¶ Introduction
Hello, welcome to whose web agency is this Anyway, starring Kurt Van Onin and myself, Toby Kres.
¶ Diversifying Ventures and Blueprints
let's get right into it here. let's get right into it. Robert Devore asked a really interesting question. He said, how do you choose which ventures to pursue, pursue outside of the services work? If any. And then he said, for instance, are you focusing time only on marketing the services? Are you packaging up the services into different bite size chunks? Or are you building related products that can be resold, like themes and plugins? How are you, diversifying your ventures? Kurt?
First off, I wanna acknowledge Robert Devore and his genius. apparently he can just kick out, plugins like butter I you, this guy, right? I'm, I'm not in the product space. I, I, I take that back. I am in the product space, but not in that way. so a lot of what we do at Ana Nomas is, let's say I work with a consultant. I do some needs assessment. I come up with a package for that consultant. So I know that they're gonna want A-C-R-M-A form tool, an appointment setter.
Maybe they want an online, you know, support, ticket program, maybe, And then maybe they want some online courses for coaching, right? Maybe they want some private coaching a like a lifter, LMS kind of package. So let's see. We do that needs assessment. We kind of make that shopping list and then we, we build it, we configure it, and we make it work. Typically what I do at that point is I take a snapshot of that website and it's set up and then.
That becomes a productized service or a productized item that we can sell to the next consultation company or to the next thing, because realistically, the hard work was figuring out. Based on your use case, this is the setup that we believe is gonna work best for you and your use case. So then when you come along, a customer that has that similar thing, if you have created that as a blueprint, a snapshot, a help me, they have a thing for that.
They call, it's not, it would not template tenancy, full tenancy sites.
Mm-hmm.
multi-tenancy sites. It's like that concept. And so now the next consultant comes along and they go, let me guess. You know you're gonna want a CRM, an appointment tool or this or that, and they go, oh, that sounds wonderful. And I say, great, I'll see you on Friday and we'll upload your logo, your headings, your content, we'll package your pictures into these, into these placeholder spaces, and they're ready to go. And it's kind of like a cool quick launch little package
¶ Value of Productized Services
that I think the customer sees as being valuable. 'cause it's quickly delivered, but we don't have to remake the wheel each time.
Mm-hmm. And you can potentially charge the same amount, whatever, you know? well,
that's the weird part. Mm-hmm. So often you actually end up charging more, right? Because you, because you're offering it as a ready to go service, and you're able to put more of your development time into customizing that user experience based on the content. And I think if we're honest, I think the copy and the content in most cases is more important than the actual structure and billing.
¶ Focus on Money, Not Just Tech
Yeah. I always, the first question, one of the first questions I always ask when, you know, leads come in, I'm always like, what? Basically it's an iteration of the question, like, how are you making money here? Like, do you wanna talk about technology or making money? 'cause they're not necessarily connected, like, yeah.
it, it's interesting when, when I read Robert's question, I instantly have like this, this negative feeling that comes from it and it's, my specialty is in the membership and learning space. So everybody that's in this membership and learning space makes this leap, this huge leap that they go well, and then how do I convert this into a mobile application? And it's like you don't even have a single paid user yet. Why are you thinking about a $30,000 investment to make a mobile application
Uhhuh?
And why are we having the, the conversation? Yeah. Like, I'm not your dude for this. Like, let's, let's, let's build you a business first and then let's worry about the icing on the cake.
Yeah.
One thing that, what you said,
it's a, so Robert, it it, it addresses Robert's question, but it's kind of like. A different way to address it, which is like, you don't have to like, change your business to diversify your business or to make more money. You can just do it differently, like in a blueprinted way. Like, like
¶ Responsiveness as a Differentiator
do more work with less time, charge the same or more, you know, build the, like. I always think the mighty Moe. what we're best at is responding to emails. And answering the phone like, we're better than anybody else I know in town at that. Yeah. And that's what I tell people who come in. I'm like, you know, we've been doing it for 18 years, but like we're gonna respond to every email you send within a business day. And they're all like, oh, that sounds great. You know, like.
So, ano nomas, the catch line to Ano Nomas underneath it says Getting it done yesterday. but it's got an asterisk in there 'cause it means getting shit done yesterday. And I came from that frustration. It was, as a corporate director, you know, in, in the. Corporate enterprise environment. I was the guy that had to call agencies and be like, Hey, we need to make a change to the, to the wording in that, in the heading. And they'd be like, well, we can pencil in from Thursday after next. Right.
And I'm like, we're just gonna change three words. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, next Thursday after next, so 14 days from now we'll be able to, and I was like, this doesn't make any sense.
Mm-hmm.
I know it takes 10 seconds, so why? Why am I waiting 14 days?
Yep.
