Ethics and Pricing for WordPress Agencies
Download MP3Hey, folks. Welcome to another episode of whose WordPress agency is this anyway? My name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I'm here with Toby Crimes, and we're here to discuss kinda the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and everything about running an agency in the WordPress space. Toby, how the heck are you?
Speaker 2:Doing great, Kurt. So a member of our community wrote this and they might wanna take credit for it, but I'm just gonna read this verbatim. So my $6,500 proposal got turned down today over a provider that agreed to build it for no money down and $300 per month. But then the customer said, quote, I would have preferred to use you, but my brother wanted to save the money upfront. And if these people can't get it done, then I'm sure we'll come back to you and hire you for the 6,500, end quote.
Speaker 2:That is a lot to process right there.
Speaker 1:That is a lot to process, and let's just let that monkey out of the bag. That was me. Gotta say, and it was so weird because it was a lead that came from someone that I work intimately with, right, with with their program. And and so I am the expert in that space. Just plain and simple.
Speaker 1:Right? There's there's a there's a handful of us. But, like, you look at that handful and you go, oh, I'm gonna hire Kurt. I'm gonna hire Manana Nomaz. I need experts on this.
Speaker 1:I did the introductory phone call. That went really, really well. Turns out this customer is from where I used to live in California, so we had a lot of similarities, a lot of things we could talk about. Right? What about this restaurant, this thing?
Speaker 1:What was the commute on the 91 like? I'm in Kansas now. Like, the the vibe was really good. The vibe was, like, awesome. So then I said, here's the next step.
Speaker 1:You know? I don't wanna waste your time now. Let's here's some questions I'm gonna have for you. Let's do a needs assessment call. I'm not gonna charge you for the needs assessment on this one because I think we can be pretty direct after this conversation, and I'll I'll get you a a full proposal.
Speaker 1:And so I did that. And out of good faith, made the proposal. And I'm not begrudging saying I should've charged for the proposal, but I'm just saying I did it for free. And then because I we had a great relationship. There there was really good energy there, synergy, and I understood his business because I've had connections to his business in the past.
Speaker 1:I'm like, this is this is a perfect fit, and I'm the expert for what you're trying to build. So perfect. So I give him a $6,500 estimate. Truth is, probably could have been a 10, could have been $1,112,000 dollar proposal. But I thought, oh, let's make it $6,500.
Speaker 1:I have a good understanding of his business. I know how this is gonna work. There's not a lot of hidden things here. Let's just knock this out. $6,500.
Speaker 1:Here you go, dude. I'm giving you a solid. And then he said, thanks. I got it. And then the very next day, hey.
Speaker 1:Can you give me a call? So I gave him a call. And he and he says, man, I really wanted to go with you. I really I'm yeah. Really I thought we hit it off well, and you really seem like you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:But my brother, who is my partner, he found somebody that would do it for no money down and $300 a month, to to knock it out. And I thought to myself, you're gonna pay someone $300 a month for the rest of your life on this website as opposed to $6,500, have it done in thirty days, and then just pay for hosting and maintenance, which I thought was just a crazy a crazy way, like, pay me now or pay me later kinda thing. And it is a lot because I I said, hey. Business is business. No hard feelings.
Speaker 1:You know? If the people you hire need advice from the expert on how to use this product, let them know they can reach out to me, and I'll only charge them my normal agency rate to help them. Or it doesn't work out, give me a shot. He goes, yeah. Because I don't even know if these guys can really do it or not.
Speaker 1:But if if they can't deliver, we'll come back to you. If you don't have any faith in who you're hiring, why are you hiring them?
Speaker 2:Well, $300 versus the $6,500. The most part
Speaker 1:of the lives. In two years, they'll spend more with that provider than they would have with me.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. They clearly don't have a lot of faith in their business if they're hiring somebody they're not even sure can get the job done.
Speaker 1:We just need the website for six months.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And maybe that's not Yeah, exactly. They're like, well, maybe we'll go out Maybe we'll quit in three months and that'll and then or maybe they're thinking, I mean, we don't know the terms of this 300 per month. They might have this guy build it as a prototype and then come to you and say how much to basically do something like this now that we've learned something. I could see that scenario.
Speaker 1:So let's say that you're right. Let's say that that's the case. Right? They have someone else build it on the cheap. They give them the 300, the 600, whatever.
Speaker 1:And then they go, ah, this ain't working out. Let's migrate the site to Kurt and have him finish it up. Right? I just gotta ask you. Where would you be in that conversation?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, that initial discount you gave, the half off, that's out the window at this point. They've just, yep, now it's the $12,000 price tag. Maybe more for the plus a couple grand for the migration. You know, that's how I would approach it after a scenario like this. Because now you know, because they've put them, they've given away all their leverage in that case.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I actually the way I run is so transparent and so based on ethics. I would probably turn down the work. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because I would be like, you leverage somebody for thousands of dollars worth of work on the on the faith that you would stay with them. You let them do the hard you know, it's not the hard part of the build in my book, but for for this this provider, it's probably gonna be the heavy lifting. Right? Let them do the heavy lifting for 600 or $900, and then try to bring me, you know, the the the touch up the details and get a discount. No.
Speaker 1:That's not the way it's gonna work.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so I would probably turn it down because I would consider that highly unethical. And people listening to this probably think I'm crazy. They're like, why would Kirk just turn down stuff? Because when you get to a certain point, when I was starting out, I took all kinds of jobs, all kinds of jobs. Anything I'd you know, put food on the table.
Speaker 1:But now that I'm at where I'm at in life, I can say, you know what? You're just not a really good fit for us right now. Yeah. The ethics of that would really bother me unless it was a fresh start. If they were to say, hey.
