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Hosted by Toby Cryns and Kurt von Ahnen, the Agency Action Podcast (Part of the WP Minute Podcast Network) dives into the real-world ups and downs of running a WordPress agency. Each week, Toby and Kurt share open, honest conversations about the challenges and victories that come with building client relationships, pricing projects, finding the right tools, and growing a sustainable business.
Whether you’re just launching your agency or refining your systems, you’ll get practical insights from two agency owners who live it every day—along with stories that remind you you’re not alone in this wild WordPress world of global teams, AI disruption, and constant change.
Follow the show and explore more at TheWPMinute.com/podcasts
Kurt von Ahnen (00:00)
Folks, welcome to another agency action show. Agency action show. That's the name of it, right, Toby?
Toby Cryns (00:06)
Sounds about right.
Kurt von Ahnen (00:07)
All right, we're about due for a name change again. Folks, I am Kurt von Ahnen. I'm here with my co-host, Toby Cryns and we're just super stoked that you come and you hang out with us. like, share, subscribe, all those kinds of things. But right now, the question that Toby and I have for each other is: are giant agencies
accidentally making small agencies more attractive to customers. Toby, what say you?
Toby Cryns (00:30)
Yeah, I've so have a we're like a 10 person shop and I've been wondering if we are making solopreneurs more attractive just because we carry a certain our minimum price is this because we have this much overhead and but I can only imagine a bigger agency, they have way more overhead, especially if they have a physical office. We don't even have a physical office and I can f already feel we're taking customers from these bigger agencies.
And where they're not these these clients of ours don't want to go to a solopreneur. They need the the people. Basically they need the people power. but like the people who are down here, like one level below, or like let's say they were at our level and they're like, I could probably go with one person shop. And I'm actually feeling that like I'm talking to people and they're like, could we just talk to you? Or like like it's just too many layers. Like people are every time I email, I have to email this person, then they do that, and then it's
like
it does seem that way. the the I actually think the biggest agencies are the people in most peril at right now. because let's say the the biggest agencies have corporate clients primarily. So let's say Walmart is somebody's client of a big WordPress
shop, let's say.
Kurt von Ahnen (01:38)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (01:38)
Walmart has certain needs, but the marketing people at Walmart are doing a lot of stuff on their own now with AI.
And these are
Kurt von Ahnen (01:45)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (01:46)
like
We have a client who has it's pr you know, it's let's say it's a ten million dollar business, but they're they're bringing AI created stuff to us and like having us pitch it. I pitched one that was like I pitched it pretty low just to port it over to WordPress. They're like, no, we'll just keep it at Claude.ai slash ABC D E F G and like they just kept their app that they built at this horrible URL and like they're This is fine.
And you can imagine
Kurt von Ahnen (02:11)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (02:11)
like
I don't know that it was even the money, is that they're I don't know if we want a layer of people, in time. I don't know if we wanna we can launch this today. It's ready. Or we can like maybe launch it in a week from now with a con and we have to sign a contract and tell our billing comp department to send a payment, you know.
Kurt von Ahnen (02:29)
There's there's so many nuances to this conversation because, and I'm thinking very personally, of course, because you know the world revolves around me, as we know. even if I put people on schedules, clients on schedules, like I got someone that says, I want to do, I wanna launch my MVP September 1st, and I've got this content, right?
Something's gonna happen in that project where they're gonna say, I wanna, I wanna remake these videos, or I wanna redo this, or we hey, I partnered with somebody, and that partner's gonna bring some assets to the project. So we need to move the launch from September 1st to October 1st. And in your mind as an agency owner, you're like, no big deal. That just gives us more time. But it doesn't give us more time. All that does is shift the client's responsibility back on the calendar, and you're still in this like.
Compressed time zone to make something happen. And so what happens is that client moves their date and does that, but then you get another client and those dates end up overlapping a little bit. And then if you're a solopreneur, you find yourself sometimes in the really awkward position of holy crud, I've got four clients I need to make happy this afternoon. And that's where having a team is so, so important.
either they're contractors that you feed tasks off to to take some something off your plate for the day, or but contractors, there's no guarantee that they're there for the day, right? They're like, dude, I can't get to that for nine days. it just depends on who you're working with and what the relationships are. So I I see that there's a lot of value in a small team so that you could say, hey, I'm not a solopreneur. I didn't, I didn't promise four people magic in the same afternoon.
I can I can split some of that up. I can see that. But man, I think about a big shop. If I had 20, 30, 40 developers, design and and custom over here and all this stuff going on. And every customer wanted to talk to me because I'm the owner and they want some special attention, like that's that's not viable for me. I don't see that that would work in my case.