And, and so we, at Ana Nomas, we became very focused on we honor the budget and we honor the calendar, right? We've never gone up past our deadline and we've never gone over budget and ask clients for more money. It's just, I mean, if they change the scope of work, they change the scope of work, but it, it's to your point, you know, answer the phone, answer the emails, be there for the client. and oddly enough, that is really, really rare in our space. Yeah,
and it's, I see it as like, you know, for all y'all out there looking to make more money, do a better job of that. You'll keep people around longer, sell more products. 'cause the other thing I notice when I do that, if I respond quickly, a lot of times I follow up with what else is going on. I. You know, just kind of an open-ended, like what else is broken that I can fix and get paid to fix, you know,
that the, the upsell opportunity, like, so I just said we've never asked people for more money unless they change the scope of work, and that's. That's the key phrase. The sooner you correspond with somebody, the sooner you answer their question, the, the sooner you have the opportunity to say something like, well, that's really outside the scope of the original project, but if you want me to bid that, we certainly can. And then it's like, boom, it's, they become Lego blocks.
You just start stacking, you know, your, your revenue in that vertical because the customer trusts you. 'cause you do what you say you're gonna do.
¶ Freelancer to Agency Mindset
I think it, it's particularly hard, for freelancers? Well, I'll just say when the times when I've been like basically a solo operator or the person like managing all the work and the invoices and doing a lot of the work, like, it's harder to, to do that, to like take a step back, be like, first of all, I remember to ask, but what is this, this thing you asked me to do? Yeah. I could do it in 10 seconds, so maybe I'll do it for free, but like, Doesn't have to be done for free. And it's hard.
The, the further step back I get, the more I have like someone else asking that question. Like, the more money, you know, it's like it changes the business. and I guess I just wanted to point that out for freelancers, like there might be opportunities that you're just not seeing because you're too deep in it.
there was a huge mental shift for me from the freelancer mentality to the agency mentality, and it was something that I think you could say it over and over and over and over again, and it wouldn't make sense until you actually experienced it. But if I charged somebody $1,500 to do something on a website and then I give it to somebody else in my network to do that, well, that money's gone.
Like, let's, like, so, so you have to start thinking like from a, from a freelancer perspective, you're like, yeah, I could do that and I could do it for 500 bucks and have it done by Friday. Right? But from an agency perspective, you have to think to yourself, if I gotta pay somebody else 500 bucks to have it done by Friday or Saturday. Or Monday, then I have to review the work and then I have to, so that $500 task becomes the 12 or $1,500 task.
And I think a lot of freelancers miss an opportunity because they could be billing at more of an agency rate, so that when they're ready to expand, they already have the funding in place to handle it.
Yeah. Or not, or they're going to the bank every week and feeling great about it. I, I think there's, this weird thing that it's exactly what you're talking about, but it's like this, this mentality that happens. and I, I have these conversations with freelancers here locally in Minneapolis and, running very similar businesses to mine. But, but I run it more like an agency and I just notice, like the way we talk about, it's a little bit, not you and I, but.
When, when I have someone in that freelancer mentality or mindset, they have this idea of what fairness is, and it's a different idea than I have. Like it's, I, I try to be really fair, really transparent and honest. And they're trying to be the same thing, but their definition of it is way different. Usually involves like lower fees as part of their like definition. I'm like, why is lower fees part of a de definition of fairness? Like, you know,
well.
¶ Value-Based vs Hourly Pricing
The whole conversation of billing based on hours is a very foreign conversation to me at this stage of the game because, well, let's just face facts. If I'm in an enterprise, lifter, LMS Build, I can build the structure of that website. You know, I, I should say minutes, but let's just say I can do it in less than a day, right?
Whereas the average freelancer that's doing all kinds of piece work here, here, here, and here, they might be on that thing for two weeks, three weeks, trying to figure out, tick this box, don't tick that box. This integration goes here. This API code goes over there. But because it's a specialty of mine, I can do it much more quickly. So does that mean I do it cheaper? 'cause it takes me less time? No, it means. The value I'm bringing to the table is exponentially greater.
So that value is what you base the billing on, not the hours. And I think that there's a lot of freelancers that still get stuck in that trading hours for dollars thing, not realizing that they're getting better and better at their craft. That doesn't mean they should make less and less money. Yeah, usually getting better makes you more money.
Yeah. And I just filled out an RFP. It's pretty rare that I do RFPs. and I was, this was an existing long-term client and so normally I wouldn't even do 'em for that. Like, it was just like an open call for RFPs and I'm just like, ugh. but because of our history, I was like, okay, I'm gonna go for it. And one thing they asked in there was, what's your hourly rate? And I was like. I don't wanna even, like, this doesn't even, I've never done hourly work for you. Why are we talking about hourly?
Like, it's not even like, like I'd rather bid it out based on Yeah. 'cause what you're saying, like, if it takes me an hour, what, who cares what it costs? Is it a fair rate to you or not? and that's the other thing about like, this definition of, so let's say that's the other thing. Let's say, the rate is. there's some ethics to the rate and that's kind of this, I've seen it time and again, particularly with freelancers.
