Episode 15: What’s Your Problem: Insurance Annoyances, Project Management and Creating Fearless Content

Sarah: Welcome to Founder Problems Podcast, where we have another edition of What’s Your Problem, where we talk about wins, struggles, and what we’re working on. We’re gonna kick things off today with Zach.

Zach: I got a lot of, a lot of things cooking, a lot of things going on. I’ll start with kind of the, the highlights, the things that are actually good. 

Sarah: Didn’t do intros. Are we supposed to do intros? Sorry.

Zach: is off the cuff. By this point. People are invested. They know us

Sarah: feel like.

Lee Zuvanich: No, no, no. I come across content all the time where everyone’s like, if you’re new here, and I’m like, I am always new here. I don’t follow anyone. Thank you.

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: right.

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t know.

Zach: do it in real time, real time.

Sarah: I’ll just, let me redo it. I’ll redo it and then I will. Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: I feel like you could use all this.

Zach: I think you can

Sarah: Welcome to Founder Problems Podcast.

Zach: write anything. Just go straight into it.

Sarah: Yeah, I just gotta think about, oh, okay. Welcome to Founder Problems podcast, [00:01:00] where we are doing an addition of what’s your problem, where we talk about our win struggles and what we’re working on.

I’m Sarah Schumacher and I run a website agency that is almost done rebranding It’s taken me a month and I’m still working on it, but I’m, I’m almost there. And I’m joined by Zach and Lee.

Zach: And I am Zach Ocean Banjo. I am a owner’s rep, project manager, and the executive director of a nonprofit based in Kansas City, focused on building houses.

Lee Zuvanich: I’m Lee Zuvanich. I’m the founder. Or of an agency that does app development, and that’s kind of rolling in now under a funded startup that’s focused on agentic ai and I just do a lot of other things as well, working on some content right now.

Sarah: Well, Zach’s gonna kick us off today by talking about what he’s been working on the last couple weeks.

Zach: Right. I’ll get into the good stuff ’cause that’s what everyone wants to hear. Yay. Good stuff. All

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: the first good thing, recently was able to attend a ribbon cutting for a project that I served as [00:02:00] a project manager, under the owner’s rep. It’s a nonprofit and they built and converted a former school into transitional housing for family services.

So people could come there if they had something going on, and they could stay for a year or two years or so until they get grounded and on their feet. It is an 18 month bill or conversion from what the school used to be an abandoned Catholic school. I think I came in month nine, so they were pretty, pretty close on demolition and got to see all the new furnishings go in.

So that was a pretty cool project to be on.

Second good thing started working with an intern the project management company and that’s been a very interesting experience ’cause. Going through and seeing a lot of the things I wish I was able to experience when I left the military. sheesh. Where are we at 11 years ago? Some of the things programmatically that would’ve been good for [00:03:00] me and I’m just, let me try to help and make this transition is as sweet as possible for this guy so that when he is done with his, his complete program experience, he can get a job that makes sense.

And you know, he can. Hang out in Kansas City. So those are good things. Working on those projects has been fun. I’m gonna dig into some more things probably in the next, what’s your problem? But for the real, the real part of this, what’s your problem? An issue that I’m ha not an issue, an observation.

I’ll just leave it at observation something. Getting a certificate of insurance is immensely overwhelming for a nonprofit, probably for most organizations, but particularly if you fall in this kind of spot where you don’t necessarily have employees, you don’t have, assumed risk in things going on, it’s very, it’s hard almost for people to underwrite or put together a proposal that makes sense for you, because it’s [00:04:00] almost like, what are you de-risking or what are you trying to

Sarah: Ah, gotcha.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Zach: I’m,

Lee Zuvanich: sense.

Zach: I’m going,

Sarah: for a second ’cause I’m like, that sounds easier. There’s no

Lee Zuvanich: Do they have a physical location?

Zach: yeah. But it’s almost like a, what do they call that,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s it.

Sarah: Like

Zach: Like,

Lee Zuvanich: de-risking falls and slips and.

Zach: Coworking space is generous. It’s loose ’cause it’s a lot of field work, so,

Sarah: Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Zach: so just trying to,

Sarah: they can’t just like general, I feel like it’s like a general liability, like you’re in a field and you trip over something,

Zach: yeah. But.

Sarah: it’s just different for non-profits.

Zach: It’s confusing for carriers or underwriters, I guess, to put it together. I mean, ’cause I think I got my first quote and it took like a day, I needed some provisions put on there to do different contracting. And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy. You didn’t say that at the beginning.

I’m like, this should be run of the mill work for you guys. But getting done. It’s getting done. ’cause I need to be able to get it in order to do some contracting with the city and different other bodies. [00:05:00] So. Kind of sucks, but that’s the way it is currently working on getting, trying to get a certificate of occupancy for a garage.

That’s been done for a little bit of time, just going through the final inspection process, getting some things reviewed and buttoned out. It’s a long process, all the work that you need to do before you can actually hand off a physical structure. In the next month or two should be starting a single family build with some that we’ve put together.

Probably can’t say the whole list right now, but we’re working with some partners and we’re gonna start building one of our first three houses should be building in late September or early October, so that will be a ground up complete grass plot of land to a physical structure with potentially somebody living in it within six months.

Sarah: Wow, that was fast.

