The WP Minute+

Toby Cryns (00:01)
Hello, welcome to another episode of Whose WordPress Agency is This Anyway? I'm Toby Kreins, I'm here with the legend Kurt Von Ahnen.

⁓ Kurt I had a question ⁓ ran into something this week. ⁓ I need your help ⁓ I had a client quit mid-project I've already received all the money upfront and they want a refund for some unknown percentage and we To add to add context here We've already if we just build our flat hourly rate. We've already used up 80 % of the budget

Kurt von Ahnen (00:40)
Yeah. Yeah. I get into this frequently. ⁓ I shouldn't say frequently because then it makes it sound like we have angry customers. That's not the point. The point is customers change their minds and a lot of customers assume that there's no financial backlash for changing their mind. ⁓ I put a lot into

our proposals and this is a prepaid service and you've booked our time and that time gets used quickly and I'm very clear about it. So you could say, hey, that's really unfortunate, but looking at the time budgeted and the time spent on your project, you're about 80 % spent. So I can give you a 20 % refund. I think that's fair. But I will tell you, I know of other agencies that have baked into their paperwork now where there's no refund. You've booked our time. You have

You have earmarked space on our calendar and we have taken ourselves off the market for that time to serve you. You changed your mind. That's not our problem. And it sounds cold, but unfortunately, and we see this with employment at the corporate level. mean, there's just not, there's not loyalty like there used to be. And so you need to protect yourself.

Here's the sad truth. I think we mentioned this in the last episode. In all my years as an agency, I've only had one person actually contest a charge through Stripe. Stripe gave him their $3,000 back. I contested it. I sent in tons of proof of delivery. Like here is the backup file of the entire website that's already completely done that the customer has. And Stripe was like, you haven't demonstrated, ⁓

proof of concept, whatever, was like, you haven't demonstrated and I never got the three grand back.

So, I don't know. It's a hard road to go because in the end, you're always open to lose.

Toby Cryns (02:49)
And to be frank, I would love to finish the project. That's my ideal scenario. ⁓

Maybe this morning as this happened yesterday and this morning I got an email yesterday haven't responded yet, but I was thinking a couple things that like I was trying to be thoughtful about it and like I was thinking like And I thought it would be good for us to converse about just like high level like something happened yesterday at 3 p.m. I opened my email and found this and I was already having a bad day Not business-wise, but just like I was just ⁓

bad mental state or whatever. And I was thinking like, historically maybe I would have replied to this email in that state. so like, yeah, so like, I've been doing a lot of therapy this year and I'm like, maybe I just won't respond today. and so I think like, if I could like share that learning with the listeners here, like, it's okay to not respond in real time. Like, let's just start there.

Kurt von Ahnen (03:37)
Yeah, no.

Yeah,

it's okay to stick a pin in something. It really is ⁓ and preferred in many cases. You know, I've got that leadership certification and I feel like with that comes this added responsibility that I really can't, I can't act in a natural way sometimes because everybody's watching to see how Kurt's going to react, you know. You know, and I don't want to be those do as I say, not as I do people.

So I really had to learn over time that it's okay to stick a pin in something. Like if someone says something, and especially they know, they know when they sent the email they knew. Like they knew this is crazy, I'm probably not gonna get my money back, but I'm gonna ask anyway. And then you're thinking, you know, you're thinking extremes, they're thinking extremes, and in reality there's something in the middle that makes sense. And I find using empathy works a lot. Hey, I have no idea what circumstance caused you to change your mind on this project.

I hope it wasn't budget because we've already spent 80 % of yours. You know, if you absolutely need a refund and you need to close the project, can, I can reimburse you at 20%. ⁓ but a refund, you not reimburse, I can refund you 20%, but please recognize that that would be a goodwill offer on our part and that you're locked into the project based on what we sold originally.

Toby Cryns (05:15)
made me think like, ⁓ so there's this other question, okay, how to have that conversation? Email, phone, you know. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (05:26)
I am, I'm a direct person and I think vocal tone says a lot more than print. And so I'm somebody that would very much pick up the phone and make the call, you know, direct to the person knowing it's probably going to go to voicemail. They don't want to take my call, right? They're hoping they can be firm in email, right? That's a person that's like, that's like, that's like someone that breaks up with somebody via text message. Right. And so

⁓ You've already seen that they're taking the escapism route. So me, I would prefer to be direct, get them on the phone and use kind of that vocal inflection and pausing in my words and own the space between the words and stay calm and in control. I prefer that method. ⁓ To be honest, I probably wouldn't get on a Zoom call. I didn't realize this until I became a corporate trainer and I recorded one of the sessions I was teaching.

But apparently I have no control over what my eyes do when I'm talking to someone that I think is crazy. So there was, was teaching a class and a technician was asking a question and I was like, when I saw the video playback, I was like, my gosh, how did that guy even leave the room with any sense of pride? So I would hesitate to get on a Zoom call for a conflict resolution. I'd rather do it on phone.

Toby Cryns (06:51)
There's a book by Christopher Voss about negotiating, there's a Getting to Yes, it's a famous one written a long time ago. ⁓ And it's interesting how those books, really they both approach it. They're looking for understanding first of all. If I could sum up, step one, try to understand their perspective. And I think like,

this case, right now with my current headspace, it's gonna be really hard for me to put myself in a place where I can listen.