Yeah. I guess like, like everybody, you could take that ethics to 10 different people and they're gonna give you a different number for what fair is and
fair is always within 10 or $15 of your hourly rate. Anything more than that in this highway robbery. Right, and anything less than that is that person's given away their time and de and devaluing the, industry for all of us, it it's that perception, right? It's like if you ask somebody, a salaried employee, Hey, what, what's a reasonable salary for this type of position? They're gonna say somewhere in the range of 20 or 30 grand of what they're making. Right.
And then anything over that is highway robbery and anything less than that, that person's devaluing the position. so we just have to recognize that, you know, the, the money's, the money, the rate's, the rate. I try to charge things based on the value provided. And so I generally work on a lot of things that create revenue. So I think to myself. Does my client have a, a valid opportunity to 10 x their investment with us?
So if they spend 10 grand with us, do they have the ability to convert this into a hundred thousand dollars? And if that answer is yes, I'm all in like, like it's gonna be 10 grand, bro. And, and it all seems like a lot, well, you could hire someone with less experience, could take a little bit longer to get it done. I, you know.
Mm-hmm.
Good luck.
Yeah, great point.
¶ Client Priorities and WordPress Releases
let's, next question here. Eric Kovic asks, how do you think the new WordPress release schedule impact freelancers? Did I pronounce his name correctly? I might have messed it up. Kovac.
I, I'll go with that.
Kirk Kovac.
Sorry.
Eric
Kovac. Eric Kovac. Good guy. do you, do you want to answer first? 'cause my answer's gonna be a, maybe a little more contrarian.
Oh, let's hear the, the contrary view of, whatever, whatever the non contrary view view is.
Well, I, I, so people in Slack groups and, you know, people that go to Word Camp and people that just got back from press comp and, and, and those people, those people care what WordPress is doing. For the first dozen years that Ana Nomas was in business, I didn't even know there was a community to WordPress. And, and so I think in the grand scheme of things, when we say how does this impact freelancers, it doesn't. They don't give a crud.
Like nobody, I shouldn't say nobody, but there's such a, a high percentage of people in our space that aren't connected to our space that, you know, hopefully some of them find this podcast. Hopefully some of them go, oh my God, I didn't even know there was a word Camp. What's a word? Camp? my first word camp was, word Camp US San Diego three years ago. and after that, I became an addict.
Like I started going to local word camps and Zoom word camps and or, WordPress meetups and, and all kinds of stuff. But I think in general, freelancers don't care. It doesn't matter when the next thing is released, as long as I know that my client has a reasonably updated version on their website.
Yeah, and I think the old schedule is what, quarterly and now it's annual. Is that kind of the idea? They're saying
annual now? Yeah. One, one. One major release a year.
So here's how I, I, I agree with everything you said, and in fact, it probably makes it more, well, it's a couple things. A, it makes WordPress more stable for US developers across the board, so that's a good thing. Yeah. On the downside, if you're charging for maintenance, there's maybe less need or less perceived need for your service, and that could be a downside. but I don't think, like, well, I a, however, a. US developers are barely thinking about it. Our clients,
like our clients don't even care. I, they don't, I can remember it very vividly. I had a client that we were doing some, some deep customization work in WooCommerce for them. And, this was the job. This was a job you sell and you wish that you didn't like, like, you know, we. From an agency perspective, I was like, why? Why do they want me to do this?
Like, you don't, you don't have the bandwidth, you don't have the users you're asking for every, they wanted like Pixel perfect recreations from a Figma file to this WooCommerce reimagined internet experience. And they're great people. I love the client. I just think what we were doing was a little weird. And and I would tell 'em, I think what you're doing is a little weird. But that's what they wanted. They were very resolute. This is what we want.
And, As we were building that out, that's when the whole WP Engine WooCommerce thing happened. And I got nervous 'cause they were on WP Engine and so I, I finally asked him on a call, I said, Hey, have you been getting emails from W WP Engine? And he goes, oh yeah, I see that stuff, but the website works. Like as long as the website keeps coming up, we really don't care. And I was like, okay.
And I was like, so at the level that this customer was having me do all this custom stuff, and I thought that they were really, had their finger on the pulse of things, they didn't care. Yeah. You know, and, and so we think, we think these horrible things because we're so close in the community. Mm-hmm. You know, with, with the WP Minute folks and Matt Maderis and all these folks, we think, oh my goodness, the sky is falling. Matt had a bad morning. You know, or, or it's like, and then.
in the reality of it, nobody cares. Right? Everyone's disconnected and it doesn't matter. And you know what, it's just Monday morning.