Zach: So we’re, we’re gonna push to try to get that done. [00:06:00] you know, seldom come to fruition, I guess is what people say. But I shouldn’t say it as a project manager, but that’s the reality that.

Sarah: There’s the rule about time expands to fill if you account for project management, if you account for delays to happen, it doesn’t matter. There’ll still always be delays. There’s like a whole rule about

Lee Zuvanich: It does. I hate this, but it is so true. It everything fills the space you give it.

Sarah: Right. But even if you plan for it to not happen, your planning will still fail. There’s an extra rule on top of that. I need to find it. I think it’s decisive. I’m looking at the book. I

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: book, decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, if I remember.

I love all their books, but I think they talk about, it’s like even if, you know, as a construction project, everything gets delayed, we’re gonna double the amount of time we need for this, it will still run over. There’s like some rule about that. That’s just

Lee Zuvanich: Yes.

Sarah: just Murphy’s Law. I don’t know.

Zach: That’ll that’ll,

Lee Zuvanich: I’m getting like flashbacks to just project management on big teams, billion dollar companies. I don’t know if I could ever do that again, honestly.[00:07:00] 

Sarah: That sounds terrible.

Zach: Spite of the negative parts of it and the things that I’m working on, I will say I kind, I enjoy the work. It’s varied. I’m not doing the same thing.

Sarah: Mm.

Zach: I just do a lot of different things, so I think I enjoy that aspect of it. So some.

Sarah: I mean, you just seem like you’ve got the project management gene or whatever thing,

Lee Zuvanich: You do? Yeah.

Sarah: It feels like something that you’d be good at doing. Jumping around and having your eye on the ball on a million different things and in high level and detail.

Some people aren’t good at it. Some people can do it and they don’t enjoy it, and then some people can do both.

So it sounds like it’s a good spot for you.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. And I wanna say for the people who are new or have forgotten what you’re talking about and all this responsibility you have, this is your side hustle,

Sarah: That good

Lee Zuvanich: right? I dunno if you, I don’t think you would call it a side hustle because you’re helping a nonprofit outta the goodness of your heart.

And I don’t even know if you’re making money or how much you’re making, but. This is just like something you do in your free time.

Sarah: I wanna point out [00:08:00] though, this is Founder Problems podcast. None of us do only one thing.

Lee Zuvanich: Exactly.

Sarah: That’s funny you mentioned insurance . ’cause like that was not gonna be one of my problem items. But I am also figuring out insurance. ’cause my current policy expires in like week and a half or something and I know it’s too high and so I’m like, oh crap. So my problem with that, and my frustration is that this is 2025, I should be able to go fill out a form on your dang website and then get a quote.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Some guy calls and leaves a message, I have to talk on a phone to somebody.

Zach: Ridiculous.

Sarah: I was like, I’ll talk to the bank. And they’re like, here’s a list.

It’s an email with a bunch of questions. You guys don’t even have a form. Copy and paste and reply, like, what is this 1995 ? It’s very frustrating. Insurance just sucks.

This is

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: spend my day.

I have

Lee Zuvanich: Errors and omissions.

Zach: I push, especially in bureaucracy and government stuff, I would push for a one form system, or even to make it into a construction thing, like getting a bid. If I need 30 people to say that they can do electrical [00:09:00] outlets. I don’t want to have to call 30 companies.

I want to just a button and 30 people can gimme a number. That’s a dream.

Sarah: that’s Thumbtack, but that’s like a backyard, like, ah, build stuff for my spare time.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s Abta. I mean,

Sarah: yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: God damnit. I’m probably sunsetting that part of it, but I just keep going back and forth on that.

Sarah: There’s a lot of platforms.

I just don’t think anyone, I guess Clutch is probably the biggest version of that, but God, they’re expensive.

Lee Zuvanich: you And this is killing, this conversation is killing me.

Sarah: I’ve been looking at this stuff a

Lee Zuvanich: It’s okay.

Sarah: ’cause I’ve been

Some

Lee Zuvanich: I know it’s ’cause you’re my demographic

Sarah: that too 

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t know what I’m gonna do about all that.

Sarah: I would never

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Sarah: million years pay for clutch so.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s fair. Yeah. My demographic would probably still need to pay.

Sarah: It depends on the size of your

Lee Zuvanich: mm-hmm.

Sarah: I’m

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: a hundred thousand dollars projects.

Lee Zuvanich: Well, once I started splitting my vision apart between the ent, ai stuff that’s getting funded [00:10:00] and the touchy feely community that I built, the app is built. Founders have been asking me for years to let them use it because they want what Zach was describing so badly where you just put your data in, you get all these quotes.

It’s transparent, it’s easy. It feels like I built a nonprofit. And then I just tried to make it a for-profit. So I keep thinking I should spin that out into the community and make it probably not open source, but make it free. You know, like it’s, it’s,

Sarah: go look at,

Lee Zuvanich: hmm.

Sarah: I’ll send you a link. There’s Zippy list. I forget what the name of the business is. It’s an SEO company. It’s the same thing. He’s mostly an SEO agency, but then he has this whole director that people can get listed on.

I’ll send you a link and you can check it out ’cause it’s exactly what you’re

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s just like a

Lee Zuvanich: Oh my God.

Sarah: I

Lee Zuvanich: I might be having like an epiphany that is game changing right now. Why don’t I just make the whole thing free and then we just do like paid ads or something.

