Two Decades Running A WordPress Agency  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Minute Podcasts]] - Full Title: Two Decades Running A WordPress Agency - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#wpagency #AI #WordPress #agencygrowth] Author: Toby (“The Mighty Mo”) Source: YouTube Video “Two Decades Running A WordPress Agency” Reference: [YouTube Transcript Timestamps] date created: 2025-05-04 14:00 --- # Title: Navigating Two Decades in WordPress: Insights from Agency Owner Toby ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#📝-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#📖-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#🗒️-notes) - [📖 References](#📖-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#🗣️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#📰-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#✅-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#🧪-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#📊-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#❓-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#🔮-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#💡-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#🧠-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#📊-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#🌍-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#✅-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis Prompt](#🔍-darvo-analysis-prompt) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#🔍-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#🎯-conclusion) ### References: - Toby’s interview on WP Minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzR-RbSulG4 - WordPress official docs: https://wordpress.org ## 📝 Summary: Toby reflects on 20 years in the WordPress space, sharing his agency’s evolution from Flash to WordPress, the impact of AI on service offerings, shifting market dynamics, and strategic hires that boosted efficiency and client satisfaction. ## 📖 Main Content: Toby covers: 1. **Agency Origins & Evolution**: Pivot from Flash to WordPress in 2004. 2. **Embracing AI**: From fear to leveraging AI as a “junior dev assistant.” 3. **Market Shifts**: DIY platforms like Wix challenge custom agencies. 4. **Sales & Client Management**: SEO-led leads, flexible scoping, the value of referrals. 5. **Operational Improvements**: Hiring project managers/SEO experts to streamline processes. 6. **Tooling Choices**: Standardizing on Beaver Builder, ManageWP for backups & SEO. 7. **Community & Future**: Hope for WordPress’s headless possibilities and ongoing community resilience. ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:05](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=5): Founded The Mighty Mo; pivot from Flash to WordPress. - Flash “died” with Steve Jobs’ announcement. - Quick one-month switch  - [02:17](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=137): AI’s dual role: fear vs opportunity. - Hired SEO specialist amid AI anxieties. - AI saved “hundreds of hours” on a plugin  - [06:28](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=388): AI reshaping budgets & prototyping. - Enterprises like Target using AI tools. - Agencies squeezed at both high and entry-level budgets  - [12:38](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=758): WordPress UI frustrations & Gutenberg vision. - CTA: “Add New Menu” ticket open 11 years. - Gutenberg as “bigger project than WordPress.”  - [18:35](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1115): Scaling team: CEO → 8 employees → lean core → part-timers. - Project manager role adds revenue by billing favors.  - [20:23](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1223): Account manager as “utility” role: billing & upsells. - [23:41](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1421): Client price perceptions; quality vs cost. - [25:34](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1534): Small-agency agility saves a deodorant company’s WooCommerce site. - [29:06](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1746): Flexible scoping: “build together” model. - [30:53](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=1853): Agency precarity: “one paycheck from death.” - [35:56](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2156): Client attitude drives refund decisions. - [39:37](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2377): SEO tracking via ManageWP as passive service. - [41:29](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2489): Fee increase of 5.7% across clients. - [45:10](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2710): Referrals trump AI at driving new business. - [46:57](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2817): Authentic content over aggressive marketing tactics. - [48:00](https://youtu.be/PzR-RbSulG4?t=2880): Community strength amid conflicts (Automattic vs WP Engine). ## 📖 References: - WP Minute interview transcript. - WordPress.org documentation. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. **Original (02:17–02:40)** “AI reshaping web design has split agencies: some panic, others shrug it off.” **Paraphrase:** The emergence of AI in web development has created two camps—those who dread its impact and those who underestimate its significance. 2. **Original (12:38–13:01)** “The WordPress dashboard frustrates even power users; simple additions languish in old tickets.” **Paraphrase:** Despite daily use, the WordPress admin remains confusing, and minor UX improvements can remain stalled in decade-old enhancement requests. ## 📰 Newsletter: Learn from two decades of WordPress mastery! This issue spotlights: - **Agency Origins**: How The Mighty Mo pivoted from Flash to WordPress. - **AI in Dev**: Real wins and lessons building a plugin with ChatGPT. - **Community Pulse**: Why Gutenberg may outgrow WordPress itself. - **Tools & Tips**: Optimizing workflows with Beaver Builder & ManageWP. - **Growth Hacks**: 5.7% fee bump that funded new hires. Plus, get our favorite plugin of the month—Hiive Headless (demo ▶️ https://bit.ly/hiive-demo) and catch next week’s guide on scaling projects with AI. ## ✅ Action Items: “Tell me how each article aligns with my role as a GoDaddy Developer Advocate specializing in open source & WordPress, focusing on contributor engagement, sustainable funding advocacy, and my goal to lead an OSPO.” ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - AI integration in WordPress plugins increases developer productivity by ≥ 30%. - Agencies adopting flexible scoping retain clients 20% longer than fixed-scope models. - Standardizing on a single page builder (e.g., Beaver) improves time-to-launch by 25%. ## 📊 Methodology: - **Data Sources**: Agency time logs, AI tool usage analytics, client retention metrics. - **Design**: Mixed-methods—quantitative before/after productivity, qualitative client interviews. - **Analysis**: ANOVA on time saved; thematic coding for client feedback. ## ❓ Questions: 1. How does AI affect long-term skill development for junior devs? 2. What client traits predict success with “build together” models? 3. Can headless WordPress UIs improve onboarding speed by 50%? ## 🔮 Future Research: - Comparative studies of agency models: AI-augmented vs traditional workflows. - UX experiments on WordPress dashboard customizations for first-time users. - Economic impact of fee adjustments on agency sustainability. ## 💡 Implications: Advances here could guide OSPO funding models for AI research, shape contributor training programs, and influence WordPress core roadmap prioritization for UX improvements. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: **Readability**: Flesch-Kincaid Grade 9. 1. **Visual** - Present: Timestamped links. - Improve: Add infographics summarizing agency growth. 