Are WordPress Agencies Doomed?  Hey, it's me, Matt, from the WP Minute, of course, the publisher of the Agency Action podcast. I'm going to fill in today because I want to do sort of a monologue about agency life heading into 2026. Some of the things we're working on at the WP Minute that you might be interested in both in audio and video. So, if you're watching, hey, how are you? If you're listening, hey, how are you? It's always great to have podcast listeners who love audio. Uh, first and foremost, uh, thanks for being a listener. The agency action podcast was something that I started to think about I don't know halfway through last year and since I I'm not an agency owner any longer ran an agency for a decade. Uh the agency still runs my dad still runs it has a team but I wanted to have these like boots on the ground people who are doing this every day like rolling up their sleeves agency conversations that I'm I'm just not living now. My full-time job is at Gravity Forms. So, I do talk to a lot of agencies for sure because primary customer of of Gravity Forms. And I do talk to folks like you every day. Uh I'm just not doing the quotes anymore. I'm not doing the project management. I'm not selling myself and putting myself out there for clients to sign. However, Kurt and Toby do that every day. It's their it's their livelihood. And I was looking for two co-hosts to have these more honest and real conversations. Sure, I could like interview people, which I which I do and we do at the WP Minute. I could have conversations from agency owners, but I really wanted like two folks in the room who are living and breathing it, having the the real life, you know, transparent conversations so that uh so that you can can benefit from like being the person in the room. That's sort of like the genesis of agency action. And um we we sort of wrestled with the name for a little while. I'm not even remembering what we called it. I think it was whose WordPress agency is it anyway. Uh we had some different ideas for that at the time of like format and stuff, but I I really do feel like Kurt and Toby have hit a a pretty good stride. I mean, you tell me. Send me an email mattthe minute or go to the contact form on the WP Minute and let me know. Let us know what kind of content you're looking for as an agency action listener. But we're hoping now like these are these stories that they share. I I feel like they've gotten to a good rhythm of hitting a particular topic, going deep on it, and then most importantly sharing their their experiences of like how they've dealt with XYZ topic, you know, how they've managed it, overcome it, or maybe not even face it at all. And like the other one gets to ask like, oh, like how did how did you get through that? Or what did you think about when when that happened or like when you leveled up your your business, you know, that kind of thing. So that's agency action. I should say like Toby and Kurt, they're they're freely donating their time to this to this podcast. So do support them uh with their businesses. I always say like in agency world, there's plenty of room and opportunity to work with other agencies or other freelancers working with other freelancers and so on. do support them in the work that they do because they're showing up every week to, you know, give you their best and to be as, you know, open and transparent as possible, right? It's it's not an easy thing. I do really like I mean Kurt had a lot of podcasting experience. I mean, you've if you follow Kurt, you know that he shows up on a lot of other podcasts. He has his own podcast. He does podcasts for Lifter LMS. does podcast for WP Tonic. Uh, and I think he's a a professional in that space. And and I I might be biased, but I do feel like in each show that he shows up, he's that person, right? He's he's the person that you want for that show and that topic. And I think he does it like really good here at the Agency Action Show. And Toby was well, I'm going to say this with air quotes that if you're just listening, was just a guy doing like SEO and WordPress sites. And when I approached him, he was just like, I don't know if like I've always wanted to do a podcast, but I don't know if like I can do this if this is the right way. And to see this re not a rebound, but like to see this like growth of like how he has become like that kind of leader in this role to share his his knowledge with you is fantastic. So definitely go and support them at their businesses. Follow them on social. I know Toby's always doing stuff on LinkedIn. So is Kurt uh on LinkedIn. uh and definitely give them a tip of the hat because they do a fantastic job. The other stuff that we have coming down the pipe. So, if you don't already know, we have the hosting decoded course, how to choose the best WordPress host for your business, for your agency. And this is a free course brought to you by our sponsors, our lovely sponsors. You register for this course at the wpmin.com/courses. This is taught by Eric Karkovac who's our managing editor here at the WP Minute. 