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Hosted by Toby Cryns and Kurt von Ahnen, the Agency Action Podcast (Part of the WP Minute Podcast Network) dives into the real-world ups and downs of running a WordPress agency. Each week, Toby and Kurt share open, honest conversations about the challenges and victories that come with building client relationships, pricing projects, finding the right tools, and growing a sustainable business.
Whether you’re just launching your agency or refining your systems, you’ll get practical insights from two agency owners who live it every day—along with stories that remind you you’re not alone in this wild WordPress world of global teams, AI disruption, and constant change.
Follow the show and explore more at TheWPMinute.com/podcasts
Toby Cryns (00:00)
Welcome to another exciting episode of Agency Action, the show that stars Kurt von Ahnen and myself. Welcome, Kurt.
Kurt von Ahnen (00:08)
Toby Cryns great to see ya. I got a question. Now, I know that you use AI. I like to say that I use AI, but have you worked with customers recently or tried a project like from a customer's perspective using the newer tools in AI now?
Toby Cryns (00:22)
no. And my my reason why is that I've I've Googled it and researched it recently and and I say Google, but now Google means like going to AI and typing how do I do this or whatever. and so I have not built it from a customer-facing perspective. I did just yesterday use it to enhance an existing plugin and add a bunch of features to an existing plugin on a complex site. And so like I that was a really useful process, but I'm very skeptical.
about using it to build a WordPress site from scratch. had do you happen to have experience from a customer's perspective?
Kurt von Ahnen (00:55)
funny you would ask Toby. I decided I I've been unhappy with the Manana no Mas' website for a while. It it's been getting slower. It's clunky. I've added things, taken things out. I mean I've just I've kind of made I've done to my website what I advise customers not to do, right? And that that happens to us sometimes. It's time to it was time to to reboot. And I thought, well I'm gonna try I'm gonna try some of these tools. I gotta tell you Toby this this was this was a journey
I was turned on to WP Vibe. They had just done a podcast with Lifter LMS. And WP Vibe is a plugin, runs in WordPress, connects to a multitude of AI tools, and you know, basically you tell it what to do, and it does it, you know, in your WordPress environment. That's the way it's billed. Chris got me into it, and their site had gone down. And it was just it was it turned into like three, four days of mayhem just trying to
get in, get an account, and get the thing connected. so so in the meantime, I thought, well, screw it. I'll just I I'm an Etch lifetime founder user. I'm gonna put in etch and connect Claude. turns out Claude doesn't connect to Etch the way everything else connects to Claude. So I played with that for a couple hours and got frustrated and just gave up. then I tried the same thing with bricks. I got frustrated and I gave up.
And then I thought, you know what, I'm gonna give it a couple of days and I'll go back to WP VIBE and see what happens. And I was able to get into WP Vibe, get Claude connected, which meant, of course, you have to buy a Claude account, right? So you now you're not in the free Claude, and I pay for Magai which gives me access to Claude, and I have Claude also in another lifetime deal with AI, but none of those are the ones that connect to your website. So you still gotta pay for Claude to connect to your website. so I did that, I got in.
And
then the real fun began.
Toby Cryns (02:35)
And tell me about this fund. So I'm a customer. I'm assuming like I have an idea of what it might be, how it might look. Did you start there?
Kurt von Ahnen (02:43)
So, okay, this is where people get to make fun of me, but I wanted to try this like the way I hear customers talking. So, so bear with me, right? Because I wanted to really experiment with this. I hear all the stuff about lovable, right? Go to lovable, type in a sentence, get a website, bam, right? So I opened up lovable, got an account with Lovable, told it, hey, I I want you to make me a website. Is this something you can do? It said, We're we are the people for you, Kurt. I said, Great. And then setting up Claude.
Like I had, because I said I had to pay for Claude. When I set up Claude, it asked me questions. Who are you? What's your business? What do you do? And it wrote me this really cool, they call them artifacts, right? But it was like a really cool, like it pulled out the the history and the association of what Munana no mask does in a in a very succinct, direct better way than I was saying it before. And I thought, well, this is great. Now how do I put this into a website? So I gave Lovable that artifact and I said.
use the elements of this artifact to build out the content of the website. And it said, you want a one-page site, a multi-page site, or some other kind of site. I can't remember. I said a multi-page site. Of course I want a multi-page site. And it did it. It did it. But the whole time it did it, it did weird things. It was saying, I'm building this, I'm building that, I'm adding this section, I'm putting this other section in, I'm going to put a form on the contact page. And then I would say, whoops, we found an error.
And I was like, well, an error with what? And then and then it would say we found another error. Now we found a multitude of errors. And then it said we had to give you more credits. We're going to do this as a one-time goodwilled gesture to fix the errors in your website. And I was kind of amazed because if I was a customer using this interface for the first time, you you would be dumbfounded. You would be like, What errors? I'm you're building this. Like, I'm I have nothing to do with this. I put a sentence in.
You're supposed to build me a website, not tell me you're making a bunch of errors and then you're gonna fix it for good w you know, as goodwill for me. some other weird things happened. when you when you make a website in lovable, it goes to like a lovable URL, right? So if you want it to go to your URL, you gotta pay for that. So
Toby Cryns (04:43)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (04:44)
so I paid the extra and I had it sent to one of my extra URLs, right? So this put it there for a test product.
When it said activate the URL, I went through the domain process and lovable, and it said, add go to your DNS settings, right? Add add this text in, you know, put this, put these things, put these in, boom, put them in. BAP. it says, okay, verifying the connection in the DNS. Great. Awesome. This is great. spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning. Sometimes this can take 72 hours. Spinning, spinning, spinning, refresh. Then it says active.
Okay,
great. I go to the URL, nothing's there. It's blank. Nothing's there. The old website's not even there. Like nothing's there. but when it says active and lovable, you can't do anything but delete it. Like you can't see the settings.
