The Journey of Building an Agency  ## Metadata - Author: [[The WP Minute+]] - Full Title: The Journey of Building an Agency - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5abcc777-f471-46fe-921c-8f71eddb9193 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Pay Yourself A Regular Salary** - Pay yourself a regular paycheck to feel like an employer and stabilize household finances. - Treating yourself as a W-2 employee creates psychological and practical permanence for the business. Transcript: Toby Krines Think, yeah, it's a great question. I think, I don't think I felt employed initially. We'll start there. I mean, I think that maybe the point where I start to feel and felt where I felt employed was maybe when I started paying myself as a W-2 employee. So maybe it was more like a process change. I was like, okay, now I'm an employee of the Mighty Mo. I have a paycheck that's landing. I pay myself once a month a certain amount. And I think that's helped. It's also helped my wife to kind of think of it as an employment situation because she's like not worrying, not thinking. She knows that some amount of money is going to land and the insurance is going to be paid. And I also pay some of our bills because like our ([Time 0:01:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89a53860-9c40-4c71-b8c0-0fa608a276fc)) - **Office And Policies Transformed Revenue** - Kurt describes renting an office and rebranding in 2008 as the turning point that tripled revenue and shifted his mindset to run a business. - He emphasizes that a physical office and firm policies forced the transition from hobbyist to formal agency owner. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen Job at a company. To me, it's amazing. If I opened up a machine shop, let's just say I took out a loan for $6 million, and I had a building built, and I put a bunch of machines in there, and I ordered a bunch of half million dollars Worth of steel. And I put some employees in there and what are we doing? I don't know. We're making bridge plates or something, right? We're, we're making something. Everyone's going to look at that. Like as they're going to talk to, Oh, look at that. He's an awesome founder. You know, he's adding jobs to the community, you know, look at a really cool new building. And there's the sense that that's employment, like that that's a real entity. It's a real thing. And then there's this weirdness that happens when you work in the digital space, like when people are like, oh, that's cool that you have that hobby building websites and all, but are You going to go get a job? And I just, it's curious when I talk to different people, when did that vacate? When did that go away? Because now we moved here from California to Kansas and there's people that, you know, run the entrepreneur groups and stuff here in Kansas. And they introduced me to other people like, oh, he moved his agency here, right? And it's like, I'm just working out of my home office. Like if I was still with friends that knew me from when I was younger, they would still think I was working on my hobbies. Right. I meet strangers and they treat it like it's an entity. You know, it's an entity. It's a real business. Yeah. Well, it's, it's interesting how that changes. It changes the way I communicate it to new people, the way I, the way I talk to clients, the way that I interact with others is different now. And it's weird because I've been an agency since 2008. Yeah. Toby Krines And I think if maybe for a lot, I think for the outside world, something changes when you have a physical location, like a storefront. Like we can't even be in like the neighborhood business association because I don't have a storefront. If I hung up a sign, then I could join their organization. But without that, I'm just some guy in a basement. You're just some weird dude. And the Chamber of Commerce is so desperate that they will let me in, thankfully. But it's a similar thing where I think they're not sure where to put it. And we bought this house recently. And one comment from one of my aunts, Lisa's mom, my wife's mom, is one of her aunts. She was like, what does Toby do? I mean, I've been married a long time, 13 years. What does he even do? Yeah. It's like, she couldn't believe that I could afford a house with Lisa, you know? Kurt Von Annen I find the whole transition really unique. And, you know, I have a corporate background. So going to my way back machine and rolling the time machine back, I can remember driving through traffic, getting to the office, being frustrated, hanging out with people I didn't Even like all day, right? And thinking, I can't wait till I can work from home. I cannot wait until I can work from home. And then I left the job and I started working from home and I was married, two younger children, stay at home mom, that whole thing. And I got to be honest, it didn't take very long for me to say, I can't wait till I can rent an office. I can't wait till I can rent an office. I can't get anything done here. I got to get out. I got to go. I got to get where the people are. And the year that we rented our office, I literally more than doubled the business. And then when I changed from my old name to my new name, which is Manana No Mas, that was like 2008 when things became official. We tripled our business that year because we changed our policies. But I think that's when I began to run it like a business, like I was employed, like the mental shift. I think that's ([Time 0:03:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10081ce1-0873-408b-9272-3df2b8a1fbcd)) - **Require Up-Front Payment For Projects** - Stop doing work on deposit or faith; require full payment up front for large projects to avoid unpaid half-done work. - Use prepaid recurring billing for maintenance and make payment terms a client qualification filter. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen The biggest policy change that we had was we no longer did things by deposit or on good faith. We said, we're the business. We're the business. We have the office. We have the deliverable. I have the reputation for being on time and on budget. So if I say, I'm going to make this happen in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, it's going to happen. There are no more 50% deposits. Pay the rest when it's done. Everything's paid up front and we execute. Now, if people are on monthly maintenance agreements and stuff, they pay the month in advance of those services being delivered. So we still have some recurring income, but for big projects, it's all up front. And it's been that way since 2008. And here's where I literally justified that. Because we had a ton of half done projects and nobody was paying for stuff. Like people just didn't have the income. And when you're working in the startup community, that's fairly common. People are bootstrapping this thing, right? And they don't know how they're going to make things happen. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I am a startup business. Well, like when this happened, right? I'm a startup business. How am I in a position to lend money and services to all these other people? I'm not. And if they can't pay me now, what makes me think they're going to pay me in 30 days when I'm done? Like if they can't pay their project 30, 60, or 90 days in advance, they're not qualified to be my customer. ([Time 0:06:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9cd3f435-5cbb-4f77-81a0-5b78f2d8ab7a)) - **Width Provides Stability, Depth Provides Profit** - Choose whether to go wide (many small clients) for stability or deep (few big clients) for profit and plan capacity accordingly. - Kurt balances two deep projects yearly and fills the rest with many smaller clients to combine profit and stability. Transcript: Toby Krines And I was thinking, a friend of mine recently had an agency contract. So he's an agency like ours, but he had a high percentage of his revenue. Let's say 50%. It's probably more than that, was from one agency that was paying his agency. And that went on for years. And so he built up his team. He was fired by that agency, or at least scaled back or something. And he was just sharing with me that he had to let all his employees, or maybe all, I think he did let all his employees go, because it was that, they were all... That big of a deal. Yeah. And we've talked about this a little bit, but I think for me, in my business, I've been trying to avoid that scenario for years now. And so I've been trying to build a very shallow and, what do you call it, wider pool of clients that are each paying a little bit versus a few that are paying a lot. Kurt Von Annen Yeah. Do you want to go wide or do you want to go deep? And that's strategically, that's why I only take two, maybe three of the deep projects a year. And then I pepper in the rest with the, from width, right? ([Time 0:11:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/431dfd38-c2ca-4262-b0c5-93b96f081a71)) - **Time Block For Continuous Sales** - Time-block dedicated weekly hours for sales and keep top-of-funnel work running even during big projects. - Limit project time so sales and marketing never become neglected during feast cycles. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen Of funnel? I go back to process. You nailed it. You said process, right? Process is everything to me. And I think that that's where most agencies honestly fail. Like they just don't have process. So for me, time blocking is huge. So I have a certain amount of my week that is for sales, for outbound marketing, for those things. If you allow the feast or famine, oh, we got a big contract. We got to knock this out real quick. If you allow that to become 80% of your week and you focus on getting that done or pushing the project through, you fail at what your agency is going to do when that project is done. So you only, even if you get the huge, big project, you can only dedicate 40, 45% of your time or energy to that project because you owe it to yourself to time block your week and dedicate Enough time and energy. And the energy is the big part. You can't do it when you're tired. ([Time 0:14:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/34094585-d145-4658-b487-23c865d2eccc)) - **Plan Time Off With A Simple Contingency List** - Take time off by planning worst/best/likely scenarios and accept that the likely outcome is usually fine. - Prepare lists and simple processes so clients have clear instructions while you're away. Transcript: Toby Krines It's like, how do you turn off the business world and take holiday time to invest with your family? Or maybe you need to go on a solo camping