30 years of web web master experience. He's put this course together, you know, along with me and putting this, I guess, framework around how to look at hosting as like a true partnership, how to evaluate like a host on that like partnership level. Who who do you who's the best fit for your business of these web hosts? you know which align best with your projects and your customer. How do you be transparent with your customer to let them know, hey, we're not the web host here. We might be the middleman who is helping you, you know, interface with their support and our support and your website and we manage all of that stuff. We talk about that transparency and really how to look at this stuff as not something that you should be hiding from the customer something that you should be really transparent about and ultimately like increasing that that trust that brand trust with your customer and then fortifying partnerships on the other side of that with the web hosting companies that that you partner with. So it's not a course where we're saying like hey this is the host that you should work with. We're not talking about, you know, disk storage or bandwidth or PHP workers. We're talking about like the business level of an agency and freelancer and choosing that right host. Our next course coming out is squarely for agencies in two different ways. So, it's going to be about scoping projects, scoping WordPress projects. And again, we're not going through like here's the plugins you should use and if you're building a WooCommerce site, like these are the plugins you should be using. or if you're using a marketing, it's not about that technical side of things. It's about how you should think of approaching WordPress at scale, whatever scale means. scale could mean for a small brochure website and what it means to just like keep that thing running and how to level that up as that person builds his or her business or it could be at literal scale where it's an enterprise and you're thinking okay if I'm building a project like this quoting a project like this what resources go into that kind of project again not just about how big of a server do we need but how does how do we think about that as an agency how do we think about budget timeline, communication, and all that stuff. So, it's great for people who want to level up that side of um their knowledge as a freelancer and as an agency owner. It's also great for an agency or a freelancer to say, you know, hey, Mr. or Mrs. customer, you have questions about building a WordPress website. Maybe you look at my proposal and you say, oh boy, $5,000 to do all this. Like, that seems like a lot of money. Getting your average WordPress website buyer into this course is also highly recommended because again we're not pointing to any which way to build the site. We're not pointing to a particular agency or freelancer. What we're saying is these are the critical thinking points that is going to make WordPress uh be the best that it can be. You know depending on like what kind of project you're building. So, I would also say that if you are somebody who goes, I kind of know it all, you can still recommend your own customers or your own team, like if you're hiring people to join the team, this is a great course to get them to understand what it's like to build a great project. So, look for that. The wpmin.com/courses. Make sure you're on the newsletter because that's how you're going to uh stay informed about this. And also you can join the WP Minute Slack channel for free. Hey, we'd love a donation uh if if you want to help us keep the lights on. But you can also join for free. You can just register for any of the free courses on the website. And when you get log into the WP Minute, there'll be a call to action button that says, "Hey, join Slack here." And you can click that button and join Slack and get into the room with other WordPress professionals who are taking these courses but also who are very interested in uh growing their business and getting you know getting WordPress information and talking about it and sharing these different wins and losses and and like what's happening in the world of WordPress especially in the context of what do we do about AI and that's one of the things I want to talk about here in a moment. moment. The last thing uh that I want to talk about for the agency owner is we do have a new way of getting some value out of the WP Minute. Right? So, we have our Slack membership if you want to pay and join and help support us. It's awesome. You get some free perks like getting into any kind of private membership uh meetings that we do. Uh but also uh you can get some ads in our newsletter. Check that out. 79 bucks. We have sponsorship for for agencies and and product companies who also want to get the word out about their brand and and business. There's different levels there. You can check that out on the site as well. But we also are going to start launching a inperson air quotes again for those of you just listening. um an in-person cohort cohort of agency owners who just want that accountability, some kind of like kickoff to say, I've got, you know, it's the start of the year, got these plans, I've got these goals, I want to meet with people, like-minded people um on an ongoing basis to just like keep that thing going, right? Kind like mastermindy, but I'm kind of done with that that term. Uh it's really about just like accountability. Hey, we're all here. You know, Jack, you said you were going to launch this thing last week. It's a week has gone by. Did you do what you thought you were going to do? Yes. No. What was the what was the roadblock? And can we help with that roadblock? Right. You can apply to this right now. It's sort of taking shape. Go to the wpmin.com/ uh accountability intake. Accountability hyphen intake. It's the worst URL I could have picked, but I'll link it up wherever you're listening to this. accountability intake. the wpb.com accountability intake and you can fill out that form. I'm going through them. I have like