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Hosted by Toby Cryns and Kurt von Ahnen, the Agency Action Podcast (Part of the WP Minute Podcast Network) dives into the real-world ups and downs of running a WordPress agency. Each week, Toby and Kurt share open, honest conversations about the challenges and victories that come with building client relationships, pricing projects, finding the right tools, and growing a sustainable business.
Whether you’re just launching your agency or refining your systems, you’ll get practical insights from two agency owners who live it every day—along with stories that remind you you’re not alone in this wild WordPress world of global teams, AI disruption, and constant change.
Follow the show and explore more at TheWPMinute.com/podcasts
Kurt von Ahnen (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Agency Action Show. my name's Kurt Von Ahnen and my co-host, Toby Cryns is with me. Toby, how you doing today, man?
Toby Cryns (00:09)
Doing good. Let me tell ask you a question, Kurt, with all the hubbub around AI these days, what's your gut telling you about mid sized clients and AI going forward?
Kurt von Ahnen (00:17)
I think I'm a little bit of a contrarian on this, but I don't I the more I say it, the more people agree with me. And I don't know if they're just trying to avoid the argument or if I'm really starting to make some headway. I'm running into more and more like mid-size clients. You know, I'm talking like in your 10, 12, $18,000 range for a project, right? They just seem to want an expert. They just want an expert to help them get their site going. They want to run their business.
And so what I'm running into now is almost like it almost feels like AI fatigue. Like they don't really want to mess with that stuff. They just, they just, you know, if they're gonna mow lawns, they want to mow lawns and they want me to run the website. If they're gonna teach people how to make ceramics, they wanna teach people how to make ceramics and they want me to run the website. I've I've only run into a couple of people lately that are like, I can't wait to jump into this and play with all the tools, right? Like that's I've only had a couple of
And I call those like hobbyists, right? Like they they have they have a real job, but for some reason they're fascinated with what they think they might be able to do with AI. Where are you at with this?
Toby Cryns (01:17)
Yeah, I think I don't think this is new. Like like there are always been hobbyists in the web space, especially since like WordPress came along. But even before that there was Dreamweaver and people were playing. ⁓ Yeah. And
Kurt von Ahnen (01:22)
Yeah.
Great song.
Toby Cryns (01:29)
I think I am running I I do think on the low end there's like when you get like below five grand for example th there's a very much cost pricing sensitivity happening and and I think it's always been there but maybe it's bigger now in terms of the sensitivity and 'cause people just think like like this whole like thing we do has been commoditized in their brain where they don't
think it has a lot of value, like I can just do that in five minutes with AI, you know, that sort of thing. And
Kurt von Ahnen (01:57)
I I volunteer with the college age group at church and one of the kids came up to me at the library the other day. And it was just a weird happenstance thing. He saw me came running up, you know, and he says, Hey, ⁓ one of my friends was telling me that ⁓ you can make a lot of money making websites and then selling them. So I I made two websites in AI yesterday. And I was like, Great. Yeah, like I I don't know how I was supposed to respond, you know, but I was like, okay, great, you know. And and I said, Have you made websites before? And he goes, No.
And he was super excited. And I go, So what's the plan? He goes, Well, I heard you can make money, like you can make a lot of money selling these websites. I said, Okay, have at it, man. And he goes, Well, that's why I'm talking to you. I thought you could help me sell these things. And I go, That's not how that works. That's that's not how that works at all. I said, I said, I said, if you like, let's say you made some landscaping websites, there's ways that you could sell.
referrals or services or something off of a site that you've made to to business owners and then you know you there's these there's there's all these what I call scammers online telling people how to do this thing. But then I asked him some questions. I said, what if you sold the website and the customer wanted you to make some changes six months later? How would you make those changes? He goes, Well, I don't know. I go, how are you gonna deal with that? And he was like, I don't know. I said, dude, you need to learn WordPress.
You you you need to you need to understand some basics before you start thinking you're gonna sell digital products.
Toby Cryns (03:18)
Yeah, you know, and but I think the kids got on to a like a really important point is the money has always been in the selling, not in the building. And so whether you're a landscaper, a web guy, an agency owner, the people who make the bucks are the ones that sell. And it doesn't matter what you're selling. You could be I have a friend in town who's very experienced entrepreneur. He's selling knives right now. And he seems to be doing really well selling knives. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (03:43)
Doing really well. I
I did have a really nice set of cut co knives before that I really miss.
Toby Cryns (03:47)
Yeah.
I'm sorry, he's selling knife sharpening services today.
Kurt von Ahnen (03:51)
okay, okay.
