Kurt von Ahnen (00:00)
Hey folks, welcome to another agency action show. I'm Kurt von Ahnen and I'm here with my fantastic co-host, Toby Cryns and I think we've got a pretty good outline to discuss with you today, if especially if you're an agency. Toby, what are your thoughts on projects that are complicated or not complicated and why do we think of them that way?

Toby Cryns (00:20)
I think like how we define complicated differs from person to person and business to business, but particularly person to person, because even within a business you could have two people who view it very differently. you know, we we could we've all anyone who's been in this game long enough knows that people can can complicate things, like clients,

For example, but it'll also be someone on our end. Maybe we have somebody who's sick, you know, like these are things that add to complexity. ⁓ and then you have like technology things. What are you building? There's simp, there's straightforward and there's complex. And sometimes the things you think are going to be straightforward become complex based on little requirements. And part of I think, like when it comes to technology stack and defining what's being built, this is where the great agency owners and great

Developers and great strategists can listen to a request that comes in. They they want X, Y, and Z, and they can interpret that and turn around and say, we can't give you A, B, and C. We can give you X, Y, and Z that's very similar, achieves the same objectives, but it does it very differently. But we can build that in scope and we we know that it's achievable. I think early on in my career, I got

stuck a lot of times 'cause I didn't have that experience to really like push back and reframe the conversation in a way that I could build it in scope. And so I got stuck a lot of times building things that were too hard, like to achieve something, whatever the thing was, it was it took in hindsight, way too much effort when there was an off the shelf thing that could have gotten it done really quickly and solved a similar problem.

Kurt von Ahnen (01:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well and

If we go back in time too, because you have to remember, like when that was happening to you, you know, was there paid memberships pro and the Lifter LMS? And did we all did we know about those these you know gravity forms with all the add-ons and extensions and boot like it wasn't as simple back then either, right? And it wasn't as ubiquitously known. So I'm gonna go for big words in the show. It wasn't as ubiquitous then. So someone might have said, I want someone to be able to buy this thing, you know, on my website.

But when they buy it, I want them to get, you know, this email, and then I want another email to go out in another 30 days. And then I want to be able to send them their own coupon. And, you know, your head might have been, you know, 10 years ago, you might have been like exploding, right? Now we now we think to ourselves, yeah, we that's this, this, this, and this. So I think it's a combination. Like I think things have evolved greatly in our favor, but I I think.

To your point, I can remember in the past, I had customers, I would like build something and they would say, you know what? I was on another site and I saw this thing and it would like it moved when they moused over it, you know? And I'd be like, ⁓ you mean like a like a slide? And they're like, Yeah, yeah, is that what that's called? That's I need one of those. And I'd be like, crap. Right. And I would never like say early in my career, I would never say,

what's the purpose for that or what's the root cause that makes you need that for this project? Or I was like, well they want it. I guess I gotta make it. And I would just constantly be in this like never-ending tornado of requests. And I think to your point, somewhere along the line, in in the in the trail of maturity, I was like, I I grew the the balls to say, why? Why do you think you need that on this project?

You know, and then how is that going to drive revenue? Or how's that where's the return on investment for that? Or better yet, I can build that for you, but it's gonna cost this much more. Is that within your budget? Like those are the questions I should have been asking. And instead what I was saying was, in my mind, I was like, Well, I promised I'd build this guy a website he's happy with, and now what I'm hearing is he's not gonna be happy unless I build this slide thing. So I gotta build it if I'm gonna get paid. And it's that's the wrong way to approach things.

Toby Cryns (03:53)
Yeah, and also I think we're living in a period right now where those goal posts are moving again with AI because requests are coming into me that in the past I would have said, No way, this is gonna cost ten grand and now I go, Well, let me give it a try. Let's see if I can do it in an hour. Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (04:00)
Yeah.

Let take a look at that.

So here's an interesting thing based on what you just said, totally unrelated to our outline today. the meeting I had today, very explicitly she said, I cannot have any ties to artificial intelligence in my project. Cannot. She goes, My my audience will not talk. It's a artist-centered, artist-featured, and she's like, in the arts, people in the arts, in the mainstream of the arts.

are not happy with AI. It's taking away jobs and all that kind of stuff. She's like she's like it has a very negative connotation. So I can't have any artificial intelligence associated with my project.

