Most agencies still hide their pricing behind a "book a call" button. Chris and Alex break down why that loses you clients rather than protecting you, and why publishing even a simple "starting at" number filters out bad-fit leads before they ever reach your calendar.

They also get into the product-led model for agencies (let the packages do the selling instead of chasing people), pricing psychology and why charging more can earn you more respect, and the competitor fear that keeps most agencies quiet about their rates.

Plus: conference season, the new AI Fear & Greed Index survey, and the Wayfront updates shipping right now including AI onboarding and semantic search in the app.

Wayfront is the client portal and billing platform for agencies that sell productized services. Your order form kicks off onboarding automatically, the work lives in the client portal, and your team can use AI from day one.

Try Wayfront free for 14 days (no credit card required): https://wayfront.com/trial

We sat down with our first podcast guest, Joey Sendz, founder of the PR agency Instant Press and a longtime Wayfront customer.

The big question: is AI killing agencies, or just changing the job? Joey makes the case that it's raising the bar rather than wiping anyone out, and we get into why everything AI touches starts to look the same, why hand-made and weird wins now, and how vibe-coded websites are drifting down-market.

We also cover the OpenAI ad platform and its total lack of support, the ticket Joey sent that pushed us to move our MCP to every plan, how he runs client orders through Claude and the Wayfront MCP, white-labeling and the two kinds of clients, and whether starting an agency is still the fastest path to your first 10K a month.

Joey Sendz runs Instant Press. Chris and Alex host No Custom Work, brought to you by Wayfront.

Our site stopped showing up on Google for three months after we rebranded to Wayfront. Everything got crawled, nothing got indexed, and none of it was our fault. Support tickets went nowhere. What actually fixed it was knowing someone at who knows someone.

We also get into the AI stuff we've been building: Wayfront skills on GitHub, the CLI overhaul, semantic search, and our agent Buddy running CRM follow-ups. Plus reactivating old trials and why B2B marketing has to go wide now.

00:00 Repositioning the brand in the AI era

03:34 We're the experts but can't put it into words

04:30 The "Wayfront approved way" and taking feedback

05:55 The ugly Apple Ferrari

08:51 Cutting AI buzzwords from the homepage

10:32 Training for a half-marathon with Claude

12:59 Why rigid rules break AI agents like buddy

15:56 The pizza order fail and consumer "dumb mode" AI

18:43 Building AI agents into the app vs rule builders

21:36 New client review and approval flows

22:43 Free merch and quiet-luxury branding

29:59 Still not indexed on Google

32:49 A phone number field where the founder texts you

34:51 Counter-outreaching the PR spam

00:00 Are agencies falling behind on AI?

02:17 The 80% of AI advice that's already noise

04:04 Why MCP is the only AI tech worth adopting right now

08:29 The agency pricing problem: seats vs value

12:43 Solopreneurs are the new mini-agencies

15:12 AI automations vs traditional automations (and why AI ignores you)

16:02 Wayfront's Kanban + natural-language rule builder

23:47 llms.txt and the "info for AIs" page that changes how AI recommends you

26:53 The Claude Skills lead magnet trend (and how agencies are using it)

33:02 Buddy is smart but slow: the speed problem with AI agents

38:28 We built an agency analytics tool in days, not months

40:49 The "5 things cooking at once" workflow shift

43:41 Working from a phone with a keyboard

Chapters: 0:00 How Wayfront decides what to build next 2:34 Why being nice to support actually gets you features faster 5:24 Buddy update: switching from OpenAI to Hermes 10:41 The AI automation agency hype vs reality 14:52 Claude controversies and Anthropic asking for government ID 18:21 Agencies are canceling seats and reducing headcount 18:50 The Duolingo cautionary tale of going full AI 20:24 Every agency owner wants to build a SaaS 24:11 How the traditional agency structure is flipping 27:03 AI adoption depends on where your agency is right now 35:15 Can AI handle onboarding for new Wayfront customers? 37:30 Setting up services and forms through MCP 39:48 Why agencies ignore good advice about order forms 43:39 Staying specialized vs building for everyone

Chapters: 0:00 New setup, new vibes 0:55 The reality of using AI every day 6:47 The most German thing ever 8:17 AI companies with zero customers 13:17 LinkedIn and personal brand 20:42 Conference merch that actually works 25:32 Work-life balance and losing your hobbies 31:13 Managing a remote team across cultures 35:46 AI for QA still doesn't work 37:56 Retargeting ads (exposed)