Toby Cryns (05:28)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (05:29)
So when you're in lovable, if you're trying to connect a a URL to the DNS, if it's active, it says active. So I waited two days because it said this could take up to 72 hours, right? I waited two days. I got impatient.
I opened up the chat window again and I said, I'm confused. I seem to be stuck in a loop. you know, it says it's active, but there's nothing on the website. And I double-checked the DNS settings, it's exactly what you said to do. And it came back a few minutes later and it said, You're not crazy. You are stuck in a loop. You seem to be using an outdated TXT code in your DNS settings. let us give you an updated TXT for your DNS settings. And I was like,
I got it from you. How is it outdated? It's from two days ago. so I swapped that out and then had to wait another few hours and then everything came to life. But I
Toby Cryns (06:14)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:14)
don't think I don't think normal customers, I don't if I have a landscaping company, I I'm not gonna be able to endure that. I'm gonna get confused and frustrated and and call the guy in town I know.
Toby Cryns (06:24)
Yeah, you for sure. there's also like an alternate conversation that could potentially have be had here. Like,
There there's building it in WordPress. Let's just that conversation. Cause what I've been
Kurt von Ahnen (06:34)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (06:34)
wondering is if your site is not super complex, let's say it's a marketing site with a contact form, maybe a couple of landing pages that are built for SEO or conversion. Let's not even say SEO because that's a whole different beast, but let's just say for conversions. I actually wonder like if WordPress is the right tool for that anymore, given that you can go to lovable, like you said.
build a page and if you can find someone to connect the dots well you've still built the site in eighteen hours rather than a hundred of dev time, you know, or whatever. Might maybe
Kurt von Ahnen (07:03)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (07:03)
maybe it's not even a hundred, maybe it's thirty or forty. it's probably a hundred. Closer to a hundred than thirty than thirty or forty. and so this is what's something I've been wondering like and and so I saw like you know, in in theory you go to Lovable and you did this, it builds a site and you're you're now struggling with porting it to WordPress. And that's a challenge that potentially
per a person would face. And that's where I go, at that point, why migrate it? If you're if you're if you're just a marketing site and you don't have a ton of pages, there are use cases for WordPress, many great use cases, don't get me wrong. But I'm wondering this I've kind of I think this use case might be better on lovable.
Kurt von Ahnen (07:38)
So
I'm kind of playing a little bit of a game. The extra URL that I put that, you know, test site on from lovable, it's still a lovable website directed to that URL. And I'm gonna keep an eye on it. I'm gonna check like page speed and check to make sure the form actually works. Like when it put the form on the contact page, these are just weird things. It said there's a form on your contact page. It doesn't do anything, but there's a form on your contact page. And you're like,
Toby Cryns (08:01)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:03)
well, how do I make the form do something then?
Toby Cryns (08:05)
Right. Well sh sure. It yeah, and it you still need a developer,
Kurt von Ahnen (08:05)
well you're gonna need a subdomain. You're gonna need some more things.
Toby Cryns (08:10)
right? You still need a developer. But the question I'm asking is like,
What's the why not keep it unlovable?
Kurt von Ahnen (08:15)
So, okay, in my use case, so I'm I'm really big on use cases, Toby. I knew that I wanted to put a CRM in the back of this thing. I knew that I want to do some email automation. I knew that there were some things I wanted to do that to me really worked best in the environment that I'm familiar with, which is WordPress.
Toby Cryns (08:31)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:32)
So I liked the lovable site. I liked the design of it. So what I did once I got into WP vibe, like I said, that took me a few days. But once I got into WP vibe.
And connected Claude, I told Claude, hey, go to this extra URL that I own, and here's a sample of a lovable website. I want you to bring in that lovable website into WordPress on my Astra theme and emulate that website as closely as you possibly can. And it did a really fair job of it. It took some time, but it did a fair job. And then I added my CRM and I added, you know, my my contacts
Toby Cryns (09:06)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (09:06)
list and all that junk.
Toby Cryns (09:07)
I'm guessing these are plugins you're talking about, WordPress plugins. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (09:10)
Yeah, I'm actually
trying the okay, this is why my website was in danger in the first place. I love to try new things. So Bit Apps came out with Bit CRM Pro, which is a sales CRM, and I wanted to try it because it really fits some of my customer use cases really well. So I put that into the Manana no Mas website, but it doesn't do it's crazy as it sounds, it doesn't do broadcast emails. It runs as a sales CRM.
So I still
Toby Cryns (09:37)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (09:37)
had to put fluent CRM into it and then hook up an integration that every time someone gets added as a contact and bit CRM they get added to Fluent CRM for mass email sending.
Toby Cryns (09:47)
So
What is this use case? I guess like because the one question is like like at what point do you need a developer? Let's you're an average Joe business person out there and you're like, I need a new website for my small businesses, it's just me. Maybe it's a consultant, consultant, a solo consultant, let's say,
Kurt von Ahnen (10:02)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (10:02)
who does plumbing or something, or an architect or you know, some small firm that doesn't need
Kurt von Ahnen (10:07)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (10:07)
much, could be a lawyer firm. now, some of those are gonna
try it and do fine, but let's forget those. But let's just forget the one let's go look at the ones who are gonna need someone like you or me. what do you think about leaving them on Claude or similar?
Kurt von Ahnen (10:19)
Mean leaving them on Loveable?
Toby Cryns (10:20)
I'm
leaving lovable, even unlovable or similar. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (10:23)
I gotta tell you, that test URL that I have with the lovable site, it's pretty snappy. Comes up quick, right? So there's not a lot of lag time. Comes up quick. I did the extra work to get the form to go to the so when someone submits a form, it sends me an email notification. for that use case, I would say Bob's your uncle, man. That's probably a good setup. And it's 25 bucks a month.