Toby Cryns (04:44)
I gotta wonder about that. I was conversing with someone recently about this. And what does that mean? You know, like have the that you don't want us to go to Google and type how to build what you need? You know, like developers use Google and AI just to answer basic questions every day. And they all they we've always used Google and Reddit and now and ⁓ you know s all the helpful forums. And now all that is in AI, and we just go to AI for those answers now. And so

Kurt von Ahnen (05:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Toby Cryns (05:12)
Are you saying you don't want me to use AI to answer this WordPress tech question?

Kurt von Ahnen (05:17)
Yeah. No, it it was a really unique conversation, you know, and I was like, and I asked some of those questions, follow-up questions. I was like, you know, if you're gonna really gonna use search engine optimization, you're gonna wanna know, you know, keyword placement. You're gonna wanna understand this. And in some cases, you know, doing a ⁓ you know, a sweep of your website with artificial intelligence is gonna let you know where your gaps are. And and she was like, that's really interesting. She's like, I just can't I can't have my audience

think or know that artificial intelligence is used anywhere in the product.

Toby Cryns (05:46)
I gotta believe though, like it's such a it's ubiquitous. This AI stuff. You're everybody's using it, whether they know it or not. you're in your Gmail and it's sorting your emails. Like, congratulations, you're using AI now. I just Right. I just think like this conversation, which is happening a lot now, and even like picture like

Kurt von Ahnen (05:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you checked your promotions folder yet?

Toby Cryns (06:07)
privacy-centric healthcare organization that has to comply with laws. And they're now hiring us to build an app. And they're like, you I've seen the contract. Like you cannot use AI to build this. And we're like, are you kidding? This doesn't even make sense. Like to ask us to do that. Like, what does that mean? And I just think like we're in this weird space where that question kind of bothers me because I go like you don't even know what you're asking.

Kurt von Ahnen (06:23)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (06:35)
Like when you ask me not to use AI.

Kurt von Ahnen (06:37)
But in the terms of corporate speak America, I think that's seventy percent of our interactions. A lot of times when you're talking to, you know, CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, they have no idea what it's like to be boots on the ground within their own corporation.

None. They they they they're they're totally devoid of of any contact of reality. I mean th they know the company from the position of spreadsheets in a conference room, but not very many of have spent time in the warehouse, you know.

Toby Cryns (07:04)
Yeah.

You know what's interesting? ⁓ the the Guitar Center is like the biggest music company music dealer in the United States.

Kurt von Ahnen (07:11)
Great place

to go on a Friday if you don't have a party to go to.

Toby Cryns (07:14)
It is, but for years,

apparently they had these number crunching CEOs. And now they have a musician who's the CEO. And he's going through like he was ⁓ in the stores recently, and he's been sharing this publicly too. Like he's like, cause he's gets because Guitar Center just gets beaten up. They're the biggest dog, but they also have so they're great in many ways, but they also have these like antiquated ways of doing things. By antiquated, I mean they have a computer monitor. This is where the transactions take place in the store. Everybody sees it when they're doing

It. It's a green, like the green screen where you like clickety clack, and you know, you're just like, when was that? And he, I was listening to a podcast. He says it's 1983. That's how old those computers are, 1983. And he's like, for the first time, being like, we have to fix this. Like these computers are getting in the way because they're trying to like take pictures of guitars and upload them and tie them into their system. And they're he's like, it's

Kurt von Ahnen (07:46)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (08:07)
Really hard to do that with a c nineteen eighty three computer system.

Kurt von Ahnen (08:10)
Yeah, yeah. I have a friend that has a motorcycle parts business and it still runs on a DOS program.

Like from way back when. And every year, and I I think this might be the year that they're updating it, but he he's like, It's it's such a big job because you got hundreds of thousands of SKUs and it's all stored in a different type of database and you gotta figure out how to manage and migrate all that information. And then I was like, It doesn't matter if you manage and migrate it or not, when's the last time you did a physical inventory and actually knew the inventory was right?