Yeah. You know? And the other thing, like, you know what, the only times our clients know or think there's a problem. Is when the sales aren't happening. And I don't even mean e-commerce. I mean like they run a lawyer shop and they're like, oh, we, we need another client. Yeah, our, and they're like, what's wrong with the website? But as soon as that client comes in, they're like, we'll see you next year. Like,
yeah, that. I work a lot in the PowerPort space, and so a lot of, web leads come in, right? And I can't tell you, so I should say I train people in the PowerPort space, so I I'm not necessarily making their websites. And so part of the training is okay, you need to have a hundred percent. Lead follow up. You need to be able to demonstrate to me that you follow up with a hundred percent of your leads.
You can do this by showing me a screen capture or a report or whatever your CRM gives you for these leads. I gotta tell you, Toby, it's at least 75% of the time business owners with millions invested in their business. I'm not talking small shops, millions invested in their business. They pull up a report and they go, well, we haven't had any leads in like three months. Right. You know, through our website of like, so you think your website's working right?
Like, what else on your website's not working? And then I do a website audit with them and I go, you, I'm not your web guy. Like if, if you, you need to take this back to who your contract is with.
Mm-hmm. I think, I wish and, and think, and I don't know, like I would rather be having those conversations with, maybe it's just my, like. where I'm at as a human or whatever. Like I wish people would just call and say, how can I make more money? I'd be like, okay, my expertise is website and some marketing stuff. Let's talk about how we can make you more money.
And you know, it's like a very different conversation than like them coming to me saying, build me a website because I need more leads. Or you know, like,
yeah, well. And here's, here's a weird one, and it's just, and I, and I talk about this a a lot, right?
¶ Handling Client Feature Creep
Your clients do, they ask for a lot of like weird customizations or modifications that, and, and in your mind you're like, I. Where, where did that request come from? Like what in your, what in your UX experience makes you think that that's a requirement for your website to make that more money? That, that, like what, where did you get the idea that that's your conversion linchpin? Right. because I'm, I'm talking to clients that if they were in Kajabi. They wouldn't have that option. Mm-hmm.
If they were in Podia, they wouldn't have that option. If they were in Shopify, they wouldn't have that option. But because we're in WordPress and we can do anything we want with WordPress, they're like, that needs to be like a pink camouflage button. Right. And that, and that needs to be purple. And you're going, I, what are we doing?
Yeah, we doing it
because we can.
And, and WooCommerce is the worst for this feature creep, ridiculousness. Like, you know, they, they see the WI don't know. I don't know where they get these ideas because I don't think they're on woocommerce.com. I think. I don't, but they're like, can we do this? Can we, I don't know. They're on Amazon and they're on some, I saw this thing. Can we do this? I'm always like, slow down. Like, how about we like
sell something? Like, but then you search on WooCommerce and they have an add-on for 1 99 a year that does just
that, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. And well, and it's guaranteed to break in three months when they up something updates, you know?
So when you get those requests from an agency perspective, do you look at it like, Hey, here's another income opportunity and another vertical for customization? Or do you. Put on your consultant hat and, and be like that, that would cost you this much more to implement that. What's your reasoning and is there something else we should do with that budget?
Usually it's the latter actually, and honestly, I feel some responsibility as like a guide through the wilderness. Yeah. I have friends who run very successful agencies in town who don't they, and they just say, yes, we can do that. Thank you for asking, here's what it's gonna cost. And I don't judge, like, I'm just like, it's not me.
I, I don't, I'd rather have the conversation about the why and, but honestly, I go, if they're coming to you asking, let's say it's a bad question, that's, and in reality what it is, a lot of times a bad question. They're probably not coming, going like, well, I, I need more money. What do you think I should do? I have this e-commerce shop. Instead they're like, I saw this feature. Build me this. And like one option is for you to say, sure, I can build that.
I know there's a WooCommerce extension and it'll be X amount of dollars. but I will say like at a certain point, if I'm feeling a lot of pushback, my answer just becomes, yes, I can do it. Sure, here's the cost. Like, and it usually, I know right away if in the conversation if they're gonna like be open to the conversation or not.
How about you? Someone asked for something. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm glad to hear that we're on similar pages. Mm-hmm. I, I used to be in the, in the framework of, well, if they asked for it, it must be important, so I'm gonna do what I can to provide it. but over the years, I've really begun to adopt this. They ask for it. That doesn't make it important. We need, we need to figure out where this is coming from.
'cause if I just say yes to everything and I chase my tail around, I've found that what happens is I might make more money upfront. I. But the relationship gets damaged because six months later they go, I don't understand. We've done all this work and we've paid you extra for extra things, and we're still not making money with this website. And then I gotta go like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like how do you think that this website work equals like a return? Like Right. What?
Like what have you done that actually makes money? because of my experience in the automotive industry. I'm very keenly aware of the, the friends and family features, right?
Mm-hmm.
if you wonder why car dealerships always hire new salespeople, it's 'cause new salespeople always come in and sell 10 cars right away. I. And then they run out of friends and family to buy new cars. Right. Uhhuh. And then the struggle starts.
Mm-hmm.