Speaker 1:It didn't work out. We had to cancel our contract with them. Can we restart with you and start from scratch? Then I would say, okay. That's an ethical thing.
Speaker 1:Right? We weren't happy. We wanna use you and start from scratch. But if they tried to bring me some remnant of a startup from something, that's that to your point, that's worth more than starting from scratch because you gotta figure out what somebody else tried to
Speaker 2:build. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, that 12 grand's probably higher.
Speaker 2:Like, if that's what you would have bid the original, like, let's say it was worth $12 to me. Like, let's say I'm bidding it. They come back. They say, we did a bunch of stuff, and now we need you to fix it. Now it's more than $12.
Speaker 2:Like so I'm like, now I gotta unwind that and redo it. Like like
Speaker 1:Yeah. It sounds really hard, but when when you hear something like because there's a lot of SaaS projects that do this now. Right? Sign up for SaaS. Get the first month for free.
Speaker 1:A $179 a month for the rest of your life. Mhmm. Does it make you as an as an agency second guess your pricing model? Do you think, hey. Maybe I should go to some, you know, lower well, higher monthly base.
Speaker 1:Right? Because if you're doing the hosting and maintenance, you're probably $30.50, $70 a month, right, for for a lot of packages. Maybe you're at 150 a month. I don't know what you're at.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But but then you think to yourself, man, I could charge I could charge 400 a month, but not charge them the $3 up front to do something.
Speaker 2:Right. I think that there's this idea that I read about in a book. The the idea is you wanna like, in an ideal world, every agency wants to be in a place where you're the expert, the go to guy. And I think you're probably there with Lifter, like, where people go, get me Kurt at any cost.
Speaker 1:That that sounds good when you say it.
Speaker 2:And people do say that about all sorts of stuff, you know, just, just, I just want it to work. And we just went through this with our realtor. We have the worst realtor in America working for us, maybe not the worst, but definitely not the best. And with the only reason we chose him, we went on good faith. We're like, he had 2,005 star reviews on Google.
Speaker 2:And I did research. I think they were all legit. Like, I was like following through on a handful of them. Like, these look like real people in Minneapolis. And so let's say they're all legit.
Speaker 2:They're all five stars. We hired him because he was $5 less than the person we wanted to hire. We regret we've regretted it every day since we started.
Speaker 1:That's so hard to hear. Mhmm. Because a house is a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's a big deal. Right? Yep. And it's it's people take for granted these giant purchases in life, you know, cars, houses, things like that. And and to to that same point, we're in the web space.
Speaker 1:When you make a decision to have a relationship with a website provider, that's another big decision. Yeah. I think of it like this whole web pricing thing has me thinking in terms of, like, CRMs. Right? Think about normal CRMs.
Speaker 1:Right? I sign up for a CRM, and it's $200. No big deal. My business becomes successful. I got 5,000 people in the list.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, my CRM's costing me $600 a month. And then boom. We had a CRM come through Manana NoMas about two years ago, and they were paying Infusionsoft or Keap, however you refer to them now. It was crate it was, like, $7,800 a month. And I was like, we can just put that on a subdomain in FluentCRM, hook you up on SendGrid, and that budget goes away.
Speaker 1:Like, boom. But that decision, that decision to leave everything that was built in Infusionsoft and Keap, it becomes a it becomes almost a lifetime decision. Yeah. To rebuild that somewhere else is a real pain. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They get you.
Speaker 2:They get you. And like, so the question is, yeah, this three this is this $300 a month scenario we're talking about. They Maybe they'll be great.
Speaker 1:300 a month. If it if that website got successful and you had to say, hey, your bandwidth has exceeded your web server resources. We gotta bump you to 900 a month. Right. Or what
Speaker 2:yeah. Yeah. And that's probably a likely I mean, how else could you make that work? Unless it's can't be they can't make a a living in The United States on that. I don't you know, unless they somehow have a lot of those.
Speaker 1:There we go. Let let's let's move on to something else. Yeah. You and and let's just call it what it is. Right?
Speaker 1:So you you do SEO. You do SEO strategy, and then someone buys the SEO strategy from you. How do you respond or how did you respond when someone said, oh, I'm not happy with this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's interesting. So so I'm talking with my SEO guy, Glenn. He's a full time employee, and he delivers SEO strategy and executes on that strategy for clients. Now some of our clients, he just delivers a strategy and says, here, execute on this strategy, And other times we do it.
Speaker 2:And what we're thinking today is that like those options aren't working for us. Like what we're thinking is like, because we have a client who we delivered the strategy for and they're not doing any of the executions. So it's like, we can see a scenario where they go on Google reviews and say, guys suck at SEO. Yeah. But like, because none of the work was done, we did the strategy.
Speaker 2:And like, and so we're like, okay. The strategy is x. And to deliver the strategy would be could be 10 x to deliver the strategy. Yeah. So significantly more money.
Speaker 2:And so we're like, do we just sell that 10 x cost product? Let's say it's $30 versus $3, something like that.
Speaker 1:Well, it becomes a math equation. Right? How many of those $3 projects do you lose versus $30 projects do you keep? But the other side of it is you're absolutely correct. People don't people don't recognize that a lot of what they're paying for is access to you as the expert.
Speaker 1:I went through this when Manana Nomos first launched. When I was in New Mexico, a bunch of broke start up businesses were referred to us through the economic development center. And they would come they would get a meeting, and they would come in, and we you know? Well, you're gonna have a know? Do you have a Facebook?
Speaker 1:Do you have a Twitter? Do you have because that was Twitter back then. Do you do you have a Twitter? Do you have this? Do you have that?