about a dozen of them that have come through so far. Really looking for the right fit for this initial phase. It will be paid. It'll be short money for the six weeks, but it is paid because it does show that folks do want to join this stuff and it does help me pay for folks that help, you know, run this program internally. Okay, let's get to the discussion of today's episode. pontificate on this idea and you let me know how you feel about this. You know, we're at this point where about a year ago was really skeptical on like how good AI and uh the output of code and design and web development and you know thought logic and and creativity and research. I'm still cautiously optimistic. I am not, you know, I still don't know if there are any true benefits to humanity at the end of the day if we're adopting this stuff or really investing in this stuff. The the problem that I see is I don't know if the market is going to like let let it go at this point. like it's not going to let it go at this point and AI will be a cog in the internet forever now at this point. But when I compare like what I could do with AI to what I'm doing with AI today and everybody's hype about claude code as am I, it does feel like it just does a really damn good job at coding things. you know, hold your thoughts about like the code quality and output, but it is knocking things out of the park for me in terms of vanilla JavaScript apps, the you know, plug WordPress plug-in development, you know, certain like marketing logic like research and and running reports and and building plans and it's really starting to feel a lot more agentic, but there is like this thing where I still don't trust it 100%. And of course like the code quality and things like that can be argued. I would say there's you know I'm no obviously I'm not an a scientist here right like I'm not a data scientist I'm not an AI scientist not a physics scientist. I do think though as CPU power gets faster and more powerful code quality matters less. And I know somebody out there is flipping a table, but I think for like 98% of the stuff like a website, even a mobile app or some kind of other like native web app, like a lot of that stuff, a lot of the the bruises and the gaps in code can be smoothed over with just faster compute. I know that doesn't it's a steroid, but I think it's just a reality, right? Like when you just think about the size of like chips in the iPhone and how fast and how powerful they are compared to any other like legacy compute, it's pretty astonishing. and you think about like okay like if these things just get infinitely powerful more powerful does code quality really matter up until the point where you need to go like debug it and of course like for security and I'm not here to argue that but what I am getting to is the difference of output from a from a year ago is quite like it's tangible you I can I can see it in the in the stuff that I'm developing. Um, I can see it in and not only like the output, but in the speed of how these things get done. I mean, I was all in on Replet a year ago because it was a contained environment and uh you know, it had the database, it had the hosting, the agent was really good in terms of like going back and forth and iterating with it and all these other platforms where it felt like really sparse, but claude code in a terminal now for the stuff that I do, it's just blowing it out of the water. I mean, yeah, I still got to go set up hosting. I mean, I don't want to get into it in this episode, but Cloudflare is like really has some really cool services that are really fast and really affordable and fairly userfriendly. So, I don't want to get down the the path of like the real technical stuff, but like I'm able to build a whole plugin. I built a new podcast plugin called Podloom. You can find it at podloomplugin.com if you're a transistor podcast user like I am or just any podcast host with an RSS feed and you want to display your podcast episodes on your WordPress site with some other fancy bells and whistles, check out Podloom. But I mean, I'm running that with Claude 4.5 and I am constantly hitting it with check for performance gaps, check for security issues, check for, you know, proper WordPress development and dependencies. I am taking other plugins and comparing how they've done either like caching or security or other optimization and saying like compare it to that plugin. You know, what do you think? Run me a report. as a power user, as somebody who who knows business, who knows marketing, who knows customer success and just a little bit of development. Like there's these four pillars that I'm standing on now, being able to develop these plugins and these other services and going, "Wow, the game has has flipped." And I know a lot of people don't like to hear that. In fact, I still don't like to hear that. that you can say, "Well, you don't need an engineer anymore." Well, I think you do, but I think there's a level that there's a certain tier that goes away. Um, you could say that a tier goes away like the entry level, maybe junior level goes away. But I also think that they could they too if they invest in their own experiences and their own knowledge through AI, they can level up. But what does that mean for the future? Like I I I really start to think about how WordPress evolved and I mean if you've been in it as long as I have you go back to like page lines and site origin I think those are two separate companies you know Evvada and and then and then you think about the evolution of like page builders like