Red Flag Issues With New Clients & The Right Tech Stack For WordPress Freelancers in 2025
Avoid costly mistakes! Learn to spot red flag issues with new clients & choose the right tech stack for WordPress freelancing success.
Join us as we uncover the key red flags that could signal trouble with new clients in 2025. This video also highlights the optimal tech stack for WordPress freelancers, helping you streamline your workflow and enhance productivity. By recognizing potential pitfalls and leveraging the best technology, you can safeguard your freelance career. Tune in now for valuable insights that will set you on the path to success.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 973. This show is going to be an internal discussion between me and Kirk. We’re going to be discussing some red flags that come up when you’re onboarding new clients or existing clients. And in the second half of the show, what is the right tech stack for 2025? If you’re a WordPress developer, freelancer, or designer, there are loads of choices out there, but what are some of the best solutions? It should be a great show. Kirk, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:15.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Jonathan. My name is Kirk von Annen. I own an agency called Mañana Nomas, and we focus largely on learning and membership websites, and I work directly with the WP Tonic team.
[00:01:28.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Before we start, Kirk, I think I think your sound is not going through your microphone.
[00:01:32.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think maybe we need to redo this. It says ATR. Let me tap.
[00:01:42.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yeah, it’s going through.
[00:01:44.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
Okay. Maybe I just need to put it closer.
[00:01:47.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Let’s redo this, then. Three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 973. In this show, it’s going to be an internal discussion between me and Kirk. We’re going to be discussing red flag issues with new or existing clients. Plus, in the second half, we’re going to be talking about the right tech stack for a Press Focus, freelancer, developer, or designer. In the middle of 2025, things are changing rapidly. Should be a great show. Got a ton of great advice and knowledge to give to you. So, Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:33.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Absolutely, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas, and we focus largely on learning and membership sites, as well as working directly with the WP Tonic team.
[00:02:43.200] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Should be a great show, but before we go into the meat and potatoes of it, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. I also want to highlight that we’ve got some fantastic special deals from the sponsors of the show, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services aimed at the freelance or WordPress professional. It’s a great resource. You can get all these special offers and goodies by going over to WPTonic, WP-Tonic. Com/deals, WP-Tonic. Com/deals, and you find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for from my WordPress professionals? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So, Kirek, Kirek suggested these couple of topics. I thought they were excellent. So where do you want to start our journey in the first half of this show, around red flags with new or existing clients, Kurt?
[00:03:55.170] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I think it’s super important to mention, these aren’t set in stone. These are just hints. So when they say, Hey, what are the red flags of dealing with clients? This is from the agency perspective, and I just wanted to be super clear. I’m not trying to point anyone out. So if I know you and you’re listening to this, it’s not personal. These are just red flags that come up in things. For me, Jonathan, if I’m in the discovery process and I’m with a client and they seem misdirected, or you say, “What’s your business doing?” They can’t answer that simply. Or if you say, What’s the goal of this project? And ambiguous, far-reaching answers come out, but they lack specificity. That, to me, is one of the red flags because your whole needs assessment process won’t be able to stay on the rails if they don’t have some idea of what they’re doing. So the biggest red flag to me is people who are big idea people but don’t have an idea of how to put ideas to action.
[00:05:07.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yes, I totally agree with you. I would add that it really it depends on the price point on how much discovery you can do, because at certain price points, really, it should all be paid up front. But on the other hand, you still want the customer to be happy because it doesn’t matter what price point. If you’re not going to consistently get customers or clients who are unhappy, you’re not going to get any referrals. So it doesn’t really matter. But you’re totally correct. If they’ve got very grandiose ambitions, but they have no plan of action on how these objectives are going to be achieved. That’s a major red flag to me because that shows that theyn’t given much thought to what they want and need. It’s very unlikely that the project will benefit them. If it doesn’t benefit them, they’re very unlikely to keep on investing in the website, in the relationship, the ongoing hopeful relationship that you’re going to have with them. What’s your response to what I’ve just outlined?
