The WP Minute+

Kurt von Ahnen (00:01)
Hey, hey folks, welcome to another episode of Whose WordPress Agency is This Anyway? I'm Kurt Von Ahnen, I'm here with Toby Crines, the amazing Toby Crines, and I think we're gonna have a really good episode for you today. Toby?

Toby Cryns (00:13)
I

think so too, Kurt. One of the questions I was wondering, this is a special early morning edition for us. They're gonna get it whenever they get it, but it's 9 a.m. Central time for both of us. And we've both been up, I don't know, I've been up since five, so I'm already four hours into my day. How about you?

Kurt von Ahnen (00:30)
I was up past 2 and I was up again at 6.30. I don't know what's the matter with us. And we both seem rather giddy this morning, so this might be off the rails episode.

Toby Cryns (00:39)
What other way is there to live? What time do you prefer to work?

Kurt von Ahnen (00:44)
You know, I prefer early mornings. I really do prefer early mornings. I don't prefer late nights, but sometimes that's the way it happens. There's something about getting up and getting going that to me is like inspirational and is for the rest of the day. Like, so I usually get up, cup of coffee, some read time, quiet time, a little bit of journaling, and then I start my day. But as long as I get up and get into it, then the rest of the day is kind of like sets the tone.

Toby Cryns (01:10)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (01:11)
But if I

got to stay up late, I'm super productive. Like, if my wife goes to bed, I'm super productive. Like, if I'm working after hours, bam, bam, knocking things out, next thing you know, it's 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. But I don't really, I don't begrudge it, because that was time that was super productive. I got a lot done.

Toby Cryns (01:31)
Yeah,

I find that too. Like sometimes I'll put in time on weekends, for example, like Saturday morning, six to 10, and I'm like, I get a ton done that otherwise wouldn't get done. So I don't begrudge it either. There's this like weird thing about work-life balance. There's books and stuff and blogs that like, they really prioritize work-life balance. And I've come to, I used to be really hardcore about it. Like, there's work and there's life. And now I'm like,

I don't know. There's just kind of life and work is just one facet of life and we've got to do work the same way we've got to. I made scrambled eggs for the kids today, you know, so like the same way I had to make scrambled eggs. I have to get work done today like.

Kurt von Ahnen (02:02)
Yeah.

Two o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, I literally just closed the windows on the computer, walked into my bedroom, put on my padded shorts, walked out to the living room and told my wife, I'm gonna go for a quick growl ride. I'll be back in a couple hours. And she looked at me like I was insane, you know? But I was like, I'm not being productive in front of the computer. It's time to go for a ride. So I went for a ride yesterday and that might be why I was working at, you know, past midnight last night.

Toby Cryns (02:42)
Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (02:42)
that's part of that work-life balance. got to know, you have to be in, you have to be cognizant, you have to be self-aware enough to go, I'm just wasting my time right now. I'm not being productive. I got to switch gears.

Toby Cryns (02:53)
Yeah, and I think like in a way that's one of the perks of owning a business is like some days you can if you notice that you can like there are days where I'm just like I just can't work today and it might be a Tuesday. might be a Thursday might be a Friday. You know, like I'm just like I'm here. I'm trying and I'm miserable. I'm just going to like close it down for the day. And, you know, sadly, sometimes I won't even tell my team. I'll just be like, I'm just gone. And like they don't know where I'm at. And like I'm just like

Kurt von Ahnen (02:57)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (03:23)
I'll clean up the mess tomorrow.

Kurt von Ahnen (03:26)
Well, but you brought up one of the most important points. You can't go broadcasting that you're taking off or you're doing whatever. People, short circuit. They can't handle it. When people hear, Kurt went for a ride at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, they lose their marbles. And if you tell them ahead of time, everybody's got an emergency. Oh, hey, before you go, I got to hit you up real quick. No, you don't got to hit me up real quick. You weren't even thinking about any of this four minutes ago.

Toby Cryns (03:48)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (03:54)
I stopped telling people. used to be super responsible. And I used to tell people, I'll be out of the office Tuesday and Wednesday next week, blah, blah, blah. And then Sunday at midnight is an emergency. Tuesday at midnight's an emergency. Everything, the sky is falling. And then you end up rushed or harried or frustrated for whatever that moment of peace was you were going to take. And then you realize, no, that's just human nature.

as just human nature. they think you're not available, the sky is falling. If they think you're there babysitting, you know, everything, nothing's an emergency.

Toby Cryns (04:24)
Uh-huh.

There's this theory that I've practiced here and there about out of office auto replies in your email. And the theory goes like this, like, if I can't help you, what good is it sending you a message right now saying I can't help you? And so there have been times where I've just been like, you know what, I'm gonna try it. I'm just not gonna have an auto reply. And like,

I've seen no downside to that. I can see the argument on the other side, like, well, you don't want to look like a complete jerk who's not responding, but at the same time, it's true. It's just one more email for a lot of these cases that aren't urgent, maybe, where you're just filling up someone's inbox with another message that doesn't mean anything.

Kurt von Ahnen (05:09)
Well, I want to go a little bit deeper on that tangent you just created. So the auto response to me is a little bit overkill. And it comes back to how did we condition the client previously? So if clients get used to you're on call, you're there at the snap of a finger for every little thing, everything becomes, my god, I couldn't reach you. But if you

groom them from the very beginning and say, we typically have a 12 to 24 hour response time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, if it's an emergency. An emergency is your website is down or you cannot take in revenue. That's it. Those are the only emergencies. Everything else is an incidental. Then you can text me or you can whatever, right? But you have to train your clients right up front. What is an emergency? What is not an emergency?

Toby Cryns (05:51)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (05:59)
and then what is our process for non-emergency repairs.

Toby Cryns (06:03)
Yeah,

that's true. And here's another scenario. We've been changing our processes and people here at the Mighty Mo. And so it used to be you would email us and the developer would see the email and respond really quickly and possibly fix it. And it'd be 15 minutes and it would be fixed. You you sent the email, he sees it, he fixes it, he replies, it's fixed, 15 minutes. Now you send an email to us, our project manager gets it.

She talks to a developer, she responds to the email saying, like, our developer's working on it, I'll let you know, here's what it's gonna cost, pay this invoice, whatever it is. So the process has now gone from 15 minutes to a day maybe at times. And we have one client right now who's struggling with that. And so we still have great communication, but it's like we've trained them in one way and now we're changing it.