And, and that's what you see with a lot of membership and learning websites is, you know, you've got a list of 20 or 25 people that are gonna support you and, and, and buy, you know, an access plan even at a discount. But it gets some revenue going and you get your hopes up. But if you don't market, if you don't do anything, if you don't take any acti, if you don't join the entrepreneur network in your town, or you know, if you don't do anything.
The website doesn't feed itself, you know, it needs to be fed.
¶ Sales is the Real Hard Work
I also think people get stuck in marketing. probably partly 'cause that's like what our culture glamorizes like Mad Men and Instagram. Like it's all about marketing and advertising. Yeah. But to me, like, I always think like, start with sales. Go find someone to buy this. Don't leave until they buy it. That sort of like mentality like, Because you really don't need a whole lot of marketing or advertising to do that. But that's like, to me, the hard part, and this is like an example of features.
People want automated sales processes. Yeah. Be it like an e-commerce site or membership site. The Mighty MO has no automated sales stuff and like it's, 'cause I just like. I don't think it's like an infrastructure that's worth supporting. Like, like I'd rather like go out, you know, like talk to someone, get their credit card, ring it up on a re, you know, like done. Next one. You know,
I think we may mention this on our original show. I think we did, but it's amazing.
What people assume or believe is happening at what they perceive to be larger or more experienced enterprises like I know, because I know people in the space, they make these assumptions that the plugins they sell are all automated and that the access is automated and that the license key is automated and that all, you know, you can go from this package to this package and it's automatically, you know, How they figure that like you paid half the month and now half the month. Mm-hmm.
And you know, prorations and all these things, right? no. Like most cases that doesn't exist. But for some reason, people that are new to the marketplace assume that all that is in place.
Right? And,
and so they're like, well, I must have that. And you're like, Uhhuh. I know people doing $2 million a year that don't have that. Right? So why is this so important? Like, let's just get you selling some stuff. Yeah. I remember back in the day, I met a guy who started a separate, you know, I'm, I'm going to get a side gig going. And his side gig was selling training on, Google Business, like Yelp ads, right?
Mm-hmm.
Helping businesses, Optimize their Yelp presence. Talk about like not, not technical. Right. He would, he would go to the business and he's like, here's what we can do for you. Right? We'll take your pictures, we'll change your blurbs. We'll optimize your, your heading and your setting and we'll take care of answering comments for the first three months. And your startup for this is gonna be like $4,000 or something like that. And it's amazing.
'cause these businesses were like, oh, well you need, you need to have a good Yelp. You know, yeah, we're grand. And it was, and he, and if he was in a local region and he got a hundred people to do that. That turned into decent money, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and in the real, in the real thing, like what you and I think of as, as work as an agency. So what was the real work? The work was the sales.
Yes. The work was going door to door and telling people what you would do and how much it would cost and getting them to give you that check.
Mm-hmm.
But the actual work. Was like, yeah. So I walk around the building, I take a few pictures. Right. I put up a couple Google alerts. Yeah.
When my alert pings, I respond. Yeah. Well, and the, you know, it's the work when you can outsource it. You can't outsource sales as easily as you can when Dev.
Yeah. Yeah. So, there, there's, there's big chunks of that. I have projects, quite honestly, that I think are awesome. I think they're awesome, but their sales have not been high. And it's because the hard work is the, the hard work is the selling.
Mm-hmm. Well, and, and you could, extrapolate this a bit with communities. The hard work of building an online community isn't building the platform, right? No,
no. It's getting What's the hard work? Yeah. And a lot of people make this mistake. They'll, they assume, and this is bad because I'm in this space, this is how I make someone my money. But people have a thriving Facebook page, or they'll have a thriving LinkedIn group, or they'll have a thriving Instagram following, and they make an assumption that, Hey, as soon as I promote my own URL, everyone's just gonna come in there. I've got 80,000 people over here.
So if I just charge a dollar a person, I'm gonna have $80,000 a month coming into this thing, and they start doing this. This numbers game in their head and getting optimistic. And what they fail to realize is getting people to migrate from one channel to another is one of the most painful things in the world. Facebook was censoring people like crazy during the pandemic, and people were trying to get off of Facebook and just migrate them over to a LinkedIn group. Nobody was going. Nobody.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know what's interesting about that? So we have, we're in the WordPress community, so we have different perspectives maybe. But like, why would you leave Facebook for LinkedIn? Like, why, why would you, I want LinkedIn. Why wouldn't you be like, I'm gonna self-host this. That way this'll never happen
again. Oh, well and that what, that becomes part of that, right? So it's, if you can't get people to go from Facebook to LinkedIn, then it's a really far stretch to think they're gonna go to your personal URL.
Mm-hmm.
To me, it's the same conversation with the mobile application. I. I went to a motorcycle expo in Las Vegas and I am a huge motorcycle nut. So I went to AIM Expo and I was a, a speaker at the event. I was a paid speaker to speak there, but when you got to the event, it said, oh, you gotta put this app in your phone. And you know, to know the speaker schedule and where the vendor booths are and all these things. I'm like, I'm not putting another app in my phone.