Sarah: Yeah. I’ll send it and you

Out ’cause it’s definitely a good use case.

Zach: This dude Cyrus Shepherd. I found it.

Sarah: yeah. Cyrus Shepherd. Yeah. Nice dude. He worked with Rand Fishkin for all the [00:11:00] SEO O nerds here.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s cool.

Sarah: He worked at Moz, so man let me figure out what I, what am I even gonna talk about today?

Proposals. Oh yeah. I,

Lee Zuvanich: I’m literally writing.

Sarah: I’ve not gotten a lot of sleep this last week. I’m still in the middle of the rebrand, so I’m like, what are my wins? I think I’m stuff getting accepted, I guess. We have some new projects. I’ve got one I think is going to kick off in a month. I love what I do partly ’cause I can’t not solve problems. So when I see problems that need solved and people don’t let me fix ’em, it’s very frustrating, especially if it’s something I care about. So there’s a project that I really want them to see them succeed and they need a, a better website foundation to do that.

So I’m really excited to, again, just solve the problem. It’d be fantastic if I could get paid large sums of money to do what I’m gonna do anyway, like try to, that’s when you know you’re doing the right thing for a living.

And you need to also get that part right. And then I have another one that we’re kicking off. I have several things I’m trying to wrap up. It feels like things are picking up a little bit. It’s really.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: with my demographic to know because there [00:12:00] can be lots of conversations and then things change fast, you know?

It feels like it’s picking up and it’s hard to that a hundred percent seriously, but that’s definitely the vibe that I’m gonna get at this point. A lot of it’s probably just school starting.

Lee Zuvanich: same.

Sarah: time again. I’m like, oh, thank God.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, I know. There’s always a rush.

Sarah: Oh man. But it’s also trying to adjust to it and figure out scheduling and everything else. So proposals happening. A project I’m excited to kick off.

Struggle wise, man, i’m still trying to get outta the project management. I told my my PM this week. I was like, Hey, I need a project manager. And you were like, pick me. And I was like, cool. And then I brought you on, and then I kept project managing. So this one project we’re about to kick off.

Okay, I’m gonna pretend I don’t know anything and I’m not doing anything and you tell me what to do.

It’s a matter of me getting outta the way in a lot of cases and, and not just, I just do stuff. And then I think about the fact I probably should have delegated after the fact ’cause I move so [00:13:00] quickly. That’s always a struggle for me.

I’m trying to be a lot more intentional about that right now. Then the other thing I’m working on is the rebrand wrap up. I announced this August 1st. We are recording this August 29th. I’m still not done.

The rebrand episode just came out and I talked about having a list in that episode of all the accounts and everything that would need updated and my God, it’s still more, there’s still things I’m finding. We had to migrate the Google Workspace account, which was not planned due to some technical stuff I won’t get into. That was extra work that really complicated a lot of things ’cause Google’s tied to everything, right? And so that’s reconnecting every single account.

So all my integrations need to be reconnected and so there’s just so many of those things. References, I changed my client portal link, but then it was like, oh crap, I need to redesign the welcome page in the portal to remove all references to the old name.

I keep finding places the name is at still. All just the technical side. But then on the business side, I can’t change my bank account because I have a client, one of the two people that pay me by check that has a really long [00:14:00] payment cycle. And I know that there’s a check floating around out there probably in the mail. And I can’t change my bank account till I can cash this last check and then I can change it. So I have to wait on that and then I can’t change stripe until I get my EIN updated. And that’s a whole thing where I’m like, oh dang, I did this partly so I wouldn’t have to change my EIN.

And what I have realized now is I think I should have just shut down Cyclone Press and started a whole new business. Frankly, it’s not saved me any work and I had to go in person to get an LLC amendment because in Missouri right now, apparently if you file an LLC amendment online pro tip, it will take three months for them to get to it.

Zach: Yes. Yeah, I was,

Sarah: Kansas City,

Lee Zuvanich: I would never shut down a restart. There’s so many things that that would impact. If you ever wanna get a loan, if you ever wanna get a Visa based on your business success, like

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: you need to show years and years of,

Sarah: to be like, oh

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Sarah: what did I do? Oh guys, We should talk about the fact that we as founders with problems. Didn’t file taxes for founder [00:15:00] problems.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh

Sarah: That’s all we should be talking about on this episode. Guess what, guys? We tell you about all these things that you should take into account and we forgot to take into account that we should file taxes because this business has

Lee Zuvanich: we are failures.

Sarah: but

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: we still need to file.

Zach: Which

Lee Zuvanich: That was a hard lesson, man.

Zach: thing, and it’s

Sarah: silly.

Zach: It actually, wait, what’s today? They should have it. I think Wednesday was the day.

Sarah: For anyone curious about this, basically what happened is I filed an extension on my taxes because had I done them on time, I would’ve thought of this. And I did not think of it because I did not file my taxes on time. So we’re now at the end of the extension, so I’m like, okay, now I have to do this crap. So I’m working on it and I’m like, hold up. I have to report this partnership. Wait a minute. Should we have filed taxes? Yes. Apparently we should have, ’cause we have to file a 10 65 ’cause this is a LLC partnership. what I have been told by my tax people is that because we are filing late and because we did not file an extension, they’re going to send us a bill. Based on the number of partners being like, you didn’t file on time, even though [00:16:00] everything says zero. So when that happens they have a letter we can send in saying, Hey, we request an abatement or something. There’s an official term for it.