Have you ever experienced that? Like how, it's a weird thing because it's a client we really like, like I really like, I can't speak for anyone else I guess. I think they're great, but, and I feel bad, but at the same time I'm like, I'm trying to build a business and this is one of the ways I'm trying.

Kurt von Ahnen (07:07)
From a leadership perspective and and we tend to go down this route every now and then you and I from a leadership perspective I always think in terms of Relationships over transactions, right? So if I'm so focused on transactions all the time, they're not gonna happen But if I focus on relationships and don't worry about transactions the transactions occur naturally, right? So how do those transactions occur naturally it comes from that whole emotional?

you bank account thing that I talk about where am I making emotional deposits with my clients or am I making emotional withdrawals? Am I always putting them in some kind of a stressful conversation or am I putting them at ease? And so when you change your processes, you know, that's when, especially if it's like a long-term customer that's had things easier or a shortcut, you know, for five years and now you're going to be like, oh, we've got this new process. That's when you have to be a spin artist, right? You have to say, oh, hey, I want to get you on a

I want to go over a new process with you. Hey, you're one of our valued clients. You've been with us forever. You're one of our founding people. But I got to let you know about this new process because our team's grown and we have to make sure we don't we don't want you to get lost in the cracks. So in order for you to not get lost in the cracks, we have to follow this new process. And then they're like, ⁓ now I get it. Right. Because they're spoiled. They're used to you when you had three clients and now you've got 50.

Toby Cryns (08:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I failed to do that in this case. I bet you that would have helped.

Kurt von Ahnen (08:35)
It's emotional deposits and withdrawals sooner or later. So every relationship in business, you're going to ask for a withdrawal sooner or later. You're going to ask for more money. You're going to ask for more time. You're going to ask for something. You're going to ask to make a withdrawal from that person emotionally. And so if you think of every conversation as either being a deposit or withdrawal, you start to realize, crap, I got to make a whole lot more deposits with people. Because the more positive I can make my account, the bigger the withdrawal I can

Toby Cryns (08:37)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Kurt von Ahnen (09:05)
for later. If you ask for a big withdrawal and you haven't made enough deposits you're going to be overdrawn on your account you're going to lose your client.

Toby Cryns (09:12)
Yeah, and I imagine, well, humans, think, are like hardwired to like, overweigh the doubt, the bad stuff, like the withdrawals. And so you have to, like for every withdrawal, you got to do 10 deposits, probably.

Kurt von Ahnen (09:19)
yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

it's got to be up there. You know, there's times where sometimes I think about my corporate newsletter or I do lives every Thursday, right? So my live every Thursday. Sometimes I feel guilty, like am I spamming these people? But I look at the open rate, and I cover this a lot in my lives. My open rate through my weekly email right now is over 50%. So if I have an email list with an open rate that's higher than 50%, it's not spam.

People are opening. People want to see it. And then when it doesn't get sent, that becomes the emotional withdrawal. Now they've actually come to look for it. So there's just different ways that we can stay in touch or we can communicate. then we have to look at, we business owners, we have to look at our results. So if my open rate was 3%, I would be like, I've got to change my content or my frequency or something, because right now looks like I'm spamming the crud out of this audience. But yeah.

Toby Cryns (10:01)
Yeah.

Yep. I've

been surprised by the... I don't know the open rate, but I know people are opening them because I get replies to the ManageWP reports. They have uptime, backups, plugins that were updated, page speed score, some SEO stuff. I would never open that personally, but I got an email yesterday and it was like, hey, why is our page speed down? We just got your report. Thanks.

And I was like, you opened that? Awesome. But that's a deposit, like you're saying.

Kurt von Ahnen (10:51)
Well,

and you just segued. You don't even know it yet. You just segued into our next topic.

Toby Cryns (10:54)
huh.

Kurt von Ahnen (10:58)
How, first off, what causes you to have to band-aid a website? And then what do you describe as band-aiding a website?

Toby Cryns (11:08)
Right, how do you, so this is ⁓ like an age old question. Mainly, I might just be a developer question. Cause if you didn't know all the options, cause you and I look at it, we've been in it a long time. When a website's broken, let's say a slider is broken. Here's an example. Slider is broken on a client site. My solution, let's say they're using Elementor. I'd be like, let's just find a different Elementor plugin, do the slider, change it.

Kurt von Ahnen (11:09)
Thank

Toby Cryns (11:34)
⁓ I have a guy on my team who's like, no, I'm just gonna fix the bug. I'm like, okay. And what is one a Band-Aid? Another classic example is in the WordPress you have the customizer where you can just add CSS. My CSS customizer is full. Like I don't know that if it has a million character limit, we're really close. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (11:57)
You put notes in.

Toby Cryns (11:58)
I do actually.

But it's like, is that a bandaid? Maybe? It depends who you ask and what the criteria are, know? Criteria.

Kurt von Ahnen (12:06)
Well,

I want the listeners to recognize how human we are. So ⁓ we all have great advice, but few of us follow all of our own advice. I'm always telling people, if you want to change this or change that or change the other thing, I really encourage you to fire up a staging site, play all you want in there, break everything, and then if things work, move it to production. Last Thursday, and Thursdays are my live days. I'm on Zoom all day Thursday.

So right before one of the live calls on Thursday, right before the first live call on Thursday, I was like, you know, my website should be faster. Like, it's amazing how our ADHD takes over, right? I'm like, you know, I'm an agency. My website's actually kind of slow right now. I should try and speed up my, I should see what's slowing down my website. I should probably do some page speed work. So I open up page speed and I do the test and yeah, it's slow. And I'm like, right? But I like,

Toby Cryns (12:41)
huh.

Kurt von Ahnen (12:57)
I got to be live in just a moment. So I go, you know what? I got this chat bot thing. No one's really using it right now. I'm going to turn that off and see what happens. Boom. I got like eight points on the page speed report. So what happened? was that, you know that was a big dopamine hit. That was like putting an exhaust on a muscle car and seeing an extra 10 horsepower, right? That's cheap horsepower. So I was like, ⁓ what else is in there?

Toby Cryns (12:59)
Yep.

yeah.

huh. Yup.

Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (13:25)
So I got

this database cleaner. I deactivated and removed that. And I went up like another two points. Oh, boom, we're in. We're in like Flint, baby. What else can we do? So I clicked a few things and clicked a few of this and a few of that. And I'm watching the clock. I'm like, I got to go live in like four minutes. And I'm like, all right, I can do one more thing. And then my page speed shot up to like 94. And I was like, right on. Like, that is amazing. I am such a genius.

And then I went to my homepage and it was gone. I was like, huh, that's not the result I was looking for. So I dove into my server and all of my websites, timeline backups have been working correctly except for that website. So then I was going to go to my manual backup that I had saved from last month.

Toby Cryns (13:57)
white screen of death. Yep.

Yep.

Kurt von Ahnen (14:21)
And then I was like, well, I don't want to go back a month. So then I started ⁓ chatting with support at the server, trying to see what they were going to do for me, and launching live calls and being on podcasts and babysitting this transition in Band-Aid for the entire day.

Toby Cryns (14:35)
Yeah, because you needed to squeeze. And it's like, to what end? Like, okay, you squeezed a few points on your page speed. Who cares? Like, really?

Kurt von Ahnen (14:44)
Well, really,

because what really happened, Toby? The server made good on the backup. You're right back where I started. I'm right back where I started. And that's why I was up late last night. Last night, I was like, I got to fix this. So there was like two or three pages where, in bricks, everything looked great. On the front end, it just looked like jarbled code. And I was like, I have no idea. I don't know if this is a frames thing. I don't know if this is an HCSS thing.

Toby Cryns (14:53)
Now you're back. ⁓ You didn't do any work at this point because it just went backwards.

Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (15:14)
I don't have the time. I got too many other projects I'm working on. So I band-aided it. I took down a couple pages. I made a couple of quick pages. I filled in the menu and went to bed.

Toby Cryns (15:25)
This is like the classic sin here that you've committed was taking on a very complex problem without the proper space. Page speed, very complex. And this is like a classic developer scenario where like, we do something, like you deactivated that plugin, you're like, well now I know how to fix it.

Kurt von Ahnen (15:46)
you

Toby Cryns (15:46)
And all you've done is got lucky one time.

Kurt von Ahnen (15:49)
Yeah, yeah, that dopamine's a crazy thing. So yeah, that led to a late night of let's rebuild these pages real quick. Let's get this menu filled back out. And now my page speed's respectable. It's not super fast. It's not slow. My page speed isn't going to be why a customer doesn't sign up for Monyan and Amos now. So that's good. But the whole idea of band-aiding

Toby Cryns (15:53)
Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (16:15)
When you have a project that, gets 10 years old, and I'm just going to shoot this out for other people, how much of the content in your database and server do you think is just junk after 10 years of a site being up?

Toby Cryns (16:29)
95 %

Kurt von Ahnen (16:30)
I was like, I was looking at it last night going, I don't even remember making these pages.

Toby Cryns (16:34)
Yeah

Yep. We had a project for our SEO guy went through and I didn't feel good deleting it, but I created a new post type called like unused post type. like, I was like, just anything that belongs in there, don't delete it, just put it there. And then I at least know it's there. And so literally I have a pile of junk. It's like a closet that I threw a bunch of stuff. It's not indexed. I'll never look at it again, but at least I feel good knowing it's there.

Kurt von Ahnen (17:00)
Yeah,

it's like when you move and you get a storage facility and then eight years later, you're like, hey, we never went back to storage to get those boxes out.

Toby Cryns (17:03)
Yeah, right. Right.

You see it on that TV show, Storage Wars. You're like, hey, that's my guitar.

Kurt von Ahnen (17:17)
Well, you just said guitar, so tell the folks what you're doing.

Toby Cryns (17:21)
well, ⁓ ladies and gentlemen, please do announce the world premiere announcement here of my new dad band. We're going to we're starting a cake cover band. And I only brought it up here because I was thinking like, why do we run a business? Why do we do this thing? like, I think the only reason we do it or go to work, it doesn't even have to be running a business, but you go to work. The only reason we do it is for

the other stuff, generally speaking. Like in my case, I was like, I really, I've wanted to start a cake cover band for, we'll say 25 years, but it might be a little longer than that. And I've kind of like always dreamed of it and finally doing it. And it was just like all the stars aligned. wasn't even super intentional. It happened over the course of a few months where I was like at a cabin, like I met this guy and he plays trumpet and he likes cake. And then we,

I saw him again at like a music school thing for our kids and there was this other guy there who heard us talking about the Cake Cover Band. And so now we have three people and this guy's like, I know a drummer. So now we have a band. So over the course of a few months, we put together this band and we had our first practice. It was amazing. We went through three songs and then we're doing three more next time. And slowly but surely we're gonna ramp up to a gig in somebody's backyard.

Kurt von Ahnen (18:40)
am amazed at the things I'm learning about you through this podcast experience, Toby. And the weird part is, like, Cake has so much meaning to... I used to race motorcycles, and everyone in the pit sings that song. You know, he's going the distance! Yeah, it's good stuff, good stuff. All right.

Toby Cryns (18:51)
Uh-huh. Yep. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So what

do you work for? Like, what are the tangential outcomes of your work that are not work-related for you?

Kurt von Ahnen (19:07)
I am such a scatterbrained person. It's almost, it's not funny. So I really like bicycling. You know, I like camping. I built the camper van out of a SWAT truck. So that's really cool. Everyone thinks I'm the FBI when I show up somewhere. You know, can flip on the lights and everything. Well, we go camping, we go mountain biking, we do things. It reminds me of that story, and I'm sure people have heard this before, but like there's a guy fishing.

you know, like in a little village fishing somewhere. And this guy comes up and says, hey, you should start a business and you should this and you should that. goes, and then goes through this whole life story of growing a business and hiring people and this. So then you could retire. And he goes, then what do I do when I retire? He goes, you go to a little small island and you first, I'm doing that already. That's kind of like where my brain went. Like when I, the first time I heard that anecdote, I was like, I am already on the island fishing, you know, and the work is the work, sure. But.

Toby Cryns (19:43)
Right. Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (19:58)
but I still get out. still gravel bike, road bike, mountain bike. mean, I love cooking. I love cooking. I love beer and red wine. And so if I like that much in calorie intake, I have to find a way for the calories to leave. So white cycling and going to the gym is it for me.

