like in the e-learning space, embedding videos for
courses with l lots of lessons and lots of videos to embed, you part of you wants to say, Hey, Captain Claude, I need you to embed these videos with the titles that match the names of the lessons or whatever. Like like you're tempted to just turn it over to AI and and click a button and see if it happens. But realistically, based on that QA process you and I were talking about, if I'm gonna have to QA it anyway, I might as well just go lesson to lesson, embed the videos and make sure the right videos and the right lesson and it's what I need it to be.
Truth, that's tedious. And now I bring someone onto the team and I assign them that tedious task and they do that. Human nature says they don't want to do that more than once or twice. They wanna move up the ladder, right? They wanna they wanna be promoted. They wanna do something they wanna be in design. Well
I can't have everybody on the team be in design unless I expand the team and keep bringing in people that do the tedious work. So you keep bringing in new people for the tedious work, they climb up the ladder, it keeps expanding. If I don't have attrition
Then the next thing you know, I've got to sell enough work to keep 20 people happy. And I think that's how our agencies accidentally scale. Cause I think we bring in the work and then it's too tedious for the people that are already on the team. So we bring in a junior developer, a junior designer, junior whatever, and we say, here's what you do. But within six months, they're like, I'm either gonna need better content to work on with you, or I'm gonna have to go to a different agency. Right. Cause I'm I'm
I am outpacing what you're giving me. And ⁓ the tediousness of the work I think is what drives some people into unexpected growth.
Toby (31:52)
That's true. And and I think there there's a co-working space that I'm a member of right now. years and years ago, I was still a member there. One of the I was one of the first members, but
They were having problems at the front desk because members such as myself were like complaining to the owner, saying, These front desk people are making my life harder. And they were good people. I don't wanna like they were good people. I'm still friends with some of them, some of the front desk people. They're really top-notch members of our community. But I was talking with the owner after at some point in that ⁓
A after he went through I think he went through like two hiring and firing phases where he's just like, We need to get rid of all these people, bring in new people for the front desk. And so now he's on the third iteration of that. And I was talking to him about it. And what he said was initially he thought he wanted people at the front desk who were really interested in success and helping, you know,
Whatever that means, something like that. Like, like I want people who get it, who like want to like do great things. And and then what he realized later, this is what he told me, is like he's like, What I actually wanted, it turns out, after years of trial and error, is I want people who really want other people to succeed. And like that's where they drive that's where the so I think the current people he's hiring are doing that. And you know, this is like to your point, I think as an agency owner.
You you need to set really clear boundaries about when to hire and fire. And to me, we let a guy go recently. We let him walk, actually. He was a great guy, great teammate. he didn't want to pick up the phone. And he told me that. He goes, if I have to keep picking up the phone, I can't be here. And I said, I would love to keep you, but that's in the job requirement. And
Kurt Von Ahnen (33:24)
Yeah. You gotta hunt some people down. So talking about like this tediousness, right? And people always wanna have this drive to succeed or climb the ladder. we found by accident, found a guy in town who was like the IT manager of the city.
And they're forcing him into retirement. Like you're you've aged out. You're gonna be forced into retirement. And he's like, I can't just sit around and like watch the dog poop in the backyard. I gotta do something. He's like, Do you have anything? And I was like, I got some real tedious nonsense, man. Like, like, you know what? I could pay you to put videos into these into these lessons. And he's like, I'm your guy. I was like, ⁓ crap. But he just wants that. And I think back to
Toby (33:59)
⁓ Well that's a yeah. There are yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (34:03)
I took the night shift at Home Depot when my daughter was born. The goal was my wife was going to watch the baby during the day, and ⁓ no, I was gonna watch the baby during the day because I worked nights, and she was gonna watch the baby during the night because she worked days. It was the only way we could think of where we could keep two incomes going for a while. And when I applied at Home Depot, they looked at my resume and they went, Do you wanna be the store manager? And I was like, No, I just want to put the paint away. I don't want to be in charge of nobody. I just want to put the paint away.
Toby (34:26)
Right. Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (34:32)
And and it the the whole two years I worked there, it was a constant battle where they kept saying, Do you want to be the night shift manager? No, I'm driving to Forklift. That's all I want to do. and so currently in my agency, I'm looking for people that only want to embed the videos. Or, you know, hey, I'm totally cool with updating the plugins. I have a team member, and you know who my team member is that does this, but like once a week, make sure that WordPress is updated, make sure that all the plugins are updated and there's no conflicts on any of the sites.