Basically we request that you waive this ’cause we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. This is year one of our business. And if we’re lucky, they’ll just waive the fees. ’cause we literally have no income. There’s nothing. There was zero and one expense on the 2024

Lee Zuvanich: is only for partnerships. That’s why none of us knew what, what the hell was going on. We like, I’ve never done a partnership.

Sarah: right? So like, I’ve had to do the K one,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: it’s because I didn’t do my taxes at a reasonable time. ’cause we just, we had an extension.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, okay.

Sarah: done it,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: okay. So basically we’re just waiting now for the official whatever document to say, oh, please, waive this.

This is stupid. This is literally a passion project. We’re not making any money.

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: anyway , I think we should highlight that

Lee Zuvanich: But share the fee.

Sarah: Oh

Lee Zuvanich: Does anyone remember the amount?

Sarah: like 2 65 per partner or something.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: It was

Lee Zuvanich: 2000 right?

Sarah: it was gonna be like a thousand bucks for a business with no income. Again, I wanna

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.[00:17:00] 

Sarah: no, we have not made a dime. We have put all of our money into this ourselves. We are doing this as a resource. If anyone would like to sponsor us. We need to make some merch so that people can buy some merch and we can use that to cover our costs, but we’re not making any money. So for the state or federal or whatever to be like, you have to pay us ’cause you didn’t file on time. File what?

Lee Zuvanich: They don’t care that we haven’t made any money. They’re still fees, and so we’re waiting to hear back if they’re gonna have mercy on us. Right.

Sarah: Yes. And if somebody even sees it because, you know, nobody

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: for the IRS anymore. The other thing that they said is if you create an EIN, they see an EIN and they wanna see a tax return attached to the IN that was the way that it was explained to me . you wanna have an EIN ’cause you need it. But I guess that’s the

Lee Zuvanich: Right. Yeah.

Sarah: says, Hey, this entity exists. They need to file a tax return so we can see what they’re doing. But we’re like, we’re not

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: anyway. Just wanna add that little addendum. Founder Problems podcast, very aptly named.

Lee Zuvanich: problems. Yeah.

Zach: On the,

Lee Zuvanich: We have real problems.

Zach: The PM piece [00:18:00] project management, I think it would probably be a very useful exercise speaking as a. PM type guy myself. If you had an exercise where you started from cradle to grave, not being the singular focus, I sometimes see like the PM role as a door where you’re, you,

Lee Zuvanich: Totally.

Zach: to let people in or not the front access, I mean,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: blind. copy or whatever, you can be on the backend and see the communication, but you don’t necessarily have to be in it. So I would feel like you’re talking to the pm, they’re like, well, what about this and this and this and this? And you’re already abreast of what needs to be done, but their primary contact shouldn’t be you.

’cause I feel like that

Sarah: Yes.

Zach: completely ties you up and everything. ’cause there are certain things that I’m

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: this, some of the things that I’m doing where it’s like I don’t need to have a conversation. Or the client may not necessarily need to have a conversation with who I’m employed by. If it’s something about this [00:19:00] permitting, or what about this code, or something like that.

Let’s get on Zoom about that next Tuesday. Are you free? It doesn’t need to be that just,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: could tell them and keep it

Sarah: I

Lee Zuvanich: can I share my

Sarah: quick

Lee Zuvanich: un Oh, go ahead. Yeah.

Sarah: visual before Zach said, it’s like a door, and I just had this vision of the Fortnite shoulder run through a door. I just bust through the door. Because I’m moving so quick, I don’t stop to go.

I should let the PM open this door

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: in my

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: shoulder run. Anyway,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s you. I would. Hate to, to be trying to race you to any task.

Sarah: That’s E

Lee Zuvanich: That task hates to see you coming.

Sarah: That’s the problem. Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: is the problem.

Lee Zuvanich: Can I share my unhinged process?

Sarah, you know, this process, I’m sharing it for the greater

Sarah: yes.

Lee Zuvanich: listener experience. And maybe Zach hasn’t heard it, in which case you can both weigh in your honest opinion on this. So I have had teams and people I’ve been delegating to for a very long time, and I think I probably developed [00:20:00] this maybe four years ago.

When I started having more project managers and operations people reporting to me and then going out and managing others. So if someone new comes onto my team, project manager, product owner, or operations, typically the weight of this would fall mostly on an ops or PM type person.

And I will introduce them to the team, to the platforms, to basic processes and concepts the first day. And then and they know through the interview process, this is a highly autonomous role, they’ve been warned. So if they’ve accepted this position, which is a contract to start position, so it’s kind of a, let’s feel each other out.

Moment. And they know that too, it’s tentative. They’re gonna get thrown in the deep end on day two. So day one, ask all the questions you want. Sometimes I spend hours on a call with them holding their hand and just making sure they’re really comfortable. But by day two, now they are in all the platforms, logged in on everything.

They’ve got Jira tasks or or notion tasks or whatever, clickup. That are assigned to them. They can attend any meetings they feel like they need to attend, they’ll get CC’d on things and pulled into meetings [00:21:00] where others think they need to be there and otherwise they have a list of tasks that they need to do now without anyone’s help or support.