Toby Cryns (20:16)
Yeah, I was thinking like one thing that I haven't done over the last 15 years that I'm really working on now is like just building more friendships and like, so I've just started like inviting people over. So Saturday I was like, I'm just gonna invite people over and my wife's not super into it. Like in fact, she's kind of against it. Like, and that's why I haven't done it. So I've been like respecting her space and like, no more, I'm gonna do this. And if she wants to get a hotel, fine. Like that's where I'm at with it.

And anyway, it's been like this is like so I play in a dad band and I am inviting a few people over on the weekends here and there and it's been really nice like That's why I work, you know in addition to some other

Kurt von Ahnen (20:55)
That is

huge. I think that's the message, that should be our theme for the whole show today actually, is how to expand past your cubicle, your workspace, your screen, whatever. Most business owners that I know have no friends. They have people they see at the entrepreneur meetup or whatever, like let's face facts, you life gets rough, you get pulled over for a DUI, you don't have a friend to call.

I also am doing, we're in the middle of building a big project in our yard. Not in the middle, we're at the very beginning of building a project, we're building a, we're getting a 20 foot container and we're converting it into an outdoor cook center. Because I want to invite people over and entertain and do all these things. And just like you said, I mean, female spouses in a relationship are like, I don't want all these people over here all the time. I don't want to clean this house all the time. I don't, you know, I don't like having people, but then once everyone comes over, they love it.

Toby Cryns (21:38)
you

⁓ Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (21:44)
Like, it's they

dread before it happens, but they love when it happens. And I just have to get over that hump every time of that four or five hours before everybody shows up is a disaster. She's all stressed out. But then after everyone's here and we hop open a couple bottles of wine and get the grill going, everybody's happy.

Toby Cryns (21:49)
That's my experience too, yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, you know, it also is if you read Lord of the Rings, there's the Ents and the Entwives and similar story there. The Ents just want to go and talk to everybody and the Entwives want to arrange everything properly.

Kurt von Ahnen (22:18)
I think that is the third Lord of the Rings reference you made in this show series. Well, OK, let's jump into like, let's switch gears. Agency people, we're talking about business. What is your preferred tool to communicate with staff and clients?

Toby Cryns (22:34)
Yeah, it's, ⁓ so we use, email pretty much email for all client communication. We're available via phone, but that's pretty rare. And even in those cases, ⁓ we always ask, we send them a calendly.com link usually. if they call and I see it, I will answer and oftentimes I'll call them, not often, but sometimes I will call them when needed. If it's like something I, that's be better addressed via phone, but email primarily for clients and, ⁓

And we just have, so our support at themightymo.com is the primary address where they email. And then we use, right now we're using Basecamp, however we're switching to, so we use Basecamp right now for all of our internal communication. So anytime I, we don't use email internally, pretty much, we just use Basecamp. We're gonna switch to ClickUp and I actually don't know how that's gonna impact our communication. It's, I've,

hand it off that project and I'm just trusting that it'll all work out, you know.

Kurt von Ahnen (23:36)
Well, you've got somebody on your team that wants to use Slack.

Toby Cryns (23:40)
I do actually, and this is like a weird thing because...

So I think Slack doesn't make any sense for businesses. That's what I think. It makes sense if like, I should say it, makes sense if you wanna have real time conversation with someone like we're doing now. But you wanna have it, I know they have video now built into it, but you wanna have a real time conversation. Great, it's just a chat room. Everything gets buried, it's like a chat room with a search engine, great. But like,

It also has this like, interruption mentality. Like it's gonna send you push messages on your phone. It's gonna like ping you on your desktop if that's where you're at or whatever. It's gonna interrupt you and take you away from whatever it is you're working on. So the one thing I like about Basecamp and this is what how I, the person that asked was a newer employee for us. He's like, and I think that just it was like, have questions that need to be answered right now. And I'm like, my opinion is like,

great, we're not using Slack. Figure out a way to get those questions answered with the tools we have. And we have interrupting-ish tools. Like he could ping us on Google Chat, for example, that would interrupt us. ⁓ He could do all sorts of things. We have tools in Basecamp that are kind of interrupting, but not necessarily. So I don't know, I just think Slack is like...

Kurt von Ahnen (24:54)
Yeah.

Toby Cryns (25:06)
And tools like, I don't know, maybe there are other tools like Slack, but like, I never understood it. Like, it's not a good way to hold like, to like, have an asynchronous communication, like, which is what I'm after. How about you?

Kurt von Ahnen (25:22)
I I know I talk a lot about WordPress, but I use a SaaS platform as a client portal. And so it does my contracts and it has a messaging platform in it. So I condition my clients to use that for communication. It'll ping my email, hey, you've got a message, right? So it'll come through an email. So I won't go for days without seeing something. But I'm not.

I don't like the idea of like, I especially don't like the idea of putting like customers and stuff in Slack. I don't want everybody talking to everybody, right? So I try to keep that channel separate.

And that SaaS platform works really, really well for me because it does project management and Gantt charts and it does all this other stuff. And I think the clients really like it. Like I've asked them, like, this make sense to you? You can see the percentage that were done on the project. can see your visibility of these things. And they like that. We also added fluent support to Manana No Mas. So now people can actually sign in with their email and they can add a ticket. And then anyone on the team that's assigned

can work that ticket, right? So that works good. So that's like a one to many communication for clients. So that's good. Internally, I tried Slack. And I'm on a bunch of Slack channels.

And I just don't have enough volume to support Slack to make it engaging at all. And it's just a distraction, and it's an annoyance. So yeah, for the contractor conversations that we have, it's either in that portal when they get assigned to a task through the project management system, or it's going to be an email or a text. And we use some offshore help. So a lot of it ends up in WhatsApp.

Toby Cryns (26:59)
interesting. You know, we had over the years had people try to bring us into their system. Sometimes it's Slack, sometimes it's something else. like, I have always declined because I'm like, there's a lot of like assumptions built into any group of people who are communicating. Yeah, that and like, we communicate this way. Why didn't you respond in this manner in this time frame? Where's that the mighty mo?

Kurt von Ahnen (27:14)
You work for us now.

Toby Cryns (27:23)
Unless you specifically say, like our expectation is like, it's not urgent. And so you can take a full day to think it out and respond and I'm not gonna bug you. If that's urgent, I will just say, hey, this is urgent. Like I'll say that in the message. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (27:35)
Yeah,

yeah, we're very similar. We're very similar in that regard. Even if I am, this is going to sound so mean, but it's part of the conditioning. got to set, got to, what are things going to look like in two years, three years, five years? And so you can't respond to everybody in 30 seconds and then condition them to that response and then box yourself into that expectation.