Speaker 1:Okay. Great. Well, here's what we're gonna do for you. We're gonna build a simple website. We're gonna activate these social accounts.
Speaker 1:We've got 75 other social accounts that we currently manage, which gives us instant access to all of those audiences, and we're gonna cross post between those different accounts, and we're gonna build you, you know, a following list pretty quickly, and then we're gonna ex and I went through and said what we're gonna do. Well, those were free meetings, and then people didn't hire me. Right? Because I I got a lot of referrals from the economic development center, so I wasn't charging these people $50 a meeting. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I was doing these free meetings. And then about six, nine months into this, I started getting weird feedback from people like, oh, so and so talked to you, but they said your advice was crazy or your advice didn't work or blah. And I was like, well, they're not customers. Right. They're not customers.
Speaker 1:They paid me nothing. I
Speaker 2:they they
Speaker 1:sat in my office, and they they took mental notes of stuff that they had no skill set to execute.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And then said that I was full of crap and that and that I don't know what I'm doing. And so we changed a lot of our policies. I mean Mhmm. That was before Manana NoMas was Manana NoMas. We used to be Vanana Designs and PR.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And then once I had a mental snap at the office and changed the name to Manana NoMas, all that stuff went away. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I think that it's it comes down to like, when you think about hiring anybody for anything, it's hard to even know if you have a good person if you've never experienced the good person. Yeah. That's why think about that realtor. Like, these people, maybe they've never had another realtor, and they're like, oh, this is just how realty is done. Now I've had two other realtors, and I'm like, both of them were better.
Speaker 2:One was way better.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's really hard to be like, I'm gonna fire you and bring in this other cat, you know? Yeah. 75% of the way through the process.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And you often don't you probably don't even know that you have a bad one. You just most of the time, you're just like, I don't know. I guess web developers are jerks or whatever, you
Speaker 1:know, like. Well, I think the follow-up question to this SEO question you had is the value of the SEO in the process or in the results of the process? And then how would you, how would you figure out an aggressive, fair compensation package for yourself if you based it on one or the other?
Speaker 2:This is like, to me, the core question of anyone who does SEO or Google Ads. Like, theory, we should only be paid if we generate leads. That's because that's what people wanna pay for. That's they're like they don't want more traffic, most of them. Some of them do weirdly enough, but, like, most of them actually want leads.
Speaker 2:Hey. Look at
Speaker 1:all these impressions I got.
Speaker 2:Right. Some of them are like I mean, this is crazy. I've had a few. They're like, oh, thank you so much for the impressions. Like but, like, I think, and this is where I wanna push my agency is to just be accountable to the leads.
Speaker 2:And then you can talk about how to compensate for that. But I was talking with Glenn, there are agencies that do that. And they'll say like, what's a lead worth? It's worth $50,000 We're gonna take 20% of 50,000 for every lead. And you're just gonna pay us that.
Speaker 2:You know, that's an option structure We're gonna do the work for free or maybe some nominal fee. Another thing, there are agencies that do it. What they say is we're gonna collect 80% of the budget upfront, and if we reach a certain target of leads, we're gonna collect another 20%. And interestingly enough, this was another twist that I thought was fun. Glenn, my SEO guy was like, some of those agencies are actually paying the SEO people on the team that bonus, like to incentivize them to generate the leads.
Speaker 2:And I was like, that's really interesting. If it, you know, if it motivates you to work harder, like, why not?
Speaker 1:I'm a really big fan of pay for performance schemes when they work. And that comes from my automotive and powersports background. Right? Technicians get paid based on flat rate. They get paid for the amount of work they get done.
Speaker 1:However, it's one of the most unfair payment plans in the world because the work the technician gets is from the service writer, the service manager. If the parts are late, it's the part's fault. Like, there's way too many things that can interfere with a productive technician being productive, which means they make less money than they could have made. But in the SEO example that you provide, I think and boy, you really gotta take me with a grain of salt on this one. I think there's a ton of SEO service providers that take on clients selling a process knowing full well there's gonna be zero success with that client.
Speaker 1:Like, you you look at their copy, you look at their website, you look at what their their product or their their their core messaging, and you and you're like, even if I got you a gazillion impressions, you're not gonna get any leads off of this because your product sucks. Mhmm. And that's that's a really hard conversation to have with people. But I think that if you went to a results versus processes model, then you would be able to filter your potential customers better or have that conversation that says, I really feel like your product's on the mark, but your messaging is off, and we need to make all of these other changes. And then you could sell a whole refresh.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And I I think, like, it's hard though as an agency owner because the process is the thing you have the most control over. And so most, I mean, I don't know, 99% of SEO agencies sell a process. They say, we're gonna do three blog posts a month, 10 social media posts. We're gonna look at the data every month. We're gonna revamp one landing page a month, and maybe they scale up to two or 10 per month, and maybe it's 60 blog posts a month.
Speaker 2:But like, that's generally across the board, the deliverable. I also think as another like step, AI, SEO, people are being using AI for SEO now. But if if we're as an an agency, our position in a place where we're getting leads, AI cannot get you leads.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's they won't yeah. Mean, who knows what the future holds? But even Google's not gonna let Google will not allow that No. Because that's their revenue. Like, Google you know, you pay Google for leads effectively.
Speaker 2:That's how they make their money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're in some super interesting territory here. It reminds me of all of the spam I got on my phone for the last two or three days. That that really ridiculous concept. It's some woman on the on on the ad, and it's it's like, you know, you don't need a website.
Speaker 1:You don't need webinars. You don't need this. You don't need SEO. You don't even need a website. Nobody uses a computer anymore.