Toby Cryns (04:26)
Well yeah, i the scale that you just mentioned is way too big. But even where I'm at, it's it's too much. And part of it is I think that I don't quite have the right infrastructure built yet. I'm still trying to figure it out. do I have the right people? Do I have the right positions? And I'm thinking right now, I need to rethink my operations role and my finance role and my sales role and just
think through because I'm still being drawn into too many conversations and I'm trying to figure that out. and nobody is the owner, and this is kind of I don't know, I don't know how business without businesses that run without the actual owner, I don't think they go through this. That's my hunch, but like I'm always thinking about all the things. I'm like, like, are we being efficient enough? Are am I paying people that
shouldn't be paid that's what's going through my head. are clients happy? And so I end up taking on a lot of that overhead and picture an employee. let's even if they're the CEO or the CFO, it's you can't
Kurt von Ahnen (05:22)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (05:23)
I don't think it's reasonable to have them take on that type of ownership and responsibility. I think that's what makes it really hard for owners, including myself, a lot of times. know, you could frame it like I care too much or something, but it's not that. It's like I
The things that I care about are different than what any employee of any even even if you're like a a startup founder, you have a totally different thing 'cause it's not really yours. It's some know
Kurt von Ahnen (05:46)
Yeah.
Yeah. And you can't expect people to take ownership of something that they don't have ownership in.
Toby Cryns (05:51)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (05:52)
I'm always blown away when someone says, we need you to take ownership of these, projects or whatever. Well, ownership like what? are I'm sorry, are we doing a revenue share? Did did did this did the image of this change for me recently? you know, and and usually no, right? So you you basically get, you know, kind of like this you get the bare minimum when when in those situations. And if you're the owner.
you're still in that position of overseeing every step and making sure the customer experience is wonderful, or just dealing with the idea that the customer experience might not be wonderful all the time. And that's just a a thing that you have to accept moving forward. It's a it's a very difficult conversation.
Toby Cryns (06:26)
I think that's probably the toughest part of owning any business probably is just any small business anyway,
The c more comfort you can get, and I'm not there, I am totally uncomfortable with any of my clients being upset or for what any reason.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:39)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (06:40)
but the more comfortable you can get with that, like we might have a we have all five-star reviews on Google. But if I was comfortable with a few three-star reviews, my stress level would probably be way low.
Kurt von Ahnen (06:51)
It makes me think about locally, there's this barbecue place in town that, for the most part, everybody loves. And then somebody got on Facebook and said, I went to this barbecue place and it was horrible and the meat was dry and the service wasn't horrible. And the owner and his family are typically always there. And it's usually like phenomenal food, like well prepared, like everything's great, you know, like almost always everything's great.
And then someone got on and did some squeaking on Facebook and the whole neighborhood came after this person. you don't know what you're talking about. Don't bash a local business, this, that, and the other thing. Da-da-da. But the truth of the matter is this, Toby. Someone somewhere dropped the ball and someone had a bad experience. And, you know, that owner's not in a position to go, I'm cool if someone says something crazy. he went really far out of his way to like prove that this person was crazy.
Right. But they might not have been all that crazy. There might have been a bad hour in the middle of a busy week.
Toby Cryns (07:43)
Yeah.
It's interesting that the owner went to crazy. Like y I was I thought you were gonna go while he went out, you know, offered them free coupons or whatever, like
Kurt von Ahnen (07:53)
Well,
yeah, but it was it was just like, no, that's so many people love us. Just look at the comments. Everyone thinks we're
Toby Cryns (07:58)
Mm.
Kurt von Ahnen (07:58)
great. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I wish I could make it right. What could I do to make it right? did all the normal good things that an owner would do. But the owner, based on the conversation we're having, didn't go, sorry you had a bad experience. Better luck somewhere else. poof. he's not in a position to go, I've got a thousand happy people if one person's not happy.
So be it, right? Like it's nice when
Toby Cryns (08:19)
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:20)
your business gets to that level that I guess you could be like that. But but realistically, when you're an owner of a small business, a startup, you know, a hands-on environment like you and I are, it's it's really hard to extricate yourself from the client conversation and act like, that's one bad apple in a bunch. I can deal with that.
Toby Cryns (08:36)
Yeah, I was talking to one of my employees the other day and I was like, I there's this thing I hate to do. And dah dah dah he's like, why don't you just assign it to me? I'm like, but do you wanna do it? He's like, I don't care. You're just paying me to do work. I'm just here to work. That's like kind of like, interesting. Like I didn't even consider because I was like, who would wanna do this work? It's like, I don't care. I need the hours.
Kurt von Ahnen (08:55)
So similar vein, if if we look further down on our notes, do you think the biggest competitor to an agency is another agency, or do you think it's like budget cuts from the clients?