Toby Cryns (27:58)
Yep.

Kurt von Ahnen (27:59)
You just can't do that. You have to think in terms of what would a business look like even? It's not fake it till you make it. It's not that at all. It's how do I plan for expansion and scale?

Toby Cryns (28:09)
Yeah, interesting. There's also like this, we've all experienced it, a business strategy where they're going to be really good at first and then they're going to give you less and less and less and

And we've experienced that particularly, let's say, in our industry with hosting companies over the years. This company is great. And then, all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, it's just like gradually you're like, is this getting slower? Is their support getting worse? What's happening here? Is their price going up? Yeah. So I also don't want to like it's a strategy like.

Kurt von Ahnen (28:37)
And it might be sites and they're so fast.

Toby Cryns (28:48)
But I guess it's, like in theory you could be really, you could have a strategy where like the first year you're with us, we're gonna like respond to everything and then, you know, it seems like it'd be tough to manage for a company of my size, our size, but like I could see that going, if you were a big company, you could implement that. I mean, they're doing it with these crappy AI bots right now. Like let's say you bought an Apple computer and you're looking for support, or some company that used to offer good support.

Now you're just getting the AI button. It's hard to find the contact button. ⁓

Kurt von Ahnen (29:20)
There's a lot of folks now that there's no phone number, there's no email address, and you are just locked into this cycle of nonsense. then 20 responses in, it's like, hey, would you like to chat with a support representative? Yeah, I would have liked to have done that 47 minutes ago.

Toby Cryns (29:33)
Yeah. Right.

I got a phone call the other day. It was an AI call or something because like I thought I was talking to a human and it wasn't. It's like, what the heck is going on here? And you know, AI can't help you. really, you know, like they can't really do any. All they can do is get you to a human like that. It makes it more efficient for them, but not for you. Like they're offshoring the, what, the headache. They're offshoring headaches to you.

as the collar.

Kurt von Ahnen (30:05)
Well, so that's twice that we've mentioned offshore in a moment. So let's jump onto this. You have, should I hire a bunch of part-time contractors or a few full-time employees?

Toby Cryns (30:17)
Yeah, so this is just, I think like a business choice that like is open to us. I know I've gone both way, you one way and then the other way, one way, the other way over the years. The Events Calendar Pro, that plugin, that was built with a bunch of contractors. And so like, I point that as like a success story. You know, they had processes built out internally.

to do that and they made it a huge success and then they sold it and then it became five or six full-time employees managing the whole thing. And I don't know where they're at today. I imagine it's still a few full-time employees. Could be wrong, but. And I recently went through this where I had a late last year, I had a bunch of contractors and even early this year and I slowly have decided to extend, you know, offer

a small number of them full-time employment. And I was thinking like, trying to figure out my reasons for that and like, there's pros and cons with contractors. The pro is like, you can save some money because you're only paying them when they work and they don't get vacation. You're not paying vacation, you're not, and oftentimes you can get a good deal on their time and all this. There's no...

Overhead once you're done, you're done. The downside is you have to find them all the time because they're not loyal to you because you're not loyal to them And if you want them to be available in a pinch You kind of need full-time employees, I think not so you couldn't figure it out the other way but That's been my experience. How do you do it? Do you do you have any full-time employees right now?

Kurt von Ahnen (31:47)
had a couple and I do not now. I have a, wow, this is where Kirk gets to sound negative. So I've brought people in before and they'll be like brand new, know, like brand new to the space. And I'll be like, let me show you our processes. Let me show you how we do this. And it's obviously it's someone that has an interest in it or someone that I thought had artistic ability for the design side of the business or something. And I'm like, well, these are some of the tools we use and this is this and this is that. You start showing them some stuff. And next thing you know.

They're walking around like, I could do this better than you. Like, I could run my own business. Why am I profit sharing with you? I could get my own clients. And it's like, wow, OK, I'm either a really good mentor. I'm either a really good trainer and mentor, or this person is crazy.

Toby Cryns (32:27)
Ha!

Kurt von Ahnen (32:33)
The idea that someone brand new to an industry can instantly adopt 22 years of experience and expertise is lunacy to me. But it's happened more than once, where I've brought somebody into the office, and I've worked with them. And then you hear, they're doing a side gig. You think, whatever. You're doing a side gig, not a big deal. And then you find out, well, they're doing a side gig, but it's a client that actually came through your lead magnet.

And now you're like, wait a minute. You can't be taking clients out of the business. And then I go, was it the pay? Am I not paying you enough? Because I think I'm paying you handsomely. And no, it's not that. It's just why take a portion when I could have all of it? Well, then guess you could have all of it. Go. Go do your thing. Go see how you do. And then each of those times, and they probably listen to this now, but each of those times they failed miserably.

Toby Cryns (33:15)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (33:25)
absolutely failed miserably because they didn't have the patience to put the skin in the game. And so I've actually gone another direction. I'm in the middle of launching a agency apprenticeship, an agency launch organization here in town because I want this to be like a tech hub in Kansas. And so I've approached the city. The city's like, that's an amazing idea. And I'm like, I'll just teach people how to run an agency and how to, like with the intent of.

Toby Cryns (33:29)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (33:52)
they're going to go start their own agencies. And then they're going to get all the startup projects and all of the low hanging fruit that comes through. And then the big enterprise stuff with the e-learning jobs will stick with Manana and Omos because they won't have the capacity to do it.

Toby Cryns (33:53)
Mm-hmm.

Right, that makes sense.

I wonder, the idea of people, your employees, like, getting in that mindset and leaving, like, how much of that is cultural? like, you...

Kurt von Ahnen (34:19)
There's so much easy button nonsense on the internet right now. And I say it all the time, right? There is no easy button. The passion I own ads are still coming to me. I must mention it too much on the internet. But if you're not making $50,000 a month with no experience and no business, well, then you don't even have a business. And it's like, OK, that's crazy. It's lunacy. The expectations, my daughter is 20.

Toby Cryns (34:32)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (34:44)
She moved to Kansas. She's going to be mad if I'm putting her on blast. But she chose not to go to school. She wanted to be an ice skating coach. Great. She got certified to be an ice skating coach. She didn't like the management at the skating rink in Kansas. So now she's not working there anymore. She has her own coaching clients, whatever. But she got a job at...

a big chain. Soon as she gets the job at the big chain, she's like, I love it. I love it. It's so amazing. Six weeks later, she's like, the guy that owns this is an idiot. ⁓

Toby Cryns (35:10)
ha ha!