Toby Cryns (08:39)
Right. Well, and how about this? My my local YMCA recently did a migration. And this goes back to what we were talking about with the how what what does difficult mean? They hired some company. I don't even know what who they hired or why they hired them, but the site, the entire operations of the site was down for two months. And it was a planned migration of from here to there. And from outside, the people at the YMCA seemed totally okay with this. Like

Kurt von Ahnen (08:49)
Yeah, what is difficult?

Toby Cryns (09:06)
They're like, we have a plan. It's gonna take two months. We won't have any access to our systems, but we have a way to a workaround. And for them, that was easy. You know, that maybe not easy, but that was, you know, not difficult. Whatever, however, we're gonna define that. And for the agency, they go, This is what not difficult means to us. and you can imagine a scenario where that happens overnight and nothing goes down, you know, or maybe it's one day down, but like it's all in the eye of the beholder, this like what.

What does complexity mean and what does it mean to have a difficult project is totally subjective.

Kurt von Ahnen (09:37)
Drives me back to that story that you shared on one of our shows where you were like, I'm not doing the update at Saturday at midnight. We're gonna do it Tuesday at noon.

Toby Cryns (09:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Big site, a big e-commerce

site. They're like, we're gonna do it Saturday at midnight. I go, No, we're not. We're doing it Tuesday at noon because we're all gonna be in the office and if a problem happens, we're gonna have slept that night and we're gonna be ready for it. And I was very adamant about that. We did it, it went great, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (10:01)
Yeah. That's so interesting. It's it's ⁓ so I had a client referred to me locally from another agency because the agency said, ⁓ hey, we're gonna send her to you. What she's asking for is more complicated than we want to get involved with. And I took it as a compliment, obviously, right? I'm like, well, hey, thanks. but then I couldn't get it out of my head, like, because I met with the lady and

You know, newsflash. She was a nice lady. It wasn't like she was argumentative or cantankerous or any of that. She was a nice lady. She seemed to I asked her questions about her business and she was able to answer the questions, and she seemed to have done some homework before she came. And ⁓ you know, it's gonna be an e-commerce website selling product and shipping product, but I didn't really see the complexity in her request. In fact

I didn't see enough complexity in her request that I started to add things to her to her list that to add complexity. Like if you want community, we can do that. If you want to do you know, some e-learning or run a mini course, we can do that. and it got me wondering, like, where where was the complexity that caused this other agency to say, this is too complex, you have to you're gonna have talk to Kurt. when someone comes to you, Toby, what what are the earmarks of complexity?

Toby Cryns (11:08)
Yeah, and another way we talk about phrasing this is ⁓ what is the agency equivalent what is the agency equivalent of difficult surgery? ⁓ and and I think it's subjective. And so let's just talk about me subjectively. We come with a lot of experience to all our projects. We have senior developers, senior project managers, senior SEO people, people with I mean, I've been in the WordPress space for over 20 years now.

Kurt von Ahnen (11:17)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (11:32)
And so if you come to us, you should expect us to have opinions. And so if you're coming to us with all the direction and all the opinions, it's probably not gonna be a good fit 'cause we're probably not gonna agree with some of what you're bringing because of our experience and our wealth of experience. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (11:37)
Yes.

Yeah.

I like to so you phrase that different than I do. I I tell people we're a business consultancy first and then a lot of the times, you know, our product is a website. But there's times where we consult with people and there's no website to make. You know, 'cause you you do the homework and you go, This this isn't a viable product or this isn't a viable project or or whatever. Whereas you know, a lesser agency, a freelancer would just be like, You want a website, I'll make your website, you know, boom, here we go. ⁓

So yeah, to your point, you know, when when you're when you're seasoned, you come in with opinions, you come in with thoughts and input. But

Complexity does is so if someone comes to you with an e-commerce idea, are you instantly like, well, that's gonna cost a lot? That's that's involved, or are there other elements where you go, it's the person, it's the product, it's I have a friend in the agency space that literally would think that's viable, they're gonna make money, I should charge them more because they're gonna have budget. So people think of it in different ways, right?

Toby Cryns (12:45)
Yeah, I don't yeah, exactly. I we never think of it that way. We don't get into their finances usually, but I understand that some people do. Like there's a whole value-based fees ⁓ you know, curriculum, but we don't do that necessarily. But we do kind of understand the value we're bringing in terms of like who else are you gonna go to for this difficult problem? Good luck. You know, so what do you what's difficult surgery for Manana No mas?