It's hosted with them, it's done, right? And it's on it's on the URL that you choose. So I think in that use case it fits well. But like when you said like an architect or a consultant, like if it's somebody that needs to like book appointments or take payment for booking an appointment in advance or build a membership out of bookings, then I I jump back into that, into that WordPress
Toby Cryns (11:06)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (11:06)
mindset.
Toby Cryns (11:07)
Yeah, I think part of it for me like even if I were using now Candly, maybe I would if all the the e commerce is where I would get scared particularly. But if I was doing like let's say a Calendly integration, but as soon I would never give lovable any access to Stripe or anything like that. Like that's where I that's one boundary that I wouldn't cross with that. similarly, like when you're talking about a C R
or an email blast system, like those are keywords that lead me to go, okay, we're not gonna do lovable. We're gonna do and maybe
Kurt von Ahnen (11:36)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (11:36)
we start on lovable for the design. Like don't get me wrong, like it has some good design chops sometimes. Just as like a starter design or, you know, like I I've used
other AI tools. Like I've used Cloud for design. I've used ChatGPT, I've used other tools as well. Lovable does a very serviceable job for like a first draft. Like it really he gets his eighty percent of the way there, you know, on the design end I'd say.
Kurt von Ahnen (11:58)
Yeah, it's
I so I'm still gosh, I hate to be like so indecisive on a podcast, right? Like I should have a stronger opinion than this. But the design I thought was pretty decent. And then when I had Claude emulate the design, it came over pretty crisply, right? there were some things I had to tweak. Claude did a really bad job of trying to put the logo in the header. That was a nightmare. So I ended up doing I I I literally told Claude, forget it. Go back three steps.
Toby Cryns (12:22)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (12:22)
Take
Toby Cryns (12:23)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (12:23)
Take
take the logos out and I'll just do it manually. and and he responds back, I'm so sorry. yeah, no, you're not, right? It's but I at the start of this I said my goal was performance. My goal was I knew that I had I knew that I had put so much tech baggage on the Manana no Mas website over the years that I just had to start fresh. I just had to have something clean that would perform better.
And
we went from a page speed on the page, you know, Google page speed, we went from a sixty-two to a ninety-eight. Like,
Toby Cryns (12:51)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (12:52)
I am pretty stinking happy with that.
Toby Cryns (12:54)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (12:54)
So even if the site doesn't look as good as what the old site might have, and that's questionable, that's subjective, the performance is so much better.
Toby Cryns (13:02)
And I wonder what that is due to. 'Cause it's not it's not any of the AI stuff. This is we're talking about your new stack. Maybe you cleaned out your database.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:10)
yeah. Well, so
when I did this, I like I said, I wanted to do it from like a customer perspective, like from on a fresh build. So I didn't like do a staging site and then take stuff out, you know. I did a I did a fresh WordPress build. I I exported and imported my media, I exported and imported my posts, and then I built the site fresh around it and I've got six plugins instead of sixty.
You know, so it's it's really it's really light and crisp right now.
Toby Cryns (13:37)
Yeah, that's so that's probably part of the recipe. I just wanna be clear for listeners. We're not saying AI made it any faster. This is like a different beast.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:44)
Well, and let let's be
let's let's be real too, right? So how many of the images in my old website were truly optimized the way they should have been? And I'm thinking about like optimized like every featured image, every
Toby Cryns (13:55)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:56)
you know, like because you get in a hurry making posts. A lot of the things we tell clients to do, I get in too much of a rush to even do myself. You know, I'm I'm pounding out a lot of content over here. And so how efficient was the Manana Namas website? Well, apparently not very efficient because it was scoring a sixty two.
So things are much better now. Now now the trick is, is the copyright, will things convert? You know, I'll have to track things and see the way they go.
Toby Cryns (14:19)
You mean the hard work starts now?
Kurt von Ahnen (14:21)
Yeah, now the hard work starts.
Toby Cryns (14:22)
Actual running a business part?
Kurt von Ahnen (14:25)
I just the other side of the coin was I basically used Claude for a day and sucked up fourteen percent of my credits for the month. That part's hard to that that's hard to stomach
Toby Cryns (14:33)
I gotta tell you, I use
Kurt von Ahnen (14:35)
too.
Toby Cryns (14:35)
I use cloud quite a bit and they have I think it's every five hours you reach a cap if you keep going. I reach my cap in about fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, and then I have to wait four and a half hours and come back.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:48)
That's a lot of dead time in the day.
Toby Cryns (14:50)
well what I do then is so I use Visual Studio Code and then I'll switch over to so I have Cloud plugin in Visual Studio Code and then I have the open AI plugin.
And I'll switch to the open AI, which seem to have seems to be, I don't know, serviceably as good and for some reason it seems like I don't max out the tokens there. So
I don't qu no.
Kurt von Ahnen (15:11)
Well, it's this
has been a this has been an eye opening experience, Toby, because on one hand, you know, you'll be talking to clients and they'll say, Well, we thought we needed you, but we're not sure. We we you know, we found that we could probably use AI for a lot of stuff. And now I'm of the mindset like, Great, talk to you
Toby Cryns (15:27)
Well,
Kurt von Ahnen (15:28)
next month, see how it goes.
Toby Cryns (15:29)
the other thing I'm thinking is like part of our I'm pushing our company and team to be more AI forward. Like like let's tell people we're using AI, how we're using it, and just be really open about that for the reasons you're describing. It's three months long. The first two weeks is AI and if you can do those two weeks without us, great. You can join up two weeks later, you know.
And what it'll invariably happen, they'll do that and they'll like, this sucks. we'll hire you for the full bit, you know, but
Kurt von Ahnen (15:58)
Yeah.
There's this funny dude that that makes these shorts, you know, for TikTok and whatnot. He's a freelancer and a customer tells him, Hey, we're just gonna use hey, hey, can we pay less because you're just gonna use AI or we'll just use AI, you know? And he goes, Well, that's great. Tell you what, you build it using AI and I'll build it using AI, and we'll see which one's better.