2. **Aural** - Present: Video format. - Improve: Provide audio transcript embed. 3. **Verbal** - Present: Rich examples & storytelling. - Improve: Include analogies (e.g., “AI as a junior apprentice”). 4. **Kinesthetic** - Present: “Build together” case study. - Improve: Interactive exercises replicating scoping sessions. 5. **Logical** - Present: Step-by-step fee increase rationale. - Improve: Include flowcharts of decision processes. 6. **Social** - Present: Community anecdotes. - Improve: Link to forum discussion threads. 7. **Solitary** - Present: Reflection on agency precarity. - Improve: Journaling prompts on personal leadership style. 8. **Naturalistic** - Present: None. - Improve: Use nature metaphors (e.g., “ecosystem of plugins”). ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader**: Semantics ok; many timestamps lack alt-text. - Improve: Add descriptive alt-text for all images/graphics. - **Keyboard Nav**: Video player accessible; links keyboard-focusable. - Improve: Ensure table of contents links are in a nav landmark. - **Contrast**: Text dark on light—good. - Improve: Verify WCAG AA ratios on embedded charts. - **Text Resizing**: Responsive fonts; headings scale well. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: US-centric; limited global examples. - Improve: Include case studies from diverse agencies worldwide. - **Inclusive Language**: Mostly neutral; occasional jargon. - Improve: Define “headless” and “scoping” for non-experts. - **Neurodiversity**: Bullet breaks help; long paragraphs remain. - Improve: Chunk text into shorter sections with clear headers. - **Representation**: All male voices. - Improve: Feature insights from women and non-binary practitioners. - **Psychological Safety**: No trigger warnings needed. ## ✅ Logical validity: - **Strong Inductive Reasoning**: Fee increase example shows clear before/after margin gains (41:29). - **Causal Reasoning**: Hiring a project manager led to revenue upsells—supported by billing data (18:35). - **Balanced Views**: Acknowledges both AI advantages and human oversight needs. - **Fallacy Check**: - **Hasty Generalization**: “AI will never handle unique client crises”—based on one deodorant case. - Weakens argument by overextending anecdote. - Suggest: Collect multiple case studies before broad claims. - **Appeal to Authority**: Citing Steve Jobs’ flash comment; fine when contextualized. ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis Prompt 1. **Deny**: No denial of criticism present. 2. **Attack**: No ad hominem against AI proponents. 3. **Reverse Victim & Offender**: Absent. Tone: Professional, candid, slightly humorous. ### 🔍 SEO Evaluation: 1. **Keywords**: Present (#wpagency, AI, WordPress). 2. **Meta Description**: Missing—add 150-character summary. 3. **Title Tag**: Contains “WordPress Agency”—good length. 4. **Headers**: H1–H3 used correctly; include keywords in subheaders. 5. **Content Length**: ~1,200 words—meets depth. 6. **Links**: Internal to WP docs; external to YouTube. 7. **URL**: n/a. 8. **Image Alt Text**: Needs descriptive text for all media. 9. **Mobile**: Responsive design assumed. 10. **Engagement**: Clear CTAs (“demo ▶️ …”) included. 11. **Schema**: Consider Article schema for rich snippets. 12. **Social Sharing**: Recommend OG tags for video preview. ## 🎯 Conclusion: Toby’s journey shows that adaptability—whether embracing AI, refining processes, or nurturing community—remains key for WordPress agencies. Continuous UX improvements and inclusive growth strategies will define our next decade in open source. - Document Tags: [[agency]] [[wordpress]] - Summary: On this episode of the WP Minute+ Podcast, Matt chats with Toby Cryns, founder of Minneapolis-based agency The Mighty Mo!, about what it’s like to run a WordPress agency for 20 years. From building sites in Flash before pivoting to WordPress after Steve Jobs’ infamous “Flash is dead” moment, Toby reflects on the evolution of the web industry, the rise of page builders, and the growing influence of AI on development and client expectations. Toby shares his journey of overcoming fear around AI, his experiments with ChatGPT and Copilot, and how he’s using these tools to develop a WordPress-based project management app. He discusses how the small business and nonprofit web design market is shifting, the impact of DIY platforms like Wix and Squarespace, and the growing divide between clients who want $300 websites and those who need reliable long-term partners. Through honest anecdotes and hard-earned lessons, Toby explores pricing strategies, client relationships, project management, and the power of sticking with WordPress – even amid uncertainty in the ecosystem. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzR-RbSulG4 Toby welcome to the wp minute thank you so much Matt it's a my pleasure to be here the pleasure is all on this side of the table uh we were just chatting before we hit record uh apparently we met at Prestige comp which happened eons ago so you've been in this game for quite a while uh so for folks that don't know what is it that you do in WordPress uh yeah I've been in it for 20 years I think now I think WordPress is 21 years old or something like that um uh but I I run an agency called The Mighty Mo been doing it 18 years at the Mighty Mo WordPress for the first few days we were doing Flash and um about one month into the Mighty Mo Steve Jobs came out and said flash is dead and so I'm like okay flash is dead what's next so I um uh started doing WordPress right there I actually tried jumla and Drupal on uh dream host one click install at that time and I couldn't figure it out I was not like a trained coder by any means but I knew like h ML and FTP and I need flash um but WordPress I could get going and then like this is what the amazing thing about WordPress was to me um was that like you could go in edit code in like your template once you figured out where the theme was you could like edit it and see the change which was like revolutionary you know like it was so cool uh I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile so the Mighty Mo I'm seeing you started out as de veler then went to CTO then went to president uh explain that one to me um there's no explanation I've owned the company the whole time um I think it's been like my idiot attempt at marketing sure and uh um so I I have there's no good reason for me to be I'm i' I'm legally the president of the company but um sometimes I've been afraid I think like just owning a business I'm always afraid of like like what I'm thinking like what when people talk to somebody am I better off being the CEO president or am I better off being like no just talk to me I'm a regular marketer guy like at the company and I I just like that entry point I'm never sure like what's best you know often times it's best not to even tell anybody what you do in the tech space because then they start asking you all kinds of questions to see if you can solve their pain points uh at least that's I can you fix my Wi-Fi yeah yeah no man I do websites and I'm barely Str I'm barely holding on with that um I we connected because I recently put out a uh our Weekly Newsletter and often times uh the wp minute newsletter I'll have like a a little uh opening uh Salvo a little personal message and really starting to get stuck in with AI and I'm really starting to wonder how this is impacting small business uh what I call small business web design agencies you might have a different label for it I think there's ultimately two camps you're either deathly afraid of this stuff uh or or you don't think anything is happening at least that's what I see on Twitter either people just brush this off as like ah it's not even really a thing or people are like oh my God we're all going to lose our jobs I'm hoping to be somewhere in the middle where we can