Kurt von Ahnen (12:54)
Yeah.

Well I'm gonna

Just be as transparent as I always am on the show. And I'm gonna tell you, I'm I'm running out of things that are difficult. And that that's not to be braggadocious. That's I'm just we do e learning at an enterprise level. We do ⁓ you know, some e-commerce work, we do community work, we do support work. so if someone you know wanted to have a support portal, we'll build that for you, right? Well, and not only that, but like we'll help you manage, run it, and moderate it. Like we have people on the team that that we can do some of that with. And so I think the component.

Complexity, and maybe this is kind of our pre-show conversation too. For me, it's almost like the complexity comes in who's who's my point of contact on this project? And are they a pain in the butt or not? You know, is this going to require a lot of time and meetings and you know, translation from tech to corporate speak? Like, is is that what's going to weigh me down in this project? Or is it dealing with their customers? Is this like a high

a high support arena where there's gonna be a high percentage of support requests and and a lot of maintenance we're gonna have to do on the back end because of their niche or target audience. it's things it's not the build. Like I think

And this is probably very similar to yourself. I think most people come to me with concepts for a project, and as they're talking, I'm already putting the puzzle pieces together. Like I already know how I'm gonna build this thing, or I know how someone on my team is gonna be able to modify this tool to get it to fit this this instance, right? So I don't think the build itself is the complication. I think the complication is the the people we work with and the content we need from them to make the project successful.

Toby Cryns (14:41)
Yeah, I'm trying to think like a a recent a project where we had, you know, that usually like I would say like we do a good job of screening beforehand, but sometimes projects get difficult. Like it's like this concept of the messy middle. Like starts out we have a clear path. You get in the middle and you're like, ⁓ we're kinda lost, and then you find the path again and there's different ways to dil you know, to to figure that out.

Kurt von Ahnen (14:58)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (15:08)
And different strategies and methodologies, but a lot of them look good on paper, but don't work good in real life, you know, in terms of like like they say, just do short achievable things that get you to the objective. I'm like, that looks good on paper, but good luck is you're building like you're dealing with humans and I'm thinking like the difficult work for the Mighty Mo. I I agree, like technology and ⁓ we have so much experience in in all the technology stuff and SEO, but where we

right now are really working hard to improve and so I would say this is a point of you know that I recognize as something we can do better is and the difficult thing is

And actually we've been improving. It's it the thing we've been improving at a ton recently is expectation management and getting sign-offs and like defining phases of projects better so that like our clients are really clear and we're really clear. Like phase one is complete, phase one of six is complete, let's move to phase two now. And that's something we're really tightening up. And I've already seen the fruits of that. And one example, and this is kind of another wrench that gets thrown in every now and then. We have one big client that

Our contact there, the main person who was making all the decisions, left the company. And so th two people came in to replace this person and they're like, This is totally not right. And we're like, What do you mean it's not? Like we've been working on this for eight months with this person and they think it was great. but thankfully, like here's a case where like we had been really tightened up on in this case where like we had very clear sign-offs, and so

You know, a lot of that complexity that could have happened when the new people came in was kind of solved by just paperwork that we had documented earlier in the process. Like, no, they signed off here. Here's the artwork we gave them. They signed off that, you know, we gave the initial, you know, content. They signed off on that. Now we're on phase two. And and so that, you know. Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (16:51)
Yeah. Thank goodness for process.

We this sounds this sounds kinda cruddy, but when I'm in a

When I'm in a bigger project and they want Zoom meetings, I record the Zoom meetings and I tell them I'm recording the Zoom meetings in case there's anything I need to refer back to or notes or whatever. But in one instance, it really saved my hide because the owner had hired us to do a pretty involved e-learning website. And then they decided, this is getting too much for me. I'm gonna hire some I'm gonna hire a project manager internally to so that you can interface with them. And this project manager kept saying, like, well, I wanna inject AI here and I wanna do this and I wanna put you know this chat window in.