Toby Cryns (03:53)
but it's it's all about selling. Yeah, you could go to the store and buy a knife sharpener. They ha sell at the local ⁓ every grocery store probably has a knife sharpener in there somewhere you can buy, let alone a target. Yeah. But like ⁓ if you can sell it and and anybody who's seen and I mean maybe that's a great example 'cause if you go to the county fair and you see the guy or the you see it on the infomercial, the g the knife guy who's selling the knife knife set plus the sharpener kit, like
Kurt von Ahnen (04:02)
I ordered the wasabi. Set your angle. Shh shh.
Yeah,
Toby Cryns (04:19)
Like it's in the
Kurt von Ahnen (04:19)
yeah.
Toby Cryns (04:20)
cell. It's not it's not the product. It's that he knows how that person knows how to sell it.
Kurt von Ahnen (04:24)
Yeah, like the Shamwild dude. Well, here's a towel. It's yours for forty dollars. ⁓ I gotta have it. I gotta have it. I I think AI's like that in a certain area. So we recently had a customer get in touch with us and they and they said, Hey, you know, you guys built our stuff with Elementor. We've been with them for years, you know. And they said, How do we access the AI features in Elementor?
Toby Cryns (04:26)
Yeah, here's a towel.
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (04:49)
And I immediately panicked because I'm like, well, you're on my account. I don't want to give you like unbridled access to my Elementor account. And so I'm like, well, how does this work? So I can I can get them a user account, right? I can get them a user account and they can still work off the same license but have their own user account. I could ⁓ I could get them like one of my I could give them one of my support emails, right? That's available because you have so many of those that you get on your license. You had like there's all these things that you can do.
But it's added a layer of complexity in the agency space because I know a lot of agency people that or or freelancers that would be like, ⁓ sure, you know, here let me put the code in for you. But you have no idea what these people are gonna do with these tools or what, you know, what AI credits they're gonna soak up and what invoicing you might get later. So I'm like, or the other option is of course, hey, we supplied the page builder to you, you know, four years ago.
If you want to continue to do something amazing with AI, you're you're welcome to, you know, upgrade your a personal account of your own and and we'll change out the license for you or whatever. But it's it's been really interesting to see w what people want to do. Cause then I I asked her, I said, I said, okay, let's cut to the chase. What are you actually trying to do? And she's like, we just want to make another page. And I'm like, Another page, kind of like your other pages? And she's like, Yeah, but we want to change some of the content. I'm like, So give me the content. Like,
Copy and paste, baby. Like duplicate page, copy and paste, replace a picture. Done. We don't need AI for this.
Toby Cryns (06:13)
One thing that's interesting about that is that you don't need AI, but AI is an option. And if you don't like WordPress or don't know WordPress, you AI could in theory build all that in WordPress.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:25)
How much access do you want to give your customers though to your AI account?
Toby Cryns (06:25)
I kinda like
Well, the only question that I have is really about the billing part, because I go if if we can be like, Hey, like with Claude, you get twenty bucks a month and I would gladly figure that out. Like if there was if I could put an upper limit, I would gladly give them that access. for a couple of reasons. One, like, customers always write, but also like I'm I'm maybe we're in different places on this, but I love it when my customers and clients ruin their websites 'cause
It means they call me and I can fix it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And as long as they know that going in, like, you know, I would tell like, Hey, like, whatever you do is not covered, but happy to help if it breaks.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:53)
I can fix that, but it's not covered by your standard maintenance agreement. So
I almost feel like we skipped all of our notes and went down to the end. Cause that that is a classic use of maybe a potential, you know, recurring billing revenue source, right? Because now let's say that you know that you're gonna have acts a certain access that you could put a cap on, and that would be 20 bucks a month, but you give them access to it for 40 bucks a month. Well, you're just that just that's just recurring profit month over month over month. And realistically, I always go back to this realistically.
Toby Cryns (07:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (07:36)
What are they really going to do on that website? Like, how many times do you build a website and they're like, I need admin because I need to be able to do stuff. And then you look at their website two years later and they've done precious nothing in there.
Toby Cryns (07:47)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a hundred percent right. They at max they would use it once and then they would get bored with it and then you're on an annual subscription for your AI service.
Kurt von Ahnen (07:57)
Okay, maybe I need to maybe I need to revamp my opinion on this. You want AI to make one page and you want to subscribe to the service? Yeah, okay, maybe this is a go.
Toby Cryns (08:06)
Yeah, I mean in this c let's let's keep going with this because ⁓ this we were talking before the podcast today about how having a subscription model in any business can be really helpful in terms of smoothing out the the waves and whatnot. and part of the thing is like the the higher the subscription revenues to your overall operating expense, the more sturdy your business in theory.