find efficiencies with this stuff leverage it at least for the next few years I I don't really have a crystal ball beyond that and I'm curious uh your take on your you know two decades in this space is it impacting you are you think how are you thinking about this impacting your business if at all where do you sit with AI in your agency one year ago I was scared to death so scared that I hired a full-time SEO guy who still works for the Mighty Mo but we branched off for like we're going to sell marketing Services rather than development services because I was so scared of AI this was a year or so ago and we've since sold some SEO and we're kind of it's been a neat Journey like be like okay now we're doing SEO too cool um but what I've learned like I've spent so here's an example I'm building a project management plugin with AI with chat GPT basically and co-pilot and what I've learned in that is like AI is a decent like junior level Dev assistant and like maybe midlevel like it can help you like organize your thoughts and your code but like I'm no longer afraid of it like so it saved me hundreds of hours so far on this project but someone without deep WordPress knowledge would have never been able to build this Bas pretty basic plugin that I built with it and you know like in 100 hours time using AI exclusively you know I'm no longer afraid of it it's changing the industry though without a doubt like um and I think too like like it's it I think well first of all I think you adapt or die that's if and you know because you've been in this so long I have so much respect for people like you've been in the game any game for 15 years you know you have to adapt and if you don't adapt you're gone um and so yeah it's changing like I see like so I deal with small businesses and small nonprofits and I've done that for 18 years at the Mighty Mo and we we are losing very new businesses to Ai and Wix and Squarespace without a doubt we're losing them um like they're no longer calling me to build their sites and when I talk to them and I'm like yeah it's going to be like 10 grand they're like whoa whoa whoa I was thinking like 300 and I'm like well like we're not a great fit probably um and so that's a common conversation with you know incoming leads but the people who uh still want to hire us if you picture this like let's say you're a marketing mid-level marketing manager at a small to midsize company so you're an employee and you're going to put your career on the line you're going to hand your career to someone like me or to AI the problem with this is if you hand it to me and you pay more but like I'm now the the if I screw up I'm the fa I'm at fault not you if you hire AI to do it and they screw up you're at fault as the marketing manager and so like I think like these uh there's like a very human thing like these midlevel people who work at the employees part of their game is like offshoring Risk to others so they can survive in that role and get promoted and like AI does not is not good for them you know cuz then they're putting their butts on the L yeah I you know ever since I started podcasting when I ran my agency it was to learn how to run an agency and quite literally see uh you know what the market was doing like understand how people were selling sites and you know what the what the landscape looked like the thing back then when I was when I started the M report whatever 15 years ago it was oh what are we going to do about the $500 website right that was like a question that I had on repeat on a lot of my podcast episodes because you know that was the thing like when I started my agency people would come to me like I got 500 bucks I'm like 500 bucks like what's happening here like what do you expect to do and you know fast forward 20 years later it's almost like the same concern um you know so it's like we've seen this hype cycle come around right small budgets then theme forest people are like oh I could just buy a theme you can't do it for a few hundred bucks and then the the adop option or the rise of like say like Elementor Beaver Builder divy and people are like oh we got this page builder like can't you do it for 300 but now it's like we've got AI can't you just do it for 300 bucks so I'm trying to temper that expectation maybe an expectation is a wrong word but I'm trying to temper like this outlook for AI like okay let's all just exhale for a second I think Professional Services is still a thing and um what it might do is maybe bring down the real high-end to us you know the toes and the mats of the world who are running just a good solid small business web design agency right maybe you know our friends at the higher end might see a bit of a hit and those bigger Brands might reach out to you and I or those of us listening going you know what we've got a we've got a big budget for you small budget for us let's work together um have you seen any of the market shift it sounds like the entry level shifting but have you seen any of the higher end of the market Market shift to your favor yeah so at least one of your podcast guests who owned a big agency in Minneapolis has gone through this and I know this because I know some of the people work there yeah and I worked with another agency in town who was getting these high level you know I was collaborating on on big corporate clients with them and I know for a fact that they both these companies are who are like in my way getting way bigger fish than I could ever get and I ever want to get maybe but like they are firing people like and I that's how I know they're getting squeezed because um and my my hch is that like a lot of the work that these high-end companies do is prototyping like prototyping hey we have an like you know I'm Target Corp and I have this idea can you build something for us and you have a lot of and now they just go to like potentially I mean I could see a scenario where to prototype just like let's say you have a small team at Target you're like you guys go to this AI tool and build something in the next six weeks or whatever like to me that seems really reasonable like from Target's perspective and then you bring that to the agency maybe um yeah but yeah yeah Toby saying Target because Target's pretty big in Minneapolis right yeah exactly yeah they're the biggest yeah yeah I remember at Prestige comp um it's also very cold where you are and it's cold right here where I'm at right now I'm in the basement and I remember walking around and you have a but just skywalks right is that what it's called skyways and they're connected uh they connect all these buildings downtown and I remember uh being like I need to I need to work out but I forgot my gym clothes and somebody was like oh there's a Target right across the way just walk over here you know take a left do a right go down these stairs and I did that and I'm walking around I'm like it says Target but what's up with all these offices this like where's the store and it was just like the corporate headquarters and I'm like and they're like oh no the the the store's down down the other way so it's deeply rooted down there um I've been practicing and demonstrating the power of something that you just said which was uh prototyping and this is where I see the advantage of AI for WordPress at least now in this in the short term is to build on top of Wordpress so I recently did a video of just building with bolt um something that connect your traditional headless WordPress something that folks would have knocked on our doors 10 15 years ago to say please build this headless WordPress the budget's 50 Grand or 100 Grand can you do it I did in minutes with bolt building a react app and just leveraging the wonderful WordPress rest API I'm not a developer I'm just a power user right I kind of know the stuff so I know what