Speaker 1:Everybody uses apps on a phone. You need your own custom app to make passive income. And I'm like, your own app to passive income with what? What's your content? What's your and they're and they're telling people, if you're not making $50,000 a month, you don't even have a business.
Speaker 1:And I was like, I don't make $50,000 a month. What?
Speaker 2:One thing too, like, just about those numbers, I get it. Like, those numbers that can even if you are making $50 a month, it can be very misleading. There's a guy that I met the other day, just yesterday. He owns a business, it's in the business furniture space. He basically refurbs business furniture.
Speaker 2:And he says it's a million dollar a year business right now, and he's only been going for like three months. But I'm thinking in my head, I go, that's impressive first of all, million in sales, impressive. However, how much of that are you taking home because furniture ain't cheap to source? Like like a chair that you're selling for, let's say $75 might cost you $50 and you have to refurb it. So even that $50 a month, I go, I always think like as an agency owner, let's say you're a solopreneur, 50 grand's way more than if you're have four employees or contractors and
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know, a million dollars in sales a year, but thank goodness I only have to pay $950,000 for inventory and labor and rent and utilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:I always think with this stuff, I'm just I'm gonna twist this a little bit in terms of that those silly ads, you know, market those, really scams, but, like, a lot of them are. But, like, the idea of, like, what should we be paying attention to as business owners as, like, bottom line metrics? That's what I'm really curious about. Like for example, here's something you could pay attention to. How much in credit card fees did I pay this year?
Speaker 2:The more, if I paid more, it means my business is doing better. I've had
Speaker 1:more
Speaker 2:transactions. I've had more money coming in. You could pay attention to like things that really like move the needle for your business. Revenue is usually not the needle that's gonna like tell you if you're success or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is hard. Right? Especially as you grow because you're you're splitting that revenue in so many different fragmented ways. There's, just silly stuff.
Speaker 1:Silly stuff. I I went to two giant screens and a desktop this year instead of working off of a laptop. I love it. I think it's better for my it's I'm more productive. There's like a bazillion reasons why it was the right decision, but it was still a couple grand in expenditure.
Speaker 1:Right? And even though my revenue's up, that comes right off the top. Mhmm. You you might be able to do that collateralized, you know, spread out over your taxes, blah blah blah. But I I swipe the credit card all at once for this junk.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So Yep. Comes right off the top. What can we switch gears? It was was it last week or two weeks ago that that we had talked? You said, what do you do if a client cancels a project midstream?
Speaker 2:Yeah. What
Speaker 1:do you do if a client cancels a project midstream? And this topic to me is so interesting because, you know, I'm on post status. I'm on the WP minute. I'm I'm in all these places. And you see you see crazy stuff from people that run agencies.
Speaker 1:Right? I talked to a guy. I'm friends with a guy who goes, I won't even talk about a project unless it's $35,000 or more. And I'm like, I don't know where that comes from because Right. I gotta talk I gotta have more conversations than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then there's people that say, screw them. Once once once it starts, I got a statement of work. I got a contract. The money's the money.
Speaker 1:That's that. I'm keeping it. And then you get other people that say, oh, bummer. I gotta give them all their money back. And so there's this huge disparity in what we as business owners believe is the right thing or what we have to do thing is.
Speaker 1:And so I'm interested to see where this goes.
Speaker 2:I think you brought up something earlier, ethics. Ethics are very relative to the person. Everybody's everybody's ethics are gonna be defined slightly differently, and some are vastly differently than others, and some of it's situational. I just lost my train of thought, Kurt.
Speaker 1:I thought you were doing that whole purpose pause thing.
Speaker 2:I I thought so too. Was hoping it would come back and then it would seem like that.
Speaker 1:Dude, I'm telling you. It was perfect. You were like, I've got something really intuitive to say. Listen to this. And it just went blank.
Speaker 1:But I think I think this is where you're going. If you're gonna have to deal with so you say it's a customer that changed their mind halfway through a product, and now they want a refund. Right? Then you mentioned FX. I go through a lot of things.
Speaker 1:First off, if a customer cancels and they want their money back, they just became not a customer.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:They just became not a customer. Mhmm. And and that's I think that's a very important thing to distinguish. Now they've become somebody that has become more like a parasite than a customer. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so I have no problem whatsoever saying, oh, because I use project management software. So I'm able to say, here's the milestones. Here's the thing. And there's a dashboard that says, hey. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Your project is 28% done. Your project is 42% done. I have no problem saying, well, you know, according to the dashboard, your project's 42% done. I can give you a 66% no. The the side 56% refund.
Speaker 1:I got no problem with that. Mhmm. What I had a problem with this just happened last year. I had another agency subcontract me for LMS work. So they're responsible for the site, the hosting, but all they want is the help of the LMS work.
Speaker 1:And of course, they had some custom coded weird stuff that they did not disclose as we started the project that really turned this whole thing into a nightmare. And they were trying to convert from LearnPress, I think it was, to Lifter LMS. And so there was a lot of conflicting stuff in the database and I had to do a lot of extra work. And in the end, they, the contractor, lost the work with the customer. And then they were like, Oh, so we just want a refund.
Speaker 1:Right. And I was like, you're an agency who screwed the pooch, and you're asking me, another agency, for a refund. I'm like, that takes a lot of stones. So so then I said, hey. You know, not only is the majority of the work done on our part, but we had to go above and beyond because you didn't do proper discovery with your client.
Speaker 1:Right? Mhmm. So she went to that portal, and she said, well, it says it's 36% done, so I'll just take a, 64% refund. And I said, let me fix that portal for you real quick. Click.
Speaker 1:Click. Click. Look at that. You're 91% done. If you want that 9%, let me know.