Some of the sites I mandate that we make the updates in staging first and then we duplicate the updates in production. And and I have a process. And I gave him the process and he does it. He doesn't complain. He doesn't ask to move up the ladder. He gives me his hours at the end of the month. I give him his money. And it's a very happy relationship. And it's like I've I struggle to find people that are happy with the work that we can give. Because a lot of people I have a graphics girl who's great, but now she wants to be the instructional designer. And then
I say, okay, well you can design this course. And then after she designs that course, she's like, I want to develop the platform that the course goes on. It's like, Okay, I still need someone to design these courses. I still need that person.
Toby (35:39)
There's a I I was working at the University of Minnesota and there there were two front actually there are more than two, but there's a a front desk in this building and they were having this problem that you and I are talking about right now, where the person would come to the front desk, they would work there for two years, and then they'd be promoted. And they'd have to hire a new front desk person. And so finally the person who manages the front desk is like
I do not want to hire these people who are looking to get promoted. And so she she what this person this story was told to me by the per the hiring person. She's like, This wonderful person comes in, interviews for the job, and she goes, The one of the interview questions was, Where do you see yourself in five years? And the interviewee goes, Right there at that desk. She was hired. Yeah, that's what she said. She was hired. It's a great tale. Yeah.
Kurt Von Ahnen (36:17)
I see myself at this desk.
I see myself at this desk. Yeah.
I I think with I think we're in a better space now than we were ten years ago for this, Toby, because I think COVID got people used to the idea that, yeah, I could do something and hang out at home and do this for you. I could knock this out. And I and I think that in a sense that part got a little easier, but it's harder to qualify people at such great distances and what their real goals are.
Toby (36:48)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (36:48)
And as an agency owner, I want to help these people reach their goals too. I got no problem training somebody up knowing that they're not going to stick around forever and they're going to go do their own thing. I'm totally cool with that. Like I don't mind sharing my magic sauce. You can go duplicate it and do your own thing. I just don't want you trying to steal my customers while you're here. Like taking my customer list or my client list and or trying to keep the relationship with people after we you go start your own thing.
Toby (37:00)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Von Ahnen (37:13)
Like I'm totally cool with it. You can learn from me. You can go start your own thing. I'm totally cool with that. What I have a problem with is if I tell someone it's eight thousand dollars to do a project and they have the freelancer mentality and they go to the customer and they go, I know, you know, Kurt said it was eight thousand dollars, but I could probably do it for fifteen hundred bucks and have it done by Christmas. Like that to me is like you're not on the team. You're on your own team. You gotta go now.
Toby (37:35)
Course.
Yeah, and I think like perhaps experiences can can muddy that because has that happened to me? Probably. But I think like I you've gotta trust your people. And part of it is just what I try to do is just I set that expectation up front. I just, hey, here's the contract you're gonna sign to work with me and it includes a line for that. But somebody could easily one of my teammates could do they have all the information.
Kurt Von Ahnen (37:57)
Yeah.
Toby (37:58)
They could steal a client and nothing I, you know, I'm not going to do anything. What am I going to do? Sue them, you know, like, probably not. but like, I trust my team. I think like I have to have this as an owner, I have to have a certain degree of naive trust in people. And so I actually don't worry about that at all. Not because it's a reality. It could happen. I don't, that's not why I don't worry. It's just like, there's nothing I can do about it. It's kind of like this like Zen thing, like, I can't control that.
Kurt Von Ahnen (37:59)
Yeah.
Toby (38:23)
You know, so I'm just not gonna worry about it.
Kurt Von Ahnen (38:26)
Well, I think not worrying about it's a a great piece of advice to end the show on.
Sometimes we can talk in detail about all kinds of things and other times we just don't need to worry about it.
Toby (38:32)
Yeah.
Probably for most of the things.
Kurt Von Ahnen (38:35)
Toby, how can people reach you, man?
Toby (38:36)
You can find me on the old LinkedIn at ⁓ my name is T-O-B-Y-C-R-Y-N-S dot com. Kurt, and also at Themighty Mode. That's T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com, where we do SEO, we do website development, we do WordPress, we do you name it. So Kurt, how can people get in touch with you?
Kurt Von Ahnen (38:55)
I am also on LinkedIn. The only Kurt Van Ahnen there, easy to find. And then the business is Manana no Mas. Manana no Mas. And that's our call sign on all of our socials and stuff too. Folks, ⁓ like, share, follow, ask us questions. you can join the Slack with the WP Minute. You can join that Slack. I believe that's been opened up in public now. And so jump in, ask questions, have a conversation, and we'd love to we'd love to connect. Folks, ⁓ and
Next week when we record, I don't know when they'll actually publish it, but next week we're gonna have a guest. First time ever.
Toby (39:27)
Thanks everybody.
Kurt Von Ahnen (39:28)
Have a good one. Bye bye.