Kurt von Ahnen (07:27)
Yeah. You know, it's, it's never the easy thing to say when you're talking with peers about this stuff, but it's really time to look at some root cause analysis too, right? Like where, where did this actually start to fall apart? Like is the client really crazy or did we not answer three emails? Did we not deliver something on time? Did we not explain the process properly? Did we, ⁓ I pride myself on having all these great processes.

And then I realize if you over complicate the like, I am so process driven with my client portal. I think it's as great asset, but I've had a couple of clients go, can I just email you? I really don't feel comfortable in this portal thing. And I'm thinking, are you are you stupid? Because it the portal tells you what percentage of the work is done, what task we're on, like all these things. And they're like, yeah, I just want to email you and ask you what's going on. And I'm like, all right, you know, and I want to hold.

I want to hold to my process, but I also don't want to alienate the client. Right. So I'm trying to work this, this crazy thing. And that's the problem. That's the problem. The obstacle of being ⁓ the leader of an agency. That's the difference between freelancing and running an agency. You know, if you're freelancing, you can be flexible, willy-nilly all over the place to please whatever the next contract is. But if you're running an agency and you have other team members, you want to have process and be process driven. So yeah, it's, it's a, it's a challenge, man. It's a real challenge.

Toby Cryns (08:55)
Another thing ⁓ that I have, I'm sure others do too, where it's like, I'm really averse to having difficult conversations. I just try to avoid them, I don't want them. so I know historically, when I've been put in this situation, I have handed over all the keys. yeah, here's a full refund and I'll even give you 10 % bonus on top of that. And I really want to... ⁓

stand firm in whatever fair place, whatever's fair.

Kurt von Ahnen (09:28)
Yeah,

I used to try being super nice too. And I, and I was the same. I would, ⁓ I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened to you. Let me, let me do this. Let me do that. And then I realized, you know what? ⁓ and this was, it's weird. It's like motorcycle gear. I'm a big motorcyclist. The people that need the gear the most have the least and the people that need the gear the least have the most.

I've got $20,000 in riding jackets in the garage and I don't even have a motorcycle out there right now. ⁓ It's the same when I was in that position. Like we were broke, man. Beans in a pot, holes in the kids shoes. And some startup customer would be like, I just don't have the money. And I'd be like, well, that's okay. I'll float you for the first six months or whatever. Why am I giving a loan to someone I barely know? Like it's, people make these assumptions that this agency work is like,

Toby Cryns (10:20)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (10:26)
free or that we don't need the money or something. And it's like, absolutely not. And I would say over time, I've grown more calloused. So I've become more calloused and I have more ⁓ processes. I'm still nice. I'm still empathetic, but I'm still running a business. And that's, we really have to wrap our heads around that and take the responsibility and the leadership to it. And yeah, there's conversations you don't want to have, but the more you have them, the better you get at them.

Toby Cryns (10:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think part of the tricky thing for me is like, feel like I really have the preparation for the call for me. It's not so much nuts and bolts. It's like getting myself in that like firm and inquisitive head space. yeah, like, yeah, I pump myself up, but in a way that's like, so tell me what's going on. Like what happened? You know, like, but also hold really firm to whatever I have.

Kurt von Ahnen (11:09)
You

I'm Frasier Crane. I'm listening. ⁓ So yeah, no, empathetic, but you got to drive the point. And I think what so many people miss is like when I think about what we do as an agency, right? We have a startup platform we do for people and it's super, super affordable. And that's because I've been doing this for over 20 years and I go, ⁓ you want an LMS, a CRM, a this or that? Okay, it's going to be these five tools in a WordPress.

fresh install and you wanted a starter template. Okay. Which one of these templates do you want? Well, you and I both know that's maybe 30 minutes, but you, you, don't care. You spent that money. That money's gone. That product is done and delivered. That's it. And if three months later, you can't figure out how to make the website look and feel the way you want it to look on some DIY program, that's not my fault. You know, you could invest 22 years and figure out how to do this or

You could take the other options we already offered. You could hire us and we could put in your content and we could build this thing out for you, but you're not going to spend $2,000. You're going to spend $6,000 or you're going to spend $8,000. But you not having budget is not my concern. My concern is what I can offer for the value that's provided.

Toby Cryns (12:40)
There's this thing, it's the language we use about in our industry. ⁓ We call our customers clients and I've always felt like ⁓ Google calls their clients customers and they're hard nose about it. you know, people who have firm boundaries generally call their clients customers and

think maybe it's the WordPress culture, maybe that's part of it, this whole idea of you're a client, or let's just say there's a difference between client and customer, and customers have very firm boundaries, clients don't. ⁓ I think all that seeps in, that client mentality, that serving clients, and we're social workers.

Kurt von Ahnen (13:28)
Well, client is a power word.

Yeah, client's a power word that makes people feel more important than they really are in the equation, right? And customer is just a generic version of that. So I always view like a customer's like in the masses and the client is like the next tier up, right? They're like the manager.

Toby Cryns (13:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think what I wonder is like, we approached, you know, I approach the situation more like they're a customer, like I'm target, like being like, have you used the product? you, have you opened the box? You know, like, you did open the box. they did do a bunch of work. ⁓ you know, like my approach might be a little differently to the conversation.

Kurt von Ahnen (14:09)
Yeah. Well, but then you have to factor in who's trying to make the return, right? Because my wife can return anything at any store with no questions asked. And as soon as I walk in with something, it's like, has it been opened? Has it been worn? Was it worn on pavement? Do you have your receipt?

Toby Cryns (14:22)
It's so true.