⁓ and so I what we were talking about, like there's your standard like in WordPress agency land, you could do hosting, maintenance, security, maybe speed. But then we're like, let's get a little creative. And so you know, we were you and I were talking, ⁓ what are some creative ways that people might do subscription stuff?
Kurt von Ahnen (08:45)
It's it's so interesting because you know, our our pre-show banter, well, I thought was pretty funny. It's we should probably start recording our pre-show banter. Maybe that'd be some good b-roll stuff. you had mentioned the accessibility and the compliance angle, right? And I'm sure Amber Hines loves that we brought that up, right? It's ⁓ or Bet Hannon or or one of these folks. Because I think so many people leave that on the table. I I barely ever hear freelancers.
⁓ or agency type people saying, okay, yeah, we can do this, this, and this and this and this. And for this much, it includes accessibility checks or accessibility builds. Like it needs to be a it needs to be a feature that's discussed because I think clients assume it's a thing that's happening, but and if you don't sell it, you're not doing it, right? So it's not it's not happening. And then so by and large, these companies are left unprotected from an accessibility standpoint. And it's really something that you could sell.
You told me about ⁓ a a friend or a peer of yours that says, Hey, I'll put you on a subscription for accessibility insurance or accessibility compliance. But if I'm gonna be in charge of that, I have to be in charge of all of the updates on the website. And I think that is I think that's fairly brilliant, especially if they're doing like SEO optimized post content and stuff like that. Cause then it's like
Yeah, we can do that for you, but that's gonna be nine hundred dollars a month, or that's gonna be eighteen hundred a month, or that's gonna be f six thousand dollars a month, you know, depending on the scale of the updates and content they're trying to to put out.
Toby Cryns (10:15)
Yeah. And there's other other thoughts, you know, as we're thinking outside the box of like subscription services that you could potentially offer. we talked about like micro app subscriptions and this I think you do some of this where like you know a WordPress plugin really well that does like course management, for example. And you could sell that. You could you know, in theory be like the expert at that and like you can tack on services to that and
I love like you brought up the potential of selling support for that platform on behalf of the client, which I think is brilliant. Like the idea is like, okay, ⁓ I'm I own a a class that's on some WordPress plugin, whatever the the plugin that does classes. and I have like a hundred students and I don't wanna support the tech for those hundred students. So I hire someone like you know, somebody to just
reset the passwords when they ask and respond to those support emails.
Kurt von Ahnen (11:05)
Yeah.
That's one of my secret sauce profitability pieces. because it depends on the size of the project. I'm not gonna lie. Like I don't want to underprice it and then like regret that I sold it, right? I always want to be happy to do it. And so let's say the company's, you know, abc one two three dot com. So we make a support at ABC one two three, you know, dot com email address. We assign that to the support tool that we put in the website.
And it's a ticketed support system. Like they're not calling my cell phone. They're filling out a support ticket. And they're saying I'm unable to, you know, I downloaded my certificate, but I can't pull it up as a PDF, or I can't email my I can't share my certificate with my HR manager, or I need my password reset. Like whatever. we handle that. We we get the notification when the support ticket comes in and we tell them, you know, we guarantee a 12 hour response on support tickets. So that gives us plenty of time.
And so we get the notification, and it's usually just as simple as like force a password reset and like boom. And we charge like $349 a month for that service at at a base level. So we make it sound easy, but to a customer, would so when you when you say to a customer, well, there's tools, you could set up your own ticketed support system and you know, set up another email address and and make sure you get your, you know, DKMs and your S Kms and
Toby Cryns (12:02)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (12:21)
You know, validate your emails and so when you describe it to people, they go, I don't wanna deal with that. Can you just do that for me? Yeah, we have a service, it's three forty nine a month. We'll set it up and handle it for you. You don't even have to worry about it.
Toby Cryns (12:32)
Yeah, and there's another ⁓ I have a friend. Actually I used to do this. this is a different subscription model where you you say, Okay, this project normally I would charge X amount for it, but we're gonna divide that up over twenty-four months and you're gonna pay me every month ongoing. until you forget until you wanna go do something else, basically. and I have a friend who does great with this. ⁓ he's just a one-person shop and this is his side gig. He sells these like micro
Kurt von Ahnen (12:49)
Until you forget.