Toby Cryns (09:06)
I think it's budget cuts, honestly. because I w I think we clients leave us. our existing clients, they don't go find someone else unless we're screwing it up. And so I I don't think we're in direct competition for our current clients, maybe for old for new ones, but I I don't really get it. it that doesn't take up a lot of headspace. our comp competition doesn't take up a lot of headspace. What takes up a headspace is our current clients.
but I will say this, it's not so much budget cuts. I was talking with a client today who's a really great client, yesterday, really great client. their owner went to some AI conference over the weekend or something. And I'm hearing this from the
Kurt von Ahnen (09:43)
Raw.
Toby Cryns (09:44)
someone high up in the chain, like it's a VP level who's talking to me. And this is a pretty big company that but
person I was talking with was saying the owner came in and he's like, okay, I want you to open up your AIs and do da-da-da-da-da. And I
Kurt von Ahnen (09:57)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (09:57)
want to see it all tomorrow. And everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Like it it and to them, they're like, we can't like we could build something with Claude today, sure. But like it's not like we can launch whatever we build can't be launched today. Like we need to like think it through a little bit and like talk about it. And so I think the
One big imp thing that's taking away our business are maybe this mindset that stuff should be done today because of AI or that AI is changing more than it's actually chang changing the bit ch AI AI can change what is making code free and fast. stuff can be ch built cheaper and quicker, but it doesn't make quality products unless you invest t human time into it, in my experience.
Kurt von Ahnen (10:41)
Well, so much of it comes down to like cause and effect too, right? Like I try to explain to some and for the record, I don't think the customers that I talk to are, you know, technical geniuses. They don't they're not supposed to be. They have a business to run and we have our business to run, what what we're experts in, right? So so I I very much recognize that. And so, you know, we have a client that that asks for customize this, customize that, and I said every time we customize something.
there's a chance that something else on the other side is going to be affected. I just need it. I just want it. This is basic. I'm asking you for basic things. And you're like, we can do this, but you're asking for another custom element. You know, every time we customize, and you it's just falls on deaf ears. And I think it's because of this overwhelming like propagation culturally that AI just creates these things instantly and we can just fix things anyway. So caution to the wind.
And you know, we went to launch a customer's website with a ton of of complications in it. And the the complaining doesn't end. Not once. Hey, thanks for giving me that feature I asked for. Right. It's always like, but what about this? If I refresh the page 13 times, I get this weird thing. And it's like, why are you are you just intentionally trying to break the website? What are you doing? You know, I just look at it on my phone. I haven't looked at it on a computer yet. You're like, we're gonna have a conversation about reviewing the website and you haven't reviewed the website yet.
While looking at it on my phone. No, no, no, no, no. You y y d y y you gotta do the due diligence as a customer too.
Toby Cryns (12:04)
One thing I think we can uniquely provide as smaller agencies in the WordPress space in particular, let's say, that I've I'm wondering this, and I think it's true, is that we have a few clients now that I've been bringing into a AI first workflow for design and development. And the way that's been working some of the time is I I schedule an hour and a half with them, I have my development environment ready, I just do a screen share with them, and I'm like, tell me what you want to change.
And I they tell me and then I tell AI, and AI does it, and we're waiting for five minutes and does it. And I'm like, what do you think of this? the thing that I wonder about that that could help in a situation like this, if they see that process and they kind of understand how it's working, like I'm wondering if it answers, fills in a lot of gaps. Like, that's why it takes a long time. Because
Kurt von Ahnen (12:50)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (12:50)
in our case, yeah, AI can change the button, but you're like,
They might like, Yeah, but now their position wrong. You're like, okay, let me ask AI to change the position. And like you're effectively doing what we used to do in person, or like behind the scenes, it would take a longer time. But now they there's a short enough time that they can really get in there and understand how much time it still takes.
Kurt von Ahnen (13:09)
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so interesting to me. And it's the c the question was, you know, are we competing with other agencies or clients' budgets? But then we started talking about AI, which always seems to be the case lately, right? Like AI infiltrates everything we talk about.
If the budget's affected and we know that we could do the work more quickly, right? So let's say that we're not losing the client to another agency, we're losing the client because of budget. And then you, me, whoever realizes, we could leverage AI and speed this process up. Does that automatically mean we're going to lower the price to meet the new budget requirements? Or are we going to hold firm and go, whether I use AI or not, you're still getting a net benefit.
professional product result. And it has a value.
Toby Cryns (13:52)
Depends what people yeah,
right. It depends what people are paying for. I work with some people, they're usually bigger institutions that require a certain level of insurance. And so if you're limiting your potential developers to people who have this very expensive insurance that the Mighty Mo has, yeah, we can charge a lot more because your pool's already gonna be limited to bigger companies. and so I wonder like on some level the answers, well, at a high level.