Toby Cryns (16:18)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (16:19)
And then when we're done, you can just pay my invoice.
Toby Cryns (16:21)
There's a guy I talked to the other day here at my co working space who has been working on their website. I might get this wrong, but it's three years maybe. they hired a designer and they're they're finally launching or maybe just launched. But the interesting thing wasn't that. It was that they started maybe in WordPress. I I'm hearing this like from the business owner, and so he's not quite sure what they're using, but he's describing to me. It sounds like they started in WordPress, they went to Webflow.
And then at the very end, like in the last couple of months, they went to lovable. And that's when for this business owner, he's like, this is way better. This lovable thing. He doesn't know what lovable is. He just
Kurt von Ahnen (16:57)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (16:57)
saw the URLs, you know. and to me that was just more confirmation, like that's where we're at. It's like lovable has like in all the I was we'll say lovable, but I you could put any AI in there. They've distilled they've what it's figured out, if nothing else, it knows what like eighty percent of
business people who don't know anything about tech or design but what they expect to see. And it can it can like put in front of them exactly what they expect. And that's that's a secret. Whereas like, you know, my team can do a much like a much a different design process that gets it's just different. Like we're going through a branding process with a branding professional. I tell you what, like AI could not generate what this person generated. Like it's impossible. It just can't.
'cause she's creative, she's brilliant, you know, like she's just bringing things that, you know, the AI just doesn't have because AI slurped up average Joe's designs, average Joe's concepts. Like
Kurt von Ahnen (17:52)
Yeah,
it's it's been it's got it's been a great learning experience, Toby. I I have been saturated lately in learning experiences. And this is this is one of them that rises to the top. And it it does explain because cause I I'll be in post status and I'll see people talking about businesses down or this or whatever. But in our particular niche, it seems like the demand has increased and the ability to charge appropriately has gotten better too.
Toby Cryns (18:16)
Yeah, I think I think it's settling down. And I think maybe that's the takeaway. Like the the game's changed. There we're that whole like zero low cost those four hundred dollar websites are done. We're not doing You know what I mean? Like like it's just just go to AI, have it build twenty bucks a month, twenty five months are lovable, you're done. Like so those are just I'm just considering those off the table.
But once you start getting on into like businesses that have like businesses or people that have like real business type and needs, like you're describing. we need automation, we need we have a thousand blog posts like historically, anything that even not even a thousand, it could be like thirty. We have a blog. Let's just start there. Okay, lovable's not for you if you have a blog. Like
Kurt von Ahnen (18:54)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (18:54)
and that and we care about SEO. you care about SEO. You don't want to be unlovable because they do not care about SEO.
Like it's not even on their radar. you know, so I I'm I'm optimistic and you know, it has limitations.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:07)
Well, just so we don't bore the crud out of everybody, you know, talking about our tech stack, let's let's talk about managing our businesses, Toby. It's
Toby Cryns (19:13)
Ooh.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:14)
what do you I know that you're looking at EOS, but in your viewpoint so far, do you think EOS is worth like 150 grand on a consultant to to conform to it?
Toby Cryns (19:24)
Yeah, and so just a little context here. I received an actual quote from an EOS consultant in town here. taking a step back, EOS is a way to like structure your business in a way that like you have accountability amongst teammates and financial goals are baked into everything. And so it's a system, there's a book for it. You can read the book and implement it all yourself. So let's start there. It could be free or fifteen dollars for the book. to hire a certified professional.
150K is the quote I got the other day. I received another quote, I think it was like 60K. And this is over two years. And so these are very big dollar amounts for my business. I mean, these are big percentages of my annual revenue, top line revenue. And so the questions I'm asking are like, is it worth hiring the person or should I do some version of it myself? one of the most compelling
arguments I think against hiring the person, the implementer, is like you could hire a great person to just like come in like a unicorn type of person and yeah, they don't bring this they don't bring they don't adhere to their system but like to your system, but they just make everything better. You know, like that's one argument. Same amount of money and you don't have to do anything. Just hire the person.
Kurt von Ahnen (20:31)
Yeah.
I just delegate to them. They handle it.
Toby Cryns (20:34)
Yeah,
yeah. They figure it out. They build the systems. They build you know, it's not an EOS system, it's their own system, but you know, the I think like that's what I'm struggling with. and I think the price point is more for like a you know, a much bigger company we'll say, like multiples of the Mighty Mo probably, where that price point makes sense, hundred and fifty K, you know, it's that's even expensive by college tuition standards for some schools.
That's my school.
Kurt von Ahnen (20:59)
The the thing is is that a lot of things right now are in that space for it for expense, right? So let's say that you're you know you're the CEO of your company and you want to hire a you know a personal consultant, right? A leadership consultant or you know, something along those lines. It three, five thousand dollars a month, you know, that well, that's sixty grand a year. So
Toby Cryns (21:18)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:21)
you know, it's not a drop in the bucket. Like these things have a cost.
Toby Cryns (21:25)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:25)
And the
and the hard part is, you know, where's the ROI? So in our power sports training business, we charge dealerships forty five grand a year to to work with their team and train them how to increase their sales. And but we'll help them create like eight hundred thousand dollars in revenue if they do the work. But that's the hard part, right? Because no matter how much you train them, if they don't implement it, that ROI never shows up. So it's so it's a really it's a it's a big
It's a big roll of the dice, you know, to figure out if an expense is really gonna have that payout.
Toby Cryns (21:53)
Yeah, but also consider this. what would what did you say? Fourteen grand? Sixteen grand. What was that? Forty five. it
Kurt von Ahnen (21:58)
four I charge forty five grand and they Yeah, and they'll but they'll make
like eight hundred grand. So that's a twenty X improvement.
Toby Cryns (22:03)
Sure, but
what's what's their like top line and just an average top line revenue for that company for the year? So probably like millions, I'm sure. Yeah. So whatever
Kurt von Ahnen (22:09)
Well, for for for that yeah, for that department it's like two point five million or two point seven million.