[00:06:38.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
For the most part, I agree. Where I go with this a lot, especially when people have your the word grandiose ideas, but that lack of specific application. These are the projects that you analyze, you go, Oh, this should be pretty simple. I can develop this pretty quickly. And when you as an agency start to have those ideas, that’s the red flag to yourself. You’re like, Nothing out of the box is going to be simple, easy. I should just be able to throw this together for these people. If you don’t have a firm grasp of what they want. And what I mean here is if people don’t have a grasp of what their actual goal or plan is and you think you’re helping them and you get things started, you start to work on what seems like a basic five or seven-page marketing static site. And all of a sudden they go, Oh, hey, we just saw this other website. It has this really cool thing. Could you check that out? We want to do that. Now they want a community site. And then they say, Oh, I just saw this ad for passion. Io. I should have a mobile application.
[00:07:39.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, I just I want to have a I want to have some online courses. Next thing in this thing is like morphing into That’s a crazy thing. But if you’ve already started a financial relationship with somebody and you’re new at the agency game and you’re tied to that income and you don’t want to let the customer down, now you might be getting in way over your head or putting in way too many hours to be able to keep the money that you’ve already gotten. You can put yourself in some really strange positions if you don’t outline a really good statement of work before you start.
[00:08:11.580] – Jonathan Denwood
I think unless you’ve got a lot of prior experience in agencies, I think for the first year, the idea that you’re going to make a lot of money from the projects you are taking is probably not going to happen, in my opinion, because you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. Not technical mistakes, some of them will be, but it’s just going to be client relationship and handling mistakes. I’m going to give some scaffolding to what I said, and then get your response and then see where you want to go with this. I think it is about price point. Now, anything below $3,000 Probably should be paid upfront or paid on a totally automatic, pre-setup, debit or credit card system. Obviously, you’re still taking a risk But spread over three or four payments maybe, but best that it’s all paid upfront. That can be dealt with. I still think you need a written document that can be signed off using electronic signature. It doesn’t need to be more than one page. If it’s more than one page long, that suggests that this isn’t a $3,000 project to me. But you need… Some people say that if it’s been prepaid, it can all be dealt with by email.
[00:09:54.970] – Jonathan Denwood
I disagree with that. I think most of the communication should be dealt with with one to two Zooms and exchange of email. But the final agreement should be a one-page with electronic signature with bullet points and the main deliverables and Windows deliverables. Also what happens if the client is expected to deliver things and they don’t? What’s going to happen to the project? And that should be written out and be clear in clear English. Now, anything between three and five, that is probably a deposit and then a final payment. The website should always be on your own server under your control, and the people that are paying really shouldn’t have admin access to it. But that’s difficult because when you’re building something like a learning management system or a community website, it’s very difficult for the person to see the back-end and do fundamental testing as a client without admin access. But it definitely should be on your server. It’s only transferred when all payments have been made, and there should be a final sign-off document If you don’t get a final sign-off document, you are really exposing yourself to unlimited liability and unlimited request for updates.
[00:11:45.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Anything after 5,000, that you do… Anything between three and five, a two to three-page contract, probably. Anything over 5,000, You really need a custom contract. If you go to the WP tonic stroke deals, one of the services we provide is a contract, and I use it myself, highly modified. It’s fantastic. I can’t remember the name of the partner that supplies it, but I use it myself. Anything over 5,000, it’s really going to be a customized contract with a sign-off process. Until the final payment is made, the website’s got to be on your server. How do you respond, Kurt?
[00:12:38.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is somewhere where you and I just have a fundamental agree to disagree stance, I think, on billing and payments. In 2008, I had just gotten fatigued of starting projects that didn’t get finished and didn’t get final payment. I had a server full of half websites where people didn’t provide their About Us section or their logo, or they wanted to change their color palette, but that didn’t get back to me on the palette change. And we ended up with all these projects. And I gave it a lot of thought. And these were basic startup packages. These were super cheap, super affordable websites. And we changed our name. So that’s when Mañana No Mas was born, and we changed our policy at that time. And I said, everything’s prepaid. We don’t touch the keyboard until everything’s paid. And when we have our needs assessment meeting, we’re going to lay out some deadlines, and those deadlines is your homework as the customer. You’re going to provide those assets, the logo, the pictures, the content, whatever. You got to provide whatever we discussed by that deadline, or we take your project out of the rotation and work on other projects that are scheduled, and we’ll fit you in as we can, if we can, but you don’t get your money back.