Speaker 2:So I ran into this. So this is the we had delivered, in this case, thirty something hours, let's say thirty five hours of work that we've completed. And the deliverable was two mock ups of the homepage. So it, you know, from a milestone perspective, it's 10% done, but from an hours perspective, it's thirty five hours. And so I told the, asked around and we talked about it last week and what I decided to do was just charge our agency rate for the hours like, and also like your comment about you are no longer a customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm not gonna bend over backwards for you or give you special discounts. So I just said, we worked thirty five hours. You paid us X, we'll give you a refund for the difference. He was clearly upset cause he's like, that much money for two simple mockups?
Speaker 1:Yeah, creative is expensive.
Speaker 2:And I'm just like, I didn't cancel the project. Like, I would love to see this through and you would get all that money's worth and more. Like, clearly we gave you a good price because it was a good price. Was a really So good there's ethics. There's also like, I think as an agency owner, you know, like I used to give full refunds.
Speaker 2:I think like I'm done with that after this experience. I think I'm like, no refunds. We will save it as credit for future work if you want. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That takes me right back to right fit, right time, you know, because because I've done that in the past too, I've had it bite me where I've given people a credit, and then they get in touch with me because, you know, heck or high water, they're gonna use that credit. And and then they want me to do something inanely stupid. And and then I have to say, you know what? Let me just give you this money back. This this is more this is more baggage and burden that I'm willing to
Speaker 2:carry. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:I had speaking of friends, this is one of those situations. I had a friend reach out to me and say, hey. You used to do really good PR work. I know you're ethical. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:Will you help me? I'm launching a new product, and and I wanna have some PR work done, this, that, and the other thing. Now what he asked for, super, super simple, Toby. Super simple. And I was like, hey.
Speaker 1:You're a buddy. You're a friend. I'm not gonna give this to one of my, you know, I'm not gonna give this to one of my team. I'll handle it myself. I'll knock it out for you in a weekend.
Speaker 1:It's $500, but I need these assets from you to make this happen. A month goes by. No assets. I send a reminder email. I said, hey.
Speaker 1:I'm not trying to nag you. He sends back, oh, you're, you know, you're awesome. Not nagging at all. Thanks for trying to keep me in line. I'm really busy with other things.
Speaker 1:I'll get back to you. Another month goes by. Now I'm not gonna send him a nagging email. Right. Right?
Speaker 1:Now the question is, do I just send him back the stupid $500 because he's a buddy, and I say, hey. I haven't really other than a couple of reminder emails and worrying about you, I haven't done anything. Here, take the $500. You're not the right fit for us anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And maybe this is that ethics. Like like, that in my how I have handled that in the past is I keep the money. I'll still do the work, but I've already invested phone calls, worrying. I mean, the overhead in my brain.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm deep in this at this point, and you couldn't you've dropped the ball, and you probably don't care that much about the money because you're not responding and Yeah. The motivation. So, you know, in most cases, I would probably keep the money. Did you decide to keep it or give it back?
Speaker 1:Well, as of now, I still have it. Because it's like, to your point. Right? I'm more invested in this than you are. I've already done mock ups.
Speaker 1:I've already created an outline. I'm just waiting for your content to plug in the necessary things and and publish these on on the channels I promised promised to publish them on. But it falls down to one of those things, and I just just chastised a fellow agency owner about this this morning. And and this is where I'm at with this now. This is where I'm at with it now.
Speaker 1:If something super simple, super easy, and it's a friend, if I can afford to give it away for free, I just do it for free. I just do it for free. It's like loaning somebody money. Never loan more money than you couldn't give away. Right?
Speaker 2:Yep. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna do it for free. The moment they cross over into it's not super simple. It's a project.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's retail. It's Yep. It's gonna be full blown retail. If you're a friend, you already know the value I bring to the table. You're gonna value that.
Speaker 1:You're gonna recognize recognize it, it, and and you're you're gonna gonna pay retail. Mhmm. And that's where I'm at with these things now. I trying to give friends and insiders the the buddy price, it never works out.
Speaker 2:I would also echo that advice. I do work for friends, but I do charge them retail. Even if it's something simple, I'm just like, here's what it costs. And I think like, there's a discipline in business that you need, that would behoove you to learn if you haven't learned it. It's like, create firm boundaries about around that work, like regardless of who you're selling it to.
Speaker 2:Like, would advise any agency owner to do that. Even that I've seen bigger agencies do that too. Like they're hoping for like the next project. So they like give away this big project and I like in hindsight, I'm like, well, of all, feel like it rarely leads to that next project in the cases I've been involved with, I've helped other agencies on those projects. And I think it's bad, a bad way to do it.
Speaker 2:Like give away the free stuff, unless it's a friend. Like if it's truly free, like, hey, just want to help you. I'll do it for free. And I'll send one of those invoices with everything zeroed out, like, so you know, it took time and energy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I do document my processes just like you just said. You know? This is what this would have been.
Speaker 1:I guess that brings us to motivation.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So part of the reason I said yes to that friend, quite honestly, was I hadn't done any PR work in a while. And when he reached out to me and said, I know you're good at this, blah blah blah, it was kinda like, hey. Here's another chance for me to stay fresh, stay crisp, dip my toes in the water. It's a friend. I can knock this out real quick.
Speaker 1:I should have just said I would do it for free, but I didn't. I said, oh, I could do it for $500 because I I felt weird about offering it for free. So I should have said, yeah. Can do that for you. It's $2,500.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right? But instead of saying, that's just $500. And because I said it was $500, I think it lowered the value to them. I think it made it less important.