Toby Cryns (22:15)
percentage, 40,000 divided by 2.5 million, it's you know, X percent. And that that's the question, like, is it worth that percentage of risk, you know?
Kurt von Ahnen (22:23)
Yeah. Is it worth five percent?
Toby Cryns (22:25)
Yeah. and that's kind of the question. And we had AI generate some pros and like
some hot takes on this. And so here's one hot take that we can potentially I'll read a few if we want. If your business needs a hundred fifty thousand of consulting to learn how to have meetings, EOS isn't your biggest problem.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:41)
AI's got jokes.
Toby Cryns (22:42)
EOS might be worth 150K to a fifty million dollar company and completely irresponsible for a two million agency. Same system, radically different return on investment, is what you're saying.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:53)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (22:54)
so those are both against it. Here's what a hot take that's for it. you're not paying 150K for EOS, you're paying 150K because your leadership team can't implement EOS themselves or can't get their act together at all to do the thing that's needed.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:07)
Well, that's the use case for the Power Sport Academy.
Toby Cryns (23:10)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:10)
The dealer owners and the service managers, they don't have the established personality traits or culture within their business to implement those those changes that need to happen. So when a third party comes in and goes, There's a new sheriff in town, things things can happen. So sometimes
Toby Cryns (23:24)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:25)
it's worth it.
Toby Cryns (23:25)
I also just read the book and the EOS book's called Traction and it's the how to manual, like how to implement EOS. And I gotta say, it's it's a very high level. Like you need to dig in to some other resources to figure it out for real. But but even in the book it says you can do this yourself. They call it self implementation and it's a legitimate path. here's another yes from
Chat GPT, a great EOS implementer isn't selling EOS. They're selling uncomfortable conversations your team keeps avoiding. Things like accountability, firing the wrong person, deciding who owns what, enforcing decisions, maybe where the actual value lives. And I gotta
Kurt von Ahnen (24:00)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (24:00)
tell you, this specifically, so we've been like, I won't say self-impl implementing, but we've implemented parts of it here at the Mighty Mo over the last couple months, I guess. and this is one thing we're getting to is like.
Trying to figure out what type of persons, what type of qualities are what we need at the Mighty Mo. And it's interesting because once we've started documenting those, like it's it's so it's kind of I don't know which informs the other, but like we might have an employee that is obviously struggling to deliver for the Mighty Mo.
Kurt von Ahnen (24:30)
Yes.
Toby Cryns (24:31)
and and then as we lay out the qualities, we're like, wow.
compared this these qualities, this person does not have them. However, this guy who's crushing it has these qualities. And for us it's things like urgency. Like do you approach projects with the right amount of urgency, need to get done, curiosity, you know, like just energy energy to like push push people, push things, you know, like when you're at an agency you need to like you need to push people things questions.
And that's that's like one example of a quality we're looking for in an employee. And once you start to look at that and that's just one, we have others that we've laid out, but like we're 'cause where I'm at now, I'm like either you develop this quality or you're you're out. And so it becomes the hiring firing criteria, which is actually really helpful as like a framework for like hiring and firing.
Kurt von Ahnen (25:23)
The
hard part with these types of programs, at least in my experience, is like you start to gel, you start to work together pretty decently as a team, you see some gaps, and then you look at something like this, and then you do what you just did. Like what's our internal culture really like? What's our communication style really like? And then you realize, I'm mismatched with three people on this team. Now you've got some difficult decision making to do, right? Because you sometimes you can train up somebody, but
Usually it's some kind of a cultural issue where that's just not gonna fit.
Toby Cryns (25:51)
Yeah. Here's another no for EOS. before spending 150K implementing EOS, hire an operations person for the hundred fifty K, which actually changes the company more. Which changes the company more? Installing operating system or putting in a stronger operator. That's what we mentioned before. here's a no yes one. EOS consultants have the same problem agencies do. You're not paying for the hours. If if an implementer prevents one disastrous hire or helps the owner escape day-to-day operations.
arguing about their hourly rate and this is the point. This is I think your argument too. Like like there's value that you don't know you have until it's there. Like and that that's part of the
I think the the the struggle here for me is the the sheer high dollar amount. Like if it was more reasonable, whatever that means, like let's say it was five percent, like I'd be like
Kurt von Ahnen (26:38)
Twenty five
grand.
Toby Cryns (26:39)
Yeah, so maybe it would be more palatable like at that point. But there's something
you know, like with anything. You're you're this is where the which this is why people self implement, of course, with this, but like
Kurt von Ahnen (26:50)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (26:51)
and but this is this it's a struggle to invest. It actually w if we take a step back here and we say like this is kind of a question whether or not EOS is on the table, but like a lot of solopreneur WordPress developers wonder if they should hire their first full time developer. And I think it's a very similar question actually.
Kurt von Ahnen (27:09)
Yeah, because how am I gonna afford this?
Toby Cryns (27:10)
Yeah. And th there's a fear like I'm just throwing this money away, maybe. And then what?
Kurt von Ahnen (27:14)
Yeah. How am I
gonna afford the well, we spent the first part of the show talking about AI and how the game's changing and all these things. And then we say, Well, yeah, you still need a developer, right? So we we say that, but then it's like, well, if we hire a developer, how are we really gonna leverage that developer's time efficiently so we c we could pay them and turn a profit doing client work when a lot of people are using AI for a lot of the quick fixes we might have used a developer for before?
Toby Cryns (27:40)
When I think the fear is like like if you knew you were getting a rock star employee, whatever that means for your business, and it's different for every business,
Kurt von Ahnen (27:46)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (27:47)
but the employee you got was gonna be a rock star, meaning like you feel the value. The minute they show up, you're like, this is totally worth it. That's what a rock star means,
Kurt von Ahnen (27:56)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (27:57)
to me. if you knew that, you'd you'd be way more likely to make the hire. Like, for example, 150K, I get it. Like, if I was 100% confident.
that like or if I knew in advance that it would pay the dividends, no problem. Like I would find the money somehow. You know what I mean? Like that's the trick though with hiring. And like like all these decisions, like and this is the entrepreneur, business owner dilemma. You're lonely up there. You're stuck. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:20)
In in a way, you
segued into one of our other questions today, right?
