A Chat With Toby Cryns

Introducing Toby Cryns

Toby Cryns is owner of The Mighty Mo!, a WordPress and SEO lead generation agency in Minneapolis, MN.  He wrote for WPTavern.com and helped plan BuddyCamp, WordUp, and the first few WordCamps in the Twin Cities.

Show Notes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycryns

https://themightymo.com/

Transcript:

Topher DeRosia: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, and I’m here today with Toby and I’m going to make you say your last name.

Toby Cryns: Cryns [CRINES]. It’s a one-syllable German name.

Topher: All right, cool. I know very little about you. I met you when we were both in the Tavern Project. Other than that, I don’t know anything about you. Where do you live? What do you do?

Toby: Yeah, I live in Minneapolis. I’ve owned The Mighty Mo! Design Co. for 18 years and we’re a WordPress and SEO agency. Prior to that, my first job was milking goats-

Topher: Nice.

Toby: …with an umpire for a little league. I worked in politics for one of our two major parties. I was a sports writer for a newspaper. Oh, and then I worked at the University of Minnesota for four years before I started Mighty Mo.

Topher: What role did you do in politics?

Toby: I was a campaign organizer. So I managed a team of at any given day between 10 and 15 paid employees and 20 to 50 volunteers. We canvassed and we tracked data. We basically tried to get people to vote for our guy.

Topher: All right, cool. Why the name Mighty Mo?

Toby: Do you remember the movie Vacation with Chevy Chase? Did you ever see that one? 

Topher: Yep. Not in many, many years. Like maybe when it came out.

Toby: In that movie, they drive across the Mississippi River, and he goes, “The mighty Mississippi.” And my dad used to say that. And at some point he started saying ‘The Mighty Mo’ when we crossed the river. So that’s what it is. Mighty Mo for nothing less.

Topher: Nice. What is your role there?

Toby: I run the company. Right now I do all the sales. I have three full-time employees and then a couple of… a bookkeeper and then a part-time social media person right now and designer. I have a project manager who really does a lot of the day-to-day management of projects. I do all the selling, make sure I manage all the bank accounts, make sure everyone gets paid.

I still do a little bit of like development and stuff, but I’m trying to get to a point where I do zero. That’s my goal is to focus primarily on let’s say account, client accounts and whatever that level type of stuff is.

Topher: I am sure you’re aware of the radio station.

Toby: Oh, the Mighty Mo in Missouri? Sure. 

Topher: In Montana.

Toby: Oh, it’s in Montana. That’s funny. I wonder if there’s one in Missouri too.

Topher: I don’t know, but it’s a 107 FM in Helena, Montana. It’s Montana’s best place.

Toby: It’s the best place in Montana.

Topher: Nice.

Toby: I think there’s also a Missouri one. There’s also a battleship, I think from World War II or something.

Topher: Oh, I’m sure. Yeah. I think you could do that a lot of Missouri. 

Toby: Yeah. I think there’s even a brewery called the Mighty Mo.

Topher: Cool. What WordCamps have you been to?

Toby: I’ve only gone to local ones here. I planned a couple of them. I co-planned the first two WordCamps here. And then I co-planned or I led the Buddy Camp planning team for one of those. I also planned a number of non-affiliated WordPress events. So we did something called Wordup a couple of times and some other things, but all locally here.

Topher: Okay. I’ve been to work at Minneapolis. 

Toby: Oh yeah. What year? 

Topher: 1912. Boy. 2016. 

Toby: Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Topher: Yeah. And then I went to another conference that was in Minneapolis that was not a WordPress… Well, not a WordCamp. You remember that?

Toby: Was it WordPress-related?

Topher: Yes. I’m looking up my history here.

Toby: PrestigeConf probably.

Topher: Yes. I went to PrestigeConf.

Toby: So I spoke at that. So maybe you saw me there. I don’t know.

Topher: Oh yeah. Well, I’m sure I did. I was there. I only went in person to one of them, but we watched the other one on TV. 

Toby: Oh, cool. 

Topher: Yeah, let’s see. I’m looking it up here. Oh, oh, it’s not on WP World. 

Toby: It needs to be on there.

Topher: You know about thewp.world? 

Toby: No. What’s that?

Toby: Marcus Burnett made it. Basically it is a list of everybody in WordPress, but on your profile, it has all your WordPress, WordCamp, no WordPress badges, all your contact info, where you can find me, what plugins you’ve made, what photos you submitted, your latest posts from your blog. You can make yourself available as a speaker, and it lists every WordCamp you’ve ever been to.

Toby: And did you say WordPress.world?

Topher: Nope. Thewp.world. 

Toby: Ah, cool. 

Topher: I attended 63 events. Spoken at 34. You should go to more. They’re good for you. 

Toby: Yeah. Cool.

Topher: So, what about personally? What do you do for fun? You married? Kids, dogs, cats?

Toby: Yeah. Married kids. The whole ship, whole kebab. I have three kids, three lovely children, lovely wife. You know, I fix guitars in my free time. And so-

Topher: That’s cool.

Toby: Yeah. There’s a music school down the road that I’ve been… they just moved in a few months ago. I fixed two of their instruments so far. Just for fun. I don’t charge anything for it. But I had a friend drop off this really, really sweet guitar that’s like probably 40 years old and he played it in a music video that I loved. And he also played on my album in 2010. And I was going back, I’m like, “Did you play this guitar on that album?” And he’s like, “Did some research.” He’s like, “I did.”

Topher: Wow. That’s cool. 

Toby: Really neat. So stuff like that with these guitars. When someone’s had a guitar for a long time, it has stories that go with it. And this particular guitar was neat because it was just dusty and gunky and never been wiped down with a damp towel, you know? And I was like- 

Toby: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Toby: It’s like an Epiphone Firebird, which is classic-style guitar. It’s like, “You want me to clean this?” He’s like, “No. God, no. I’ve gone 40 years without cleaning it. Why clean now?” Like now-

Topher: Right there is blood from this…

Toby: Yeah, totally. 

Topher: That’s funny. 

Toby: Guitars are neat like that, I think. I never thought of guitars in that way until a couple of years ago and I’ve been playing for 40 years. Like 30 years, I guess. But just at the last couple of years of like my… I guess just have a different perspective about guitars that it’s like, you know, just like the river of life flows through guitars, you know?

Topher: I was in flight school 35 years ago and my instructor, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years before that, had decided he wanted to learn to play guitar. So he bought a kit and he started building his acoustic guitar. 

Toby: Wow.

Topher: And he loved building it. It was wonderful. So he sold it and bought another one. And when I knew him, he was on his seventh or eighth guitar and it was a beautiful 12 string with gold strings and 45 different kinds of wood and mother of pearl inlay and all that stuff. And his kids said, “If you sell that, we’re just going to kill you now so we can take it.” And he still didn’t know how to play.

Toby: Wow. Isn’t that something? 

Topher: 10 or 15 years making guitars and he didn’t know how to play, but he had a wonderful time, you know?

Toby: Yeah. You know, some of the most respected luthiers in the world, like professional guitar builders and errors, they don’t know how to play guitar or they don’t know how to play well. It’s like a mechanic doesn’t necessarily know how to drive a race or, you know, the guy building the car, the board plant, maybe he doesn’t drive over 55 miles an hour ever.

Topher: That’s funny. So we were both part of the tavern project. It’s been long enough now. Those who are listening, who don’t know what happened, the lead editor of… the only editor of wptavern.com resigned. She moved on to another job and the