Speaker 1:Right? So like I said, insider pricing always comes back to bite you in the butt. But part of how I stay motivated was this is a chance for me to pick up work I'm looking to do anyway. But how do you stay how do you stay motivated? Like, if you're juggling multiple projects or well, you already talked about having a difficult client, but you get through that whole rebate refund argument email exchange.
Speaker 1:How do you keep that from, like, dragging you into the mud?
Speaker 2:It's really hard, Ben. First of all, the energy that I expended just to get to the point where I called yesterday, where I called this this former client who's canceling, it took days of my mental health space up, you know, like just to be like, not only mental health, but just like I'm calling like colleagues. We talked about it last week. I've had hours of conversations just to get to the point where I felt comfortable to call. So it's really hard.
Speaker 2:And after that, I'm like, all right, I'm ready for bed. Like that was a lot. It's over. Hopefully, I'm still crossing my fingers. I won't hear back, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, then then I go there's a whole inbox full of stuff waiting. And though those people in my inbox have no idea what just happened, and they don't care really. You know? Like No. So here's, here's one thing I think that works for me.
Speaker 2:And I don't know that it works for everybody, but you just gotta show up, bring your laptop to the table, open it and just start going like in a way, I think I find that motivation might be the wrong word, but, like, I'm able to get back into the the groove that way.
Speaker 1:So what you just described is discipline, not motivation. You described stick to itiveness, you know, discipline. Discipline's lost on a lot of people in society right now. So if you are in position to exhibit discipline from a leadership perspective, kudos to you. Right?
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people people need motivation because they lack discipline. So Good question. If you have the discipline, you're you're 10 steps ahead of the rest of the world. Honestly. Honestly.
Speaker 1:Discipline is something that well, Tuesday was a perfect example. I was tired Tuesday. Like, you had said, you were tired. My wife came home from work and no. She didn't work on she was off on Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Yeah. She was home. And I said, hey. The business meetup is tonight. So once a month, there's a business meetup at Sand Hills Brewery, and I go.
Speaker 1:I always go. And I didn't wanna go. I didn't wanna go. But there's a new person in charge of the StartUp Hutch thing in town. So it's it's it's first event.
Speaker 1:Right? And I'm like, oh, it's Graham's first event. I don't wanna go. And then I was like I told my wife, said, come with me. And she goes, I'm not leaving the house.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna get dressed. I don't wanna put shoes on. I don't you know? And I was just like, oh, I don't wanna do it either. And I almost sat with her and just watched TV.
Speaker 1:I went. Graham's there. A guy named Travis is there. A guy named Matt is there. Like, I ended up networking with a ton of people that were like, who what do you do?
Speaker 1:And I was like, well, this is what I do. And they go, that's so needed here. Oh my god. You know, can I have your card? How do I reach you?
Speaker 1:What's your website? Oh, I love your website. And I was like when I came back, I was all energized again. The motivation kicked in from that. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So discipline led the motivation in that instance. But it's one of those whenever I do something I don't feel like doing, generally, the reward is a five x experience. It's like the days I don't wanna get dressed and go to church. For some reason, the message is just for me from the pulpit.
Speaker 1:You know?
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like, I didn't wanna come today. And then he's
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. I find similar, like, like so I went to the no code meetup again, second time yesterday.
Speaker 1:Oh, It's
Speaker 2:at 07:30AM. 07:30AM. I rode I so here's a when you think about motivation and I, you know, I wanted to go to it. I was actually kind of excited to go. So I guess I was motivated to go.
Speaker 2:But the question for me was, do I bike there? And it's a thirty minute ride in pretty intense heat, but although at 06:30, seven am not super intense, but the question is, I bike there and show up all sweaty and gross and have those problems or drive there knowing that like, I would feel better about myself if I rode, like probably would lose some potential connections because I'm sweaty and whatever, but so I rode and maybe that is the, just showing up like, yeah, but I think like going there, like inspired other ideas. So then it, I left motivated, like you're saying. Like, I'm like, oh, now I have a 100 ideas. Like, I had came here with none.
Speaker 2:Now I have a 100.
Speaker 1:Just what I needed. A 100 more Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's interesting. I've never thought of it that way. Like motivation versus just showing up. And I think what you're saying, like, I've seen people who need the motivation, they require it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And actually, I don't see them that often because they don't show up like, most of the time. Or they show up for a short period of time and they're super you know, you love them, and then you're like, where'd they go? Yep. They're no longer here.
Speaker 1:They're they're making mobile apps for passive income until the next thing comes out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I don't I guess how you get motivated is you get some discipline. That's how you find motivation, maybe.
Speaker 1:I think it's super, super, super important to have that. It's part of our list here of potential things. Part of that motivation, part of that discipline, I think it really comes from the communities that we choose to interact in and how do we actually make that connection with with colleagues. I'll give him a shout out on the show. James Lau.
Speaker 1:James Lau is one of these people. He's in post status. I go live on YouTube. He's there with the comments. So he shows up.
Speaker 1:I'm live on different shows. Boom. There he is. Super plugged in, super connected. I'm always happy to see him.
Speaker 1:Every now and then, he asks me for advice. I'm a little further along in the agency world than he is, but he does, like, development stuff that I don't do. Right? And it's like that connection to me has value. We we haven't exchanged dollars, but the connection is valuable.
Speaker 2:And this is another question that's that I've been thinking about is, like, I have a friend who runs an agency very similar to mine. Like, it's almost identical in many ways, same size, we live in the same town, our clients are the same, we have, know, we're competing for the same clients basically. He told me the other day he does zero marketing and I do a ton of marketing, this podcast included. And I was like, this is kind of like what you're saying. Like, there's something valuable to me about this conversation.