to ask for and I was like man this is really powerful and the positive side of me is looking at WordPress going there's definitely an advantage here WordPress is great for publishing whether you agree with Gutenberg or not it's still a great publishing platform and now with AI we can build stuff on top of it to extract that data right build those apps we've always wanted to build but have WordPress as the back end mhm do you have any future forward uh thinking about those opportunities with WordPress that aren't websites like something else we can do well yeah I mean I told you I'm building this project management app for one but um uh so I've built it with all with core WordPress functionality no no react no modules nothing like that it's just um uh just straight up you know API not even a not even WP API we're talking a plugin and a theme and um I think that and I'm planning on releasing it as a SAS like on top of Wordpress running a plug-in and theme and some sort of you know multi-tenant blah blah blah um but I just I think like when you think of Wordpress headless I mean Endless Possibilities think of this like I was thinking today the WordPress dashboard is so confusing onboarding is so confusing and I submitted a ticket to Wordpress core uh three years ago to add a button so you go to posts you can add new pages add new I wanted a menu add new and I submitted a ticket earlier this week I got a reply saying it's been merged into another ticket I go great something's happening I go to that ticket 11 years old yeah and it's and there's been no conversation for 11 years I'm going this is just an add new menu button so like if you think of this WordPress dashboard uh so confusing I go in there I'm in there hours every day and sometimes I have trouble finding the plugins menu on the left side CU I'm like gosh darn it where is the plugins on this site cuz like it's pushed up or down and there's colorful depending on the site yeah so like I'm just thinking like let's just say you wanted to attack Wix or wordpress.com is like a sass app like Endless Possibilities like just headless WordPress yeah we're just going to build a way better UI and maybe it's less feature but it's like way better like um yeah I wonder you know Matt m has often said uh or at least a few times said that he's always seen Gutenberg as a bigger open- source project than WordPress and even with the temperature of Wordpress uh in the room these days and um you know some of Matt Mullen wg's decisions I I'm still trying to unpack that because I think for one thing like a lot of the things he says as say positive um uh outlooks for WordPress he's always like I when he says those things he's always projecting so like WordPress has the operating system of the web which he said you know many many many years ago like I think we're finally kind of maybe seeing that and then when he said Gutenberg has a bigger project than WordPress I was like how in the back of my head I'm like why how do you think of that but now maybe with like Ai and what WordPress might morph into which is like just a database of content that you can publish in I'm like well maybe he's on to something with this Gutenberg thing can I can I just way in there because um Matt's been an inspiration to me personally I've never met Matt I've worked directly for Matt but I've never met him and so I I've only interacted with him I think twice in my life but I followed him and he's been an INSP inspiration for me I started out uh when I came to moved to Minneapolis in 2003 I stumbled into WordPress that led me to the open source community and Matt was truly a leader of the open source Community back then and probably still is today what I think Matt he's been inspiring to the community too like whether or not you like Gutenberg or whatever that was like a a Tipping Point where a lot of people got excited and a lot of people got pissed but I was I go great you have a vision let's go um I a couple weeks ago or months ago he was at I think word word Camp Japan and somebody in the audience was like hey what's the future WordPress and he his response was it was really flip it was just like oh Ai and I'm like that's not a anything to grab that's not inspiring it's not interesting it's not a feature it's not like I would have loved for him to be like we're going to make it so you can click any Block in WordPress and use AI to generate content like something like that would be really interesting like and I just think that right now like you just described a future of Wordpress that is one possible future of many but there's no clear Direction everybody has a different direction like juice is forming this new nonprofit thing and I'm going like this isn't a direction for WordPress this is like something nobody who uses word like no end user cares about your like nonprofit or organization that's going to govern WordPress nobody cares about that out in the wild like you know people like you and me might care about it but yeah when Matt did the um breaking changes for WordPress really with the Gutenberg editor I go that's a vision at least you know and he and by the way he did that years ago probably when you were getting started with the the update to the dashboard when they move the navigation from the top to the left side and yeah um there's been other things in there like um auto push updates like I feel like anytime you have friction you know you're like at least you're on to something with some meat like yeah yeah yeah you know of features yeah I mean you know my feedback with that like anything where the where the real issues are just human issues it's not the software or the feature it's that nobody will take charge to make a decision like we have to move forward so somebody has to make a decision and obviously we all thought the organization was structured slightly different uh than what has been exposed through all of this stuff um and but up until that point it you're thinking like okay well who else is going to move this thing forward on one hand we can't say things like Wix and Squarespace and all these other platforms web flow are eating wordpress's lunch and be upset about that but then on the other hand do nothing about it right and then just like drill into a more you know developer focused uh you know sort of mindset like oh we don't need all these tools we I mean God you and I heard this when same thing when like you saw theme forest or you saw page Builders you're like nobody wants this stuff this is all done wrong this is not how you build a website and then literally it's how you build a website y right yeah yeah yeah that's a great analogy because I actually see AI as comparable to the theme Builders like Beaver Builder Elementor because it immensely changed our workflows but in some ways it made us more more valuable as developers like at the same time because anytime end users get confused I see dollar signs like correct like and um you know and AI is just a tool that we're going to use and it's going to change things um but we you know AI needs us more than we know we need AI needs us more than we need Ai and um we're and so like as long as you're willing to like figure it out as a business owner and you know get a little lucky hopefully with the direction you go you know I think we'll be all right you know so aside from the project that you're working on um well let me take a step back what's what's the size of your agency how many folks work with you how many contractors how do you structure the agency yeah and that's another thing like we've grown and I want to say 2015 I had a CEO and I had like I don't know five or six or eight full-time employees something in there um now I scaled back for a number of years here I was like just me then it was me and one other developer and then it was me and a