I had a tree. So I bought a tree from a very fancy tree seller in town here. And they have a guarantee, like, if it ever dies, we will replace it. And I brought it home, planted it, brought it back the next year because a rabbit had eaten it around and it died. And they're like, no, if a rabbit eats it, we don't take it back. But then I was talking to my friend who's a woman and...

little older than me, just really kind. And she's like, no, I return stuff like that all the time to that very store. And like, no questions asked. I walk in, they say, here's your refund.

Kurt von Ahnen (14:55)
No questions asked, no questions

asked. So if you ran your agency like Target ran their agency, imagine how many allies and inclusive people would be so angry at you if like, well, if a woman wanted a refund, I'd give it to her. If a man wanted a refund, I'd make them work for it.

Toby Cryns (15:16)
Yeah, right, and maybe that's it. And it's probably not policy, it's probably just part of life in the United States.

Kurt von Ahnen (15:17)
you

Part of life in the United States. Well,

I think that you we're going to transition into the next thing and that is you're having this this incident, right? Let's go and you know, we're talking about it now and in reality, I know you're going to make the call. It's probably going to smooth over and it's going to be fine. Like you're probably overworking it, right? Which is what we always do to ourselves. But how do you define a good client then? So what is a good client?

Toby Cryns (15:48)
Right, this is like, I asked this of our, I just plugged the WPMinute group. There's a Slack channel. I think you can buy access to it. Like it's great. If you're an agency owner, you should totally, I don't know what Matt charges for it, but it's, cause I get a free one. But now having been in it, I would buy it. Are you paying for it, Kurt?

Kurt von Ahnen (16:10)
No. It's going to be on blast right now.

Toby Cryns (16:13)
So,

but definitely join it. And then you have all the access to Kurt, me and other grander names from the WordPress community we'll say. we had a conversation about this very question in on the WP Minute Slack. ⁓ And one of the great answers like we got was ⁓ the question, I was just like, what makes a good client? And the gist of it was you need one person who really wants it.

on their end, on the buyer's end. And they're like, and they have the authority, power or whatever, the clout, really it's about clout and trust to really push it through. And ⁓ the gist of it is it doesn't have to be a big company. There's no like, doesn't have to be a certain vertical. It's like, do you have that person at that company that's really fighting for you? ⁓ And I was thinking like, we're wrapping up a project right now for,

customer who needed a website redesign. And our advocate at this company doesn't even work for the company. They're the spouse of one of the people at the company. they are the spouse is a partner. like the spouse co-owns the company. ⁓ But our main like contact there is she's doing the copywriting for the website.

but she's driving the project on their end.

Kurt von Ahnen (17:46)
I think like, like when we say what's a good customer and then you say, having someone that's vested, right? Someone that that's really into it. And you got to be ready for the bumps that come with that too. Right? So two years ago, I worked on a website project that I was really proud of. It was helping launch new authors out of Canada. And I love the founders. They're great people. They were on my podcast. We get along really well. ⁓ and then they hired a marketing person.

And the marketing person's like, I prefer Squarespace. And then I'm like, the website's built. Like the website's built. You have a functioning CRM. You have these things. And like, we're going to go with Go High Level and Squarespace. And I'm like, so you're going to spend twice as much money to have no ownership of anything. And they're like, well, that's what our marketing person wants to do. And we're really committed to using her. OK. And so sometimes you have to recognize that

Toby Cryns (18:42)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (18:46)
Sometimes stuff just leaves and it's not your fault at all.

Toby Cryns (18:50)
Yeah, I just got an email ⁓ recently, I think it was yesterday from an agency in town. And they don't do the same work we do. They do different ⁓ marketing lead generation type of work. But they're like, we really want you to build this site because they came to us and they're like, they're talking to someone. They don't know exactly who this client is talking to.

but they wanted to do something I never heard of, some company I never heard of, but basically it's a headless CR, headless website builder thing. And then my head, I'm like, yeah, that's WordPress if you want it to be. Like, we don't have to overthink, but like there's something in their head, whoever this person, this amorphous person is that, yeah. But someone's driving it to this point. Somebody with some influence is driving this weird decision and it's probably,

Kurt von Ahnen (19:35)
AI. They have AI.

Toby Cryns (19:45)
I mean, if I had to guess, that's where the project's going, you know, just based on this little email I received.

Kurt von Ahnen (19:52)
You, let's just put them on blast cause he's a nice guy, right? So Dan now answered your question. And then what's interesting is I didn't realize he worked for multi dots. And then I look at the way he answered that question and the way that he drives down, like size of the customer doesn't matter that, you know, he goes through these things. And then I don't know if you recognize this or not, but like I interviewed a Neil Gupta for a separate podcast who was the owner of multi dots. Then he is.

like a holistic, organic, into yoga, like totally awesome dude. Like he has a wellness blog, all these things. And I think if we're going to be real, like you, me having a conversation and we say, well, what's an idea of success or what's an idea of someone that's struggling, right? ⁓ When you see someone that operates individually in that way, and then they grow a team, you can tell by Dan's response, he's kind of in alignment with that.

that ethos, right? Good things are going to come their way. You're going to see the growth. You're going to see the client loyalty. You're going to see customers that behave. And I work really, really hard to emulate some of that on my end. And I know that you do too from talking to you so much recently. So I think in a lot of respects, when we say what's a good customer, what's a bad customer, sometimes I think it's just the fruits of what our agency builds based on our own actions and behaviors.