Toby Cryns (12:58)
subscription things where he's like, gonna you pay it off over twenty-four months, but it doesn't stop there. You know, but what he says is after twenty-four months we'll redesign it or, you know, relaunch or something. I really like that. What I ran into just as an anecdote is that we didn't have a twenty four month limit on ours. And so we would do all this upfront work and people would be like, months five, what am I paying you for? We're like, well, we front loaded all the work. but yeah
I think like like there's a lot of stuff and these we're just scratching the surface here, obviously like there's tons of stuff people are doing. In fact, if you're listening and you have a way that you're creatively making recurring revenue, please share in the comments and you know, I would love to to learn.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:34)
Yeah, I think this is a fun
one. This is a ⁓ there are so many opportunities, like helping people with SEO driven content. Like if you know their niche and you know their their area well, they're busy doing other things. Like, so you look at their website. If you're hosting the website and you're doing the updates in the website, you're gonna see like, they haven't done CRUD in here in six months. They haven't added a post, they haven't done anything. You could send them, say,
Hey, you what? We have a monthly service. We can help keep your content fresh. We can, we can, you know, cycle content through your homepage. We can do these different things, you know, obviously for revenue for an added service. And I think you'll be really surprised how many business people just want someone else to do it. They just want someone else to take the reins and make it happen. They want to focus on whatever it is that bothers them every day. They don't want to deal with the website. That's our job.
Toby Cryns (14:25)
Yeah. Let's move on a little bit here. I'm curious. ⁓ so we ⁓ we have all these new ideas that you get when you listen to a show like this and you you have a hundred things to do, but then you show you maybe you listened on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all you listen to our our entire catalog. you get into work on Monday and then there's a barrage of emails waiting for you. How do you decide what to work on when you get in on Mondays?
Kurt von Ahnen (14:46)
I th I are are you putting me on the spot? Are you because I think you know that I have a ritual now. I I I've become very ritualistic in my morning time. I used to be a I used to be unfocused. I would sit down and there would be like nine things in my brain and I and I literally was like, What am I gonna do next? And I'd start something and I'd check an email and then I'd go over here and I would do this, and then next thing I know it's two o'clock and I got nothing complete, right? I've got
I've got pieces of nine different things done, but I don't have anything complete at two o'clock in the afternoon. And that was really setting me up for a negative experience. You know what I mean? Like like my inner my inner mental health was not good because I wasn't I wasn't feeling productive.
So now I get up early with my wife. we read together. We're people of faith. So we read some scripture. We discuss things, right? Yeah, have a little family moment, drink some coffee. She goes to work. I come in and I I I got addicted to this remarkable tablet. And I have a planner and a journal in it. So what I do is I open up my computer and I look at my digital calendars and I review my schedule for the day in the planner.
So that tells me like those those are non-negotiables, right? Like I'm meeting with you at 230 today. I had a meeting at 9.30 this morning. Those are non-negotiables. So I know that that time's taken. And then I literally I plan the day. Like I've got stuff for Lifter LMS. I've got stuff for WP Tonic. I've got stuff for Manana no Mas I've got stuff for you know, the Prestige Academy I'm working on. And I literally like time block the day, and it keeps me focused, Toby, because if I don't do that.
If I don't do that, I allow other things to get in the way.
Toby Cryns (16:20)
One thing I reacted to that you said was if something's on the calendar, it's locked in. And that's the same with me. And what what my reaction was to that. Because I agree, like if you're on the calendar, you're gonna see me. My reaction was that I need less stuff on my calendar because everything else is getting pushed around based on what's on the calendar. My calendars are generally really full.
That's I think a problem.
Kurt von Ahnen (16:43)
When when I said I time block my day, I time I purposely time block like non-appointments in. So in my appointment scheduler, there's only certain times available. And so even though I'm writing in, like I've got work for WP Tonic and work for Lifter and work for Power Sport Academy, like I might time block that stuff in. They're not appointments, they're like tasks, right? But no one else can schedule in that time because I'm time blocking it for productive hours.
Toby Cryns (17:10)
I've heard of this, but do you do you really f follow that a hundred percent? You do?
Kurt von Ahnen (17:10)
And yeah, so I do. I
do. Yeah. And I and I literally I'll have people say, hey, can we get together on Wednesday? And then I'll I'll look and I'll go, Well, I'm not available on Wednesday until four o'clock PM. And I'm only available for an hour and a half that time. And they go, ⁓ so we gotta meet at like four to four thirty. I go, if you can do it, that's great. If not, we'll have to pick a time next week. And it sounds like maybe I'm cutting off my foot. Like I know that some people would say
Well, you need to serve customers better or you need to be more available. But if I make myself available for all, here's what happens to me, because I don't know how your brain works. If I let someone take a nine o'clock and someone takes an 11 o'clock and someone takes a two o'clock, I'm screwed. I'm not getting anything done that day. Because I'm thinking about the meetings before they happen. I'm thinking about crap after the meetings. I'm getting distracted by my email dinging.