Speaker 2:I don't know that it's gonna lead to more leads, but like, it is motivating. I didn't show up here at eleven when we started. I didn't show up motivated. I'm motivated now. Really engaged, I'm like, yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1:I wasn't very motivated to talk to Kurt today at all, but I forced myself to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I mean, whether it felt good. Like, I wasn't down or anything. I just think, like, if here's the the curve of my, like, excitement on the over the course of this conversation, you know, like
Speaker 1:That's almost painful, Toby. It's almost painful. But if we think about it, your friend does no marketing, runs the same size agency. You do a ton of marketing. At what point?
Speaker 1:Because I've tried this. I I've said, hey. You know what? I'm doing okay, but I could do better. Let's run a few Facebook ads and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Nothing happens. So let's run a couple of Google ads and see what happens. What did happen was Google overcharged me for what I said I'd sign up for. Right? I had to fight with them for Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:A refund that became a credit. Uh-huh. Apparently, they went to school with you. Like, these things don't seem to work. And then so I'm on VP Tonic, the WP Minute with you right now, on the Lifter LMS calls, and now I fear what has happened is people have said, oh, crap.
Speaker 1:He's the expert. He's gonna be too expensive. Like, now I feel like I I may have crossed the threshold, which is great. Like, enterprise clients are gonna search out Manana de Mas and go, oh, we have to use you. You're the expert.
Speaker 1:But all of my, like, potential, like, smaller jobs are they're thinking to themselves, man, I gotta find someone that follows Kurt.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. Yeah. So like potentially, and maybe you don't want, maybe you, maybe you're an agency, you know, that would be way more comfortable with non huge company, you know, like some medium and small size. I'm not saying Manana's that, but like, I think Manana want would love to get those enterprise clients.
Speaker 1:But I love having two or three of those projects at once, because I love big projects. But if I have five of them, it I my mental my mental gymnastics get to be too much. Yeah. So what I like is two decent sized projects that are stretched out over time, right, in the project management system and fun to watch, because I love the big projects and and the intricacies of them. But then I like a lot of little projects to pepper in between because it keeps that, well, in our vocabulary today, those little projects are the motivation things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, like, the nature of your marketing is turning off some of those smaller projects, which is interesting. Yeah. And vice versa.
Speaker 2:Like, maybe my, like, nuts and bolts marketing is turning off agency. Alright. I'm turning off big corporate clients.
Speaker 1:Well, let's I think we have enough time, and we might wrap up with this topic right here. Talk to me about, your latest marketing adventure on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Ah, yes. So I've contracted with a guy in town. His name's Colin. He runs this program called Rainmaker, and I bet you if you googled Rainmaker, there's a million Rainmaker programs. But his thing, first of all, we should start with like, I really trust Colin.
Speaker 2:Colin, I've known him for a long time. He's been just like, just a good guy to know in the community. You know, like he hasn't, you know, just I can't say a bad thing about him. I just trust him. And he's like, I got this thing, it's $500 a month and here's what it is.
Speaker 2:It's something you could do on your own. So it's kind of like what you're saying. And he told me, so we had a webinar or a one on one call. He's like, here's how you could do it yourself. And, or if you just want to hire me and we do steps three, six, and seven for you and saves you hours a week potentially.
Speaker 2:That's the gist of it. And the core of the program is you do a weekly live stream on LinkedIn and about some topic that you can target to a specific niche on LinkedIn using the LinkedIn And filtering so, for example, like, let's say you're someone who does, wants to get a lot of construction business, you would filter LinkedIn, say you want to filter, I think LinkedIn has like a limit of 2,500 that you can invite at once or something like that. There's some like API limit. So you, you have to like niche down to a point where it's like less than 2,500. But then you're gonna give that same live webinar weekly to that same audience potentially.
Speaker 2:And then the idea is like, you're gonna have someone show up at some point that calls you, that wants to talk more. So I've started that. I did my first live stream and I have right now three audiences and my plan is to do four audiences. So I have like marketing directors, that's one audience, lawyers is another, small business owners, and then we're thinking like something blue collar ish, like let's say painting contractors or something. So those are the four audiences.
Speaker 2:We're gonna do basically the same presentation every week for each one, it'll have a different cover card effectively. Yeah. It'll say, Hey, this is perfect for painter. Same content though. And you can go to my LinkedIn and view this thing.
Speaker 2:I had eight people register for the first one that accepted the invite, zero showed up.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's okay. That, you know, it wasn't, I was like, woah, eight people accepted the invite.
Speaker 1:But in LinkedIn, they'll get the reminder to see the replay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we then follow-up part of the Collins program as we follow-up with an e LinkedIn email shortly after saying like with some sort of follow-up that has some, hey, schedule a call with me if you'd like some sort of like action. So my plan is to keep doing this. I don't know. This is the thing about this specific program.
Speaker 2:It makes more sense to me right now from a sales marketing than any other program I've seen to date. And so I'm not saying it's the perfect one for everyone or the perfect one for me, but I'm like, this clicks with me, like, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's such a weird thing because to hear you talk about this, it reminds me of when I I had the Manana Namaz podcast going full steam. I was putting, like, a fair amount of work into it, but I wasn't seeing results. Results as in return on investment.
Speaker 1:Right? And, I thought to myself, I'm just gonna turn this thing off. And then I went was when I went to WordCamp San Diego. I'm walking on the Bottom Floor, someone starts screaming, Kirk. Kirk.
Speaker 1:I turn around at some lady. Her she's sitting with her friend, and and I turn around, and she goes, knew it was you. And I'm like, who is this? Like, I don't I don't remember you from high school. And she says, are you the Manjaro no Mas guy?