Toby Cryns (28:25)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:25)
And that is, should your best employee make more money than you do?
Toby Cryns (28:29)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:30)
Right? So if you were to hire that crazy good operator for $150,000 a year, right? And let's say you let's say you only make $149.5.
Toby Cryns (28:38)
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:39)
so so is that is that okay? Like like
Toby Cryns (28:43)
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:43)
is it is is that a pride issue? Is that a hierarchy issue? Is that
'Cause I I'll I'll be honest with you. If I can sell well, a perfect example is what I do with the Power Sport Academy. I'm looking at bringing on a salesperson for that role. And it's like, yeah, if you want to be paid hourly, I'm only going to pay you so much an hour. A little bit, right? Because that's now I'm on the hook to make an investment and you don't have to give me any result, right? But if you want to
Toby Cryns (29:07)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:07)
be results, pay for performance, you can sell that forty five thousand dollar program. I'll give you forty percent. You know?
Toby Cryns (29:13)
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:15)
So
Toby Cryns (29:15)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:15)
so yeah, you go make a thousand phone calls, right? Get two hundred meetings. Out of two hundred meetings, you close three people. But if you do that, you're gonna get forty percent of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's not bad for a couple weeks' work.
Toby Cryns (29:30)
Totally. And what I another thing I wonder in this EOS conversation has spurred that is like when we talk about the best employee, like should I one employee I've seen it in re real life, like not at the Mighty Mo necessarily, but at other places. One employee can replace three employees just because of who they are.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:47)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (29:48)
Like just not even sales. I'm talking could be the front desk person, the operations person. There are employees that just bring way more to the table.
For whatever reason and it's not even a value call. It's just like there's something about them in this role at this time. And so like there's a potential that let's say I take that money, invest in a great employee that's full time or whatever, and they change the whole trajectory, you know, like like I can now
Kurt von Ahnen (30:12)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (30:12)
we don't even need these the other two employees anymore. Bye. They pay for themselves, you know, that sort of thing.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:17)
Well, speaking of paying for themselves, right? you have here a question that I'll be honest kind of strikes me as kinda odd, but we're gonna bring it out. We're gonna f we're gonna flesh it out together, because you and I do have different pathways of thought sometimes. You said, What if we stop tracking employee utilization? Does obsessing over billable hours actually encourage the wrong behavior when the goal should be profitable outcome?
And
and that's interesting, right? Because sometimes we think sometimes the employee thinks, we gotta we gotta push the billable hours on this thing. We gotta we gotta clock 30, 40 hours so that my boss can charge whatever, right? When in reality
Toby Cryns (30:53)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:53)
you're like, man, if you could knock this thing out, you know, in twelve hours, we can get on to the next project.
Toby Cryns (30:58)
Yeah, and I think
We don't even do billable hours. But I think our employees aren't always don't even always don't might not even know that. Like you know, like
Kurt von Ahnen (31:07)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (31:07)
we're not sitting there billing hours like we just don't. We build per bill per project. And what I'm thinking is we've been trying to create a account more accountability at the Mighty Mo. And part of it what we've been conversing about internally is like, hey, what about employee utilization? Meaning like should we track
the number of hours a percentage of our developers' time that's spent on client projects versus internal projects versus you know admin, let's say. And maybe we want it to be ninety percent client projects. But then I go, yeah, but that's not the goal. The goal is that their time be profitable, which is a whole different set of numbers that, you know, it's a little bit harder to track and distill down, but like it's a mentality almost, like, you know, like if they know
If they have a clear picture of what profitability means, maybe maybe that we don't need to track hours. Maybe they just get it done and like they're like, Great, everybody's happy, like let's not worry about it. And we do what it takes for a profitable project, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (32:01)
Yeah, it's kind of weird because I think about the way that I bid jobs. So I track my time, you know, as a team, we track everything that we do. We have we have a project management system. And not because I want to track every minute, right? I'm not billing on the hour. But what I'm doing is I know that the next time I bid this job, a similar job out to another client, I'm gonna be able to look back and go, we spent forty-two hours on that, we spent 150 on that, we spent thirty hours there. So
When I figure up that next bit, I'm able to go, okay, well, look at those three things. That's 240 hours or whatever, right? And what's my agency rate? Pat at 10%, because things can go wrong. And then I kind of have a number to work with. But to your point, I'm not delegating like, you know, George, you've got 13 hours to execute this, and Susie, you have, you know, 14 hours to execute here. And then I take some of the bulk of stuff. And you know, and we're not timing ourselves like that, but it's like,
Because we've done it in the past, I know roundabout what it should take, but I expect the team, like you said, to just have due diligence, put in the time, dot the I's, cross the T's, make sure things are right, and not put crap out in front of the customer.
Toby Cryns (33:08)
There's I always think when problems like these come up, usually they or questions like these. It's usually based on an experience. And I have an interesting story from recently that I heard. A company was asking this problem we were conversing, should we track hours of our clients, of our employees, like dev hours specifically? Should we track our developers' time to a project and budget in the way you're you're doing you're talking about? And what it
What it came down to was the question what when I dug into it with them, it was it was more about lack of confidence in a single employee. It was driving this like company wide type of thinking conversation. I
Kurt von Ahnen (33:45)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (33:46)
was like, How is that employee paid? their salary. I was like, Okay, so they get paid no matter what and they're not accountable to really anything other than showing up and doing the things. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And anybody who runs works in a small business can relate to that.