Yeah, I think for some projects and some clients, you have to lower your rates. I'm not saying you lower your hourly or anything like that, but what used to be 10 grand to build a website, maybe it's five grand now and you have to sell more or, or figure that out. and I don't mean every time and every situation, but if somebody can now, if somebody knows and has gone to AI, let's say they went to Chat GPT, built something, built a new website for themselves.
And then they go to and you say how much? 10 grand. They go, but I just built this in five minutes.
Kurt von Ahnen (14:46)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (14:46)
Why are you charging 10 grand? there's a big disconnect there. And I think maybe
Kurt von Ahnen (14:51)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (14:51)
that's we've been talking about this for a long time. those lower entry points are probably not gonna be developer work. Like it's not gonna be paid work for anybody. You know, that's that's probably the reality.
Kurt von Ahnen (15:02)
Yeah. But but what I find so interesting about that is now because I've because I've sampled these products, right? Because I've I I've been working in this area too. And let's say I have AI create the website and you go, okay, well, there's the website. Well, it's amazing how much more time and oversight and checking things out it takes before it would be published ready in our minds. But in a customer's minds, it would just be like, my website's done. And you're like,
Yeah, you don't have anything for search engine optimization. You you you didn't even ch turn off the checkbox that says don't index this website. You know, it's like there's so many obvious things. Or we've been doing a lot of migrations lately and we've noticed that the search and replace feature that a lot of the, you know, servers provide in the migration process are horrible, right? And so then we we actually have to go through and and re-filter them, you know, research and replace everything. and maybe it's just the tools I'm using. Maybe I just
I'm the loser that found all the stuff that sucks. But we've had to go through and like audit all of our migrations to make sure we're not using any outdated URLs inside the sites. And of course, that interferes with, you know, SEO and indexing and all that too. If you've got a hodgepodge of development and staging URLs in a website. So there's just been a lot to do. And people that are like, hey, I made a website, bada boom, bada bing, Bob's your uncle.
They're missing on all they're missing all those details. And then the
Toby Cryns (16:23)
Awesome. Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (16:23)
frustration comes in when they have a product that doesn't work and they still need an expert.
Toby Cryns (16:27)
Sure. I wonder too, we're talking about a certain experience that we probably have every day. there's a whole nother type of agency that's very value-based oriented. Value in terms of money value, like and and the offering value. and this is what like all the the you know
million dollar fees or whatever. there's all these books like how to s pitch a million dollar project. those things still exist, I think, in this world, where they just people just want the best people to cut the best person to come in and solve their problem, whether it's complex or not. there's still room for that. There always has been and probably always will be. And I think even in WordPress land, I know people who are like, they would charge
10 times what I'm charging for the exact same thing. And it's just they bring that weight with them. they bring that command of whatever marketing. We'll call it their own personal marketing. they bring that
Kurt von Ahnen (17:19)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (17:19)
in that that drives up cost too. Just how how well known are you? That can drive up your cost or you know, how much people pay you.
Kurt von Ahnen (17:27)
I was talking with Chris earlier at Lifter LMS, and you know, you were talking about features or that that that magic something, right? And for some reason it just came into my head, and I I don't know, ADD. he interviewed a guy named Sam Marston on the LMS cast, and this Sam Marston guy went from like, you know, broke startup dude to he's making 500 grand a year doing local SEO. Like local SEO.
Focused on local businesses. he's in the Pacific Northwest. And he's also focused on AI search results. And he created a course for like other agencies to to progress in this space. And then he does like meetups with other agencies. And he and he he loves it because, you know, he gets to do the work, but he also gets to associate with peers that are in the same struggles and they get to like,
talk about what wins, what doesn't work, things like that. And it's very interesting to me because that that's an example somebody figured out a vertical in this environment that they could still excel at.
Toby Cryns (18:30)
Yeah. And I think yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (18:31)
You know Yeah,
go ahead.
Toby Cryns (18:34)
we have another question in our notes today that's related. It it's like are we overcomplicating it? So this guy in the Pacific Northwest, he's like, I love SEO. I and I'm pretty good at it and I have a reputation for it. And clearly I'm I do a lot of marketing already for marketing myself. And like, what if I just shifted it to an AI focus? And I don't know exactly if that's what he did exactly. There's more to it, obviously. He did the in the course as part of his marketing, probably. And
But are we just overcomplicating it when it comes to business? And everybody's talking about AI, AI, but the fundamentals of business haven't changed, I don't think. I haven't felt them change. I still
Kurt von Ahnen (19:10)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (19:11)
feel the same amount of anxiety that I felt 15 years ago. Like the same amount of money pressure, the same amount of everything. Like it seems like business is the same. We're just like
Kurt von Ahnen (19:20)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (19:21)
changing with the times.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:22)
Find a problem, solve a problem. Right? Same same thing. find a need, fill a need.