[00:13:54.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
We’ve already put work in, that’s it. And we started that policy in 2008, and a lot of people told me that wasn’t going to work. A lot of people said, Oh, that’s countercultural. The customer is always right. No one’s going to put up with that. So you get all this unsolicited business advice whenever you do something like this. And we did it. I said, I’m just going to do it. I’m going to see what happens. Our business was so small at the time, it could only have grown. And that year, our business tripled. People wanted the structure. So we learned firsthand that people wanted the structure. They wanted the accountability. And they started to appreciate the consultative side of our business more than the, hey, do you want fries with that building websites business? Because we transferred our role in the relationship. Now, as our business grew, Jonathan, this is going to sound odd, but I don’t care if it’s five grand, eight grand, 10 grand. If it’s a project where we’re going to build a digital property for somebody, I’m going to say, Hey, here’s This is the needs assessment. This is what we got.
[00:15:01.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
Here’s your assets. And I say, Hey, this is going to be a 45-day project or a 60-day project or a 90-day project. I’m going to say that’s $12,000 payable up front. Your deadline is going to be at that 12 weeks or whatever that turns out to be. And then we give them access to our project management system. And they’re part of the system. They can see everything happening and know that we’re on schedule. But I made it a point after 2008 and really solidified this in 2018 and ’19. In 2018 and ’19, that’s where we started to see a decline of people wanting to shell out money in advance for things. We really started to see a squeeze of people wanting deposits and payments and stretching things out. And then the battle, the collections to always get paid at the end, we decided to hold firm on it and we just said, Hey, here’s the deal. Our agency is not in a position to lend your company money. If we know that this is going to happen in 2-3 months, if you don’t have the money now, what makes me think you’re going to have the money in 2-3 months?
[00:16:10.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m not in a position to make you alone. You, however, can go through Klarna or a firm or any of these other finance locations, and you can finance it through another third party, someone that does financing for a living. And we’ve lived on that for a while. Where I do, and I’m sorry, this answer is getting long, but where I do have some agreement with you is when it’s a project that’s going to be nine months, a year, 18 months in development and ongoing curriculum development and like subprojects built on the back-end. What we’ll do is we’ll split it into phases and we’ll say phase one is the actual website build, you pay that upfront, and then we transfer that ownership to you based on your sign off. And then when you want additional content for curriculum development, LMS development, stuff like that. We do that as phase 2, phase 3, phase 4 projects, and each of the phases is prepaid before we execute.
[00:17:11.380] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you can see it whatever way you want, but I think in the tradition, if it’s a project, you ask for 50%, and that covers the costs with a small profit margin in it. If you’re a freelancer, you’re going to be the project manager. Most of this is poor procedures and dealing with really difficult clients that want to extract as much value from you as possible without really compensating you. That sounds harsh, but subconsciously or consciously, that’s what a lot of the smaller clients, that’s what it’s about. Basically, that’s about being totally clear what you’re going to be providing, really having clear packages, really being in a financial position of when a client really pushes against this, even though it’s all been explained to them, and they start with project creep and wanting… Obviously, there’s got to be a little bit of leeway. You’ve got to give a bit of slack to somebody, but there’s got to be a clear boundary. Normally, the reason why there ain’t no clear boundaries is that you need the money. They can smell it, and they sense that you’re desperate, and you are, and so you can’t walk away from them.
[00:18:56.360] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s really down to you to be in a financial position where you can walk away from them and say, Sorry, we never agreed on this. You’re asking a ton of work here. It was never in the discovery, it was never in the document. Really, I want to help you. I want to finish this project. But if you want all this extra work, this is any tradesman, electrician, plumber, car repair, air conditioning, it doesn’t matter what it is. If the work is getting more, they just re quote the story. They’re not doing a ton of extra work without giving you a revised quotation. It ain’t happening.
[00:19:45.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
The big word that you used there was clarity. Having clarity on the topic is super, super important. And then let’s be a little vulnerable. You and I have had private off-screen conversations before about how important it is to run lean, operate below your means, put yourself in a position where it’s okay to tell a customer no. I’m part of another show, and in that show, me and that co-host had a discussion. And I said, How many times did you make a bad decision to work with a client you knew you should have said no to, but you thought, you convinced yourself you needed that income. So you took on the project, and then it just became a boat anchor. It just waved you down for months dealing with the person or the project that you knew wasn’t a good fit. But you did it because you thought you needed the money. And then, hindsight being, 2020, look back on that event, look back on life, look back on that event and then ask yourself, honestly, did I really need that two grand? Did I really need that $3,000 at that time for that headache and heartache?