Kurt von Ahnen (35:13)
just like, this is wrong, that's wrong, and I told her, said, baby girl, you're young, you've had like three real jobs and you haven't liked any of your bosses. You're not someone that's gonna be good at working for other people. You're just not. And she's like, maybe I should go into the military. I'm like, if you think you don't like a job, you're really not gonna like being told what to do 24 seven by people you think aren't smart. And it's just...

Toby Cryns (35:38)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (35:41)
But I'm watching her, and this is not disparaging against her, it's the culture. It's this idea that you see a glimpse of something from the outside and you make so many assumptions that I could do it better or they're not sharp, they're not smart, they're not committed, they're not intelligent. But the people making those judgments have no idea what's going on in the core of what has been grown from infancy.

Toby Cryns (36:07)
Yeah, absolutely. I remember sitting at a coffee shop in 2002. I was in LA and I was playing in a band out there and some guy was like lecturing me on how this coffee shop is doing it all wrong and they're going out of business. I think he was an employee there. He's like, I could fix this, this, this and this. And at the time I was just like, whatever. But now I'm looking back, I'm going, I don't think you have a clue how coffee shops work. like, yeah, you, there's.

This person's going out of business because all coffee shops go out of business. Like 90 % anyway, you know, like.

Kurt von Ahnen (36:43)
When I worked at Suzuki, big organization, I had staff. And that staff would not stop barraging me with their needs. I need a new camera. I need a new laptop. I need a new this. This is never going to succeed without A, B, C, D, and E. And I'm thinking, they've been around for over 100 years.

Like the people at the main office, they know what their goals are. They know what they want to do. And they're executing. You might not like the results of that execution. But newsflash, I stopped working there in 2020, and they're still in business. They're still going. So ⁓ whether I liked it or didn't like it, they had a process. They knew what their goals were, and they executed. And it's interesting.

Toby Cryns (37:18)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (37:27)
How do you set goals? Because I just said Suzuki has these goals, right? And they're executing, and they're still around. The coffee shop's going out of business.

Toby Cryns (37:36)
Right.

I don't set goals in a manner that makes any sense. I know I want to be in business next year, and I would like to make a little more money next year compared to this year. And I also, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure in order to do that, I need to do more sales stuff and marketing stuff.

And in order to do more marketing stuff, I need other people to do more of the other stuff. And so, part of my goal, probably my biggest goal this year is to figure out how to do more marketing stuff and sales stuff and how to maintain enthusiasm for that. Because in the past I've tried and I just lose enthusiasm and I end up just going back to me and one other person and...

the classic version of the Mighty Mo is that. But I'm trying to power through it and figure out how to stay in that marketing function forever or long term. That's my goal, I guess. It's like I want to stay in that marketing and sales function and do more and more of that and less and less of the other stuff.

Kurt von Ahnen (38:51)
Speaking as someone that does a lot of consulting with business, that is super important as a business owner. Do you love the marketing and the sales, or do you love the creative, the work, right? Or do you just really love at the end when you help another business find success through your product? And so if you think about those three major verticals within your business structure, if it comes down to

I'm really not into the sales and marketing. I thought I was, but I'm not. It turns out I'm really into delivering the finished product. That's my favorite thing. I have seen.

And then I've consulted with business owners where it's like, hey, you need to step down. Like, you're not the CEO. You need to hire a CEO. You need to bring in a partner or hire a CEO or a sales general manager or whatever. Pay them handsomely to do that. And then they can fill that top of funnel thing for you. And then you can focus on what your skill set is, right? You can do the execution and the delivery. And sometimes that works out really good because some people just aren't wired

for sales. sometimes I think I am not wired for sales. And then I go to an after hours here in Hutchinson and meet a new business owner. And 45 minutes later, the party's over and we're still talking and having a beverage. So it's like, obviously, it's in me somehow, right? So I keep, like you, keep forging that path of where I'm the head of it and I'm running it. But I wonder how long I'm going to keep on that path.

Toby Cryns (40:19)
Yeah, it's a great question. But I also wonder too, like, there's with any job and any relationship with anything, there's a certain amount of stuff that you have to do that you don't like. And this is where it's tough for me. Let's say my marriage, my wife's amazing. And I also like there are days where I'm just like,

If I do this, I know she's going to yell at me for that. Oh, gosh, this sucks. But like, kind of like try to see the big picture on it. I think it's the same. I don't know. I'm with you. Like, I don't feel like I'm in love with sales. I think I love like helping people realize bigger. They can achieve bigger stuff and do achieve. I help it. Love helping people achieve those things. And I think for me, maybe the sales and marketing is just

the crap I have to do to get to that other thing. And by the way, the other thing is also make more money and play more music with my band and this other stuff too. So it's all, I put it all kind of together in one, but I don't know, is it even possible? this idea like do what you love, you know, is that even a thing? Cause I'm old now and I'm like kind of jaded. I'm like, that's not a thing for 99.9 % of people.

Kurt von Ahnen (41:42)
It's not a thing for 99.9 % of the people, but I have seen it for the 0.1%. And when I look at the sacrifice they made to actually make it happen and then find success in it, it's not easy. It took work. I knew a young lady in Colorado, semi-professional, hated her job, everything. And then I hadn't seen her in a while. And I'm like, wow, where'd she go?

She moved to Australia. She does scuba diving lessons on the coral reef down there. Like that's her. She goes, I love scuba diving. love that. And then she moved to Australia and just started this thing. You know, that was like living in a car, being homeless, know, eating ramen. As a grown adult, you know, just cashed out a life and said, I'm just going to go figure this out, you know. And then after a few years of hard knocks,

Toby Cryns (42:27)
Right.

Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (42:35)
thriving business, financially solvent, all those things. But so many people aren't willing to make the sacrifice required upfront for the payment later.

Toby Cryns (42:46)
Yeah, but

even in that example, she's running a business. so she has to file taxes. She probably doesn't love that. she has an employee answering the phone maybe or some scheduling website down issue.