And I I'm like, this is nowhere in the scope of work, bruh. This is this is nowhere, this is was never, this was not part of it. And then

The owner of the company was embarrassed. They didn't want to let the the project manager know that they didn't think of the stuff first, right? So it's go, no, no, we talked about it. Kurt's supposed to X, Y, and Z, right? And I literally had to go back and and pull segments out of those Zoom meetings and be like, here's where you said it was exactly what you wanted. Here's where you said this is you didn't want this. Here's where you and they were and and then we it became contentious. Like, if you want to add this stuff, we can do it, but it's not gonna be the same budget.

And it can't be on the same timeline. Like it's you're totally trying to reverse direction here. And ⁓ that was very unique. But I was glad we had that process in place. Cause if we didn't, I'd have been on the hook for a bunch of free work.

Toby Cryns (18:15)
moving on, there there's this concept, it's kind of related. You have a ⁓ you know, convenient way to say it is somebody comes and they say this should be easy. And we were thinking you and I were talking about it today. And one other way to frame that is the most dangerous client is the one who knows just enough, but not enough. Like they know just enough, but they don't have the context and the experience. And it's the idea like, you know, they've seen some or they heard somebody did it, or they're, you know, they kind of saw it, it looks simple.

Kurt von Ahnen (18:31)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (18:41)
here's an example. I had a plumber out to fix a thing in my toilet. It wasn't gross or anything, it was just like the plunger needed to be replaced. But we had we had moved in here a year ago and it we had a malfunctioning plunger, and it was like a dual flush thing that I had never seen. And so I called the plumber. They came out, replaced it with a simple plunger thing, and that broke like within a day or two. So I finally called him, like, you need to come out, and he, you know, he's like, No problem. But on the way out, he goes,

it was so easy. Da da da da. I'm like, that was not easy. Like if it was easy, I would have done it. Thank you for coming and fixing 'cause I have no idea. Like

Kurt von Ahnen (19:13)
Yeah.

I find that's something that we really need to watch as agencies because we will very often discount something as someone will thanks for doing that, and you go, that was simple for us or it was a quick and you know, no charge, it was a quickie or whatever. And at a certain level, we're actually insulting them. They thought it was difficult, you know, and we're acting like we're smarter than them because it was easy. We need to remember that we have forgotten more about the internet than they're ever gonna know.

You know, then they're ever gonna know. To your point, you you watch a p you watch any skilled laborer do something, right? I I have twenty years of automotive experience. And I can tell you, you know, t I watch a technician do a timing belt and water pump and an Audi A four, right? Be, beep, beep. There's parts all over the place, the air hose is going, the noise, the da da da and and a couple hours later that car's running down the block, right? And then you get kind of prideful and you think, ⁓ you know, your car's due for maintenance and you pop the hood and you pull your toolbox out and you're like, I could do this, you know, and nine hours later, you know, you

blood on your knuckles, your elbows are greasy and you're just pissed off.

Toby Cryns (20:12)
It the the in my world you it's easy to watch a great guitar player and just be like, I can do this and you watch them and it's effortless. They're just doing this. I'm like, I can do that. Yeah. All you have to do is this.

Kurt von Ahnen (20:16)
yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I always thought I'd be a good drummer. Until until I

sit down at one and try to play something. I go, no, no, it's just not in me. It's just not in me.

Toby Cryns (20:33)
Yeah, and that's

and for some reason, maybe it's because everybody's tried and failed. Like people get it with musical instruments, but they don't get it with technology yet. And maybe it's because they try, you know, with technology. I I went into WordPress.com, I did something or Squarespace. I built a Squarespace, you know, like th they have just enough experience, but not enough.

Kurt von Ahnen (20:52)
Yeah.

I run into an awful lot of people that think they know how to build websites and then when you ask any kind of questions, it's obviously th they don't, right? But it's we do it to ourselves. You know, the the content we make, the conversations we have, the

Well, I do a lot with Lifter LMS. And with Lifter LMS, we have the you know the the Getting Started with Lifter LMS course and we make it sound like it's easy. Just watch this co just watch this free course and and build your own, you know, e-commerce-driven learning website. You know, go go make money doing that. And we portray it like it's easy. And, you know, I guess it is, right? Like I'm not it's it's it's easier than digging a ditch for me, right? It's easier than using a pulse hole digger, but it's a different kind of muscle that we're flexing.