[00:20:55.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
And chances are you’re going to be able to look back with clarity, again, hindsight being, 2020, and you’re going to go, No, I didn’t really need that. I didn’t need to do that. But unfortunately, you already did and you’ve already paid the price. The trick is to not put yourself in that position repetitive. You should learn from your mistake and not repeat it.
[00:21:14.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s just also the prices. I am looking to have a washing machine dryer installed, just the electrics and some basic plumbing. It looks like it’s going to cost me a couple of It’s ridiculous. I was looking maybe at 500 to a thousand, but I think if I want this done, it’s going to cost me between 1,500 and 2,000. It’s just gone absolutely bonkers costs. And these clients know this as well, I feel. Now, when it comes to the big… Well, and just to finish off, if clients are really giving you some major red flags, even at the initial discussion on the initial discussions, it ain’t going to get better. I can tell you. Don’t think because you do a great job and you give them fantastic… I’ve heard all this on forums and people like to, Oh, I We never have any problems with clients. We always satisfy their needs. Give me a break, will you? For God’s sake, give me a break. Who are you trying to kid? If it’s not started off that well, it ain’t going to get better. Secondly, you only really know a client when something does go wrong in a project because you can get a client saying, Oh, you’re fantastic.
[00:22:59.200] – Jonathan Denwood
I love I love the vision. Oh, you’re doing great work. Your project manager’s fantastic. You’re fantastic. Oh, we got plans when we’ve got this project done that we got tons of I’ve worked for you and at least got five or six jobs. We’re expanding the team and you’re going to be part of it. And soon as something goes wrong, well, you’re the devil incarnate. You’re useless. You’re your project manager is great. We love to hire him or her, but we don’t want anything to do with you. You’ve inserted us. I’ve heard it all, I’ve witnessed it all. Some of the worst, the most charming initially, because they tend to be narcissists and psychopaths. There’s a lot of them around, basically. Basically, and you only see it when something goes wrong. Obviously, we all have to drop people and drop companies if they’re consistently doing things wrong and they do nothing about it. We got to dump them. But am I making any sense or am I starting to waffle now?
[00:24:22.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, you are. I want to be really careful in this episode. Like I said at the beginning, this isn’t about anyone in specifics. This is just in general running a business for 25 years and the ins and outs and learn from us. So if you’re new in the agency game, you’re not going through the same stuff. Jonathan, a lot of what you talked about is like that transition, that difference. When an agency first starts, they are fighting to become recognized as an expert. And so you end up doing the easier jobs, the easier projects. You end up saying yes to a lot of things. But then there’s going It’s going to be this transitional period where you’re either going to expand and add to your team, which adds to your expertise, or you’re going to recognize that you’re really competent at what you’re doing in your special. You’re going to become that expert. And then there’s a transition in agency life. There’s the transition of where you’re fighting tooth and nail to get every stinking job you can possibly get to later being like, your job is really to filter out what you don’t want to work on so that you can focus on the stuff that’s really your sweet spot.
[00:25:35.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
The trick in this in agency life is to find your sweet spot, find your niche, find the people that you want to serve, and then serve them really, really, really well, but have the confidence and the ability to say no to people that aren’t a great fit.
[00:25:50.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think we’ve got a good place to end the first half of the show. Hopefully, we’re giving you some value. I think we have. I’ve I’ve tried, I’m sure Kirk has to be as honest in this conversation. There is a lot of… This is only my opinion. I’m not speaking for Kirk. There’s a lot of misinformation and a load of nonsense spoke in this subject. Project, a lot of misleading. Everything’s fantastic. I never have problems with my clients, blah, blah, blah. I just can’t put up with it. I’ve told Kirk this. In the second half of the show, it’s a much nicer subject. We’re going to be talking about the right tech stack. If you’re a freelancer specializing using WordPress, it should be a great discussion. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out we love you as a developer, a freelancer, to be a partner with WP Tonic. We offer the best hosting for bigger website projects, Vulture high-speed servers. Plus, we offer all the best WordPress plugin tech in one package. Plus, we’ve got great support. If you’re looking for a great partner, plus for the first year, you get half the hosting when they pay annually, your client.
[00:27:23.420] – Jonathan Denwood
No arguments about you getting the right tech. It’s all included. It’s just a fantastic package. Kirk can’t believe how much value we offer. To find out more about getting all this, plus making 50% of the first year’s hosting, to find out more, all you have to do is go over to wp-tonic. Com/partner, wp-tonic. Com/partners, and you’ll find all the information there. You just fill in a quick form, and then we can have a one-on-one chat and see if they’re a great fit for your project. Where do you want to start with this? What’s your intro with this, Kurt? I’ve got some ideas, but I want you to start off.