And typically what this does is it causes them to have to go around to various. Folders full of documents or like they’re searching slack. They’re talking to people in different departments and asking for help, or they’re coming back to me and saying, Hey, I don’t have what I need for this. I think I need this other login or whatever.

It takes all the weight off of me and my team having to hold their hand and make sure they have absolutely everything before they can even start. And it forces them to be autonomous and show me what they are doing, like what they’re working with, if they’re smart enough.

To swim and not sing?

Sarah: Where’d they get the list though, of tasks delegated to

Lee Zuvanich: Usually it would be me and my main ops person and maybe one other person, like a lead dev or a lead product.

Sarah: A lot of it is just me not passing on the information or doing something and forgetting to note it somewhere.

Lee Zuvanich: I would log out of that inbox if I were you.[00:22:00] 

Sarah: That

Zach: That’s,

Sarah: to me.

Zach: that’s pretty extreme.

Sarah: though, ’cause instead of emailing from my email, I’m emailing from that one so that they can

Lee Zuvanich: If it needs your reply, it can be forwarded to you.

Sarah: true.

Lee Zuvanich: And really that’s a learning opportunity for her because eventually she should be able to write a lot of those emails too. Right?

Sarah: I just realized this week I have extensive documentation. So she’s in my documentation software. She

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: access to most of the categories. I am so sorry. You probably logged in. And were like,

Lee Zuvanich: So

Sarah: articles? And I’m like, no. There’s a lot of stuff in here. It just wasn’t showing all to you.

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t know how that happened, but if you had done the process I described, would that have uncovered it or do you think she would’ve just been like. I guess I can’t do these things and you guys wouldn’t have.

Sarah: probably the documentation is my checklist for if we set up the feedback software

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Every new project

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: a feedback. Tool for the

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: they leave feedback on the website. It drops in our queue so she could go create [00:23:00] that.

She has the login for it, but the way I want it done you name it this way, whatever. That’s the thing where she could

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, yeah,

Sarah: out.

Lee Zuvanich: So my unhinged thing, because it’s very sink or swim, do you guys think it’s evil or,

helpful.

Sarah: I don’t think it’s evil. I think it’s a

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: to someone’s like,

Lee Zuvanich: it’s important to me, I think.

Sarah: You’re very hands off. You’re just like, do the thing.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: if you’re hiring

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that that’s just how things are gonna be.

I am not that way.

Lee Zuvanich: Yes.

Sarah: I don’t have any desire micromanage people,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Can do every task that I delegate. I have specific things about do this this way because this is best practice and I know that, ’cause I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so

I don’t wanna leave certain things up to chance. So then I’m looking at

Lee Zuvanich: I was like that

Sarah: been like, oh, this is not good enough.

Lee Zuvanich: the first. The first few years that I was delegating in my business, you know, like it’s different when it’s not your business. But in my business when it was like, these clients are my babies, this work is so important. It’s my name, you know, and I would do things like, I would take videos and like have documents and I would forward emails and be like.[00:24:00] 

This is our culture. This is how we talk to clients. This is how we respond, how quickly we respond. When there’s a problem, we respond very quickly, like it’s part of what we do. And I would try to hammer that into people and I was very I think micromanage and kind of compulsive about exactly how we took care of our clients.

One time somebody that worked for me said. Something like Howdy in an email. And I came down on them so hard.

Zach: What’s wrong with howdy?

Lee Zuvanich: I was like, absolutely not.

Sarah: But was it to that one client that would’ve liked a howdy because

Lee Zuvanich: Prob they probably would’ve honestly like, but I was just like, that’s not what we’re doing here. Maybe it triggered me. I’m from Oklahoma and I was like, no.

Sarah: Oh, that’s funny. Yeah.

Zach: I said.

Sarah: like,

Lee Zuvanich: Yes.

Sarah: man, I.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah. No, I just, I was really serious about the impressions. I still am, you know, I still care about that stuff, but I had to step back and that’s why I’m so hands off is because if you put me [00:25:00] in the room and I watched you work, I will have a lot of things to say and I saw that my opinions were I mean, I’ve, I’ve had to learn this as a parent too, when you have a lot of opinions about how someone should conduct themself.

It just kinda wears away at their morale. I saw it happening. I saw people kind of shrinking. The more that I was like, Hey, you know, I would just do it just a little tweak, just a little, you know, a little suggestion. It’s like they were just shrinking more and more and the more autonomy I gave, and maybe this is the kind of person I attract when I’m hiring, but the more autonomy I gave the more that they would grow into it and like take on more work and be more creative and be more problem solving.

So I leaned into that and then went. Too far in that direction to where I had people coming back and saying please give us structure.

Sarah: I lean too much that direction

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: the document to work from, or whatever.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: developer. Would just figure stuff out with no questions.

But then my senior developer, he’s like, man, you didn’t gimme enough info. it’s interesting because you have to have a certain level of experience with [00:26:00] someone where a junior developer

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, that’s true.

Sarah: I’m doing a bad job of telling you what you need to know for this project, and it’s okay to

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: say that. Please ask me

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: Here, let me give you some more. Whatever, and he will

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: like, can we hop on a quick call? And you explain this to me. This is not explained clearly enough.

There’s this chicken and egg problem with scaling businesses where you need help to scale and you can’t scale without the help, but you don’t have the money to hire the help that you want.