Kurt von Ahnen (43:00)
But

you bring up an interesting point. So many things in business, we could create processes or we could create workarounds for that. I hated collecting money. I still, to this day, hate it. Like if I say, I'll do this for you for $2,000, and then I do it, and I send you the invoice, and a week goes by, and I don't have $2,000, I'm pretty ticked. And then I'm like, OK, here's a reminder email. OK, now I got to call you. Now, God forbid, I bump into you at a live event somewhere. Where's my $2,000?

I made it a point back in 2008 when Manana No Mas was born when we changed our name we changed our process. We don't touch a keyboard until your check clears. Done. And so now I could have either hired somebody for accounts receivables, right, because I was tired of being a collector. So I could hire someone for accounts receivables and have that added expense and then trickle that down to everybody. Or I could leave my pricing kind of the same and just tell everybody they pay up front.

Toby Cryns (43:40)
Yep.

Yeah, love it. ⁓ Here's a couple of things I'm doing that might be interesting to our listeners. This is just like this week. So I realized part of the sales thing, I've realized like, gosh, I hate creating proposals. And just this week, I had another one, it's took I invested like three hours and I was still at the beginning. And I was like, gosh, this sucks. And so I went on a couple of forums, went on the minute WP minute forum, Slack channel, and I also went on a couple other places and just asked

How are you all handling this? And what I ended up doing, and I had to thank the communities for this because it's something that like huge shift in thinking about proposals that changed my whole proposal process. The gist of it was my proposals had, oh, you asked for X, Y, and Z. Here it is. Here's like a very clear description of what it is. It's a really long proposal. Like we sent one out that was 40 something pages.

and it had very in-depth stuff and here's the price for all the stuff. All these 40 pages will cost X amount of dollars. That's what I was doing up until yesterday when I was like, what if I didn't do any of the specifics and I didn't have any line to sign, but like I just like had like a one or two pager that just kind of ironed out high level details. And so that's what, and then I, I did that. That took me like an hour and a half. I sent that to my artists. I'm like, put this in Canva, make it look good.

And so I haven't looked at it yet, but I imagine I'm gonna log in today and gonna have this finished proposal ready to send to the client. It's gonna look great. It's gonna be two pages or whatever. so I think that'll help as I figure out how to do the sales stuff. Another thing, I hate paying people. I don't mind paying them. I want to pay them. I hate the physical act of like logging into wise.com and being like, okay, what do I do? And then like, how much does this person get? How much does that person get? And then I send the payments and...

Kurt von Ahnen (45:30)
you

Toby Cryns (45:48)
it takes like an hour to do that work. I'm just like, I'd rather not do that work. So was talking to my bookkeeper who I, by the way, I hired a bookkeeper this year. had a bookkeeper, but they weren't like doing a lot. And so I found another one and this person has ideas. She's like, why don't I do that for you? And I was like, yeah. And then she's like, do you have clients that I could follow up with?

If they're not paying I'm like, yes, I do actually so so she's now gonna do those so she's gonna Set up the payments. She's not gonna click send but she's gonna set them up. She's gonna follow up with You know with the invoices that are past due I'm like this sales thing suddenly getting more interesting to me like

Kurt von Ahnen (46:19)
I'm sorry, dude.

Yeah, because other stuff's coming off your plate. When I worked corporately, I worked with another young lady. She loved spreadsheets. Like, I've never seen that before in my life, right? And I've seen it since. But when I first met her, I remember she would be like, ⁓ she'd say, ⁓ hey, you don't have to do it that way. Just give me all that stuff, and I'll put it in a spreadsheet for you. And I'll put some VLOOKUP and some functions in it. I was like, what?

you know, because as a corporate training manager, I was like, I got to manage all these students and grades and quiz attempts and stuff, right? And she's like, no, no, no, I'll put it in a spreadsheet. And then what we'll do is we'll put a web hook in it and it'll bring it over automatically. And I was like, whatever. And it was amazing and it worked. And that's when it hit me like a ton of bricks. People really do have.

Toby Cryns (47:09)
huh.

Kurt von Ahnen (47:24)
different things they would...like just because I think something sucks and I would never want to do it doesn't mean someone else wouldn't be thrilled to do it. And so I have really put my energies into, what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses, and I used to have that mentality of I need to be better rounded and I need to work on my weaknesses. And now I'm more like, you know what, I'm going to forge forward on my strengths, I'm going to do what I know I can execute well, and I'm going to backfill the stuff that I suck at. And I just offload that stuff to other people.

Toby Cryns (47:30)
Right.

Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (47:53)
have a general idea of how things work and what they do but no they're gonna do that.

Toby Cryns (47:58)
Yeah, you know, one of my strengths, let me describe how I learned it was my strength first. I used to work in politics and anytime there was a crying lady in the office, they would send me in to talk to her. They'd be like, Centovian, what's the cooler or whatever that movie where the guy stands there and that was me. But I realized like, you know, in hindsight, like I really enjoy talking to

women in distress or something like that. Don't enjoy it, but I feel like I have a lot of empathy and I do really well in those situations. Way better at that than the cold-hearted business conversations. So yeah, I'm with you. Part of what I've tried to do, I guess part of my success has been that I've leaned into that, or I try to, try to really like...

get people who need someone, maybe a lot of my clients probably need someone to sit there and listen to them. And I'm a good fit for those clients who need that, you know?

I think your strength is something... I don't know if we might have just had a tech issue, but what do you think your talent is? The main talents you're bringing to the business. I'm guessing it could be code, but oftentimes it's not coding.

Kurt von Ahnen (49:07)
I think this for-

It's not code. I'll take that mystery out of it for you. It's not code. I learned it in the automotive industry. I have two things. I can take something that seems very complicated and communicate it in a clear, concise way. Like, wherever the audience is from, I can make it understandable, whatever that is. And I think it's because of all that different experience in life, right? And then the other thing is,

Toby Cryns (49:27)
Alright.

Kurt von Ahnen (49:50)
much like you with the crying lady in the office, when I was in the automotive industry and customers would come in, know, typical like what you see like TikTok videos, right? Angry, throwing things. Like, people are, you know, I brought my car in here two weeks ago and you've got to give me my car back and blah, I say, hey, no problem. Why you come in the office and we'll talk about it real quick.

And then 15, 20 minutes later, the door opens, we're shaking hands and patting each other on the back and the customer's leaving. And all the service riders on the service drive would be like, what happened? Did you give him his car back for free? No, no, no, he wants us to put a new motor in it. He's going to pay us for it. They'd be like, how did you do that? And I'm like.