There are just no metrics that track anything at small businesses, you know, or a lot of agencies anyway. but so what they're thinking now, you know, I was I was like, what if instead of tracking employee utiliz utilization, what if he just made that person hourly rather than salary and said, When you work the hours, we'll pay you. and
Kurt von Ahnen (34:20)
Yeah, when you work the hours we pay you.
Toby Cryns (34:22)
and on the flip side
you're probably gonna pay a little more attention to those hours just 'cause that's human nature. When they send the invoice now it has all the things attached to like, what did they they worked on that. Why'd they work on that? ten hours for that thing? Why is that ten hours? Like just like human
Kurt von Ahnen (34:36)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (34:36)
nature is a person who's paying the bills, you're gonna keep it like when you read your credit card statement, you're looking for the big line items.
Kurt von Ahnen (34:42)
Well, when people are working remote and running time on a plu a program or platform somewhere, it's super easy on your computer to have, you know, YouTube open in another window or Facebook open in another window. Next thing you know, thirty, forty minutes of scrolling's happened.
Toby Cryns (34:57)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (34:57)
They're not working for you, but that clock is running.
And sometimes sometimes that's mental health time. Sometimes that's like
Toby Cryns (35:00)
Yeah. It it's that it yeah. Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (35:05)
it, you know, it clears them out and they're able to be more productive and in the end you're still not overpaying for the work.
But there's gotta be balance. And I think that's the hardest thing, being it being an employer, you know, running the business. It's it's you know, I can't crack the whip and drive people all the time, right? But there needs to be enough balance that they understand the urgency you talked about, right? So th this has to get done. It's gotta get done in a certain amount of time. And I'll compensate you, but it's gotta get done.
Toby Cryns (35:30)
Yeah, one thing yeah.
One thing EOS is helping us figure out at the Mighty Mo is we're looking for pressure points that lead to money outcomes, like profitability outcomes. But profitability at the end of the day is the goal of any business, I think.
Kurt von Ahnen (35:44)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (35:45)
and so we're trying to figure out which buttons to push on our, you know, which what things to track. And one of the things we think we're gonna track is percent of projects that were completed on time.
And at the estimated amount. And so like what EOS does, it provides a system, but it doesn't have to be EOS to do it without. But like the idea we're gonna have weekly meetings where you say, here's Project X. is it on time? Is it looking on time? Are all the tasks completed the same number of hours you scoped, or is it more or less? and the thought is, and I don't know yet, you know, it's means to be you data is not there for us yet, but it will be hopefully in a couple months.
And the question is, does pushing these specific buttons every week and tracking these things, and it's only a handful of things, basically we're saying we're gonna hold you accountable to these five very basic metrics that you control. First of all, you're setting the scopes, you're s you know, and if you can't meet these, that's affecting profitability. And maybe the hope is our hope in dream is that if all our employees are meeting these specific metrics, it smooths out everything else.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:43)
Yeah, the the biggest thing I want to see smoothed out is like I don't want the client calling me. You know, we should make the outgoing calls to the clients, right? Here's the status, here's where we're at.
Toby Cryns (36:52)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:54)
hey, good news it's done. You know, we're gonna launch on Tuesday at noon. that's your favorite time, Toby. Tuesday at noon we're gonna launch.
Toby Cryns (37:00)
Yep. Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (37:02)
but it's like if the client's calling if the client got a hold of me and is trying to harangue me about status or updates or
I sent in three updates and I haven't heard back yet. Well then that's a sure sign that the urgency and and stuff's not being executed in the inside.
Toby Cryns (37:17)
Yeah. That's a great point because that's one metric we're gonna track as well, both on our developers and our project managers, is this would be what this is a hundred percent. It's like, did the client contact us at all to ask about the status of anything? If
Kurt von Ahnen (37:30)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (37:30)
the answer is yes, that's a problem that we're gonna escalate. And so that's another thing we're tracking. And it's simple, it's basic, but like the whole concept, like you're just saying, like, I don't know how you get
out of that problem. That's for you to decide as an employee. Like I'm not telling you how to not have the client contact us. Just make sure they know everything. Build whatever systems you need to build. Like
Kurt von Ahnen (37:50)
Yeah. Yeah. You are in charge. The a lot of the business consulting we do, we that's actually one of the measurements, right? Is is incoming phone calls. What percentage of incoming phone calls are status requests and what percentage of incoming phone calls is new business? If our consulting does the job right, then when the phone rings, they should be excited. Because anytime the phone rings, it's just new money. They just got to sell to someone new. if if it's if that's not the case, then something internally is wrong and we gotta fix it.
Toby Cryns (38:17)
Yeah, that's a great point. I wanna have a last question here before we check out. I'm gonna change the topics a
bit. But what happened to all the WordCamp buzz? Wordcamp used to be buzzworthy and fun and exciting, but
Kurt von Ahnen (38:29)
I thought we were gonna I thought we were gonna skip that question.
Toby Cryns (38:31)
what's up? I mean I I've I what's going on? And and without I don't wanna get into politics about it or anything, but like is it just not as fun anymore?
Kurt von Ahnen (38:37)
no, no. I d I I don't want to touch on the
politics either from from like y who does what blah like I'm not here to point a finger. I just I was shocked because in previous years, 2018, 19, 20, I I got pretty involved in these word camps. And then financially I wasn't really seeing the reward in it. And I know that, you know, Lifter LMS has their things and and Raquel's doing her thing with PressConf and and there's just all this stuff, right? And but there used to be
'Cause I'm active on X and it used to be like, I'm so excited, I'm on the plane, I saw five other people, we're doing this, we're doing that, here's the after party, here's the pictures from the whatever, we're this restaurant, with the and this year from the Phoenix one, I mean it was last week, and crickets. I'm not really seeing much unless
Toby Cryns (39:20)
Yeah and
Kurt von Ahnen (39:20)
unless my algorithms change and I'm just not seeing what people are posting. I'm not seeing much.