So you’ll end up hiring someone that is too inexperienced because they’re in your budget range, and then they actually cannot handle the work you give them because they don’t have the level of expertise. So my senior developer, I can rely on him more for things. It’s gonna cost me more, but I know if I don’t give him enough info, he’s gonna come back and tell me that, versus a junior person who’s just gonna figure it out.

I’m not gonna be happy with the quality because I didn’t do a good enough job on the

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: it.

Lee Zuvanich: That is a really good point.

If you lean into senior hires exclusively for a smaller team, then it’s scary. ‘Cause it’s more expensive. But in my opinion, it pays for itself so quickly.

Sarah: We need

Lee Zuvanich: You’re not [00:27:00] training and handholding.

Sarah: There’s a caveat though. It can’t just be a senior person. It has to be a senior minded, self-directed person.

Lee Zuvanich: A unicorn.

Sarah: yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: I tend to hire people who already run their own side things agencies or they wouldn’t call themselves.

Freelancers. Run a business and they have other clients and they

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: for other agencies. Those are the people that I

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: have the ownership mindset and they’re able to just figure stuff out. ’cause it’s what they do for their clients. Because if it’s a freelancer, if it’s someone that’s inexperienced or if it’s a senior person that worked for like a corporation where everything was told to them, those people are not.

Sure gonna work out very well. And that’s what makes it

Lee Zuvanich: No,

Sarah: you need a key person like

Lee Zuvanich: that’s a hard lesson for me.

Sarah: to do well. Right. And it’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: find those people. So anyway, Lee, we need to get to your struggles and problems.

Lee Zuvanich: I’ve been avoiding it. All right.

Sarah: Good rabbit trails, but let’s get back on track

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So for me, win struggle and what I’m working on, I feel like that’s all the same thing, honestly.

Sarah: [00:28:00] Yeah, that’s true.

Lee Zuvanich: okay. So one win. I am expanding my business around the world. Some of, you know, more than others, but I’ve just been traveling and doing some international stuff and it’s been really exciting and impactful for me and my family.

I got invited to take on a contract where I’ll be teaching entrepreneurs classes. And not only will I be doing one-on-one consulting and teaching classes, but I get paid to develop curriculum and content for this nonprofit to teach entrepreneurs that they will also use and disseminate that other teachers can use.

And that win I think has helped empower me and made me realize there is still a need. There’s not just, YouTube is not everything for everyone. There’s still a need for this personal experience where you show up and you teach a class and you give people curriculum and they learn and, and maybe you write a book or whatever.

For some reason, I just felt like that was so oversaturated. There was no point in trying, and that I would never be able [00:29:00] to create content about the things that I know. It’s just imposter syndrome. Who’s gonna read that? You know? But like I’ve told Sarah, I don’t wanna hear from anyone else about WordPress.

If I need to know about WordPress, I’m going to go bother Sarah. I’m not gonna go to YouTube or whatever. I’m gonna be like, Sarah, please take some time out of your day to instruct me. And if she had content on YouTube that was like, here’s how you set up your WordPress site and here’s how you go through these motions or whatever.

I would just go consume that because I know, like, and trust Sarah, right? So intellectually I know that there is still the need for me and people like me to create things, but for some reason I didn’t believe it until I got hired to do this. So now, yay, I get to do that. So those are wins for me and I think work is picking up and investor season is starting again, and it looks like my pre-seed round might actually finally close if people keep their word.

So that’s really exciting.

Zach: Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: Struggle. I think all the [00:30:00] traveling has been hard. It’s been good to start to get settled again and figure out like my routines so I just have lots of work across multiple cities now, and it’s been a journey to get there and to get my kids on the same page with me and everything. So beyond that, just getting investors to respond right now. I think anyone who’s a startup can feel that pain with me that summer is hard and I’m looking forward to fall.

Zach: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: And then one thing I’m working on.

So I challenged myself apropos of nothing except like I got this contract and I’m feeling very creative and excited to create content now. I was like, you know. The last hurdle for me is video content. I hate it. I’m terrified of it. This doesn’t count for some reason. I think just ’cause I’m here with you guys and

Sarah: This is just

Lee Zuvanich: we’re just hanging out.

Sarah: just a meeting. We’re recording. Yeah. It’s different.

Zach: Hanging out.

Lee Zuvanich: We just would do this for fun anyway, so now we’re just doing it and recording it. I couldn’t get past all so many mental blocks for creating [00:31:00] content and I knew they were there and I would regularly go and kind of look at them, be like, here are my mental blocks. And maybe I would write it down and try to do a exercise and try to get further along the path or go look at cap cut and hate it, but try to learn it.

And I’ve spent the last couple years in that loop and I hate to praise an algorithm, but because I’m feeling more like creating content and feeling more creative. I started attracting that content in my feed. So I would open up, you know, Instagram or TikTok or something.

’cause someone sent me something funny and if I scroll at all, it’s just one person after another being like, you can do this. It’s not that hard. It started giving me momentum and I started using it for research and I started taking notes. Kind of psyching myself up, consciously.

Then I think I crossed the threshold recently where I was like, okay, that’s enough research. That’s enough note taking. If you go too much further now you’re just like the stereotype. You know, everything there is to know. Now go make a fucking video and [00:32:00] post it. So I challenged myself a hundred days of content starting on X day and I didn’t even really pick a day.