Toby Cryns (21:20)
Yeah, because I think like in general in the world, you can, you actually have a lot of control over how people interact with you just based on how you carry yourself.

Kurt von Ahnen (21:33)
That's freaking unacceptable, man. ⁓ So, no, but it's, that's something to really drive towards, you know, and I'm not trying to put out a commercial for a Neil in any way. It's just when you see the size of his agency and you see the clients and the customers that they work with and you see what he does outside of running the agency, you begin to realize like you're building an ecosystem of truth, respect, transparency, communication.

Wellness, he's really big on wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness, all those things. And I think when all of that comes together, you can't help but attract the right people.

Toby Cryns (22:15)
Mm I asked my

friend, I have a friend who's, um, has lots of personal issues, like mental health types of issues, like really serious things that are very medicated and whatnot. Um, but I asked her recently, I was like, uh, was basically like, how do you, how do you come off as like, so calm all the time? Cause like, it seems, you know, if I looking at you on paper, it's a different story. And she was like,

This is what she found useful. And I think like I could use this too, in general. She kind of like we were saying, Anil, she was like meditation for her. Like, like the idea is you can like don't need to like meditation. But the idea is if you can find calmness, like in the storm, whatever's going on in your head, because it's usually in your head. Like if you can just like figure out how to do that. And for her, it's ⁓ it's meditation. It could be

Kurt von Ahnen (23:07)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (23:13)
stream of consciousness, journaling, could be yoga, could be basketball. don't know, but, I don't know. There's something to that.

Kurt von Ahnen (23:22)
think mine is mountain biking and barbecue. If I'm manning the grill, especially with a beverage and just chilling on a nice day, everything else just falls to the wayside. Even if there's problems or obstacles or distractions, you're able to, I don't know, put things in a clear alignment. And I think that's really important. And we discussed that an episode or two ago, like with the mountain biking and the physical activity.

Toby Cryns (23:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I heard a funny anecdote yesterday at my kid's soccer. We'll call it practice, but I'm not joking. It was an hour of soccer practice, bunch of six-year-olds. Not a single soccer ball was kicked. Like, I'm not even joking. Like, at one point they were, I mean, there were like three or four groups. One group's playing cats. Like, they're pretending they're cats and doing like this with the soccer ball.

Kurt von Ahnen (24:14)
I just don't like where sports is going.

Toby Cryns (24:14)
One kid was sitting on it like an

egg. ⁓ The gist of it was though, I have a friend who's a parent there and she was like, yeah, it was just wild yesterday. So what she started doing was she got out of shot glass and she's like, anytime my kid asks me for something today, I'm just gonna take a shot of water. It's like she's just shooting them. It's like a drinking game of water. It's like fun way to handle it, you know?

Kurt von Ahnen (24:41)
That's the one way to get your gallon in for the day. So, I know that from another agency perspective, you and I had a discussion about, ⁓ tools and I hesitate to turn this podcast into a tool review all the time. You know, I do that on other shows, but I think you and I shared a little moment with like zip WP, right? And then we have a lot of people talking about

Toby Cryns (24:43)
Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (25:11)
WordPress AI, right on WordPress.com. And what are your thoughts, man? Do you think that's like a replacement for a low level agency designer or are you still skeptical like the jury's still out?

Toby Cryns (25:13)
Mm-hmm.

I played with Zipwp over the weekend and effectively it's like build a website with a click, and build a WordPress site with a click. That's what it is. ⁓ And the only reason I was there is because I was having trouble getting my contract designer to do the work because she was busy or whatever. ⁓ And so we were having a real business problem and just producing mockups for a client website. Like they're just like, we need a redesign and we couldn't even get like the initial like

design, you know, like a wireframe, like I was just like, gosh, there's gotta be a better way. And I gotta say, I was really impressed to the point where I'm like, and now here's what I'm thinking in my head. Our designer, if we do this, our designer is gonna manage the zip WP. Like we still need a designer to do it and think about it, but like, it's a different process. I just saw it as a process change, not like a tool. It was just kind of like.

Okay, the problem was, couldn't hire this designer because she was busy. Here's a potential process that we could use to...

Kurt von Ahnen (26:32)
Yeah. So, ⁓ a while ago, maybe two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I don't know. ⁓ I was in cadence and cadence had an AI builder with their starter templates and I had used cadence starter templates for a while. Right. And let's be clear from an agency perspective, there very much is room for that product. you got startups, you got people without budget and you're like here.

I can give you an instance of WordPress and give you, you know, a formatted five page website that gives you the opportunity to get a head start. It gets you off the blank page, right? And so, and I'm very clear. It's a starter template. It's not SEO optimized. It's none of this crud. It's just, it just gives you the format to know where to put your pictures in your headlines and your, and your paragraphs. And I'm very clear about it. So just want to make sure that I am clear on the podcast. ⁓ But I found cadence.

wasn't generating like true stuff. Like I don't want to say true stuff, but it wasn't like applicable, right? And then I have an Astra Pro license and I thought, well, you know what? I'm going to jump in and do this one in Astra. And it was for a friend of the family. And so I went in again, not a lot of budget, but it was like so and so does this in this area. They run this kind of company, but the, the, the, and I put in like 500 words and then I noticed it said 500 of 3000. Like I could put

I could put a giant description in this AI tool, but I didn't. I just put in the 500 words, whatever it was. And then I click next and I said, pick some pictures. I said, ⁓ okay. So I picked some royalty free pictures and I was able to pick the pictures that match the, the client in this case, right? She likes bright colors. She likes this. I know some things. So click, click, click, click, click, click, click, pick your colors. Wow. Okay. She likes purple. Boom.