And I'm amazed at how many quick support zooms I give people, you know, that get lost in the program and need help with, you know, no check this, uncheck that, do this, do the other. And it's like we said earlier, it's like we have forgotten more than most people are ever gonna know about certain things. We know we have the historical knowledge too. Like, this used to work this way and that's why it's this way now. And and people don't have that, so it's easy for them to get lost.

Toby Cryns (22:01)
Yeah. And this is kind of leads into another question that we wanted to talk about, which is ⁓ why do senior developers seem expensive until you need one? And put differently, at Manana no mas, when does a client cease to be buying the website or the you know, the app and they s they're actually buying insurance from you, Kurt?

Kurt von Ahnen (22:20)
Well, for anyone that's on our hosting program, I feel that that's absolutely the case.

But you and I have kind of touched this conversation before, and that is, you know, some people have marketing websites where if their website was down for a week, they might not even know it. You know, it's it's not it's not making sales, it's not putting money in their bank account. It's just a website that says, you know, yeah, I cut lawns, you know, call this number if you want to get your lawn mode, right? Like that's a level of website. That's that's some people have that. most of our clients have dynamic websites with active memberships or users in them. So if the website

Goes down, you know, there's instant phone calls or emails, right? Like, the website's down, the student couldn't get their certificate or whatever. Like that's there, that's happening. And so most of the customers we have get the advantage of using us as a business consultancy. We talk a lot about strategy, about sales, about conversions.

So when you're like at what point does is someone getting expertise beyond the website, that's that to me is that, right? but we still do we still do a lot of paying it forward stuff. Like we do the we do the WordPress meetup here in town. We host that down at at Sandhills. Shout out to Pippin. and that's all free. There's no revenue in that. And but that's when I look at the questions or the conversations I've actually had at that meetup, they're not real deep.

like business consultancy type questions. They are more functional, like, you know, which which theme do you think is the best? You know, what plugin is the the one that you would use for e commerce. And ⁓ and I think they're much more basic in questions. And I think there's a difference in value displayed, you know, between the between my office conversation and my meetup conversation. And it's not intentional. It's just the audience. It's the demand of the audience.

Toby Cryns (24:00)
Yeah, feel like like experienced people, people like who have deep experiences and years of experience in a thing, they don't care as much about the tools. Like if you're I imagine if you're fixing a car like well let's put it this way. Would you rather have Michael Jordan barefoot or me in Michael Jordan shoes? Like, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (24:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

If there's a lot of money on the game, I'd definitely want him. Shoes or no shoes.

Toby Cryns (24:23)
Right,

exactly. Even at fifty, sixty years old, I'd take him over me. Barefoot. And I th I think I I have the same experience at meetups too, by the way. Like it just seems and maybe it's that I've by the way, like I I ran the meetup for 10 years here in Minneapolis. The Word I founded the WordPress meetup, I led it for 10 years.

Kurt von Ahnen (24:28)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Toby Cryns (24:42)
And by the end, I was just bored with the conversations because they were very like tool-based. And even the agency types of conversations weren't meeting me where I was at because I've been already doing it for a decade. And so that's a real thing.

And it what what I always struggle with in those situations is like you wanna meet people where they're at. And this is with really all consulting and all teaching. Like you meet where they're at. I always try to push people slightly out of their comfort zone, you know, when anytime I'm teaching something. ⁓

⁓ you know, part of like teaching is going to those boring spots as well and figuring out creative ways to teach the boring stuff too. Like so I don't know. I I I think I'm better I think I'm much when it comes to those meetups, I'm I'm much more comfortable in the teaching role than I am in the audience member role.

I'm curious if you feel similarly.