Toby Cryns (39:24)
Yeah. Minneapolis
Minneapolis didn't even do one this year. I don't think we did one last year either, for that matter. I think it was two years ago. I think maybe it's like the perils of a mature like it felt like when I started going to WordCamps, I don't know, maybe a decade ago, I was co planner of two WordCamps here in Minneapolis. it felt like we were building something. And
Kurt von Ahnen (39:42)
It was new, it was exciting, it was fun.
Toby Cryns (39:43)
and and there wasn't
this like huge profit motive in any of it, like from our perspective. We'll say like I'm sure some people were making bank. I know some people were making bank, but but it wasn't even the even the we'll say like the support we were getting was more grassrootsy. Like I remember like someone from Automattic came to our word camp. I think it was like twenty let's say twenty ten. I could be wrong about that. But and we were just like
grateful that anyone came from Automattic We're like, this is awesome. They brought some t shirts, you know. I don't even there was I don't even think we had booths. I think it was just like, here's a bunch of people showing up at Best Buy headquarters here in Minneapolis and like and I
Kurt von Ahnen (40:23)
It's so funny. Dude, I signed up
to run the I run the WordPress meetup here in town. And part of my onboarding with Automattic was or with WordPress.org, however it was, right? What but I had to go to a meeting, I got onboarded, and then they said, What's your shipping address? We're gonna send you a box of swag so you can give it out at your meetup. That box never showed up. No stickers,
Toby Cryns (40:40)
Mm. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (40:44)
no pins, no wapus, no nothing.
Toby Cryns (40:46)
That's interesting because that was an exciting part too of starting the local meetup. This would have been long time ago. I mean, I don't know, maybe it was twenty ten, twenty eleven, but like we got a box of swag and it was like just like wow. Just
Kurt von Ahnen (40:58)
We're so important.
Toby Cryns (40:59)
small box, by the way. It was like like you're saying, like, I don't know, twenty pins and some stickers.
Kurt von Ahnen (41:03)
Yeah,
yeah, just something. But they said it was comin', never showed up.
Toby Cryns (41:06)
Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, that's unfortunate. Hopefully that was just not a policy but an error.
Kurt von Ahnen (41:12)
I don't know. That's right
when everything got really tumultuous. So,
Toby Cryns (41:15)
Yeah, yeah. Well
Kurt von Ahnen (41:17)
it's I don't think so. I I I hate, hate, hate, you know, the the clickbait stuff, you know, is WordPress dead? You know, all these things on
Toby Cryns (41:25)
No.
Kurt von Ahnen (41:25)
on because it's it's not. I don't I don't believe it. I don't think you believe it. I I think I think the market's grown and there's some other options to look at in certain use cases. but I don't think there's really anything replacing the open source nature and the
flexibility and scalability of WordPress. but then the question is the community. Like right when I found the community, I was thrilled I found it. And now it seems to be dwindling or not, I don't want to say dw phasing out or whatever, but it it's it's
Toby Cryns (41:52)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (41:52)
just not what it was.
Toby Cryns (41:53)
Yeah, and I gotta say, like it even before all the drama a couple of years back, it it was not the same community in terms of energy. Like it w there was still
Kurt von Ahnen (42:00)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (42:01)
a lot of like, hey, let's you know, corporations, you need to do your part. Like like it was like just like top down. It was becoming like very like you know, well it's a corporate enterprise machine, the the the WordPress software now. It's it's huge, it's mature, it's powers billions of sites and that's
It's windows.
Kurt von Ahnen (42:16)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (42:16)
It's the windows of the internet, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (42:18)
The windows of the internet. Well
Toby Cryns (42:22)
Well, I'm I'm hopeful. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, you never know. I somewhere down there there there's goodwill and heart and I'm I'm hoping that it you know something interesting happens.
Kurt von Ahnen (42:31)
Yeah, yeah. It's
but I gotta be like bold faced honest. Like I like running the WordPress meetup. I think it falls within my skill set. I'm not a developer and like contribution days or five for the future, any of those things don't really make sense for my agency. I mean I can't I can't make it work really financially, economically. We're not we're not big enough to really say, take one of our employees for the year. so I just
I d I do struggle with that because on one hand I I one hand I'm being vocal. I'm saying, Hey, it's crickets, man. What happened at WordCamp? I'm not seeing I'm not seeing the flutter on on the socials. But on the other hand, I'm not writing the check either.
Toby Cryns (43:07)
Yeah. Well there's I also think maybe the I mean, I don't think these types of conferences will go away, these corporate y like, you know, booth types of conferences 'cause people need to make money, you know, it's a marketing
Kurt von Ahnen (43:18)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (43:18)
opportunity. But there's a conference happening here locally this fall that's put put on by one guy and it's it's like an idea conference or something. You go there and you go for like three days and you sleep in cabins and I don't know, drink some coffee, hang out.
It sounds amazing, interesting, fun. Like it just might be maybe this has run its course and it's time for the next iteration of things, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (43:41)
Maybe so. Speaking of running along, I think we're gonna run along. I think this is a good time to wrap up. how can we reach it, Toby?
Toby Cryns (43:47)
You can find me on LinkedIn, Toby Cryns that's C R Y N S. You can also find me on themightymo dot com. That's T H E I G H T Y MO dot com, where we sell all sorts of WordPress and SEO services. Kurt, where can people find you?
Kurt von Ahnen (44:03)
Well, on that brand new stinkin' website, manana no mas
Toby Cryns (44:06)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (44:06)
dot com. It's fast. And then it's it's
Toby Cryns (44:08)
It's very fast, everybody. Test it out. Send us your numbers on LinkedIn.
Kurt von Ahnen (44:11)
it's very fast. And then then you'll break it and then I'll have to fix that. But I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find. I'm the only Kurt von Ahnen on in there. Folks, this has been great. and we have notes left over to talk about next week. So we're not out of content, but we would love like, share, follow, and comments so that we can have something to talk about. Talk to you soon.
Bye bye.