No, it's stupid because then you're gonna say, oh, you, you get access to my contacts and my pictures and my phone. Right, right. Yeah. Videos and my, forget this, I'm not putting this crap in my phone.
Mm-hmm.
But that's where people are at nowadays. Mm-hmm. Like most people, like, I'm not putting another app on my phone. Yep. So if you think your business won't succeed without a mobile app, I need you to rethink what your business is then.
Well, I think too, like. The whole idea that, and this is common I think in my experience, is that like people assume the app is the solution. And like, just to reiterate what we've been talking about, the solution is to sell more, not to build an app, whatever. It doesn't matter where the community is. You still gotta convince someone. I always think like get 'em to join for a dollar. It can be a dollar a month, whatever. But once you can get them to pay you once.
You can get them to pay you again, like the, at least that barrier to the second payment goes extremely far down like where however tall it was. Now it's way further EAs way easier once you get that $1 transaction. You, you just reminded me of that guy from American
Pickers, the TV show.
Oh, I,
I haven't seen that. What, what's the deal? two dudes, it's been around forever. Two dudes drive around the country and they go and they, they look at like antiques or like junkyards, and then he calls it, you know, oh, I gotta break the ice, you know, so he says, Hey, how much for that rusty fender up there on the shelf? And the guy goes, well, I hate to let it go. I could let it go for $50. He goes, mm-hmm. How about if I gave you 30? Would you take 30 for that fender? And he goes.
Yeah, I'll take the 30 bucks, whatever. And then he goes, ah, I broke the ice. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Now he, because now he's looking like, you know, for a motorcycle or for a
¶ Managing Burnout and Prioritizing Time
car or whatever, right. Yeah. So, oh, that's
funny. what do you do when you're feeling burned out? Busy. And the burnout's probably too broad a term, but like, I had a long, I have a lot. I just moved my house. I have like a stack of boxes over here that's a mile high and I'm feeling anxious the moment I wake up. And so like, how do you, and you can imagine, let's say you're run, trying to make a go of being a freelancer. Maybe you've been doing it a year and you're like, Ugh, I need more money.
Like, like how do you manage that expectation internally and how do you, what do you, yeah. What do you, how do you manage that like.
It took me a long time. Toby, that's a good question. It took me a long time to get over it. 'cause I used to think more hours. More hours. More hours. Right? I used to think, oh, if I just, I just put in more time, I'm gonna get more money. and it wasn't until fairly recent and, you know, late in life that I realized that's not the equation. That's not how it works. And so, I used to work in the car biz 13, 14 hours a day, standing on concrete selling.
So I got that really hard work ethic kind of ingrained into me. And then in this space, that's not how this works at all. So if I find myself burnt out, stressed out, staring at the computer and nothing's happening, those moments, if it's a nice day, I'll just put on a pair of padded shorts and go out and and do a 30 mile bike ride. If I do that physical something physical, something removed, it recharges me mentally. So then when I come back, you know, we had talked earlier in the show, right?
So sometimes there's things that might take someone else a week to do. I can knock it out in an afternoon 'cause it's in my sweet spot. And so just like the book Strength Finders. You know, I double down on my strengths. I go out, I bicycle, I come back, I'm mentally centered. I hit that keyboard and knock out a week's worth of work in an afternoon and go, man, I should go bicycling more often, right? Mm-hmm. sometimes you look at your schedule and you see meetings.
I just had a conversation with a, I'm on a board of directors, kind of an advisor's board, and we are meeting today and I was very direct and surprisingly others were on the call that was like, look. Time is getting very valuable, right? So either 'cause I like to add value to others where I can, I wouldn't do shows like this if I didn't, right? So am I, am I adding a lot of value to other people? Are other people adding a ton of value to me that I just can't miss?
Or is it putting a bunch of money in my bank account? And if it's not one of those three things, it needs to go. And so I was doing the, I don't know if you wanna call it the Gary Vaynerchuk kind of thing, but I was making appointments with people and giving away time and give away the best for free and all that work will come in and maybe that's a great way to get launched.
I. But if you've already been launched and now your time is, is, has grown in that value category, you can't keep giving it away like that. So you're either doing something 'cause you really enjoy adding value to that other person, or that person's adding extraordinary value to you or you're making money. It's gotta be one of those three things or it's gotta go
that. I like that a lot. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a brilliant coder. Like, in person, just like, just really nice guy. Can't find a job for whatever reason. Yeah. But brilliant. a great coder, you know? anyway, we're conversing and he's like, yeah, I just had a meeting, with a guy who's building a business in town and we spent, to me it sounded like he spent more than an hour at a coffee shop giving the best information.