And next thing you know, I've I've done those three meetings, but I haven't done anything productive with the other hours of the day. So I need to be more protective of those pro of those productive hours. So I'm not up at two o'clock in the morning getting stuff done to to you know, to beat the the deadline.
Toby Cryns (18:17)
I wasn't I think for me the the amazing thing about what you said is that you actually do the work in those times that you have blocked off because I'm actually curious how other people if other people are able to do that. Cause I I have a s I struggle with that. So I will also block time off. But then like by the time I get there, like I'll block time off for let's say, send an invoice to such and such client. And maybe it's gonna take a half hour to figure all that out. And I'm like, I block off a half hour and I'm like
I just got out of this call, I'm tired, I'm just gonna like get a drink of water and journal for you know, do whatever. So that's my problem. And I would love to have the discipline that you just described there.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:56)
Well, I take the ritual pretty serious, Toby. In the morning, like when I said it's quiet time, you know, I have that quiet time with my wife. She goes to work. I have more quiet time. I don't schedule any meetings before nine o'clock in the morning, you know, and she goes to work at six. So that gives me three hours of early morning time that I'm able to study. Like I'm trying to learn how to be better with the HWP page builder. So that gives me my study time. That gives me
You know, time to respond to personal emails. And then at nine o'clock, I kind of that's work time, right? So that's when I'm like, okay, what client stuff am I gonna do? What what's my client productivity time? What's my meeting time? And I and I time block the day in those areas. Before I started doing this, I was a mess. I was a mess. So I know I sound like I'm a little too regimented right now, but that's what I had to do in order to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish.
Toby Cryns (19:23)
Yeah, yeah.
No, the thing that you left out of that, which I will use in a as an excuse for myself, exactly, because here's my morning today. I was gonna leave the house at six 'cause my wife was gonna take the kids to school at at seven thirty. but I slept in till seven ⁓ because I was up late getting my kid to bed. And then then my my kid isn't ready at the time when my wife needs to take So now it's on me to take him.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:51)
Having younger children.
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (20:12)
And
he's not ready until I was supposed to bring him at seven forty five. He couldn't get ready for very real reasonable reasons, ⁓ that have to do with his health. until ten I got him to school at ten forty five. So now that what I was gonna leave at six, I didn't get to work until eleven fifteen or something, you know, like yeah, I know. So what got me when you're like, from six to nine, I'm like, that's I just figured it out.
Kurt von Ahnen (20:31)
Yeah, that's five hours, bruh.
Yeah, that's the sweet spot. That's the sweet spot. I will tell you, ⁓ I always saw it's it's funny when I say it, but it's it's not funny in real life. When I worked corporately in the automotive business, I was away from the house like 14 hours a day. And I was missing the kids, I was missing my wife, and I just wanted to work from home. Like I couldn't wait until I could work from home. And I finally worked out life to where I could work from home.
Toby Cryns (20:39)
If I can give myself an excuse.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:03)
And then they never left me alone to get my work done. And I couldn't wait to rent an office. You know, I it was just, it was so ridiculous. But now that the kids are grown, you know, both my kids are adults. And and, you know, yeah, they come and go and they they live in my house and stuff, but they're adults, right? They take care of themselves. So it literally is quiet time with the wife in the morning, more quiet time for myself to accomplish personal things. And then of course.
Toby Cryns (21:07)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:28)
You know, like I said, the workflow for me, I don't start working until nine typically. I'm not regimended on when the day ends though. If my if if my wife like my wife's off on Mondays and Tuesdays. So yesterday she was like, What's your schedule look like today? Can we work on the wall? And we did a a home improvement project in the middle of the afternoon. So what was I doing at nine o'clock last night? I was touching some things up for work.
Toby Cryns (21:50)
I'd be curious to learn from our listeners, our thou hordes of thousands of listeners, how how do you stay disciplined or not disciplined? You know, what what are the pressures you're facing and ⁓
Kurt von Ahnen (22:04)
Do do you
know Sarah Schumacher in Kansas City? She she does the post status meetup and she just seems like a really, really cool person, right? But she's like, she's like, yeah, we play video games, and this is our video, this is our video game monitor, and this is you know she she goes to sign in. And and then I think to myself, like, that's the freedom of self-employment, right? So in what you said.