What happened was I started posting on LinkedIn more compulsively. ’cause LinkedIn is like my safe space, so

Sarah: That’s

Lee Zuvanich: I’d be like, which I saw the face you just made Sarah, and I realized

Sarah: those words in that

Lee Zuvanich: I should take to a therapist probably.

Sarah: No, I mean, we’ve talked about this before. I understand where you’re coming from, but that’s just a really

Lee Zuvanich: I just,

Sarah: Sorry.

Lee Zuvanich: I love to write. Years ago I started writing on LinkedIn because I was like, nobody’s here.

Sarah: Now

Lee Zuvanich: Like, this counts. Right?

Sarah: It’s just AI bots now.

Lee Zuvanich: Completely. Yeah. To me it’s still like nobody’s really here. The only people here are people who are trying to be pseudo influencers or you’re here ’cause you’re job hunting, like no one’s really here.

So it’s so easy. And I still feel that way. So I would go and I’d be like, okay. We’re creating content today. And then I would just fearfully be like, okay, LinkedIn post it is and put something out there. ’cause [00:33:00] then I could check that box and be like, I did it. So then one of these days I’m just like, okay, I’m gonna create something.

So I wrote on LinkedIn, I’ve challenged myself to do a hundred days of content and I kind of phrase it as if I’m starting the next day. So I scheduled this out four days ahead, so this is about a week ago. And I just kind of watching that day get closer and closer. Like, okay, better figure out cap cut.

So I did day one yesterday and it was literally me making a video about how I still dunno how to do video editing. It was probably eight seconds long and I put it on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, and then LinkedIn. it was very freeing. I’m actually starting to have fun already ’cause I’ve made six videos.

I’ve been trying to make the day one video for three days and I have made videos of me just ranting about how much I hate this process and talking about what I wanna give back to the community and I don’t know how to trim those down yet. I haven’t figured that part out yet. But I got back into cap cut.

’cause after I made my first video, I was like, I hate this so [00:34:00] much. I need to learn how to make it better.

Zach: much.

Lee Zuvanich: of a sudden. For the first time ever, I got into cap cut and I, I started to learn it and I think it was out of desperation. It was like the mental block is still there in some way, but I am overcoming it because now I’m staring at a video of me that I just made that I desperately want to clean up.

I wanna trim it and make it less rambling and whatever. So I just started learning cap cut and got really excited actually and created. A couple of really cool things that I’m excited to share soon, but they didn’t feel ready enough for day one. So then I did my little eight second thing for day one.

So wow. That was a tangent. That’s what I’m working on and I think you can tell, I can hear in my voice, I’m actually getting a lot of energy and excitement around it. And that’s my goal. My goal has been to figure out, for the last year I’ve been thinking a lot about. The advice that I’ve given other people who say they wanna start doing content regularly, which is just go where it’s easy.

Do what’s easy, do [00:35:00] what’s repeatable, start there. So I literally have experimented with like, what if I have the phone holder thing that I bought just by my bed and I’m just laying here in bed? And it was like, Hey guys. Because

Sarah: Is that better than

Lee Zuvanich: that’s easy.

Sarah: that are like,

Lee Zuvanich: Like. Yeah,

Sarah: I don’t get those videos at

Lee Zuvanich: I can’t, I can’t do the walking outside one. I, I tried and I got too nervous.

It’s ’cause

Sarah: Like run into a stop sign or

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t want people to be like fucking influencer. I just, I can’t, I’m not there yet.

Zach: That might be the

Lee Zuvanich: I’ll get there.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: But I have had so many moments where I’ve been laying in bed in the dark, and had a really good idea for a video I wanted to make, to just like rant about something the way I do on LinkedIn. And I was like, oh, that’d be really good, but I have to turn on the light.

Sarah: Just do a voice. A

Lee Zuvanich: I’d be like,

Sarah: I know a lot of people do voice

Lee Zuvanich: that’s,

Sarah: then they’ll write with the,

Lee Zuvanich: yeah,

Sarah: transcribe it or whatever, so you could do that. It doesn’t have to always be

Lee Zuvanich: well, I can write easily. Writing doesn’t intimidate me. My goal is to do the scary thing,

Sarah: Mm,

Lee Zuvanich: reels,

Sarah: the light

Lee Zuvanich: and I think that. [00:36:00] Turn the light. Yeah, exactly. That’s the scary thing, because if I turn the light on, then I’ll be like, I’m so puffy.

Zach: effort.

Lee Zuvanich: But to your point, Sarah, yeah. I should just record it in the dark and then do a voiceover later over a B roll. I’ve been taking B roll.

Sarah: It’s just more like

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: night, like

Lee Zuvanich: Which I

Sarah: I

Lee Zuvanich: heard.

Sarah: a good idea for like a, a tagline. I’ve been struggling with a tagline I wanna use on stuff like late at

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: of those things where I was like, it’s pretty good. I’ll remember that tomorrow. Did I?

Lee Zuvanich: Oh,

Sarah: not

Lee Zuvanich: I have so many notes. Yeah. I’ve gotten note files and

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: I’ve got, oh man.

Sarah: You’ll never

Lee Zuvanich: Lots of half finished things.

Sarah: maybe I did remember it correctly, but it’s not as good in the light of day. That’s the other thing

Zach: Yeah.

Sarah: know. ’cause I dunno if it’s the same one that I

Lee Zuvanich: Exactly.