[00:28:15.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
The idea of a tech stack to me is first, for some of these listeners and viewers, Jonathan, just describing what a tech stack is. The tech stack is just the collection of software that you use to run your business and serve your clients. And I can remember when I first started growing my agency, people would come into the office and they would say, oh, I need a way to put appointments on my website. I would run into the repository and find something and load it up. I need a way to have a gallery of images. I’d go into the repository and I would look up a plugin for that and I load it up. And that is not a healthy way to experience or grow your agency from a tech stack perspective. Over time, I’ve gained a lot more respect for certain plugins, certain tools, even in the SaaS market, there’s SaaS tools that I use. But it’s like I use certain tools that I know I have expertise with, that I know I can serve people well with. And even just recently, I was, Hey, can you use this new tool? And I say, Hey, I haven’t used it yet before.
[00:29:24.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to have to learn it a little bit. But as is usual the case with clients, it was a time crunch. And that time crunch put the pressure on and brought out some errors along the way. Now we learn as we go, but unfortunately, learning as you go with active customer sites is not the best way to learn as you go. So to me, knowing what the tech stack is, building a tech stack that you think is reliable and that you can become an expert in is going to help you grow your agency and attract customers because of your confidence in the tools that you use.
[00:29:58.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m going to approach this It’s slightly different. I agree with everything you’ve outlined in your initial intro. I also think it’s really dependent on the clientele you’re dealing with and the price points. There’s been a lot of back and forth in the WordPress freelance developer community about the right technology. We hate Gutenberg. We don’t We have class selection in Gutenberg. We haven’t got full design functionality unless we’re a JavaScript developer and we can make custom blocks, blah, blah, blah. But fundamentally, we want to use a different type of page builder that That gives us all this control. And that’s fine. If you’ve got clients, you can only do all this custom development, front-end development and design. If you’ve got clients over $5,000, in my opinion, unless you’re offshore-based and you’re prepared to do work at an offshore rate, even If you’re US-based and you’re doing… You need tools that may be… And there’s a lot of overlap here because, in my understanding, I love it, but I haven’t used it in Anger for a while. Generate Press gives you class selection there. I understand. I don’t follow all the forums like Kurt does because I’m busy producing content and money in my business so I can feed myself and build a future for myself.
[00:32:04.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t got the time. I don’t know how Kirk does it. I’m not saying somehow he manages it. I don’t know how he does it. Maybe I’m just slowing what I do. I don’t know. But a lot of the… If you’re below the 5,000, using Cadence, using Astra, using Using Alimator to build a good solution for a client is a great stat. Now, if I’m doing full custom development, custom design, I’m probably going to have somebody on my team, probably, that can build custom. I do. I have somebody that can build custom blocks, but there’s also freelancers that can’t. So they look at bricks or they I’m looking at the upcoming etch, but a lot of people like bricks, and to me, it’s a great tool, and it’s fast for a page builder, a non-Gutenberg page builder, but we got to be honest here, folks, a lot of these non-Gutenberg page builders, and it does depend on a lot of other variables, like the other plugins you’re using and the hosting provider you’re using. There’s a lot of variable, but a lot of these non-Gutenberg page builders had an effect on speed. I’m not going to mince my words here.
[00:33:47.280] – Jonathan Denwood
One of the worst was Alimator. Now people say the new version, but I found that it had considerable speed consequences on mobile, not quite so much on desktop. Obviously, they’re doing things to change that. Also, it depended on the third-party add-ons you are adding to the mixture. There’s a lot of variables to this, folks. It’s not a black and white situation. But if you want true speed and you’re not doing full custom design and development, I think you’re best with either Cadence WP or Generate Press. That’s my opinion. How would you respond, Kurt?
[00:34:37.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it’s one thing to talk about the page builder or the theme, because in some cases the theme is the page builder, blah, blah, all that stuff. But when I think about the tech stack, it’s like, how do things work together? How do things integrate together? I’m always trying to think two, three steps ahead for the client and what ensemble of plugins or tools I would put together. I agree with Jonathan in much of what he just said, but I’m driven by a conversation I just had this week with someone local. They had an agency and they had reduced their agency capacity because they’re pursuing another line of business, which is great. But they confided in me. They said, Oh, I don’t even know how that stuff works. I just use this no code thing. And I was like, you’re doing sites for customers using that? And he was like, yeah. And I said, oh, well, why? And he goes, well, that’s what the other The big agency in town does. I was like, What? Because I’m friends with the other big agency in town. Well, you put a lot of them on.