Toby Cryns (22:06)
Mm. I don't think so.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:28)
Like your freedom of self-employment right now in this stage of life is like sacrificing part of the day to really take care of your kids that are younger. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You know, Sarah's time is like, I'm gonna play video games in the middle of the day. Okay, cool. You know, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna put meat on the smoker or I'm gonna go for a mountain bike ride. Like that's the freedom of this self-employment gig that we have. And as agency owners, we should really embrace that and not beat ourselves up.
Toby Cryns (22:42)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's a great point. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:54)
Like I don't want this I didn't want
this conversation to go down the negative and be like, how do I be more productive? I don't know that we always need to be more productive because this is gonna sound weird. We can always just increase the quality of what we do and the cost to our clients for what we perform and what we do. We don't necessarily have to spend more time.
Toby Cryns (23:13)
But I think one thing that I really appreciate what you just said, it that's true. Like as freelancers or people who r own a business, you you generally get to control who you work with, when you work with, and how you work. And this thing I described where I am like going I'm able to it's really a ⁓ a pleasure and to be able to bring my kid to school in morning and be there with with my family in the morning when they need me or my my wife needs extra help. That's why I do what I do, really. That's why I don't
go it's why I started a business. And so I do think there's this like maybe it's an American thing or something where like, you know, let's get more productive, get more disciplined. But I I also think like there are times for that and there are times for not that.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:53)
Yeah. I I'm really strict on so I mentioned the time blocking and and being very purposeful. When the when I'm having when it's productive hours, it's productive hours. And I knock out an amazing amount of work in three or four hours. but when it's time to go mountain biking, it's guilt-free mountain bike time. You know, it's it's I I cause you gotta take care of yourself, right? You gotta you gotta figure out in life what's important to you. You know, for me it's health and wellness and all that because I'm getting older, right? I don't wanna be some
you know, big fat dude having heart attacks in the next year or two, I want to take care of myself. So yeah, I'm all in 100%. Which which brings us to one of our bullets. I mentioned sometimes it's not a matter of working longer hours. Sometimes it's a matter of selling the right job or selling a high enough value job, a high enough margin job. So what do you think about like this whole idea of like a five thousand dollar profitability cliff?
Toby Cryns (24:42)
I think like so th there's this yeah, like a five thousand dollar website is like a website ⁓ everyone might have a different slightly different picture of it, but generally if someone's gonna pay you five thousand or less, they're not it's not a big investment into their website compared to other companies. Like people are spending a million dollars, people are spending less than that. But like ⁓ it's very common for like a let's say a medium sized business.
small to medium sized business could easily s in America anyway, could easily spend, you know, let's say ten to twenty grand would be like a pretty low cost site for a lot of them. and so this five thousand dollar website, what it says what we're really talking about is like there's a point of d revenue. You have to sell, let's say you have to make let's let's let's just say you have to make fifty thousand dollars a year. Let's say you're
single living in the city and you just want to pay the bills and you have to make fifty grand a year, but you probably more than likely need to make a hundred grand a year in in any US big city to to really make a go of it. Let's say it's a hundred grand then. You have to sell 20 of these five thousand dollar sites. And this is again what we talked about early. Selling is the skill. It's not the building. It's can you sell 20 of these and can you build them in a way that that's sustainable?
And if you can't sell twenty and you can't build them in a sustainable way, then you need to figure out other ways to get to that hundred K. And part of it is subscriptions. We talked about that today. Part of it could be selling other services. For example, I sold a consulting engagement recently that wasn't a high price engagement, but I'm hoping it'll lead to more. But it was very I was very fairly compensated for my time. but it wasn't
wasn't an ongoing recurring, it wasn't a huge dollar amount, but but if I can book, let's say hypothetically, ten of these fifty thousand or ten of these five thousand dollar sites in a year and then figure out a way to get to fifty grand with all the other stuff, whether it's hosting, you know, subscriptions, these like training, could be speaking gigs, I don't know. Whatever you can think up.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:35)
I really enjoy the speaking gigs, just being honest with you. I I have more fun doing those than I think building the websites. The ⁓ if you go into AI right now and you do a search, what is the average revenue for a WordPress agency in the United States of America? Wanna be like super clear, because you know, economies of scale are different all over the the planet. But it'll say microagencies, you know, a median revenue is typically fifty to a hundred thousand dollars.
And it'll be 20 projects of like $2,500 to $5,000 apiece. And I think what we're talking about here is if you can get over that threshold and get past $5,000 per project, overall you're gonna see a lot more profitability for your business.
Toby Cryns (27:16)
Yeah, and I think i it's very I should say it's as a if you're a solopreneur and you need to build twenty websites at five K each and you need to sell twenty, that's really difficult. Unless you are excellent at selling and getting the gigs, which most of us aren't. so like I think what ⁓ I agree w a hundred percent with what you're saying. So okay, let's say you need to sell ten ten thousand dollar websites. I always think it's
Kurt von Ahnen (27:30)
Superman.