trip where there's no internet. How do we do that? Kurt Von Annen If you're always panicked about cash flow, if you're always panicked about money, if you're always focused on transactions, you're going to be a very unhappy person. You know, I listen to a lot of Joe Rogan and that kind of stuff. And you'll hear Josie all the time. I know a lot of rich people that are miserable, you know? And so if that's, if that's your goal, I guess you can pursue that, but you, it takes discipline. You got to be able to pull back sometimes and go, Oh, this isn't healthy. I gotta, I gotta do something. I've told you before, I'm big on the mountain bike thing. I need the physical activity, and that kind of recenters me, refreshes me, and launches me for whatever the next task is. But I think, for instance, my kid is volunteering at a camp for the summer, and me and my wife are packing up the camper van, splitting on Friday, and we're gone for the weekend, and I'm Not emailing or calling nobody. And this is going to come out after I'm gone. So I can say it now, like there's no warning. I stopped giving customers warnings that, oh, I'm going to be out of pocket for three days. No, because then everybody calls me the day that I'm leaving and tells me, oh, I had a question. No, you didn't have a question. You just thought I was leaving town and you panicked. Toby Krines And so now I just go. I do think like whatever your perceived damage is from that. And we all kind of I don't know about you, but I experienced some like fear that my business is going to tank. Oh, if I don't if I'm not there on Friday, my business will be harmed for good. So I do a couple of things I would recommend that I that I try to do. I don't not always. But first of all, it's going to be fine. Let's just start there. It'll be fine. But if that's not enough, what I like to do is write a list. I have. OK, let's say I take next week off and I'm going to decide today. It's Monday. I'm just going to say next week I'm taking off come hell or high water. What I would do is like have a piece of paper, three columns, the worst case scenario, the best case scenario, and the likely scenario. And the worst case is always like, yeah, my business will fail. This person's going to tell everyone I suck. I'll get 10 bad reviews on Google. The best case is like nothing happened at all. And the likely scenario is usually something close to that best case, except like I come back, I have some complaints, I have to like massage some relationships. ([Time 0:16:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a3ebc62-7f3e-4b07-a2db-8fd6be4a3b12)) - **Use A Support Channel, Not Personal Email** - Create a support process and a team-visible support channel so clients don't email you directly during absences. - Train clients to use the support link and reserve direct contact for true emergencies only. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen Well, and there's so many other things from an agency perspective that you can do to start building that before it becomes. If your customers are emailing you directly for things, that's a red flag. Like, create that support account, use a SaaS platform, do something, have a process that's like, this is what you do if you need support. This is the process if you have a question. And I tell people right up front, use the support link on the website, because when you use the support link on the website, that gives the whole team visibility to your issue. And you're not depending on me to answer your email. Right. And I'm I'm very clear with customers up front. Now, am I the team? Am I the team that's answering those support calls? Typically? Yeah. Duh. But if I'm going to take a week off, I'm probably going to take a contract and say, hey, you know what? Let me just give you two hours a day to take care of the support tickets that come in or don't come in. And if anything's super important, you know that you can text me. Toby Krines Well, this is interesting. You could, in theory, you could train your clients to not get real-time support unless they want to pay for urgent real-time support none of them will by the way i mean you might get someone But like but then the expectation is something not real-time i wonder if that would let's say you're not you but somebody's freaking out i want to take time off even one day a lot of our Colleagues have trouble with and i'm like okay yeah if you build a system that where your clients normally get one business day responses, let's say, and then you can take that time. Kurt Von Annen You have to train people to get used to the 12 to 24 hour response time. Even if I see it come in, now be very clear, I have emergency boundaries, right? If your website is down or you can't take revenue, that's an emergency. You can text me, you can call me, whatever, right? But if it's, I want to change the title on my call to action square, right? That is 12 to 24 hour support. You put them in the ticket and we make it happen in 12 to 24 hours. And like I said, if you set the process, you could have a team member babysit that, you know, that third party, whatever tool it is, because it's not your personal email. ([Time 0:19:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ce141b7-d363-4b0c-9861-a779c8aa47ff)) - **Enforce Off-Hours Boundaries** - Enforce strict off-hours boundaries by turning notifications off nightly and limiting phone use during family time. - Train clients on response SLAs and preserve personal time without harming client relationships. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen When, how often do you do that? Every night at a specific time, my phone goes off and every morning at a specific time, it comes on. I don't deal with anything at night. I have a nighttime thing. And then when we go mountain bike racing and I'm camping with my son and we're at the races, I use the phone to take pictures. Toby Krines Other than that, I don't do anything with the phone. You know, we're gone. You're talking, there's a way to think about this. Think of yourself as a retail establishment, your Target, your Home Depot, whatever. You're not going to, oh, you called them at midnight. Nobody's going to answer the phone at Target at midnight. But if you're there in business hours, they will address your question in real time and you'll have to get in line. And there's a good lesson just in that practice you just described. I'm going to start doing that. I didn't used to do it. Kurt Von Annen I didn't used to. I'm being blunt and honest. When we started in New Mexico, every broke startup business that didn't pay their invoices on time, that still had a problem with their website, I would do it whenever. Eight o'clock at night, nine o'clock at night, four o'clock in the morning, like whatever, because I was so afraid that they were going to say something negative to someone else in the Business community that was local, let alone that they hadn't paid their invoices or compensated me yet. Right. But I was just always in a panic, always. And I made everybody's problems my own problems. And it wasn't until I got a little older and a little more seasoned in the game when I realized, wait a minute, this isn't a Kurt problem. It's not that I'm not empathetic, but I'm not sympathetic. Like, hey, I can empathize with that. You know, within the boundaries of our scope of work, I'll take care of that for you. But outside of that, nope, you can pay me more or you can find another provider. ([Time 0:22:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e797f8a8-832c-4454-9755-339bf2d067d5)) - **Limit Meetings And Price Extra Consults** - Limit meetings and charge for extra consult time; define how many meetings a project includes in the proposal. - Use project docs and access to reduce unnecessary meetings and renegotiate rates for additional sessions. Transcript: Toby Krines And one question would be, like, you know, do you ever feel overwhelmed by meetings? But the follow-up to that, or maybe the question that should come first is like, do you even need the meetings? But let's start with, do you ever feel overwhelmed with meetings? Because I think our audience and the audience of one me is curious in a sense, because I feel overwhelmed some days. Kurt Von Annen The only time that I really feel overwhelmed by meetings is I have a couple of people that we subcontract for, and one of those has a calendar where they set the security settings to where I can't sync that calendar with my calendar. So my overwhelming, my stress comes from, let's say you and I have a podcast scheduled. We're going to do it Wednesday at 10 o'clock. This particular contract is going to have a client that schedules a meeting Wednesday at 10 o'clock. It just always seems to happen that way. And so then I have to do that antiquated back and forth email like, oh, I'm sorry, there's a conflict at that time. Can we meet at nine or can we meet at 11? Now, well, I really needed to meet. No, no, no, I'm not available then. Well, your calendar says you are because it's not synced with my other calendars. I'm sorry. That's the only real stress I have. Toby Krines Well, this is interesting in light of what we've talked about. It seems to me that that scenario of sharing that level of access with my calendar or your calendar should come with a premium price tag. And there's other things too, perhaps, that fit in that. Like, I think like as an agency owner, if something's really bothering you, you might want to put a premium on it. Like, whatever the thing is. Kurt Von Annen Yeah. So I have a thing where you can schedule a meeting with me. Pardon me, 30 minutes, no charge. 30 minutes. First 30 minutes is free. And then I had a client under a statement of work that kept using that link to schedule meetings, like just whenever. And I was like, hold on. So after like the fourth time, I was like, are you scheduling these meetings so that you feel better about the project? Like, I just need to know why we're having this meeting. I just need to know what's going on. I said, well, you have access to the platform, you have access to the GAMP chart, you have access to see, you know, our notes on what's been done. We try to communicate in a very transparent way. And then I went back to, your proposal stated that we planned on six meetings for this whole project, you're currently on meeting five. So are you prepared to have one more meeting before we launch, or do you think we're going to need more meetings than that? ([Time 0:28:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b56f59e0-dc8b-46a0-ad1e-0e544177c9c9)) - **Documentation Makes Agencies Sellable** - A saleable agency requires repeatable documented processes and a core tech stack you can standardize across projects. - Without documentation your agency becomes unique to you and loses buyer appeal. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen Would anyone ever buy it without you in it? That's the rub, isn't it? That's the hard question and i see it's it's one of our notes and i was thinking in the background like how are we going to work this into the conversation but um my company name used to be Von on and designs and pr when i very first launched and then it wasn't even a year in i don't think and someone said what if you ever wanted to sell your business? Would you be wanting to sell your name? And then I was like, you know what? I don't think so. And like, there's a guy in town that has an insurance company. His name's David, but the insurance company is named something else. And I'm like, that's just weird. Like you're someone else's name to do business forever. And so the whole story about Manana No Mas is pretty entertaining. I won't share it here because it takes too long. I lost my temper one day and I yelled at someone said Manana No Mas. And then the guy running the office said, that'd be a great name for your business. And I was like, all right, that's what it is. And it's been Manana No Mas ever since. And now I can't change it. It's too well branded. Yeah, you're stuck. But it's going to be for sale. And I don't know, because I'm 57 years old, and we bring in revenue, and we have demonstrable revenue, and we have demonstrable process. I'm really hitting hard on process, it seems like, this episode. But I'm in the middle of creating training for this, right? And so I'm thinking about all the different processes and how we've built this over time. Other agencies, you know this because we talk to people. We go to events. We ask people, oh, how do you do this? And they go, oh, I just kind of this. ([Time 0:32:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb5f955c-7811-4b82-a251-44852d93b6c1)) - **Standardize A Narrow Tech Stack** - Pick a focused tech stack (20–25 plugins) and standardize workflows to build a repeatable product offering. - Avoid hoarding tools; restrict choices to the core set you can support and document. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen We could say, we make stuff for the internet for everybody, but then we become that hoarder. We end up with a license to every single plugin on the planet. We end up not really understanding our skill set or where our strengths are or what tools are required for our business. But if I take, you know, out of the 65,000 plugins in the repository, if I pick 20 to 25 of them that become my core tech stack, and I can make something that is duplicable and a process to Make other customers happy, I have a product. ([Time 0:36:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/577b1e5a-bcc5-4023-b194-833c94fc346b)) - **Copy What Works And Time-Block Learning** - Emulate proven systems instead of reinventing massive projects; pick one reliable toolset and master it. - Time-block learning to adopt new tools like AI or page builders without disrupting delivery. Transcript: Toby Krines This reminds me, you know, I'm part of the traction process and is creating processes. It's like, like part of it is like, okay, you want more reoccurring revenue. What's one thing you can do to get started on that path? And I listened to a podcast. It was on the Business Insider YouTube channel, but it's why massive projects like, this is the title of the podcast episode, why massive projects like California's high-speed rail Almost always fail. You might be surprised. The reason is that they're always building something completely new. And if they had just gone out, this is the theory. So they have this, basically the gist of it is California has like a massive, massively over budget, like numbers that you wouldn't believe beyond, like basically they can't finish This huge rail line that they're building. And you can see it like you see it every four years with the Olympics, same problem. The same exact problem that like if they just hired the company that builds large stadiums every day or whatever, and maybe it's not a U.S. Company, maybe it's not a local company, but you go to, I don't know, wherever these companies exist or like the train company. Maybe you might you know kurt and i were talking earlier like could be some of regulation gets in the way and you need to like in order to make these large changes and processes projects Work you need to you need to do the old thing again like and so like i think everyone's probably really bored with this like when it comes to like running a sustainable agency but like what, What works? Just do that. Yeah. Look at someone that's successful and then try to emulate what they did. And so, yeah, an example would be WordPress. Let's say you want a WordPress agency, just use Elementor, just use Beaver Builder. Don't even use Gutenberg because they're changing it all the time. Like use something that isn't going to change and you can move faster and cheaper and you can have more space for this other stuff and more money to hire people. I would start with something as simple as that. Well, and to your point, start, right? Kurt Von Annen And then I'm not saying that we ever stop learning or stop growing or stop, but with our productive time. Again, I go back to time blocking, If I time block my week, I've got stuff for sales and marketing. I've got stuff for personal development and I've got stuff for productivity, for the job, for what we do. ([Time 0:40:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/427a556d-22f8-4061-bef3-1fbc67282d48)) - **SEO Still Matters In The Age Of AI** - SEO isn't dead because AI still cites search results as its primary sources. - Being in the top few search results remains critical as AI condenses referrals to two or three recommendations. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen Well, SEO, people are jumping the gun. They're saying SEO is dead. And there's no way that it's dead. Because if you do research using AI and then you ask the AI, how did you make this referral or how did you? Because when AI gives me an answer, I'm always like, well, where did that come from? So I say, how did you make this decision? How did you make this referral? It'll say, here's a list of resources we used. And the top listing every single time is search results. Right. Right. So CO is not dead. Right. And search isn't going anywhere. Yeah. Just because you use a different tool to get to the search. But now think about it this way. CO used to give you pages of results. And then you as the end user would look at those pages of results and try and determine what's the most relevant and visit the ones you wanted to visit. But if you search with AI, it gives you two or three referrals and that's it. So now if you're not in the top two or three of your search results, you're not even in the game. ([Time 0:44:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad25b689-fcac-4d48-a9ef-cd80d378c7cb)) - **Use AI To Improve Local SEO Quickly** - Use AI to audit and optimize local profiles and homepage copy for clearer, targeted messaging. - Small AI-driven edits to LinkedIn, Facebook, and homepage content can produce meaningful local visibility gains. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen I've done some deep diving again with the time blocking, but my personal development time working with AI was how can I best locally optimize manana no mas for the startup work that we Do. And the results I got from AI and the advice I got from AI was pretty incredible. Change this on your LinkedIn, change this on your Facebook. Change this on your TikTok. I'm like, I didn't even consider that stuff. Add this to your homepage. You know, you already have national business, so you don't need that on the homepage. Now your homepage needs to reflect the local stuff. Put your Chamber of Commerce picture on there. ([Time 0:46:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33805ee8-cdd7-4396-a83a-4529093a8634)) - **Offer ACH For Big Payments** - For large invoices avoid credit-card fees by offering ACH or bank-transfer options via SaaS invoicing platforms. - Use Stripe for card payments and a secondary ACH-capable invoicing tool for big contracts to reduce fees. Transcript: Kurt Von Annen I want to switch gears because we've talked a lot about building your agency. So let's say you've built your agency. Now you got to take revenue in. Toby Krines Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess. Kurt Von Annen So Braun Strokes, are you a fan of banks or credit unions? Toby Krines I have both. Actually, I don't. So this might be really sad. I have no idea what a credit union is compared to a bank. I have both for my business. I have Capital One, which is probably the biggest bank in the world or something like that. And then I have our local credit union. And I don't have like a grand strategy. I just like having options. What is a credit union, Kurt? Kurt Von Annen So a credit union is like a bank, but it's owned by the members. And it's like a profit share from the members. And so fundamentally, there's a couple of things that I like about credit unions. Because for example, let's say you're a small business and their loan decisions aren't typically made strictly by what your credit score, right? So you're a business and you're like, this is how I want to impact the community and this is what we do with this and this is what we do with that. And so there's extenuating circumstances that a credit union would take a look at and go, well, based on the best interest of our members, we're going to approve this loan or this feature Or whatever. Whereas a bank's going to be like, you didn't qualify, hit the skids. So there's that, right? So it's basically like one's a commercial enterprise that is owned by investors, I guess. And then one is owned by the members. But then I get stuck with the strength of the organization. So, and maybe I started the discussion, maybe you started the discussion. I got kind of lost in how these notes came about. But when we moved from California to Kansas, I have been, just full disclosure, I've been with Wells Fargo since 1994, but there is no Wells Fargo in Hutchinson, Kansas. So then I'm like, well, I don't want to go to Wichita every time I got to go to the bank. Right. And so then I was like, well, we got to start looking for a local bank. And so we've been struggling. Like, do we want to use this credit union, this credit union, or this bank or this bank? And I'm part of the chamber of commerce