Kurt von Ahnen (25:30)
I work really hard sometimes at just keeping my big yap shut.

until I'm forced into a spot where like I am the person in the room that knows the answer, right? Like I don't I look at things like ⁓ because there's a lot of assumptions, right? With the podcast exposure and stuff like that, there's assumptions, right? You show up and think, this guy thinks he knows everything. No, I don't. I'm here to learn too. And I try to hang out and I try to keep my yap shut for as long as possible. and I find that especially the meetups that are done on Zoom calls, like the one out of Seattle, the one from the Inland

Empire, the one ⁓ gosh, I w I think it's in Chicago, right? They do a lot of like zooming it. And they're a lot of the same people on all these calls, right? I go and I see the same same cats, but they're really smart, you know, and it's I can learn a lot from those guys. But when they ask like a specific question about one of the tools that I'm really good at and everyone else seems to be kind of lost, you know, then I'll jump in and and I and I'll offer some help or a solution. But I think that's important. I think as community members

We have a responsibility to allow other people to shine. Like

I don't think per participating in the meetup is the chance for me to promote Manana no Mas It's my it's my paying it forward to promote WordPress. And so I'm not there to be the smartest guy in the room. I'm there to facilitate a conversation. And hopefully if someone else has an answer, that's great. And if I need to come with an answer, I'll source one and and and share it. But ⁓ I always find it really interesting. Like I'm I'm that way in a lot of the groups that I participate in where I voluntarily, and I think you and I have talked about this before.

But it's like I don't need to be the leader all the time. Like sometimes it's really nice just to be a a good solid number two or three.

Toby Cryns (27:06)
Yeah, you know, I've been really enjoying the AI meetup here locally because it's all about tooling and I don't know any of the tools yet. And like I'm like discovering new things every day. Even today I my teammate at the Mighty Mo, I I was asking him, he was shared something he did with AI and I was like, tell me about that tooling, because that looked really interesting. He had a screen grab. I like, what is that? Tell me about it. And and he explained it to me and so I'm learning about that. ⁓

And so at the same time I go, It's exciting. Like if if we were new to WordPress, we'd probably think these like tooling conversations were awesome and they probably are important at that point.

Kurt von Ahnen (27:43)
I was an early adopter of Etch when it came out, and then I almost foolishly built my website on Etch prematurely. Like I figured out how it would work and I built an MVP website for myself. I was like, hey, I used Etch. well, now it's been a couple of months, and I wanted to make some changes, and I went into my own website and I clicked edit with Etch, and it was completely different. I was like

Kevin, you've been busy. And I was like, okay, I'm not the expert today. And you know, ended up having to go do some searching, look up some tutorials, figure out where things were. and to your point, it makes it exciting again. Like right when you're really, really bored or things are becoming mundane or or happenstance, it's like it's ⁓ it's nice to to challenge yourself again and and raise the bar.

Toby Cryns (28:25)
Yeah, and I think that's a great way to end. Like let's let's encourage people to get out there and try something new. Push yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Because honestly it's probably you'll have probably have fun. More fun than you would otherwise. We'll say that.

Kurt von Ahnen (28:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean if you get really good at building some static five page site and you grow a business on that but you never grow past it, y it you get really frustrated.

Toby Cryns (28:47)
Yeah. And I think like I'm feeling that on my team too. Like just today I'll say, like like the last couple days, 'cause I've been pushing my team not to go wild with AI, but like, hey, just like explore it a bit and see what it can do for you. And I've been noticing like

Kurt von Ahnen (29:01)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (29:03)
There's just some neat conversations happening around it. And it's again, we're not like going hog wild, but like we're building for example, we're building an SEO dashboard, a client-facing SEO dashboard, and we're in a we're pulling ⁓ data from a bunch of different data points and the team's kind of jazzed about it. you know, in an otherwise normal day, now we have this twist that's kinda interesting. And and so I think it I think I would encourage our audience to go do that sort of thing too.

Kurt von Ahnen (29:19)
Yeah.

That's

cool. Go explore and grow. Folks, this has been the Agency Action Show. We hope that you've enjoyed it. like, share, subscribe, go play the video game at the agencyactionshow dot com, I think is the the URL, I think. Toby, how can people reach you?

Toby Cryns (29:44)
you can go to themightymo dot com. That's T H E I G H T Y O dot com or find me on LinkedIn. My last name is C R Y N S. First name Toby. And Kurt, where can we find you? Did you just say that or not? I don't think you

Kurt von Ahnen (29:55)
Perfect.

Yeah, I'm

over on LinkedIn too. I'm the only Kurt von Ahnen there, so I'm easy to find. And then our company name is Manana no Mas, and that's our call sign for all of our socials too.

Toby Cryns (30:08)
All right, thanks everybody, we'll see you next time.