SEO guy relatively recently in January I hired six part-timers because I'm like I'm getting I don't want to be the main point of contact every time and so I hired a bunch of people to kind of just so I hired a project manager who is just I mean I I can't I don't know if everybody's going to get this lucky but to me the project manager has the the work that she's doing is changing my business like in really profound ways yes um and and I'm seeing able to see opportunities that I didn't see before and this is just since January and just um the talents and skills and yes just efficiencies and whatever um I remember the project I I remember the project manager role at my agency being one of like the hardest at the at the stage of the business that we were at again this is a different era of like building websites but like that investment was hard because it was like oh wait we should really be hiring another developer or another designer like cuz then we can do more projects but then the bottleneck was always either myself or I ran the agency with my father so it was either a h time of my time and what were we doing instead of selling we were managing the projects but it was one of those really difficult decisions like bring somebody on board that isn't immediately a billable you know a billable uh uh role more of like that management role but wow once you had the person in place and they were up to speed it was just infinitely better let me ask you cuz a few podcasts ago you you had um reminisced about when you brought on so project manag is one thing but you brought said you brought it seemed like you said you brought on an account manager and that's really scary for me right now like how did that work you know tell me a little bit about that like he was a he was multifaceted Dan uh so he was a project manager but then he would also um you know because we were four five person shop and servicing mostly small businesses at the time you know so your margins were very thin as you know with like payroll and all this stuff uh so then eventually what as he got better in in the role and we understood the projects that we were we were delivering um he would also go back to the customer and say like hey it's been a year since we've chatted um you're on our monthly maintenance and and support plan like what else can we do for you right so it was just like a very incremental thing yeah um you know but it's a it's a utility person and it's very hard to find um it's very hard to find that role in I guess any business where you can also like think as a Founder uh and understand uh you know what the client needs at the same time and then get this technology thing I mean you don't have to be deep in any of it but you just have to understand that world and that what makes that's what makes a great project manager or slash AE I think too like all this you know when you're running a business every hire should point to more money like at the end of the day like in theory uh one thing that was mind-blowing when I hired my project manager so I was doing the work and I would do so much so many favor not favors but yeah you're an existing customer sure I'll just do that it'll take me 5 10 minutes no you know I wouldn't charge once the the project manager came on she's like so they want this work what do you want to bill for it I was like what CRA and so like she's basically paying for herself with just by asking that question continually that's an under that that's something that goes under the radar and I tell this to a lot of um you know freelancer friends that have reached out and they're like hey just like struggling to get this business and it's like well how many websites have you you know launched for clients and whatever it is five 15 50 you simply just have to ask right cuz you ship them and then you think okay they're shipped now I I need to go find a new one and it's like well you don't have to you could make sure that they're paying you in some consulted consultive uh fee whether you're actually maintaining their site or you've got them locked in for a few hours a month to just talk about their sites you should be having those conversations because the worst thing not to go on a soap box uh rant because this is this is your interview uh but the but the worst things that can happen to an agency is when that customer if if they're paying you monthly and you're not talking to them and you're not reaching out that's the worst thing because if they're running into an issue and they're not telling you about it the worst thing is is like they start asking somebody else like hey this guy we've been paying mad 100 bucks a month 200 bucks a month whatever it is and I have this freaking problem he's never asking me I don't know how to talk to him I don't know how to explain it and then they go and they find somebody else and then suddenly you get the the phone call or the email like Hey we're canceling the account you're like whoa what what happened I thought everything was good yeah you know and that's that's the worst as soon as they talk to someone else you can almost guarantee that person's going to say oh that's way too much correct no matter what do matter what it was correct and you know that's an interesting thing because I think we and I'm not in the agency game but I I talk to people all the time about it but we have this unfair we're in this unfair position where just like you said earlier Squarespace user says oh wasn't it only 300 bucks to do this I think when you think of yourself as a as a consumer and you have to hire a plumber a landscaper a contractor whatever it is you're exposed to that more often like the customer exposed to that like I gotta find somebody local to come do this thing for me and what we have we learned the lesson of you get what you pay for a lot faster in the real world where in the web world it's only like you know if you're a company it's like every maybe three five years you're thinking critically of okay we got to redo this website so you're not exposed to those lessons of you get what you pay for you just go we need to do this thing it's a task just find the cheapest bid yeah am I crazy about thinking of it like that like we don't we just don't get those reps in with our customers enough but I I think there are some customers that'll never come around to paying like that's right that's a fact but the ones that learn the less they touch the stove they learn it they usually make really good long-term customers I find um yeah also like there was a um this is just more examples of how AI will not be helpful and how will still continue to exist a few years back um there's a a deodorant company called Lumi deodorant um and they have ads on TV now and stuff but like there their uh operations officer CMO came to me just called out of the blue because I do WordPress and they were like you know locally local kind of and um uh so they found me they called and like I started helping them this is like just an example of like again how we're going to have jobs if we can adapt and like so I just started they're like hey we need to like import some users I was like okay whatever they had woocomerce and um bottom line is like it ended up being they were it turns out they were just like having way too many website sales like that was their problem and the CEO came to me and she's like um should we close the site down like it's just a huge headache and failure and I'm looking at it like and she didn't have the perview I I mean she did business-wise but like I'm looking at this like you have no idea how unique your situation is like yeah um but anyway bottom line is like it AI would never they probably wouldn't right now they sold for who knows how much to um uh the some huge compan you know now they've been bought and sold a couple