and they have lots of after hours events where you go and you meet these people. And I've started to like make friends with people that work at a certain bank. So do I make my business decision to bank at that bank because I bicycle with one of the ladies that works there? Or do I go to the credit union because it's the smarter, I don't know. Right. Toby Krines I think like with a lot of us, there's no right answer, of course. Kurt Von Annen This would be a poll, a poll for the podcast. Do you prefer a credit union or a bank? Toby Krines Yeah, and there's different reasons for both. Because like, here's an example. My kids, I have two kids in the middle school across the street. And one of the kids' mom is of the front desk people there. And I tell you what, it's been enormously helpful to have a personal connection with this person. Because I go in there, I'm like, Ansel said this. And she's like, oh, that's not how it happened, though, Toby. Yeah. Like, oh, thank you for letting me know. Because he told a different story. Kurt Von Annen I think having a local entity to do business with is really important because I'm suffering from that national feeling, right? But there's also a part of me, and this might be childish, but I think to myself, I've been with the bigger bank for decades. That shows consistency. That shows so to me, right? So I don't necessarily want to close those accounts, but I need something local. Yeah. Toby Krines Well, and I think you nailed something too. Capital One has no branches that I know of anywhere. Maybe they have somewhere, but their online tools are fantastic. Whereas our credit union, it's clearly like a hodgepodge of services. As I log in, it's like I log in, I click here to see the statements, a new window opens up with a new URL. Nothing like I'm feeling of security with your thousands of dollars. Yeah, but they do have a branch. And so I can go into the branch and take care of stuff. A lot of these lines. Oh, sorry. I was thinking, what tool do you use to collect ACH payments? These are, so someone, you know, they can pay with a credit card, they can mail a check to you, or you could do it online. Basically, it's a check online. Credit card's kind of easy and well-trod. However, I've noticed that ACH payments, not so straightforward. Do you do ACH online? I do. Kurt Von Annen So I have a SaaS platform that I use to operate my business with. And so I have messaging for bigger contracts. So let's be real clear. I'm lazy. I use Stripe. I didn't go crazy trying to make my own credit card payment gateway or anything nuts, right? It was a Stripe plug and play done 2.9%, 30 cents on every transaction, whatever, fine, done. Um, but when you sell somebody a $10,000 package and they're like, well, I guess I could put it on, you know, Amex silver, whatever you're like, oh my God, what's 3% of $10,000? You know, I don't want to pay $300 today to make a sale when an ACH transfer is $25, right? Right. I think it's $25. So I have a SaaS platform where I can create an invoice and then give them the details to make that ACH transfer. And they'll do it from just bank to bank. And it works really easily for me. And it's 25 bucks? It's 25 bucks for like a wire transfer, yeah. So they put in the routing and they put in the account number and boom, right? Got it. There's other tools. I mean, there's, you know, there's Zelle and there's other tools to transfer things around, but they have limits. Even the ACH transfers, depending on your bank policy, has limits. So I've found that using either a SaaS platform that uses ACH as a payment gateway, or I don't want to misspeak, but I will anyway, I think Lifter LMS has the option for ACH payments in their Payment gateway. Toby Krines Oh, that's interesting. Kurt Von Annen And so I'd have to double check for limits and stuff, but then I could create a ([Time 0:49:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/de0c2a32-72a1-4527-ba90-134d8c0edb05)) - **Use Temporary Cards For SaaS Trials** - Use temporary virtual cards for short SaaS trials to avoid accidental recurring charges. - Generate per-service cards and expire them automatically to prevent surprise bills. Transcript: Toby Krines And it's like, I don't know, let's say 500 bucks a month. And that doesn't include hosting and stuff. Just like, hey, we have SEO, 200 a month. This is 100 a month. But it's probably like 10 to 20 services. And oftentimes when I sign up for those, I use a tool that Capital One provides, which is like a really easy way to have temporary credit cards that expire. You can have them per site and they expire whenever I want them to expire. So I always set them if I'm like not sure I'm going to need it next month. So I did this with Canva Pro recently. I was like, I don't know, I'll try it out for 15 bucks, but I don't want to get a $15 bill next month unless I really want it. Yeah. And so I use one of these. So with Capital One, it's just built in and has a browser extension for Chrome and it's super easy. But I use that. And then I'm like, then I get the email in a month. They're like, you haven't paid. What are we going to do? You clearly screwed up. Come on. So, you know, the email from Canva. And then I fix it if I want to. ([Time 0:56:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bd97ad07-eee2-485e-9ccd-f73e1e152a35))