Toby Cryns (19:27)
I was talking to a guy who runs a very big coaching company business, Fortune five hundred CEOs come to him. He's a local guy here, and he was I was sharing my problems with him because he asked and and he's like, Yeah, even the the CEO of Giant Corporation has that same problem right now. I talked to him last night, you know, like it's so yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (19:50)
But it changes with scale, right? Like you and I discussed, right? It's like in in some terms, CEO of a major corporation loses a certain market share and it creates anxiety, but there's momentum in other verticals. And you you know, kinda you kind of have a sense like a grounding, a foundational point as a CEO of a larger thing. Like I remember being corporately employed with
Ducati, Suzuki, these other companies. And it's like, yay, we lost a little here. We're gonna pick up a little bit here. We're gonna move. We're gonna shift. We're gonna, but when you're a solopreneur and your best client of 14 years rolls along and just sends you an email that says, we'd like to discontinue our services starting November 1st, woof. And you have to ask yourself, well, what did client loyalty actually mean? So what did vendor loyalty mean? what how did I treat that person for 14 years?
But then how did I expect to be treated? You know, like all that kind of gets
Toby Cryns (20:40)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (20:41)
weighed. And the anxiety in in that in in that perspective is like, holy crap, that's our best customer and they're gone. And now how many customers do I got to close in the next two weeks to fill that gap?
Toby Cryns (20:53)
yeah. And how many stories have you heard over the years where people you just get dumped as a business. people are like, I'm
Kurt von Ahnen (20:58)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (20:59)
just moving on. See ya, bye, and you never hear from again. You're like, I invested everything in this. And the guys at thirty seven signals, they're in the news a lot recently, but
Years ago they talked about how they s they switched from having their thirty their Basecamp product be two tiers, basically. It was like a small mom and pop like my business. And then there was like Microsoft was a client or something like that. And what they said is that at some point they made an intentional decision. Everybody gets the exact same product, the exact same service. Everybody goes through the same support channel. and the gist of it was that now everybody's equal.
And you're not investing you're not risking it all on this bet with somebody who could just run away tomorrow.
Kurt von Ahnen (21:40)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we had a client that we had made a website for and we were hosting and providing the maintenance for their website. And then they hired someone local to manage their website for them. And we were like, Yeah, that's fine. That's great, you know? but when they did that, they sent us an email that said, Please g discontinue our services immediately. We no longer need you. Like that was the email. And I was like,
Do they want me to turn off the website? Because I, what's my DNS? It's still pointed to us. Like,
Toby Cryns (22:09)
Right.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:09)
are do you want me to turn this off? And so I I sent an email and said, I just need to clarify, you know, we do your hosting and your maintenance. Do you want me to turn the website off? Question mark. God, no, don't do that. You know, and all of a sudden, all of the customer relationships instantly restored, right? Now they're
Toby Cryns (22:24)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (22:25)
now they're nice and kind. And here's the email. And I get more than a more than a sentence. I actually get a paragraph and and
But in the back of your mind, you now know, right? That's how that's how this person does business, right? When they find a new host, it's it's not like they're gonna say, Hey, next year we're thinking about moving somewhere else. you're not even gonna get a chance. It's gonna be like, we move the website to go daddy, turn us off.
Toby Cryns (22:46)
Yeah, and I it's a s it's sad, but I think I don't think everybody operates that way out in the world. But we certainly don't. Me as a business person, I don't, but that fear exists for a reason in me. and I think it's reasonable to build systems that support the fact that anyone can leave at any time. And it it's sad. I wish there was more loyalty.
Kurt von Ahnen (23:08)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (23:08)
it makes it makes me
related. We talk about systems and processes. And part of this, when I think of the risk of someone leaving, it's partly if if your all of your business processes support that one client, or some percentage of the processes support that. That's a pretty risky venture. And one thing that comes up as we talk about like AI and whatnot, it's like, are we investing too much in like specific workflows? And these could be AI workflows for like
Maybe the maybe it's workflows for the team we have when like or for the clients we have when a great client or a great teammate, a let's say a better fit teammate or a better fit client would make all those systems irrelevant. Like, and maybe
Kurt von Ahnen (23:50)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (23:50)
the systems could be more generic and then you just have great people on both sides. I've been wondering this a lot recently, because with some of the frictions we're feeling internally at the Mighty Mo. I'm thinking like, we have really nice.