Toby Cryns (27:40)
easier to sell ten of something than twenty of something. And l let's say you just needed to sell five twenty grand websites. Probably easier to sell five twenty K than ten ten K, you know, like hypothetically and
Kurt von Ahnen (27:53)
Well, you're stumbling right into my niche, right? So my niche is e learning and I'm typically looking to do e learning projects that are enterprise based, right? Where where an organization's gonna sell their training to groups or to organizations. Because like if someone's trying to like make a website like, you know, how to customize your cot your your mug, right? you're gonna sell that what, nineteen dollars a course to a hundred people? Like that's your
What revenue is that? But if I'm gonna do enterprise learning and I'm gonna sell a course to an organization that's got a hundred employees and it's five hundred dollars per student, it sounds weird, but it's easier to sell that than it is to sell a course about customizing your cup to 20 people. You know? It's ⁓ it it's very, very interesting how how the whole process works.
Toby Cryns (28:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think
One hard thing to get over, this is where I think a lot of small businesses fail, particularly in the web development space, is they put too many eggs into one client basket. Like if most of your revenue is coming from one client, that's a problem. I see that as a red flag. If that was happening to my business, I'd say, Well, we have a problem here. Even if it was a ton of money, one client, like I would I would want to be very aware of that and like plan for the worst case.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:09)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (29:10)
Whereas if you can spread out that risk amongst many clients and many industries. Like here's an example. I've a there's a ⁓ company in t an agency in town that only does like HVAC industry SEO, let's say. when when the economy's bad, the HVAC industry disappears basically. You know, that that work's all gone. So they had a few bad years a few years back and you know, but when the economy booms, he's doing great, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:34)
Yeah.
Interesting. So go ahead.
Toby Cryns (29:35)
And so like I I think
I think like agencies like mine and maybe yours get a slightly bad rap by people in the agency world because we're diverse in our clientele maybe, or at least the Mighty Mo Mighty Mo is very diverse in terms of our clientele and we're partially intentionally diverse in terms of what we offer, who we're selling to, because we're trying this is me, I I'm like naturally averse to that like all the eggs in one basket and I'm trying to
disperse the risk around.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:03)
So I actually branch out in different ways, Toby, and it and it's it's because of my personal makeup. I I'm I'm of I I need variety. And so I do a lot of public speaking, I do a lot of corporate training, ⁓ and then we, you know, do this web development stuff. And if I only did the web development stuff, I think I would still generate the same, if not more, revenue, to be honest with you. because we're really strong in that space.
But I really, really, really like I love the training, the public speaking, the the person-to-person interaction. I even like some of the travel. Like I I go to Vegas, I go to Miami, I do some things. And that's part of our revenue structure. Like those are verticals within our business. And I've had professional like consultants tell me that I'm committing, you know, corporate suicide. They're like, you're spreading yourself too thin. You know, you can't be an expert public speaker and an expert, you know, web developer. And I'm like,
Dude, I'm in my fifties. Do you think I could only do one good thing in f four decades of work? Like, obviously I'm gonna develop skills in other areas and I want to optimize those skills whenever possible. And so for me, having those extra verticals, ⁓ honestly, I think it's what personally gives me the passion to do what I do as emphatically as I do it.
Toby Cryns (31:15)
Yeah. Let's talk as a closer here on this ⁓ agency action show. Have you ever been asked to come into an organization? And this could be like a it could be many ways to be brought in. What could be like a full time hierarch, what it could be like part time consultant, it could be board member, advisor, you had mentioned training. can you share a way that you've been brought in that worked out really well?
Kurt von Ahnen (31:36)
Yeah. ⁓ but the thing is is that I get real tentative about it. I I'm not gonna lie, I get nervous. Like if my introduction to the company is through the web services that Manana no Mas is providing, and then they're like, we really want you as a business consultant, right? Well that's like a natural flow for me because we always seem to be consultants to our web customers, right? We like how do you how do you make your widgets? How do you distribute your widgets? How do you train your new employees? How we ask all those questions because we want the
digital product to match their use case. So that that's a natural. Where things got unnatural was ⁓ we've had cases where they they've they've said, hey, would you you know, would you like to be one of our in-person trainers? ⁓ I ended up doing a job. I was ⁓ I trained at the election when I lived in l the Los Angeles County area. I taught all the people how to service all the election machines. I love doing the job, but the path to get to that job
was a little convoluted and it actually I think cost me agency work to take the training job. You know what I mean? Like like I think there was a conflict and they were like, well we really like you as a trainer, but we can't use you on the tech side now because you're working in this department. and I made great money doing it. And I love doing the training, but I think it cost me, like if you were gonna say how do you develop your agency in that space? The other thing was ⁓ we subcontract for other people, right? And so
Someone had hired us as the subcontracted people, and then they had us talking directly to the customer. And then the customer said, Hey, how do we just go through you direct instead of this other person? We'd rather just hire you. In fact, we we want to offer you a job to come into our into our company. And I'm like, I can't do that. Like that's a breach of ethics. Like I'm getting paid by the guy that hired me. I'm not gonna let you just come direct to me and cut the middleman out. I wouldn't have this gig if it wasn't for the middleman.