Sarah: so now it’s just

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: in my mind, like, did I have the right tagline?

Lee Zuvanich: Right, and yeah, you’re a perfectionist. Okay, so I was sitting here on cap cut finally getting excited about it, and I [00:37:00] was admittedly partly getting excited about it because I discovered their AI feature and I made a really, to me very cool video. That talks about what’s possible now with low code.

That was never possible before for non-technical founders. I’m so excited for what non-technical founders can do right now if they know the guardrails to put in place before they start. And I want to teach about that. I’m so thrilled for them. I’m building prototypes within an hour that would’ve taken a month before.

It’s just beautiful to see what like tools people have right now that they could be using to go to market. So I created a video about that. With the AI tool inside of Cap Cut. And then Jasmine, my daughter walks up behind me, she’s 18 and she’s like, online enough, she’s a developer and she knows what’s trending and stuff.

And she was like, oh, they ins ified it, which is like a Gen Z term, I think,

Sarah: Z term. That’s

Lee Zuvanich: or,

Sarah: Dro is who coined that. That’s definitely

Lee Zuvanich: oh, is it? Okay. Interesting. Okay. Well I’ve heard it only from my [00:38:00] children but she was like, oh, AI. Staying. Shit. I, it, I would never, I would never, I don’t touch cap cut now. She she is, she’s also, this is so weird. She builds on neo cities and she only wants to use analog things.

Like, it’s just this whole

Sarah: Oh, I know. It’s, it

Lee Zuvanich: ridiculous.

Sarah: you get. I saw me the other day that was like the pipeline or the flow is like you become a developer, you get really into development and then you quit everything and start like a goat farm.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Oh, we’re on that path. Yeah.

Sarah: So there’s a return to like a lot of this analog stuff because, and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: probably the opposite of anything the younger generation’s ever known because

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: cities, that’s like a rebuild of like geo cities, right?

Like how come

Lee Zuvanich: I know,

Sarah: throwback man? But

Lee Zuvanich: but you know, I made fun of her a little bit when I saw that she was on Neoc Cities. ’cause I was just like, oh my God, that’s so old. I remember GeoCities and then she actually gave me a lesson about, I didn’t even know this, how GeoCities got bought out. I think it was Yahoo. [00:39:00] Bought GeoCities and destroyed the internal network that we had all built in the nineties because they wanted us to not be able to use the network and instead only use a search engine. And they actually created the need for search engines by destroying this organic community that had sprung up

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: then they renamed it Neo cities.

Yeah. And so Jasmine educated me on this and actually. She’s a radical. She’s like, we need organic, you know, decentralized internet and all this stuff. So I do,

Sarah: like the eighties

Lee Zuvanich: I know, I know. Yeah. That’s her soul. So I do like, I, I value her, her input on things. And she’s a smart kid, and so she’s like ugly and ified it.

And then she said, she looked at my video and I think I played it for her, and she said, totally serious, if you. Make this public, this will destroy your brand and everything you’ve worked for. And I was like,

Sarah: that.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah, she did. And I went off, I like turned all the [00:40:00] way around to my seat and told her that she’s a perfectionist because she is.

She has built so many cool games and never shown them to anyone. No one’s ever seen her website, no one’s seen her comics, no one’s seen her writing. She’s built really cool things that no one will ever see except me and her brother probably. And I was like, okay, I’ve made a lot of money doing cringey things and putting myself out there when it’s scary and sturdy before I felt ready.

And I’m also a perfectionist, but I have to kill that part of me if I wanna get out there and do anything for anyone else to see it. Or I’m gonna end up like someone else in this room who never shows anyone anything and, and honestly isn’t making any money. And she was like, damn.

So I, I have fully leaned in. I’ve embraced, and I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s been a journey. I’m embracing the cringe of creating content and putting it out there and being scared and doing it anyway. It felt like my [00:41:00] last hurdle. I’ve already done public speaking. I’ve created so many businesses and put them out there into the world and let people judge them and whatever.

I’m numb to all that. I can’t think of anything else that scares me.

Sarah: There you go.

Lee Zuvanich: Reels terrify me.

Sarah: I would say that like every newer client that I work with, when we get to their point of launching a site, it’s the same thing. Just start as my mantra, it’s literally the.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Start is like one of my

Lee Zuvanich: Absolutely. Yeah.

Sarah: Just start.

Just start. You’re overthinking it. You launch a site, no one’s gonna see it. You post on the social, it’s not just gonna go viral.

Lee Zuvanich: Nobody cares.

Sarah: No one cares at the end of the day. I think that’s a good point to end on. ’cause that is the biggest hurdle for people after they

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: get to a certain point where they can do something, it is choosing to take the next scary step and that you literally will never learn anything if you don’t do it.

So. I think that’s a great point to end on. Thanks for listening. Hopefully this is helpful for people. And please follow us on the social media that we don’t. we post

Lee Zuvanich: Like and follow

Sarah: on LinkedIn. I mean, follow us anyway. I don’t know,

Lee Zuvanich: and [00:42:00] share.

Sarah: please. Like please, please listen.

Because this is a lot of work.

Zach: A lot of work we

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: for.

Lee Zuvanich: Love.

Sarah: lot of work we don’t get

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: have to do tax returns on. So

Zach: Yes, win.

Sarah: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you.