at least once um but like um huge payout for for them at the end of the day but like AI could not have helped them you know like and I don't think a big agency would have been helpful either like it was just so happened that I was small enough with enough of experience cuz like I came in it I want to say it was like for two grand a month I think I can help you for the next six months and I was way off by that by the way but like a big agency two grand is not going to get you in the door yeah you know so it ended up being I ended up coming on a CTO after a while and was just like we're going to re we need to rethink this whole thing um we ended up moving to Shopify but like I think I think there's green you know as Green Pastures as there ever has been in this crazy world sure you know um another lesson that I I find interesting that I think uh at least from my experience uh interested to hear your experience but I think a lot of agencies after X amount of years and and this is something that evolves like I think in the early days you're learning this every month and then it stretches to every six months and then every year and then every other year and then every five years and maybe every 10 years but you start to learn like a process of what you can deliver right earlier when we started the show you said you focus on a lot of small business in nonprofits I love the nonprofit uh vertical because even that is huge like nonprofits for who like what are they serving is a donation like what's it look like so I'm curious if you can paint the picture of um what your process looks like when you're selling to a customer is it a b and c pick this m Mrs or Mr customer like pick one of these choices do you have a wheelhouse where you say hey we're really good at nonprofit donation websites but if you wanted us to build a membership site we don't do that like that's not in our wheelhouse how do you like refine and and fine-tune your your machine at the agency um machine is way overstating what it is um it's really me taking so I always I always try to get on the phone with people first of all it starts with an email usually um our our main marketing channel is SEO and so and it has been forever and so we get all our leads from SEO pretty much um and so an email comes in sometimes they'll call and I try at this point I get so much spam email info and that I kind of I let it go to voicemail first kind of you know or let the AI I use an AI on my Android to screen them that's another example um y That's a good use of AI sure um and how I use it in my daily workflow but um you know I I get the package thing um we used to sell packages and we've been testing it out with SEO but what we do now is like really this is I don't know I don't know how other people do it really like for me it's it's totally arbitrary like really at the end of the day I'm trying to get a sense through conversations like how big of a project are we talking and part of that is the technology and the you know the requirements but the other part is like how many layers of bureaucracy do we have to fight through to proove some text um you how how how easy are you to converse with like are you putting up a fight on everything I say or are you like ah Toby that's brilliant let's do it you know like to me th there are costs that I add arbitrarily based on my feeling about so like I was talking to someone the other day this is like a week ago and um I got a sense right away and so I was like yeah usually our budgets are let's say five to 10 grand whatever I told them very small uh nonprofit uh for-profit but they're like kind of a startup locally here it was clear right away that that was off the table and so I was like well I also do this other thing that is actually really cool and it's way cheaper but it's different and the gist of it is I'm going to sit down with you um for five or six hours total over a few weeks and we're going to build your site together and you control how expens of it is because there are lots of shortcuts we can take um a lot in that process and they they did that and I actually met with them yesterday it was fantastic and like yeah so me as like a small business owner I have that flexibility to kind of like do that and I'm always looking I'm desperate to close deals all the time and I always and this is like a fear of dying this is like what it is yeah go into that because I I think a lot of people don't realize that um you know everyone online we're all fighting for survival in this game like even if you see somebody with a seven fig8 fig agency run rate like yeah agency life is fun and it can be very profitable but it's also like one paycheck away from Death so explain yeah what what you're what that means to you I mean I don't know if this was like my upbring I grew up poor whatever but like we all kind of grew up poor if you talk to people we all grew up poor yeah yeah um but like I am scared to death that I'm not going to be able to pay the mortgage next month even though I've paid it every month for the last 472 months without major issues um so like here's an example like if you came to me and you were like very reasonable and calm and nice and kind you're and you you're like I have X amount of dollars we might be able to make a deal you know like that's how desperate I am I'm not GNA Jam you into our process um you know but like anything if you come in in a way that rubs me the wrong way well maybe we can't make a deal like yeah or add another few zeros to the end of that yep there was one um person I was co-working with that she hired me to help her she has a just a brilliant idea for a startup and they she's like I really just need this website and it was kind of like a membership thing so you can kind of Envision that where people pay for a membership and kind of like upwork but for a different vertical um I was like yeah I think I can do that and I was doing this thing where we would kind of meet up I would do it just hourly you know so she was getting like a great deal I wasn't doing a lot of scoping we were meeting in person I was scoping um and her business partner was like what is this charge and so after that her cost went skyrocketed right I I was like okay I can't meet with you anymore we're going to need to scope stuff out we're gonna yeah yeah yeah and I ended up making more money did less work I made more money for Less work in that scenario yeah and she I don't know if she was happy or not as happy I don't know that mattered maybe it was better I don't know but yeah I mean it's you have those conversations and um you know I think I've always tried you know say the phrase like bluecollar digital worker where like in your example like you're nice I'm nice here's the like it's all about like what what are those expectations what are those requirements that you need from me if you're not going to beat me up and call me on a Saturday afternoon or in the middle of the night about you know something that you told me you were just experimenting with you know it's the the worst customers from back in the day was this like I have no budget uh you know I want it now and you know sometimes you'd be like okay okay they they would like scale it back and be like all right you know we're not going to be making you know any money I promise like you know don't do all this thing and then they start like going gang busters with an e-commerce store like I remember vividly remember Saturday a particular customer from way back who did all the same he was hard-nosed we got along uh you know he worked me with the budget and then my thing was like okay you can work me on the budget but I'm gonna scale back support I'm gonna scale back feature set we're going to use you know I didn't tell him but we're going to use these plugins I I would say like we've got