Really great people, but what I've been wondering is are they the a great fit for the Mighty Mo? And and a lot of times I'm like, I'm not so sure based on the one of the questions, for example, that we're asking our project managers specifically. The litmus test is do I trust that you're gonna get the job done? If I don't trust that you will, and this could be for developers too, then we have a problem because we don't I don't wanna build systems that like force
check-ins and force just force the granular. I just want to trust that it's being done.
Kurt von Ahnen (24:32)
Yeah. Yeah. But like everything else, right? It it requires checks and balances. And so you can have trust, but you still need checks and balances. And people go, Well, why did you add the checks and balances? Don't you trust me? It's like, I trust you because I have checks and balances. Like, mm-hmm, that it's a two-way thing. It's a two-way thing. And and we've worked really hard at at building our process development, right? And and so we we have like
Training in the back end of our site. If we hire contractors, we can say, take this and tell you exactly how we do things here. and I've really valued that setup. But we have recently changed a bunch of structure or a bunch of things that we've been doing. And so now it's like, I got to remake all that content, or I got to change all those things. And it it's it's one of those things where you once you create it, you got to stay current with it too. It there's always a struggle with.
Trying to be appropriate, right? Trying to be timely with what you're trying to articulate to other people.
Toby Cryns (25:26)
I think part of the re it sounds like you're say talking about redocumenting the process, like because you
Kurt von Ahnen (25:31)
Yeah, yeah.
Toby Cryns (25:32)
need to change something or you learn something. Like there's to me, like there's some balance. If you like the better fit people you bring in, in theory, it could be actually you could be a very like granular check-in person. I'm not putting a value judgment on that for others, just for myself. because it's but like
There's a world where you have very generic statements like in your process docs that are like, is the customer happy? Yes or no? And you don't have any more process than that. And the check-in is somehow you figure out how to verify if the customer is happy or not. but if you have the right people that understand that, you don't. So maybe I haven't thought about this till right now. Maybe the length of your process doc, your like standard operating procedure doc.
The longer it is, the less trust you have, and maybe the more you're putting on yourself in a way, the l more fragile it is, maybe.
Kurt von Ahnen (26:22)
Well, that takes us, we're right back to an personnel conversation. If you leverage personnel and not necessarily AI or contractors, if you leverage personnel, the part of that, part of part of the luxury of that is you get to empower people to say, This is the result we seek. I need you to find that result. Right. And and sometimes we don't, as the owner, don't necessarily need to have that process. It's up to them.
Be self-empowered. Go figure this out. Go go problem solve something, right? And and let me know the result when you're done. and in some cases, they do better than if you they you would have made the process and given it to them, right? But I find that some of the problem, like when you, when you over-leverage, and I'm using that term on purpose, when you over-leverage AI and you take yourself out of the human framework, I think sometimes we get we get lost in the minutiae of it.
And we actually lose productivity.
Toby Cryns (27:17)
Yeah. Well, and I think part of it is like it you realize when you talk to AI and try to have AI do something. right now, I'm probably 40 hours in on building a tool to have AI do visual regression testing on websites and mass. So I have a hundred sites and I have 10 URLs, 10 custom URLs per site and they're on different hosts. There's a world where I just say, Hey, teammate, go test these sites.
And that's
Kurt von Ahnen (27:43)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (27:44)
and there's a lot they handle a lot of that like overhead that happens, but now I have to like program all these use cases into the computer. And it's it's like it gives me more appreciation for the just like go do it thing.
Kurt von Ahnen (27:58)
Yeah. Go execute something and let me know the results.
Toby Cryns (28:01)
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:02)
That's the cool part of having staff is when you can delegate something. When you use contractors, that's the the scary part about delegating something like that is okay, is that gonna cost me a hundred bucks or is that gonna cost me nine hundred bucks?
Toby Cryns (28:14)
I don't know that that's totally true. There is that unknown, of course, but even internally we have that problem. Whereas somebody s goes
Kurt von Ahnen (28:19)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (28:20)
down a rabbit hole, I'm like, why did you spend all day working on that? I thought it was gonna be fifteen minutes and now I'm out a thousand dollars or whatever because you did that. Like Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (28:26)
Yeah, yeah. Hey boss, you said. Yeah,
you said I did.
Toby Cryns (28:32)
Speaking of throwing money away, should agencies refuse to pitch for free?
Kurt von Ahnen (28:37)
boy, you're gonna you're gonna drag this one up. It's amazing how animated people get about this conversation. So I used to say,
Hey, let's have a quick icebreaker conversation. Let's get some of your basic needs down, and and if it's feasible, I can give you a ballpark where we would be, right? I might I might wanna I might wanna cinch some things down with a statement of work and get your signature later, but we can have a conversation and put you in the ballpark, right? And I used to like working that way. And then I started doing like, I started having a lot of wasted conversations, Toby. People just asking me questions.
and then trying to do it on their own after talking to me, right? Like, well Kurt said he was gonna do X, Y, and Z, so I'll try X, Y, and Z. Right. so for from
Toby Cryns (29:18)
You know where the bike?