And then it said, pick your format or pick your template. that's where all of the, like, if you want this kind of content, these kinds of pictures and this color, it would look good in these templates. And there's all the templates and you pick one and then you go into the next screen. It says, choose the font, choose your colors. So like, do you want the links to be this? Do you want this to be that? And then ⁓ publish. Badabum badabing website.

Toby Cryns (28:52)
And I think like what people get wrong about this, ⁓ like in my view, designers could still charge a premium for this. They don't need to pay me, like we're saying, like let's say they charge X amount, X dollars for just to deliver the design to me. Like let's say this designer that I was trying to contract with, I don't care if she does it in Zipwp or some other AI tool. I just need the design, cause I still don't want to do it. Like, ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (29:10)
Yeah, if it's 500 bucks, it's 500 bucks.

Toby Cryns (29:20)
If she under like, she has a good sense of what we need, you know, like I would love for her to be like, this hourly thing isn't working. I can do it for this amount now for each design. I'd be like, great, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (29:31)
Well, and I think if we're like really honest with each other, because I don't want it people that hear this and go, ⁓ Kurt says I can build this in 10 seconds. ⁓ That's not true. Because I will say the template, all the printed material was like the headlines matched the cause, the paragraphs kind of match the cause, but you got to go over all the content. You got to change things. You got to put in some local SEO keywords. You got to move some things around. And when I say move things around, that's where the designer comes in, where the designer goes.

you know what, in this use case, we probably need a little more white space here. We need a spacer here. We need, we're going to transfer this form out. We're going to put this form in. We're going to connect it to this lead magnet. You know, that's, there's a difference between ⁓ getting off the blank page and having a finished product, right? But for a lot of our startup clients in our local community, they're coming at us with a, with a meager budget. And I'm able to say, Hey, for that budget, I can give you a heck of a headstart.

Toby Cryns (30:18)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (30:30)
here you go. and by the way, I run the WordPress meetup once a month. You can come to that and we can go over how to make these changes and all that stuff for free, you know, on that dime. I don't, even have to abuse you at the agency level. And I think that earns trust and we end up getting more referrals from it and the product's great.

Toby Cryns (30:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think you're right. I think for me, the zip WP thing in similar tools that I tried, I tried one called relume.io that was, I thought really good, but not at all WordPress. was just for to get to Figma. It was go from blank page to Figma really quick. ⁓ and I think this is like, this is what people get wrong. Like, I still think my designer, even with these tools needs to invest a day in polishing these things. Like you're saying,

And it requires all their talents and energies to do that. But it and yeah, maybe it saves a day or two of whatever would happen beforehand. But ⁓ this is where we're going. mean, this is like when I think of like where we're going, this is sorry. The world's changing. A.I.' here. Like I don't I'm not fighting it, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (31:18)
Mm-hmm.

I think that is a very workable use of AI. Whereas I'm going to ask ChatGPT to make me a custom plugin and I don't know what code is. I think that is a completely ridiculous use of AI.

Toby Cryns (31:45)
Yeah, but even like, this is the thing, even if you were you with all your experience, ask chat GPT, it's still a huge headache for you. You'd still want to pay someone to do that. Like even if you knew it was chat GPT, you'd be like, just build me the starter plugin. I'll pay you X amount for chat GPT. I know you're going to do it there. That's fine. Like.

Kurt von Ahnen (32:02)
Yeah, but you're responsible. Like I don't want to be responsible. I want to pass that liability off to someone else. I want to say you're responsible to test it and make sure it works and that it's bug free. Yeah, I'm totally down with that. And then so if we are having this conversation and we're saying what is that worth, that comes into that whole framework that we talked about earlier, right? And it's like, what's the value you're bringing to the client versus the hours you put in, you know?

Toby Cryns (32:12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kurt von Ahnen (32:32)
If the client tried to duplicate what I just did in zip WP in 30 minutes, ⁓ they'd spend three weeks on it. So is it worth 500 bucks? It's absolutely worth 500 bucks. And just because you have the, like, if a technician uses air tools with an air compressor to replace your water pump, does he get paid less because you would do it with a ratchet? No, that's not how that works.

Toby Cryns (32:39)
Yep, yeah.

Right. Right. Right.

Well, and most of the professionals in the world have a set fee just to show up. I'm going to come and do something. That's 200 minimum. Like to just come and look at your broken pipe, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (33:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

In our space, I think that's actually going to be what drives the value in the near future because people are going to want that human face to face zoom to zoom contact and know that they're talking to a real person with real ideas as opposed to some AI tool that say, you're so brilliant. Absolutely. This will be easy. We should do this. Right. You need a real person to bounce things off of talking about real people to bounce things off of. ⁓ Let's segue into this one.

Toby Cryns (33:12)
you

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

All right, so Casey Allen, who's a friend of mine in Twin Cities, he's ⁓ an advocate of the local startup community here and does a bunch for the community. ⁓ But he posted something to LinkedIn that was really interesting and he said, ⁓ if you're a founder, your husband or wife is your largest investor, whether they want to be or not, whether you want them to be or not, they are. And then it got me thinking, because I think there's some weird disconnect between the startup community and like the

agency owner community were really the same in my view, you know, in many ways. But so I was thinking about it and I was like, I would just tweak this little bit and say, ⁓ you know, if you own a small business or any business, you're you're and you're married, your spouse literally owns half your business. So don't pretend they don't like whether or not they're actively participating is irrelevant because they if you got divorced, they own half the business.