Speaker 1:And that was the first time that someone had ever said that to me. And I was like, what? And she goes, I've been watching your podcast for years. You know, it's so good. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:And I was like, okay. How many people watch this thing and never comment, never like, never share, never subscribe?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:What is the net that's being spread by this tool? And then Spotify, who I distribute through, said, your listenership is up 300% this year. Right? That was a couple years ago. And that right there, I was like, well, I'm not turning this off.
Speaker 1:Right. Something's working.
Speaker 2:And I think, like, part of it too is, like, this is something that I think lots and lots of people get wrong about business. The stories we hear on mainstream media, on Twitter, on x.com, wherever, on LinkedIn, the stories that are posted in Business Insider, New York Times, they generally are things that work for large corporate entities. And so like, we have a limited store of energy as like business owners and agency owners. And like, I always think like, I don't we there's no way to measure what we're doing, really. This this podcast, we have no idea what what this podcast might bring in terms of goodwill and let alone leads.
Speaker 2:I always think like we gotta do whatever, like, feels good. Like like, not you know, just like, does it feel right for you, you business owner, you know, or does it not feel right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I lead with a lot of that, but I'm also the guy that will hop on my mountain bike at 02:00 in the afternoon because it's time to go for a ride. Like, I I really believe a lot of it has to be driven by people say, well, you can't run your life on failings. You know? You gotta use facts.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a healthy blend between the two.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know? If I'm doing I work with somebody who changes things all the time. All the time. We're changing this menu, this price, this, what's included with this. There's always something changing.
Speaker 1:And I noticed that even though I'm not adverse to change, I tend to have more of a stick to itiveness mindset. Like, I'll I'll work with something, and I'll say, well, let's look at it in thirty, sixty, ninety days. At the end of ninety days, I'm like, let's give it another hundred days and see what happens. Yeah. I tend to stick with things longer, like the podcast example, like my Powersport Academy example.
Speaker 1:And usually usually, the patience does pay off, but there's a certain point where you have to look at facts and go, this is just it's good work after bad. It's gotta go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think there's every agency owner I think it's important that there's no to let if you're getting started, if you're experienced, you already know this, but, like, every agency owner has a different tolerance for change really, and different tolerance for prelaunch thoughtfulness. And like my, when it comes to me like testing this SEO product idea, we're just gonna make the switch. Like I'm not gonna do research, I'm gonna make a gut call really soon on that. We're either gonna sell it or not.
Speaker 2:I'm not even gonna think about it twice. And I have a friend who spent two years thinking about how to price and position his, let's call it WordPress maintenance plan. And I'm like, who cares? What? Did you sell any in the last two years?
Speaker 2:And, like, the Mighty Bow, we sell we have a bunch of, you know, customers who rely on us monthly for maintenance, but, like, every single customer has a different price and different expectations. And like, that's just where I'm comfortable. And I'm like, I'd rather get their money today than get my process perfect tomorrow. Like, and then, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm a little bit more of a hybrid of the two. You know? I execute pretty quickly. And I would rather offer something at a higher price with the ability to discount it or cut it later than try something cheap and then go through the process of doubling, tripling the price later.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I had
Speaker 1:to do that with the Powersport Academy, and I didn't do enough research ahead of time to realize that $1,500 for a year of training is obscenely inexpensive. Mhmm. And then when I raised the price to $12 per dealership, I got more energy on it. Mhmm. And now we're currently selling that training for $45,000 per dealership.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And Yeah. When the project started, I was willing to do the training for fifteen hundred bucks. Sure. You know?
Speaker 1:So you learn sometimes you learn the hard way that, you know, I've gotta price this thing accordingly. So I think it would have been easier for me to start it like, hey. I can train your dealership for $60 and then toss in a, you know, 10% discount or something or whatever.
Speaker 2:It's hard though, because even now, I've been in business almost twenty years, I haven't it's like I know and I don't know what people are willing to pay me for SEO because I've been doing WordPress, I have some sense, but even that, let's talk about WordPress, which I know inside and out, been selling it for eighteen years or more. I still, I just sold a project that is like double my next highest project for a website redesign, and it's not any more work than all the previous ones. It's probably less than many. I'm like, I could, could I have been charging this this whole eighteen years? Maybe I could have, maybe not.
Speaker 2:And then I'm like, this guy paid. This was not an issue for him, paying for this. Yeah, there
Speaker 1:you go.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, maybe I could charge double this, but I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Well, if we brass tacks, and this will be a talk for a future show. If we were to look at what does it cost to develop in the Shopify space? What does it cost to develop in the Webflow space? What does it cost to develop in the Wix space? And then we take a look at the pittance we charge in the WordPress world, when in in the end of the story, the customer just wanted a website that worked.
Speaker 1:They didn't care if it was WordPress, Webflow, Wix, or Squarespace. So why are people in other verticals making more money than we are? Like, that doesn't make sense. Right. And so we need to reevaluate our margins, our pricing, and approach business at large as if we're offering that original value, which is they just want a website that works.
Speaker 1:Yep. I think that's a good thing to end the call on, man. Dude, this is awesome? Yes. I've had a really good time.
Speaker 1:Folks, if you're having a good time watching this Who's WordPress Agency Is This Anyway Show, we encourage you, like, subscribe, share, all those things we should have been saying on all of these shows. We need you to do that. When you see the shorts pop up, little short videos that come up, we need you to like them, share them, send them to your friends. And with that, Toby, we'll see everybody next week. Can people reach you?
Speaker 2:Go to LinkedIn. Look for my name or themightymo.com.
Speaker 1:Perfect. And for
Speaker 2:me you, Kurt.
Speaker 1:I'm on LinkedIn. I'm the only Kurt Von on LinkedIn. When you find me, you know you got me. Folks, have a great one.