Kurt von Ahnen (29:19)
our standpoint, we started charging a five hundred dollar discovery fee.
But then I worked with larger agencies and I found out that for what I was doing for $500, they might be charging $3,000, $6,000, $10,000 for these discovery meetings and episodes and conferences or whatever you want to call them. And it's I really started to re-evaluate. for a $500 discovery fee, I'm committing myself to probably more work than I want to do for $500.
But I'm weeding out people that are just gonna ask me for free information. So I felt
Toby Cryns (29:51)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (29:51)
I felt fine with the 500 bucks. And then I gotta tell you, the more I worked with larger agencies and saw them charging three, six, eight, ten thousand dollars for discovery, the more I realized I have to make it sting a little bit more. And and we're in the fifteen hundred to two thousand dollar range for anything that is anything that's e-learning related, e-commerce related, anything that's like dynamic content type.
stuff, I'm gonna scope that at $1,500 to $2,000 discovery. We're gonna interview you and a couple of stakeholders on your team. So we're not getting everything from just one person. And then we're gonna come up with a proposal that makes more sense. But I'm not doing I'm not really doing those $500 quick discoveries anymore unless it's like a three page, four page, five page brochure site just to start up looking to get launched.
Toby Cryns (30:37)
Couple thoughts come to mind. one is a question. Are you pitching these to new clients or existing clients or both? The discovery fee? And
Kurt von Ahnen (30:45)
Well,
Toby Cryns (30:46)
yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (30:46)
we started doing both, but we tell them, in most cases that discovery fee gets applied towards the contract if you approve it. and we give you a discovery document that you can shop with other people if you want. So, we create a proposal document, we put details in it, and it's like if you want to shop this with other houses, you can. So it's almost like
Toby Cryns (31:04)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:04)
creating a request for quote for them.
That's more educated than them going to ten people saying, I think I have an idea and I want your solution.
Toby Cryns (31:10)
I think more and more what we're gonna end up at is that AI is gonna do all the discovery for us. Not in a research oriented way like you're talking about, but
Kurt von Ahnen (31:18)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (31:19)
hey, I'm here at the first let's talk. Let me just type this prompt into AI. Is this about it? No? what's wrong with this? thank you. Is this it? It is? Okay, that's gonna be around, you know, I'll let you know tomorrow how much that's gonna be.
Kurt von Ahnen (31:33)
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's super interesting because I'm still amazed at how much AI gets wrong. I've quoted clients and I've had clients come back and go, Well, I asked Chat GPT and it said that for that much money I should expect X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, Well, can you also ask Chat GPT if that requires custom development, or is all those features gonna come out of the box? And then they're like, What does that mean?
Toby Cryns (31:51)
Yeah, but I and I
and I think maybe we're glossing over maybe the most important part of the thing you said is that once you get that discovery fee, or really any fee, the project is yours to lose. And the key is
Kurt von Ahnen (32:04)
Yeah, yeah.
Toby Cryns (32:05)
getting that first dollar. So I don't even I don't I think 50 bucks might well, 50 might be too low, but 500 I go, it stings enough to where it's it's a way to get the first dollar if you can if you can get it. And maybe
Even if you go lower, because let's say, let's say, let's say you charge 500, let's say you charge 50 bucks. Let's say you charge $10. $10
Kurt von Ahnen (32:24)
Ten dollars.
Toby Cryns (32:25)
in any company. It could be a big company, but you're like, it's gonna be $10. and I it can start as soon as I get paid. And they go, why $10? You go, well, don't worry about it. Just get me the $10. now they have a have a conversation with their accounting person. They're like, he wants $10. Here's the invoice. They do that, it takes a week.
You get paid, you go, okay, now I need to schedule five meetings with da da da da da. you're embedded. Now you're deep. And like I'm from me, I'm salivating seeing dollar signs at that point. Like because there's
Kurt von Ahnen (32:50)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (32:50)
no way they're going with someone else.
Kurt von Ahnen (32:52)
Yeah. That's a very good point. So from an enterprise perspective, I could actually see that being a good hook. Because again, experience with enterprise clients, now you're in the accounts payable process, right? You're on that you don't have to create a vendor to do this thing. Like it's you're already in. You're it it's like almost like having that what do they call that USG approval or something like that? UGS
Toby Cryns (33:13)
Yeah, right.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:14)
USG. it's almost like having that approval, like like corporately
Toby Cryns (33:16)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:17)
speaking.