Kurt von Ahnen (34:34)
I struggle with this whole concept. I really do. And it's so use case specific, right? It's like, what scenario did you put yourself into? And I'll just be really transparent. I love my wife. I love my wife. I love my wife. But the whole time I'm launching my agency, she's like, so-and-so's hiring. Did you think about applying there? I would really like it if you had a job. ⁓

Toby Cryns (35:01)
Uh-huh.

Kurt von Ahnen (35:02)
And then she would come home from her job, you know, and be like, what have you done all day? You know, it's like, it's like, I'm working. Well, there's no money in the account. It'll come. I'm so in seed. Harvest will come. But funny when the harvest shows up, it's like, uh, all of a sudden you're an overnight success and you're a hero. Right. And, uh, and, I'm not beating her up because I can, cause she's my wife. That's very common with people. Very common. Um,

Toby Cryns (35:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (35:31)
People that have, I have entrepreneur friends that said, it won't be long now. People are gonna start patting you on the back talking about this overnight success of yours. And sure enough, there's some people going, wow, this guy came out of nowhere. And it's like, out of nowhere? I've been doing this for 22 years. I have an e-learning website that I almost shut down. Last August, I almost shut it down. was like, well, it's failed. It's not making any money. And then I thought, I already pay for the hosting package. It doesn't cost me anything.

Toby Cryns (35:39)
huh.

Yep.

Kurt von Ahnen (36:01)
I'm just going to leave it up and see what happens. Literally that month, I got a phone call from someone that wanted to do a partnership and looking at their numbers and what they're going to bring to my e-learning program. This tool that I was going to turn off after five years of making nothing is all of sudden turning $60,000 a year. And it's like, so is that an overnight success? No, that's five years of waiting it out.

Toby Cryns (36:19)
Mm-hmm.

Right, Yeah,

yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (36:27)
You just don't know. So I was transparent. How's it for you?

Toby Cryns (36:34)
⁓ I've had similar conversations with my wife where ⁓ really up until this year, this is the first year that I have, the Mighty Mo has paid for health insurance for our family. Up until this year, I think she's usually had like a full-time job. ⁓ I should say every time she's had a full-time job, her job is paid health insurance. And that was always a sticking point for her. like, huh.

Your company doesn't even pay health insurance. Is it even a real company? like, also, like I was putting some percentage away for like an ASEP IRA every year. And that's like just money that nobody ever sees. It's like for 40 years from now, maybe we'll if we're alive, we'll see it. ⁓ And like in her brain, that doesn't count. You know, like she's just like, you're not making enough money. I'm like, honey, like

Kurt von Ahnen (37:24)
No, that doesn't count at all.

Yeah.

Toby Cryns (37:32)
Like,

⁓ it's tough. And it's tough too, because I really like, mean, within reason, I can decide what to pay myself as long as that money is in the bank account. But, you know, there's uncertainty about what will be in the bank account. So it's like, it's hard for somebody who's always worked like a W-2. It's hard for them to like understand, I think, like the just kind of the messiness of it of running a business.

Kurt von Ahnen (37:34)
You can't shop on Amazon with an IRA, buddy.

And I think we have to, we have to acknowledge it, whether we, whether we agree with it or not, we have to acknowledge there is a certain amount of resentment when I've already told you, if I'm having an unproductive day and there's nothing on the schedule, I'm going to go mountain biking at two o'clock in the afternoon. And then I'm going to come in. I'm going to work into the evening. Right. And they see that they're, they're like, you don't even care. You just do whatever you want to do. And then some $40,000 month rolls along.

Toby Cryns (38:19)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (38:31)
Right. And now you're rolling in it. Right. Now you're now you're now you're making it rain. You know, hey, let's go out to dinner this week. You know, you're doing crazy things and and and you think they should be happy. Like you wonder, like, how come you're not happy? I brought in all this money. You should be happy. But instead, they're resentful. They're like, I slave away the job I hate. And you're just here hanging around the house. And all of sudden, all the money shows up.

Toby Cryns (38:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Right. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, that's a great. I've gotten so much slack over the years from my wife, not not good slack, like really like you're sucking it up slack because I would take a lot of naps in the afternoon. But like what she doesn't see is like today, my workday started at six a.m. And a lot of times I leave for work at five a.m. But what she sees, you took a nap today. But like.

Kurt von Ahnen (38:56)
That's okay, don't worry, we'll be broke in three months.

Toby Cryns (39:22)
No matter how much I try to share the context, it's something in her brain, just doesn't click. And I think that's probably... I don't know how normal that is, but it seems reasonable, like a human would be like, he's napping while I'm working?

Kurt von Ahnen (39:28)
No.

Yeah, I try to be empathetic and I try to understand the perspective. ⁓ But like we said in an episode before, I'm so emotionally unemployable at this stage that I would be useless to go to a corporation now. Because I'd be the kind of guy that would want keys to the building and I'd work at three in the morning some days and I'd be gone at lunch other days. And that drives corporate crazy, right? ⁓

And they don't care how much money you're making or how productive you are. But if you're not, if you're not toeing the line and conforming to, you know, their ideals, they freak out. And so it's really, really difficult with spouses from that perspective. There's another side of ⁓ entrepreneurship that is, it's like a taboo. A lot of people don't like to talk about it, but it's the fear of success. You know, how many people start an agency making $500 websites and then they go, I could probably charge $750.