[00:35:41.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Even these pro-level Wix Studio, they allow you to knock something up and you don’t have to look into the… They give you the ability to look at the code. You’ve got to be honest, there’s loads of people that enter the WordPress space through Alimator and Oxygen, and a lot of them They don’t know what a div was. They don’t even know. I actually do. I actually got in it and I did a degree. I can’t say I did a degree in computer science. It was a hybrid, but a lot of it was coding. I’m using visual basic and using Actions scripting language in a product called Director, which was macromedia dream way. Then I got into Action scripting for… Yeah, I was one of those guys, actually. So I’m bringing up… A lot of people, they wouldn’t even know what a div is, and they’re running an agency, and they’re using no code page builders, Kurt.
[00:36:49.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s part of our discussion, as we say, talking about your tech stack is sales overcomes a lot of obstacles. Like, money can overcome a lot of things. So if you’re good at sales, if you’re really- Have you noticed that I’m very focused about what my role in my business is?
[00:37:07.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Have you noticed that, Kirk? Yeah.
[00:37:09.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sell, funnel, top of funnel, get people in here. When you’re Building your agency, you have people to do things, and then you run the business. That’s how that works. So again, I’m going to drive back to tech stack. If you have great sales and you’re great at selling and you can build an agency on some no code code, implementation builder software, that’s fine.
[00:37:34.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you really think the customers care?
[00:37:37.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t think the customers care. The customers care about the end result. Does the site work? Does it function?
[00:37:42.600] – Jonathan Denwood
This is my main… You can come after me. I think he’s got a fantastic salesperson. He’s a fantastic educator, but Kevin will come after me. Now, you got to use Etch, and you got to do it. I think it was, ‘Give me a break, Kevin. But he’s been because he’s selling a page builder that gives that, but that’s up to him, isn’t it?
[00:38:17.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
In a lot of instances, the end customer doesn’t have a single care about that. Most of them don’t even know what WordPress is. They just want a website that works. If you can confidently build one that works with your stack, that’s great. But where I drive to with the tech stack idea is, and I do this when I’m working with the Lifter LMS people on those ask us anything calls. People will ask us for all kinds of crazy things on a website, and they’ll be like, Well, can This? Can I that? Can I gamify this thing? Can I bring in something? Can I connect this to some other weird thing? And it’s like, yeah, you probably could. But what tool were you planning to use? And if you’re going to go into the repository and pick a tool, look at things like, how many installations What versions does it have? What’s the feedback for the reviews? When was the last time it was updated? Look for those things. What version of PHP does it work on? Does it work with your version of PHP that’s running your WordPress site? I don’t see people using critical thinking to make these decisions.
[00:39:20.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
I see them on a wing in a prayer, just downloading and plugging things in and seeing if it works. And I think when we’re talking about tech stack, I We have for Mañana No Mas, we have a list of about 20 plugins that we feel are reliable, dependable, affordable, and deliver to our end-using clients at a very high rate. And so whenever I’m talking to a client doing a needs assessment, in the back of my mind the whole time, I’m like, Okay, which one of those 20 tools is the one that’s going to meet their needs the best for this, for that? And will that work well with the other tool I’ve been thinking about? And knowledge and confidence with your tech stack allows you to sell well, which takes us back to funding and money because if you can’t sell, you’re not in business anyway.
[00:40:08.400] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree with you. We’re at WP 20. I think the tech stack, the plugin stack that we offer as part of our hosting is the best in the industry. I’m not overstate. I think you agree, don’t you? You’re not agreeing because you do some work, you wouldn’t do it. That’s why I like it. That’s what I admire about you. You don’t do it in an undipomatic way, but you just won’t agree just for the sake of agreeing. But I think you agree that at WP Tonic we offer… But none of those people I got every… Only one, one of the plugins that we offer, but I have to offer it because it’s the leader or seen as the leader. But there’s only one plugin that I I have some slight doubts about, but almost all the rest I’m 100%. We’re a big influent. Joel, the founder and CEO of Fluent, he’s been on the podcast, we’re not close friends, but I think he’s just got a fabulous business and he deserves it because him and his team, they’ve got one of the leaders. There’s two that I think are the leaders in world native CRM, and that’s Fluent CRM, and that’s WP Funnelz.