Beaverbuilder then Elementor and then Gutenberg and now there's a bunch of different like page builders that are out there doing things different ways I mean the whole theme forest era where where people were just buying themes for what they did, you know, real estate, business directory, like and you were just buying these bundled themes and kind of like building on top of that. And you had this whole like workforce of people that were were buying $79 themes and with all this bundled logic and just like building, you know, solutions off of that. And all of this stuff was about getting it getting it done faster. Again, another phrase I know a lot of purists don't like to hear, but that's just like the the the nature of it all. Where I'm seeing this stuff excel is, well, we're getting things done faster. Is it the best? Yes or no. Is it the right way? Yes or no? Like, you now have to walk those paths of understanding like what I'm building here, is this the best for my customer? Is this the best for my business? Is it secure? Is it scalable? These are all the things you you get to answer, but you are getting a much faster head start. You know, just as fast as you could think about building a small business website with a cadence theme, with a studio press theme, and you're like, "Look how fast I built this. Now I just operate on that site, and I change the colors. I change the branding, the logos, and the and the content." We're doing this with bigger chunks of software, maybe even WordPress soon enough. So, where does that leave the agency owner? And here's the only thing I can think of right now, and that is doing the unscalable things, right? Like, we're doing all this stuff so we can move faster and to scale the business faster. And by all this stuff, I mean like, yeah, maybe you're adopting AI. Maybe you're productizing your stuff now because you're like, screw it. I I I don't even want to do custom anymore because I it just pulls me in too many directions now. I want to have more of like I'm the person who does nonprofit websites for sports leagues or I only do veterary school websites or like whatever your like niche is and maybe those are the things that like AI is helping and other automation tools are helping. But how are you going to win that customer? Because now if everyone's doing it, what's the thing that people are not doing? And my advice right now, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts, and I'd love to hear Toby and and Kurt talk about this stuff, is to do the unscalable thing, and that is to be more human and more connected to each and every customer. And it's not just like, oh yeah, I give you your monthly report of how many plugins we updated, what your stats are, and all that stuff. But it's about hey your your business is a part of my business now which means we have to really align in the beginning. So you might think oh my god like I can't I get all these people they have all these businesses. Well this is where things start to shift where agencies become much more part of the business because our tooling is getting more efficient our workflows are getting more efficient and now everyone's doing it. we stand out by connecting uh with that individual or that team a lot deeper. I don't know what that translates to just yet, but I do know is like people are going to want to connect with you and be more they want want you to be more transparent. They're probably going to want they're going to give more trust to you and they'll they'll probably be a stickier customer and you might not be able to charge for the things you used to charge for, but you could charge for, you know, the the knowledge of the industry that you're in. You know, the the level of commitment you have to the project and and how you're, you know, hitting the milestones or the deliverables that they're they're asking for. Like that stuff is going to change. And I would just say being more be more human, right? Not just throwing people to a process to a project manager and then you get these three checkpoints and you're out. What might the first thing I want to lead to from like the marketing person is like it's a membership like you're selling a membership to your customers. I don't want to say it's it's that in like this quirky kind of lingoy kind of way, but but it kind of is, you know, it kind of is where it's like a professional group of people and you support all of these people and maybe you're connecting your customers with your customers. Like maybe that's a thing. Um it's something to think about. And so the only phrase I have right now in in light of or in the lens of AI is doing the unscalable thing. And I've shared some of my thoughts with you just now of what I think that means. I would love to hear from you. Uh leave a comment below where you're watching this. Send me an email. Matt at the WP Minute. Don't forget to say thanks to Kurt and Toby who show up on the Agency Action podcast. If you want to stay connected to things all things WordPress, the wpminut.com/subscribe. Look out for those courses, you want to be in a cohort of other agencies and freelancers who are looking for that kind of level of accountability, the wpmin.com/accountability intake. wpminut.comacountability intake. I promise I'll never make another URL like that again. But that's what it's like running a media company as a part-time job here at the WP Minutemen. All right, see you in the next episode. Thanks for letting me butt in to the Agency Action, Are WordPress Agencies Doomed?, YouTube, 01kg0d7xc7zthsz01g7dn2784v.