But how am going to raise my rates? You know, I'll lose customers. it's like, no, that's a fear of success. Like if you have acquired some skill set and you have a niche to sell to, sell to them. Now it's $1,500 a site. Now it's $5,000 a site. Now it's $10,000 a site. And then eventually you get to be one of these multi dots guys. And you go, you know what? We can take a look at that for $173,000. And.

Toby Cryns (40:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (40:57)
people have a hard time wrapping themselves around what that looks like, feels like, smells like, especially people that aren't in our shoes. Cause then they go, wait a minute. Cause I'll talk to a client. I go, man, that was a great phone call. That's got some pretty good potential. That could be a $40,000 call. And, and you know, people outside your brain space are like, that guy's crazy. There's no way that's going to manifest itself. And then when it does, you're an overnight success and you got lucky.

Toby Cryns (41:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. This what to charge thing is really, I think there's something to what you're saying. Like, I gave a talk at WordCamp this year and one of the bullets was like, it was for freelancers. And one of the bullets was like, just raise your rates 5 % tomorrow, whatever you're charging. I don't care what you're charging. Just raise whatever you're, you know, like if you're afraid to raise them, just raise them 5 % tomorrow. Like, why not? Like, I don't know.

You can always drop them again. I guess.

Kurt von Ahnen (41:59)
You know, when you're driving across the country, and I say this to a lot of people and they think I'm nuts, you're driving across the country and I'm in Kansas now where gas is $2.40 a gallon. And then I drive to Arizona and it's $3.40 a gallon. And then I cross the border into California and it's $5.50 a gallon. Do I stop buying gas?

No, I pay whatever I need to pay. Like that's just the way that it is. And if customers want to race to the bottom and find a niece or a nephew that'll build a website for 50 bucks, they've taken that on themselves. That's their business decision. But if somebody wants a professional that's going to treat them well and give them the status along the way and build on time and on budget, then you have to have budget. And that's where I have those conversations.

Toby Cryns (42:45)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

I think that's it. If you want to, for people who are afraid to raise your rates, well, for like, I think you just need to get over it. Like you're saying Kurt, like, and myself included, like I've kind of been stuck, uh, in this year and that's 18 years in the biz. feel like I finally maybe increased my rates considerably compared to for the first time since like 2013, maybe. Um,

Kurt von Ahnen (42:56)
you

Yeah.

And think about everything else that's gone up since 2013. know, rent in San Jose in 2013 on a three bedroom house was $4,500 and now it's like 8,600 bucks. And so, and then you're thinking, well, I'm working on the same money I made in 2013. Like we have to put things in a perspective that, that makes sense to our, to where our environment.

Toby Cryns (43:18)
Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (43:43)
So how do you pick that fight?

Toby Cryns (43:49)
Yeah, and this is a great question. ⁓ I actually heard about this ⁓ concept. It was in the context of a political conversation that was happening recently. And the question was like, ⁓ without getting into specifics, I'll let you, anyone can fill in any blanks they want. doesn't matter because this happens all the time, but it's like, are you picking the fights that are advantageous to you? And so this could be a pricing fight. could be, let's say my case today, like with this

client, a customer who's trying to get their money back. And after the work's done, ⁓ I can, even within that context, I can choose which fights I want to pick. You know, I can set the, my own boundaries for what I think is fair game to fight over. and I think like historically, like, one I've shied away from picking any fight and I've just folded over and let, let people run over, run rough shot over the business.

deal that we struck. ⁓ And so I think like, one, I would encourage everybody, like, to some degree, you got to find some ground and hold that ground, whatever that is for you. And it's, it's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to take time and energy to figure it out in the moment. ⁓ The good news is you have helped though, you can talk to people like who've been through this a lot. Kurt, me, you know, you can find us on LinkedIn, you can

find a business coach and score. ⁓ You can also read these books like ⁓ the Chris Voss book or the Getting to Yes book. They have like really thoughtful ways to approach these questions of like, find the ground and like the getting to yes, it's always like, what's the best, this is how they describe it. What's the best alternative to negotiated agreement? Like at what point do you walk away? That's how they encourage you to think about it. Just at a high level. What do you think Kurt?

How do you... ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (45:48)
So again, this is going to sound trite. I worked for a really good manager when I was at Ducati, a really great dude. And he had a saying he would say all the time. He would say, train hard, fight easy. And it's not his saying. He took it from something else, right? He's from the UK, so he took it from something. Train hard, fight easy. Train hard, fight easy. And I've really taken that almost as a mantra, like, if you are prepared.

If you are plugged in, if you are aware of your surroundings, you know, if you have some verbal dialogue, I call it verbal muscle memory. ⁓ I have certain phraseology that I use that I consider my power words and they get me through most of what would be uncomfortable and then go back to what is uncomfortable. Well, uncomfortable is always the space that we find growth in.