[00:41:43.340] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s just a fantastic CEO. He’s been very generous to me. He goes on Facebook groups, he answers tickets still, and he’s a very generous person. Chris from Nifter NMS, great plugin, great founder, great CEO, very generous person. When it comes to hosting, Tom from Covertio, high-end hosting, not for everybody, but him and his team are just fantastic people. If you need that high-level hosting compared to some of the other high-end hosting providers, I wouldn’t look at them. I would go to Converse. Io. You’re just getting quality and you’re getting a quality founder. There’s a lot of people, but there’s other companies, which I won’t name. There’s one particular one. I haven’t got the time of day for the founder. It’s one of the largest plugin providers in the WordPress space now, unfortunately. I haven’t got a time of day. Everybody says he’s shown his business attitude by the way he runs his company, which isn’t the way I would run mine, but everybody to their own cup of tea, really. But there’s a lot of people, you got to be a bit fussy. Well, I think you got to be a bit fussy what your your advising clients to use and that.
[00:43:11.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you unexpectedly hit the nail on the head for the listeners and viewers on that one, Jonathan. When you are, and again, the audience intended for this episode is agencies or prospective agency owners. As an agency owner, you got to take your business serious and you got to know who you’re in business with. Who are your partners? And your partners are people where you are-It can really cause you a lot of restless nights.
[00:43:37.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly. But of course, if you’re a psychopath or a hard core narcissist, you’re not going to be worried, are you? Because you’re not worried about other people’s problems, but you’ve got some conscience, especially with hosting and going in. I’m very fussy, but I try I’m not going to say my best. It hasn’t always worked out for me. But also freelancers, I think, tend to be very cliché about the page builder they’re going to use. Because the client can then… We’ve got a client that we’re trying to help now, aren’t we? They installed over three page builders on their site, and there’s some page builders that were really popular and a lot of freelancers because they were on the cheaper side. They’re just awful, aren’t they? They’ve locked in the client, and you got to do a total rebuild, don’t you?
[00:44:46.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, without being overly specific, Jonathan, and this is not the only project recently I’ve seen this with, multiple form tools, multiple page builders, multiple caching plugins, multiple image compression things. People don’t realize this, but especially if you’re a freelancer or an agency, when you get into the back end of someone else’s website, you become responsible for that website. You adopt it whether you meant to or not. It’s important to have a staging atmosphere to play in or a way to clean things up or a way to rebuild things if that’s necessary. Unfortunately, in our case with this one client, Jonathan and I share, we’re going to end up going down the rebuild path because there’s just so much.
[00:45:35.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we need to discuss that. But we do another show, folks, called the Membership Machine Show, both me and Kirk. It’s aimed at membership, surprise, surprise, and community building. But we do a lot of reviews, not solely, but a lot of reviews of plugins and WordPress technology that can help build a membership website, but SaaS and other stuff as well. But we did a show earlier on this week. You’ll be listening to this show next week, but we did a show earlier in the week, and we looked at the best WordPress page builders and services that offer in AI. The quality diversity was mind-numming, wasn’t it? From the two that you could use, because I’ve been a bit resistant, but Cadence has done a fantastic job, one of the best when it comes to utilizing AI. For a certain type of clientele that we’re dealing with that do it themselves. I now I didn’t realize Kirk was right. He offers enormous benefits. But there were some of them, I won’t name them. I think you’re not doing a favor to use that as a hosting package and giving a deliverable to a client, not at the present moment.
[00:47:02.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, sometimes you’re looking for a really nice piece of marble, and then someone drops a cinder block on your foot. It’s just a lot of these tools aren’t refined enough yet. They’re not ready for prime time. But my fear with AI, and this was one of my big things this week, a competitor, local competitor, is advertising, making these AI websites and being the easy button for businesses. When I looked at their website, I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked. I mean, it was inaccessible, black buttons on black backgrounds, big white swaths of screen with no content. And the idea there is that, Hey, here’s our website built with AI, we could do the same for you. And I looked at it and said, I wouldn’t want you touching anything to do with my business. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re saying, if you’re going to get into this game, have a tech stack, understand the good client that you should be working with, have a tech stack you have confidence in, and be able to focus on your sales and grow your business successfully.