Toby Cryns (50:27)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (50:29)
I just listened what he had to say, and we offered some solutions, and they said yes. And then the service writer was like, you got to teach me how to do that. And now I run an agency. So yeah, I got out of the car business as quick as I could. It only took 20 years. But yeah, those are my two strengths, is overcoming conflict, identifying where that conflict, what's the root cause of the conflict? That's the strength. What's the root cause of all this anger? And I got some, I call it like, ⁓

Toby Cryns (50:41)
Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (50:57)
muscle memory like verbal muscle memory right when someone's really upset a lot of times i just ask them i go look i'm just here to help you with the situation and i get the impression you're really angry about you're not angry at me right so what are you angry at and how can we how can we come to a resolution together and then usually people go yeah i'm not really pissed at i'm pissed at the situation

Right, so OK, so let's identify the situation. Let's put together, like, what are the next steps to fix the situation? And then let's just figure out, like, do you have the budget to cover that or not?

Toby Cryns (51:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's great stuff. We're nearing the end here. just wanted to ask is before we go, how do you as an agency owner handle the Fourth of July and other major holidays?

Kurt von Ahnen (51:46)
I'm not a holiday person. The only reason I celebrate holidays is because I'm married with children and the family makes me. And like, I'm a believer. I go to church. I volunteer at church. I do all these things. And Christmas still to me is just some other day on the calendar. I have to go shopping because I'm married with kids. I'm not.

I'm just not into holidays. So to me, it's not a big deal. I'm still doing lives. I'm still doing things this week. I'm still running my business. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to cash out and go for a mountain bike ride later, So yeah, I'm not big on holidays. Personally, to me, they could come or go. If my wife is attached to a certain holiday, I will force myself to get into it and celebrate it and do it, like Christmas lights and things like that.

Toby Cryns (52:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kurt von Ahnen (52:29)
But it's

not in me. It's not in my makeup. Growing up, I didn't have parents that made life fun in that way.

Toby Cryns (52:32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. was thinking, so my employees are all in the Philippines right now, and, you know, they don't celebrate the 4th of July, but like, there's no work for them to do right now. So like, do I give them the time off or do I just, we don't really have a vacation policy and one guy just took four days off, so I'm like, I don't think I need to give them the day off. They can take time off whenever they need to, and they have their own holidays, their own Independence Day and all that.

Kurt von Ahnen (53:05)
Yeah.

The other country thing is really unique, and I've said it before. I will go out of my way to try to keep money in the states. I will go out of my way to try and hire somebody here and keep the money local. But I'm not paying you as a freelancer, I'm not paying you agency rate to be a freelancer and just do a task. Like, it's just not gonna happen. So a lot of times my money ends up going somewhere else. And there are holidays, there are work style, there

When you have someone, to your point, that's a contractor, they're a mercenary, man. Whoever's paying the most or whoever has the most work gets the most attention. And sometimes it takes a little effort to get people back on focus, back on target. But that's what being a good agency owner is, being a project manager and making sure things get done. And it's really, really interesting to me, culturally, to see how people do things. And the difference in male, female.

I mean there's certain work, like when you take in the work you have to go, well wait a minute, is it culturally insulting for me to give this job to someone in this region? And you have to be emotional intelligence, you have to be cognizant of what am I asking this person to actually do and then execute accordingly.

Toby Cryns (54:10)
Right.

I've got a story we could end on potentially. So I had a lead come in. They run a porno magazine website, a very legit business based in Minnesota here, just a husband and wife. They just sell magazines that they're a magazine company that delivers magazines. That's all. But it's porno magazines. And so I'm conversing really nice people all this, you know. At the same time, I'm

I had an offer to, I think I had just started working with my SEO guy and I sent him this. I was like, hey, I need you to write up a proposal for this. And it didn't occur to me to think through any moral implications, but then I didn't hear from him for two days or something. I was like, ⁓ wait a second. I just scared him off with this porno sign.

Kurt von Ahnen (55:01)
Wait a second.

Toby Cryns (55:04)
Ended up being, I talked to him, I go, I'm sorry if I offended you, da da da, we don't have, and he was like, oh no no no, got, like, my wife was in the hospital, it had nothing to do with the porno max, but. But yeah, you do have to be careful sometimes with the cultural difference.

Kurt von Ahnen (55:19)
Yeah, I mean, there's just

certain work. And think about it. It could be totally innocuous to you and I. Maybe you take on a client that's like, we only process who've an animals for natural meat or something, right? And then you send it off to somebody who's like, I'm vegan or halal or however you want to describe things. And they go, I can't do that kind of work. But unfortunately, we as Americans doling out our work on a global basis, we

Toby Cryns (55:33)
Right.

Kurt von Ahnen (55:47)
unknowingly sometimes put ourselves on a pedestal and people feel intimidated or forced to have to do the work we ask them to do. That's not the case. Like I can always find someone else to do. I very politely turned down a job yesterday. I actually sent them a proposal in writing that told them why I was turning down the job.

You know, it was like, hey, you gave me access to your website. That's great. You use this for hosting. You use this for a theme. You have these custom post types in your website. And you've already verbally said you don't want to change those things. So based on these factors, we're out. You know, we're just not doing this. If you want to restart, this is what you'd be looking at for a refresh. And there's no shame in that, right?

Toby Cryns (56:25)
Mm-hmm.

Kurt von Ahnen (56:32)
But I don't think we give people, offshore people especially, that same latitude to make decisions like that. And so I'm very clear with people I work with. hey, if there's a project that you're not content with, happy with, you can't get behind, you can't give me 100 % of your whatever, just let us know. And I never make the assumption they're going to give me 100 % of anything, because it's not their business. It's my business. So yeah, it's working with people and really understanding their motivations, I think, is a really big deal.

Toby Cryns (56:37)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Great. On that note, happy Fourth of July, everyone. It'll be August 6th when you hear this. But, Kurt, where can we, where can people get in touch with you?

Kurt von Ahnen (57:07)
You

⁓ LinkedIn, I'm the only Kurt Von Annen on LinkedIn so I'm easy to find and then for business, Manana Nomas. You?

Toby Cryns (57:20)
Great.

I'm at Toby Krynz, C-R-Y-N-S, that's on LinkedIn as well. And you can email me there. TheMightyMo.com is my business. So thanks everybody.