So so we're not I can't have that conversation, but it really makes it awkward because ethically you gotta go back to the guy that hired you and go, Hey, you need to know that this happened. Your client approached me and asked asked me to work directly for it.
Toby Cryns (33:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting that just worth calling out, you had mentioned subcontracting. Mighty Mo doesn't do any subcontracting. Like so we're I think we might be a little bit unique in that space and that we all all our clients are our primary sources and whatnot. but I was thinking like being brought in. I was we were the Mighty Mo was for doing work with a company called Lume Deodorant. and
Kurt von Ahnen (33:44)
Hmm.
Toby Cryns (33:59)
Then they brought me on as CTO. and I actually think it was a really great fit. Like I really helped bring them from point A to point B. And you know, I probably 20X the revenue or whatever in the time I was there, maybe more, maybe 100X actually, I don't know. But like the the cost to that, and it and it was a really unique opportunity, and I'm grateful for it. But
The cost was that the Mighty Mo stagnated. And so when I was ready to leave, ⁓ the the Mighty Mo it still existed, but it yeah, it had no momentum. And so I had to come back and kind of like restart the engine and what do you call it, a push start? Like one of those. I used to push start my Geo Metro.
Kurt von Ahnen (34:27)
Yeah to ramp back up.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that was kind of the same for us at Manyana no Mas At Manana no Mas Ducati was our number one client. And then Ducati had an internal training position open up and hired me directly. So they hired me away from myself. I never closed Manana no Mas. I still did the occasional side project here or there just to s you know stay sharp and do stuff I wanted to do. But I I worked for almost a decade in the motorcycle industry before I relaunched Manana No Mas. And so
To your point, you're absolutely right. Like the pandemic broke out. I couldn't find another job after leaving Suzuki. And then I was like, I guess we're gonna fire up Manana no Mas It's still sitting here on the back burner, but it was on the back burner and it had to get, you know, a new priority and and new momentum and all that. And it took a couple of years to really get it spooled up.
Toby Cryns (35:26)
Yeah. I was looking today and we have someone mentioned something to me. I I was just mentioning the size of our team, in numbers, not in weight. And they said, Hey is that bigger than it's ever been? And I was like, Wow, it's twice as big as it's ever been, like in terms of like we had an e earlier iteration. And that all stemmed from after that experience.
Right, came down as Lume Deoderant CTO and came back to the Mighty Mo and like, Okay, where do we go from here? I you know, I learned some stuff and so I don't know. You know, in some way I lost momentum, but in some ways maybe I learned some stuff and came back refreshed. It's kind of a weird thing.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:00)
Well, I d I'm just gonna come out and say it. I think any substantial time in corporate America, if you're an independent minded person, like getting back on your own again is is the most refreshing thing ever. You know, 'cause cause corporate can really stifle a creative mind. But, you know, I don't have that 401K sitting there either.
Toby Cryns (36:18)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:18)
So
there's, you know, that's that's the risk, right? The the so ⁓ everything that we do is based on risk. I mean the customers we take in, the pricing we offer, the tools we use, like everything, everything is has a certain rick a risk to weigh. I think more so than corporate, but corporate doesn't have the job security it used to have either. So there's certain risks in that space now too that didn't used to be there five, ten years ago.
Toby Cryns (36:41)
Yeah. Real risks, in that front. All right. Well thanks Kurt. This has been a great show. how can we get in touch with you if if we do so please want to?
Kurt von Ahnen (36:44)
Yeah.
⁓ I'm the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn. That makes me easy to find. And then Manana no Mas is our agency name and it's our call sign on all the social channels. How about you, Toby?
Toby Cryns (36:59)
You can find me on the old LinkedIn at Toby Cryns. Last name is C R Y N S. ⁓ you can also find me at themightymo.com. That's T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com, where we do WordPress support, WordPress development, SEO, security, you name it.
Thanks everybody.