Like Yeah, like you're saying, like the vanerchuk thing. and I told him, and he's, he comes from more, he, he worked at an agency for the last 15 years or whatever, and I think like. For him and I, this is what I was trying to share with him that I don't know how successful I was, but I was like that next meeting you have, he needs to pay you five grand. Not for the meeting, but you have to have a contract. Yeah. Worth at least five grand to take the next meeting.
And you can have a quick phone call and sort that out. But like, I think that's very foreign to a lot of people who are getting started in the agency and freelancing world. Like
Yeah.
¶ Overcoming Sales Fear and Asking
That like. Yeah. it's o like, it's okay to give a little bit away, but like at some point you gotta ask for real money. Yeah, exactly.
And, and I think about how many people did I give my best to? Over and over and over. 'cause 'cause when you're young, when you're a freelancer, you're just getting started. And when I say young, maybe you left corporate and you started your own thing, but you're 60 years old, you still, you still, you're young in the space.
Mm-hmm.
And so you're like, well, if I just keep adding enough value, sooner or later they'll see the value and they'll offer me something. Mm-hmm. They're not, they're not gonna make an offer unless you tell 'em what the value is. Yep. There's a thing.
this is, that's why on YouTube. You hear over and over again like, and subscribe. Like, and subscribe. And you're like, I've heard it. But if they don't ask, people, don't do it.
Yep.
Like, you gotta ask, I guess maybe that's the lesson, ask for the money and I would say ask before the first co. Before the first. Definitely. Before the first in person. and, and that's another thing, like I go. Let's see if you can get 'em on the hook for one hour at your hourly rate because they've given you your, their credit card. It, that next sale is way easier once you have their credit card and you've
billed them for that. You know, when, when I was the publication and, and training manager at Suzuki, I had a guy that worked for me and, and I, I would consider us friends now. His name's Bill. But when I, when I first started working there, he annoyed the live in Crut outta me all the time. 'cause whenever we would, whenever I'd say, oh, here's a new task that we have to do. He'd say, well, I'm gonna want this, this, this, this, and this. You know? And I'd be like, why? Why?
How come every time I give you something to do, you're asking me for something like, you're supposed to work for me? And he would just go, well, if you don't ask for cake, you don't get cake. And I was like, ah. But after like six months of that, it got to be where like, like he would start asking, I'd go, whatever. How much cake do you need for this? You know, how much cake do you need for this? But he would say, if you don't ask for cake, you don't get cake. Yeah.
Yeah. And yeah. And I think like, well, so yeah. And that's the thing, like you don't know if somebody has cake to give you until you ask for their credit card. Like as a freelancer.
Yeah. And. As a freelancer, I was really surprised at how many people I donated my time to that didn't have the funding, didn't have the, the methodology to get to the funding. They were, they were more lost than I was. But there I was in good faith trying to give them this, this good information. And then I, I realized if I'm gonna do that. It can't be in a one-to-one scenario anymore. It needs to be in a one-to-many situation.
So it needs to be in a podcast environment or a mastermind or something like that where the chances of somebody coming with funding or ability is, is higher to be in that group. But if you're doing everything one-to-one, it's very, very difficult to get your hooks into something and, and turn something into a success because, And, and we don't know who our audience is yet. This is just our second episode, right? Mm-hmm. So I don't know what, I don't know who needs to hear this magic, right?
Right. But it really is like, sales is a numbers game. Uhhuh, you're gonna have to try with so many people before you get any kind of positives back.
Mm-hmm. And
so if you limit yourself consistently to a one-to-one thing as opposed to a one to many, you're gonna end up missing out on a lot of opportunities.
Yeah. One thing, you know, I think for many years, even when I started, Sale. I, I did not like sales. Like I was very like, it's gross. It's like unethical, whatever. You know, like every sleazeball idea that our culture kind of associates with sales. 'cause like every stupid comedy has some sleazy sales guy in it. And it's become, like, for me it was like, yeah, hey, I'll call you tomorrow.
but once I got over that and it took years, I started reading books about sales and it's a science and an art, like everything, and I really enjoy sales now, like, and it's just me. It's not like I'm reporting sales figures to the boss, but like if I can get someone on the phone and close it, I'm like, yes, I closed it. And like I get excited anytime I get a cold call or like, we'll call it a warm call, but someone's like, Hey, do you do WordPress? I love it.
'cause for me it's like this internal competition to like close it and I'll, I will close it. Pretty much any reasonable number,
you know. That's hilarious. When we were at, when we were at that word camp in San Diego, I had just done some sales training and, and one of those. one of those catchphrases from the sales training was, Hey, I don't know if this is for you or not, but hey, just for fun, why don't you try this real quick? Right? Yeah. And so, so it's like that disarming thing. Love it. So Lifter had these cards to give out, right? Like, so you could try get your own demo site or something like that, Uhhuh.