Toby Cryns (33:18)
Yep.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:18)
Boots in the door, you're in. And so even if you quote them, let's say you quote them $50,000 for a project and your competition in town, you know, would probably do it for $40, you're probably still going to get the $50 grand because they don't want to go through the the hoops and the extra steps of initiating another vendor, another vendor account, getting you on record with and your tax ID with the accounts payable department and all that nonsense. And you might have
Toby Cryns (33:42)
Yeah.
Kurt von Ahnen (33:42)
only gotten 10 bucks, but you're in the door.
Toby Cryns (33:44)
Yeah, well, and a lot of companies, sometimes they won't even hire new vendors. they'll be like, you have to go through our vendor list first. And so if
Kurt von Ahnen (33:51)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (33:52)
you can sneak in there, this is the problem with I've talked to an actor once who won it, I think it's the Screen Actors Guild, whatever like gets you in the union. Like there's no way, no door to the union. You have to like sneak in. This is every single actor. Somebody's got to like sneak you into the union. Like this is everybody who's ever been in the union. This is the way they explained it to me.
And there was they got in through some weird scenario, you know, where they were on a set. It was on the set of the origin the Batman, the Chris Nullan Batman. And they were like a waiter at the restaurant, and whoever the actress was who played the main star or whatever, she asked, She's the waiter that my friend is, just like an extra. It wasn't an extra, but she was. And like they're like, No, she was an extra. I don't even she probably paid 50 bucks for the day. And the actor, the main famous person was like.
what are you serving today? And the person's like, well, we have shellfish and da da da. And afterwards, Cut, what the hell? you can't be talking. You're not in the actors' guild.
Kurt von Ahnen (34:44)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (34:44)
And and so all right, get this woman in the actors guild. like
Kurt von Ahnen (34:48)
You can't speak?
Toby Cryns (34:49)
Yeah. So and she's like, what they asked me? I didn't know what to do. And so now she's in the actors guild. and that's the and I think like, especially if you run into a very hungry marketing person at a Fortune 500 company, these hoops are real hoops.
To get through. And if if you're already in the system and they can move today rather than a month from today, that's a pretty big
Kurt von Ahnen (35:10)
Yeah.
Toby Cryns (35:11)
deal.
Kurt von Ahnen (35:11)
Yeah. I'll tell you, when I worked at Suzuki, I was in the training department, training and publications. And so we were like, you know, four tiers down from sales and marketing. Like sales got first priority, marketing got second priority, operations, you know, customer service. You you get down to training and publications, and it's like, yeah, whatever, we'll we'll take care of you next month. Like me getting a new vendor.
Or the corporate credit card to make a payment on something was, I had to have everything signed by three vice presidents, by department heads, and they only wanted to send checks, but they only sent checks on Thursdays after three o'clock. And I mean, it was just it was lunacy to try to do business in that position at that company because of the hoops they had set up. And so if someone came to me as a department head and said, you know.
Hey, we can use this guy is already on the vendor list or we have this guy that we'd have to add to the vendor list. I'd just be like, Whatever do, we're going with number one.
Toby Cryns (36:08)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
the hoops, the hoops. So yeah, I don't know. Just don't pitch for free. It's it's a double you had options. I guess that's where
Kurt von Ahnen (36:15)
It
Toby Cryns (36:16)
we're landing.
Kurt von Ahnen (36:16)
I I think where you are, like I always say use case is my thing. Like I always say that like when I'm talking to Lifter LMS people, right? Should I do this or this? Well it depends on your use case. I think that whole question is what what's your use case? Are you dealing with local people? Is this a national account? Is this an enterprise level account? Is this a startup? Like like not for nothing. I I love startups, I love the startup culture.
But I can't keep having free meetings with people that have ideas that aren't going anywhere. Right. And so I have to put some guardrails on the way that I connect and communicate with people. And sometimes that discovery fee is is that filter I use.
Toby Cryns (36:53)
Yeah, that's a great way to end it here. We're at about time here. thanks everybody for joining us on another exciting episode of Agency Action Show with Kurt Von Annen and myself, Toby Cryns Kurt, how can we get in touch with you?
Kurt von Ahnen (37:05)
Well, I own Manana Nomas, so you can come to manana no mas dot com, see me there. You can connect on LinkedIn. Toby, you?
Toby Cryns (37:12)
I'm on also on LinkedIn. My last name is C-R-Y-N S and themightymo.com. That's T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O.com, where we do all the things WordPress, and now we're apparently doing AI apps. So thanks everybody. leave comments if you if you have anything you'd like to talk to us about on you can leave them on YouTube or wherever you catch this. Thank you.