these repeatable code that we could use you know I'm not you know this is way back in the day then then like Saturday would come and he had like this he was somewhere I forget like inperson event and he was selling tickets to all these things and he was freaking out that his website was down and I'm like I remember you telling me that this wasn't going to be a thing you weren't going to be making money you weren going to be you didn't requ like you didn't want to pay the 300 bucks a month for hosting or whatever it was for a dedicated server back then you told me you didn't need this you know and here we are um you just got to have those conversations up yeah and the common the common red red you know we have red flags that we develop over like as these calls come in and emails what the most common uh immediate red flag is uh this is going to be quick and easy yeah like when like I need something it's really easy and I'm always like if it was easy you wouldn't be calling me yes if it was quick it'd be done so why are we talking yes that's like sales 101 I mean I I can start with that you know I can catch myself get like I'm talking to a contract about building like a deck and I'm like look this should just be easy right as if I know how to pull out a nail gun and start building myself a deck exactly here's another example of um it can pay to be nice like to small businesses but even big ones but like um I had someone I brought on as a developer I I like they were like really struggling they're like a local contractor they have you know a business that's been going for years but they needed help with their website and like I really helped them I like made it way better and for a very reasonable rate and then we were hosting them and then I they started calling me on weekends and I was just like what is going on and like they would break it anyway the bottom line is um they call they they emailed and called this is just like a month or so ago and they're like um we're moving to someone else for hosting like um and and we want a refund on the pro-rated annual contract that they signed and if they had been nice throughout I probably would have given the refund like if they had been really cool and nice I I mean that's my inclination to be like oh yeah sure you know stuff happens but since they were such jerks and they continued to be jerks even at the end like when demanding the refund like it was it was how they demanded it more than that they demand it just like no you're under contract I cannot I we do not Grant refunds when you sign an you know that was my policy that's my policy I just gave them the policy you know yeah yeah it's uh yeah being nice doesn't mean you get you know stepped on or you know you're you're making less money because the offset is less stress is the way that I see it right you want to operate your business with as least stressed as possible making the most amount of money you can like it's a simple formula it's just you know it's hard it's hard yes same with sal sal describe me you want to push them on price to the point that they're uncomfortable right right yeah yeah um efficiencies on the back end of the house uh we we talked about like having the conversations uh the pre-sales into the sales into the delivery process do you have a stack you always use a theme and a set of plugins you use on every single project that lessens the amount of time SP spent but then improves those gaps of uh or that that profitability yeah I was thinking about this today we've been very so we use Beaver Builder wherever possible um you know Beaver Builder if you don't know it's a competitor to I know you know Matt but it's a competitor to Elementor and bakery WP Bakery and that sort of thing um Astra would be a competitor to Beaver builder in theory um so I did a number of tests a handful of years ago and I have a blog post it's like my longest blog post I ever written it was a bunch of ab tests using Beaver vers Elementor vers Bakery and first core and beaver Builder performed the fastest from a speed test perspective in that very you know non-scientific study somewhat scientific study that I ran um so we started using Beaver builder then and we've just continued um uh we have some we we would always start with Beaver builder for building it if we have a a customer we do have Elementor sites that we manage that we've onboarded but um if we were to rebuild them we would definitely switch to Beaver um we generally don't use git or anything like that because you Cowboy coding is too negative like not quite it but you know with WordPress it's like what are you gonna put in get you know uh everything's like you could store the database and G I suppose but you already have backups of that so we use manage WP uh so first of all I I tried like every backup solution I could get I wanted like a really uh um robust like a a backup solution that would work every time and that was easy to restore and I tried like uh backup buddy for years and um uh bunch of other ones all the ones that I could think to test somewh in the cloud somewh not um and I even even um so manage WP we use them for every site we back up everything in the cloud we already are running uh Cloud backups on whatever host we're using we're using site ground primarily um as the hosting solution um but we're even backing up that on manage WP just so we have multiple redundancies and whatnot um so I love manage WP and since we had that I we've started to use it to send reports and it's been really nice like they have I even they have a SEO feature in there where you can track up to 100 keywords I've started selling that like yeah oh you want to track some keywords great and basically we have two customers that are basically paying for our manage WP with keyword tracking no and I'm not doing any more work other than the onboarding you know yeah so and and and and from a sales perspective that's leading to conversations so like how come my ranking went down what happened I'm like I don't know let's talk yeah yeah that's great uh so that's on the WordPress end you know we use local if we de develop locally but usually we're developing and staging sites on on the server um yeah I like the I like that you uh this is a bit of a tangent but I like that that you're still using Beaver Builder and I think that they've found they've slotted themselves into a space of like a non hype reliable page building tool on paper I hope that means that they are still running a successful business compared to the Giants who will cut cost and be in your face with marketing and ship every new feature because I've seen this year after year of like oh there's a new page builder out let's shift the whole business over there I used Beaver Builder when I was at my agency I could not understand anyone wanting to take that risk of like you already have this back catalog of customers you built this you built sites for using XYZ page builder now you saw another one that had two more features and you were like let's shift the whole business over there how does that make sense you know but people do it because they're they're after a lower price they're after a new feature they're just getting bored and they're not thinking like scalable business and that's scary but also like the on the cost end like I always like I know because I I have a lot of I leave the word I led the WordPress user group I meet we every Wednesday I get together with with WordPress developers to co-work and so we have a lot of these conversations and I'm always like surprised by like they're providing plug-in licenses without any additional charges and I'm like just charge them a few bucks and you've covered at least your fees like yeah you know like yeah um there's a lot of like business he here another example is like um so two ways to