And so, Yeah, all of us were at the table and somebody came by and I, and I just said, Hey, I don't know if this is for you or not, but it, Hey, just for fun, why don't you take this card, try a demo site, see if you like it or not. And the guy's like, oh, thanks so much. It's great off you went. Right? And, and, Chris and Tom and, and, Emily, they, they were all like, what was that like, like Uhhuh, what just happened? I go, oh, I'll do it again. Watch. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. It again, and the same response. And they were like, how? We've been standing here and no one's taking the cards and now you're just, everyone's coming. Right. I go, let's do it a third time.
Mm-hmm.
And so that became our thing for the whole Word Camp. And so the after hours parties, I mean, it became like a contest to see who could give out the most amount. Yeah. We had so much fun. So much fun. But sales works if you make it fun.
Yeah. Yeah. And and, and it's the only way to make it, I don't know. I guess there's other ways, but like, if you're a freelancer and you're trying to avoid sales, you're gonna have. I think it's a hurdle you need to get over.
So we're gonna come up on time soon. Mm-hmm. So I want to ask what I think is an important question for mm-hmm. For people that are listening you, I've been around, you've been around, so
¶ Allocating Time for Sales and Marketing
how much of your week, what percentage of your week is spent on sales and marketing? At
least half of my work hours. Yep. Yeah. I'm just thinking, I do a lot of project management, so I even have a project manager who is fantastic. I don't think there's a better one out there. I've seen a lot of project managers and she's right up there with the great ones. And even with that, she's managing 90% of the client communication. almost all the project management. I still invest a lot of time just making sure, like I'll do some qa like.
Yeah, like, like, I'll be like, so Julie and I are my project manager. We meet twice a week for an hour at 6:00 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. so there's that, but then there's like, I'm just queuing the work because she started in January and we have other teammates who started since then. And I, I just wanna make sure that like the designs are up to my standards or whatever, you know, like the code's up to my standards.
And, for example, like, we had, we had one of our teammates delivered Afin, you know, we said, here's the description, do the work. She did the work. and it wasn't what I had in mind. And it wasn't just like an artistic vision. It was like, this just isn't good enough, whatever that means. I couldn't put my finger on it. So we then we told the client, we're like, we, this is what we built isn't up to our standards, so we're gonna rebuild it.
And, then we put another developer on it and they nailed it. And so that's an example of project management. Yeah. But then sales, I mean, 25% marketing and sales and you know, probably only 5% sales, but I would love to do a hundred percent sales. Like,
yeah, there was
a, I saw a job come up somewhere on a job board, and it was for a WordPress agency. They needed a sales guy. I was like, I would love to do that job. Like that job sounded fantastic to me. But how about you, Kurt? What? What's your percentage? Marketing and sales.
Marketing and sales. I'm 65, 70%
mm-hmm.
Marketing and sales. And I think what's really interesting, because we're, we're having like a, you know, whose agency is this anyway, right? And, and, and then, but then talking to freelancers at the same time, there are certain clients I have where technically I'm the freelancer. I'm not even operating as Manana, NOMAS with that person. So. I have two different clients where I would consider myself the freelancer. And so I'm not billing that workout at agency rates. I'm now, I'm the hourly.
Right now, I'm the guy going, oh, you know, for this much I can execute these five tasks. And, but it's steady work. It's consistent income and I keep it because it's the smart thing to do. Right? Keep that vertical going. So that probably takes 15% of my week, which really only gives me 10 or 15% of my week for actual client manana, Voss work because I'm actively marketing promoting, always looking for that next bigger margin job.
Mm-hmm.
Right. And then we have team members we delegate too, right? So they, they pick up some of some of that work too. But the actual work, like you said, the project management and stuff like that, the actual work that I can do is only 10 or 15% of my time. I have to delegate the rest because I have to commit that much to sales and marketing to keep the funnel full.
Mm-hmm.
And how create what people think. The funnel isn't some magic funnel lytics link out there, that's just bringing me free clients. Right. Right. And it's, it's the funnel means the work to build the funnel.
Yeah. And what, what, so that's a hundred percent true definitely at our, let's say, freelancer agency level, but I think it's true across the board. Like Walmart is still out there advertising.
Yeah.
You know, Target's still the, you know, name company, Suzuki Motors still advertising like this is a never, never ending, what do you call it? Mouse
wheel. Yeah.
¶ Sustaining the Sales Funnel
And what's really important is even if you get those really big jobs or those really big contracts, you cannot allow those really big contracts to all of a sudden become 85% of your week. Because if you're not continuing to add to that funnel. When that work goes through the funnel and trickles out the bottom, there's nothing left in the funnel to collect on. Mm-hmm.
So you either need really, really strong margins or you need to schedule your work in a way that says, which gets us back to the original part of the conversation. Why does it take till Thursday after next to change the heading? Right. Well, because they're doing other things.
Yep. Exactly. let's end it there. This is whose web agency is this? Anyway, with Kurt Nanon, Toby Kres, hope you'll join us next week.