[00:48:05.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think when it comes to page builders, you won’t have any problems with Cadence WP or Asha Astra, which they call Brainstorm, aren’t they? Brainstorm, yeah. You’re not going to have problems with Generate Press, a great page builder, or you’re not going to have any problems with Oh, my mind’s gone blank. Oh, sugar. Thomas… Oh, it’s just gone blank. You use it.
[00:48:40.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
Bricks?
[00:48:40.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Bricks. You’re not going to have problems with bricks.
[00:48:43.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
There is a problem with bricks, though, Jonathan. Oh, is it?
[00:48:46.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry.
[00:48:46.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Bricks work great for you, the developer, the professional. But if you intend on giving this website, if you intend on giving the ownership over to the client, are you training the client?
[00:49:02.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you could say the same things to some extent with Alimator or with some of the Bricks solutions or some of the Gutenberg solutions. Now, given a certain client access to Cadence WP, it’s one of the problems, isn’t it?
[00:49:26.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think if you’re in the Cadence and the ASTRA market and dealing with new clients that are going to do some DIY work, that’s all part of that conversation. If they say, “Oh, we need to be able to make changes to the website.” As soon as they say, We need to be able to make changes to the website, Elementor, Divi, and bricks. It’s all off the table for me because I don’t want to be responsible for having to teach them how to use a page builder at the end of the whole project. I’ll build it in Cadence or Astra, and I say, Here you go. Here’s how you change headers. Here’s how you change pictures. Here’s how you change paragraphs. Have a nice day. We’re available if you need us for deeper work than that. And I think that’s a really good way to pass it off. What happens with Elementor is that customers will go in, they’ll go to edit a page, they’ll click Save, and everything you formatted in Elementor is gone, and their website’s broken, and they’re freaking out thinking that your hosting sucks. Your hosting is not the problem; they’re the problem.
[00:50:24.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
So you have to educate them. But that comes out of where does that come from? Do you fix it once for free? Do you charge them for free, three times for free? Do you charge them for every minute on the phone? All that’s part of the relationship, right?
[00:50:36.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Charge them? You should be available 24/7 and do tons of work for them for free.
[00:50:44.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s why it’s important to use tools that are commensurate with the client’s experience.
[00:50:50.620] – Jonathan Denwood
But any of those solutions I’ve just managed, when it comes… I love the fluent stuff, but I think the Asha Brainstorm does some great plugins. Gravity Forms, been around a long time. Great solution for forms. I think for a certain type of custom project, great. We combine Gravity with Fluent Forms, which, because it works with the other, I think WP Funnel’s in the CRM, a certain type of client, great. Fluent Community, great solution now, maturing a little bit. There’s a lot of quality out there, but there’s also a lot of junk out there. Junk? Junk.
[00:51:35.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s a ton of junk. To me, some of it is really bloated, too. You’ll put stuff in your site, and all of a sudden, your site slows down, pages don’t render properly. Just crazy stuff happens, and you go, I don’t understand what’s happening. Well, what’s happening is you got sloppy with your tech stack. If you build yourself a reliable, high-performing tech stack, and if you’re going to reach customers that match what you can do with your expertise in that stack, you’re going to find success.
[00:52:06.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think it’s time to wrap it up. I’m probably going to get a lot of slack for this episode, but it is what it is, isn’t it? I just try and be honest with you, audience, listeners, tribe. Hopefully you’ll observe that. I make tons of mistakes, but I try and be honest as much as I can be. So, Kirek, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:52:36.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
To just make that person-to-person connection, I’m on LinkedIn a lot, and I’m the only Kirek fun on there, so it’s easy to find. And then if it’s business, I’m at Manana Nomas, or of course, WP Tonic, part of the team there.
[00:52:49.260] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. If you want to support the show, we are getting more listeners and viewers. If you really want to support the show, why? If you’re on your phone and you’re listening on iTunes or Spotify, you can give us a review really easily. It’s really easy on the apps, on Spotify, and on iTunes. It really does help us if you could leave a review and give us It’s great to get some feedback about how both Kirk and I are doing. Kirk’s doing fantastic. I’m not, but I have accepted it. I know my place, folks. But if you could do that, that would really help the show, Fab. That’d be fantastic. We will be back next week with either a great interview, an internal show, or a roundtable, our monthly roundtable show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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