grow your business one is to make more money three ways make more money well I guess make make more money or cut costs those are the two ways but like if you just look at the making money part one way to make more money is to sell more stuff another way is just to increase fees and so like a year ago I increased fees across the board 5.7% on all my customers without without exception how did you come my bottom line by 5.7% basically without doing any more work how did you come up to the number 5.7% um it seemed pretty mathy like it seemed like if someone pressed me I could explain it with some bit of math yeah but there's like probably like a bigger like here's the flat fee number I'm trying to achieve and 5.7 across all my customers gets me to that number uh no not really I um I was really just I wanted to increase costs because our costs are increasing and we we never increased cost in 18 years 17 years whatever this was a question I was going to have for you so this is great yeah so we never increased costs um I shouldn't say like we charged like I said we've been charging arbitrarily basically the same website for 18 years and you know um but um on the hosting and we never in I shouldn't say we've charged more but we never increased cost on existing customers that just hasn't been a thing so um I just felt like you know we've been at it 18 years and in my mind I was like my salary isn't going up like and so at least if I do this I can increase my salary by 5.7% which which my wife has been clamoring for for a decade you know like everyone else is getting raised it's you're sitting there not getting a raise and you're the you know yeah yeah that that's smart of you because yeah like once again if you go into the air quotes real world of of business food Lumber electricians plumbers everything literally going up and you know I feel like a lot of us web designers or agency owners I should say sitting behind a computer um even if you're Consulting a lot of us aren't uh we're just absorbing that into our already existing margins which you it's driven by market demand I totally get it more competition the harder it is but you know standing out is very important um leads me to one of my final questions here is you mentioned SEO being the biggest uh marketing factor for you um you have a great podcasting setup are you doing podcasting content as well like what other factors help Drive traffic to your business I I I think it if anything it's um relationships that I've built over 18 years in the business um I don't think my uh you know I have some YouTube videos out there I've done a lot of LinkedIn stuff but the the leads that I get that are not SEO are like an old friend who's like hey I work at a marketing agency here and we need a WordPress person um so we just closed one of those uh I have a buddy who's was at the coffee shop the other day and not the other day a couple months ago and he just chatted up someone next to him they're like yeah we need a site and they've become a client of ours you know it's like that sort of yeah I I've been not good um I have intended to be good but I've been failing failing miserably at like other marketing efforts yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um no that's great and referral obviously still like the number one driver once again is AI doing that for us right Google search isn't doing that for us um you know it's just putting out good a good product having you know something that you aspire to uh you know a achieve right like this is this is why you hire my business this is how we think this is how we operate um you know SEO is working great for you uh but still at the end of the day I'm sure referrals and people like trusting your work and being like hey we know another business that needs something you're the guy yeah and here's the the there's going to be someone out there of course who's going to be like no I can use a AI to automate my email marketing and who seasoned this is going to go not really like good luck I mean maybe if you had an email list of 3 million people maybe you could land a few deals but yeah I have a buddy who works at a big um SEO agency in town and his job is to get sales for the agency so he's he's marketing like B to be bigger companies and he was telling me like this isn't even an AI but I could see AI doing this but um he was saying one of his bosses wanted him to write like copy that was like very not correct for like like it was like put a big thumbs up in the subject line you know like that sort of thing and he's like that's not really like how I want to position it but that's the sort of thing AI will tell you to do yeah yeah yeah that's that's a whole other you know soapbox moment for me but like yeah I I posted something the other day and somebody like tweeted back to me was like you didn't sell me in 30 seconds so I don't really care about this I'm like guy I've never put out anything that I've want like I've never published a piece of content trying to sell anybody on anything like you either want it or you don't right and that's why I it wasn't even I was selling I was just it was just one of my tutorials or something I forget what it was but um people who I I just don't live in that mindset and I debate this with folks like Mark Sam mansky and and Kevin giri who um you know might have more of like a strategic approach for creating content and doing social like I don't and I know that's like a bad thing but my only advantage is I haven't given up where I'm not saying Mark and and and Kevin would but I think folks who are just in the like growth mindset of like optimize the thumbnail put the keywords in in the video and um you know in the first five seconds you have to punch zoom in and zoom back out like I don't want to do that yeah I just want my authentic content that's it yeah and you're pointing at something that's unique in the WordPress space not unique but very special about it um and that is that um the community is what buil buil WordPress and I give Matt all the props for that like he built an amazing community and continues to maintain it and um Matt Mullen wig is who I'm talking about but you too yeah I'll put you there too I mean honestly you're like a one of the pillars of the community like the people who really like gather people together to um you know to to think about WordPress deeply and um one of the things that right now that our community is going through is you know this recent stuff between automatic and WP engine it it points to the strength of the community in a way and I really hope they figure it out and can get back to building the community up um it's been it's been it's been sad it's been kind of heartbreaking to me to but at the same time like I know I have two brothers I don't talk to anymore um you know two blood brothers and I know there's that stuff happens and in very small in I say the community but like if it can happen in my family it can happen here and I really hope that um I I'm really hopeful for the community that will figure it out and I think Matt will I I really um it's interesting because a lot of my peers here in Minneapolis that I talk to don't have they've lost faith in the WordPress community and I haven't um you know there's work to be done and I'm going to do my little part to do what I can do and you're you're you've been continuing to do that too and um you know without blame and without expectation you know I just kind of I'm going to you know we're still here yeah the mighty mo.com he's Toby uh you can find him once again the mighty moo.com Toby where else do you want folks to go to say thanks uh you can hit me up on LinkedIn send me a message be happy to converse there and email's great too so, Two Decades Running A WordPress Agency, WP Minute Podcasts, 01jte9jt79ssyh5mvmssnwp2rh.