Like we always grow when we're uncomfortable. We don't grow when we're comfortable. We're comfortable. We're not doing crud. So when we're uncomfortable is where we find these growth moments. And so what I try to recognize is, and it's a saying I said all through the pandemic, I said, we have to find opportunities within the obstacles, right? And that's my way of saying we grow when we're uncomfortable. So if we find an opportunity in the obstacle, even if it sucks, even if it sucks in the moment, train hard, fight easy, do the battle.

learn from it and grow from it. And I always come back to what's the root cause analysis. Where did this go sideways in the first place and how could I avoid it in the future? And I'm always trying to think in those terms. And I think it's really led me over the course of the last half decade to come to a pretty good space right now. Like, like I'm pretty comfortable in how I make decisions, but you touched on something and you said, at what point do we walk away? You know, at what point do we turn away? And I've realized that

My point to walk away is pretty quick anymore. I'm not as tenacious as I used to be. If it's not a good fit, if someone really doesn't want to be part of the Manana No Mas team, you know what? Go ahead. And if it's a case where I've done half the project, I got no problem saying, hey, let me download this for you. I'll give you a zip file. You can take it to any other developer to have it finished. Obviously we're not your choice, right? But that doesn't mean you get all your money back. That means you get what we didn't use.

Toby Cryns (48:09)
Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (48:11)
And you already know this. said this the other, I thought this is one of the smartest things we said two episodes ago. It was when you lose a client or like you think you can't, like you think you can't afford to lose the client and then you retrospectively look back on it, you absolutely didn't need that client. There was always something better right behind it.

Toby Cryns (48:31)
Yeah.

I also like, you know, I'm in the process of selling a house still. ⁓ they, the, buyers, prospective buyers came and asked for something I thought was ridiculous. I just said no. And they came back with, okay. You know, like, and I, I, I would, you know, my realtor had the conversation, but like I told him, I was like, look, just share with them how much we've done and don't focus on this.

Kurt von Ahnen (48:46)
Yeah, no.

Toby Cryns (49:03)
thing, but you know, tell them no, but couch it in this other thing. And I think. You know, a fight, the advantageous fight is sometimes to be like, look, we're busting our butts for you. And, um, we, you've, you've pushed us too far on this, you know, like.

Kurt von Ahnen (49:20)
Yeah, yeah, and this happens frequently, like especially with really big projects with dynamic tools. ⁓ I'm really skilled at Lifter LMS. And so I jump into these Lifter LMS builds and before I do the builds, I tell them, this is how the quizzing works. This is how the reporting works. This is how the member pathway works. This is, and I go through all this with people just to make sure we're clear.

And they always go, okay, yeah, that's great. We can work with that. That's not the way our old system did it, but we can change and this will be fine. And that, that, that, and then six months later, you know, you're building everything. And then it's like, I noticed in the reporting, it doesn't give me this data point. You know, I really need that. And like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We went over all this. What data point can you not live with? Right? Okay. So do you want to have that custom developed and add that to the ticket? And well, I didn't want to have to pay for it. It should be included. Well, it's.

It's not included. We went over all of this. We did a full needs assessment with you. ⁓ But that's to your point. You have to know when is it appropriate to say no and like not even enter the advantageous fight. Like it's not a fight. Like a lot of times we as agency owners, we go, I got to battle this out. You don't have to battle nothing out. A lot of times just go, it's not a battle. The answer is no.

Toby Cryns (50:27)
Right. Yeah.

right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of times the things that just because someone asks for it doesn't mean that they think it's even important.

Kurt von Ahnen (50:45)
No, they just want to ask.

They want to get back on the teeter totter and be in some kind of position of balance or power. And sometimes we just have to say no. that's not... And a lot of people ask me to do really weird things, like with LMSs or with membership sites. Well, I want certain members to do this and certain members to access that. And then I want to be able to restrict this. And like everyone wants a community plan.

until you load up a community plan. Then they want to restrict everybody from the community. And then I have to go, well, what platform do you currently use or have access to that does anything like that? Like what makes you think you need to have that? Do you need to have that? And why do you want to re-engineer how the internet works?

Toby Cryns (51:13)
Yeah. Right.

Right.

And I think there's like an art to this conversation. like, and it's a, it's like, it's more about being under listening. People want to feel heard. I hear what you're saying. You want this feature that doesn't exist anywhere else. And you think it's going to be easy. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (51:46)
And

it's it's very important

Toby Cryns (51:49)
Yeah. ⁓ I think like the art is kind of like just listening and making sure they feel.

Kurt von Ahnen (51:59)
Yeah. And I always drive back to why, like what's the root cause? What made you think that this was important? You know, and maybe it's something they heard at a Tony Robbins seminar or something, right? Like it's always going to be something wild and then you have to go, okay, well let's circle back to how the internet works and let's have a conversation about, know, why did you want a community platform in the first place? You want to attract people, build a mail list, have a marketing tool. So if you restricted a ton,

Toby Cryns (52:15)
Uh-huh.

Kurt von Ahnen (52:27)
have you created something that is open conversation? They'll be like, well, no, I guess not. Okay, let's leave it open.

Toby Cryns (52:32)
Right.

Yeah. On that note, ⁓ this has been a great conversation. ⁓ Kurt and I are both available on LinkedIn. ⁓ Anywhere else that anywhere else you'd like to out today, Kurt?

Kurt von Ahnen (52:52)
Well, I'm an everything Manana No Mas. So Manana No Mas on X, Manana No Mas on Facebook, manananomas.com for my business, and you are the mighty mouth.

Toby Cryns (53:02)
Yep, the Mighty Mo. T-H-E-M-I-G-H-T-Y-M-O dot com. There's a battleship, a radio station, and now a brewery that all share the Mighty Mo moniker. So you gotta be a little...

Kurt von Ahnen (53:12)
Mighty Mo.

All right. And we've already got great notes to start out the next episode. So folks, if you're not already subscribing, liking, sharing, all those fun things, please do so. And we'll see you next time.