EP9: Freelancing: A Minimum Viable Business

Sarah: Welcome back to Founder Problems Podcast.

Today we’re talking about the difference between freelancers and entrepreneurs. I’m Sarah Schumacher. I run a website agency that focuses primarily on working with solopreneurs, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Lee and Zach.

Lee Zuvanich: I am Lee Zuvanich and I am a former freelancer turned small business owner who helps other founders try to dig themselves out of technical problems. They get themselves into.

Zach: And I am Zach Oshinbanjo, an occasional freelancer focused on project management, mainly in construction.

Sarah: We are going to start by breaking down the difference between freelancers and entrepreneurs and all these other terms because I think we all kind of have our own ideas about what these mean or how we approach them. So. Let’s start by defining what a freelancer is.

In my opinion, a [00:01:00] freelancer is where most people start. You have a skill you’ve learned in a job you offer it on the side, maybe you go full time with it, but it’s just you doing it. And it’s generally a service-based business. And in my mind that’s kind of the beginning point. That can merge into something else or continue being the same thing for a long period of time. But that’s how I would define it. A freelancer.

Zach: I would agree. I see a freelancer is as somebody who has a particular skill that they’ve honed over time or a service that they’re looking to contribute. And I would say that most of their income is on a time basis. They trade time for money.

I

Sarah: I.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that

Zach: would agree with that.

Lee Zuvanich: trading time for money versus scaling up to the point where you have what feels like semi passive income, at least maybe you get to take your kid to a sporting event and you’re still making money because you’ve got someone working in your business.[00:02:00] 

That’s the point where you would say maybe you’re a business owner instead, or a small business owner. And solopreneur freelancer. Consultant those are all interchangeable in my mind. Those are just people who take on gigs versus having to kinda keep the engine running to keep the overhead of the business going.

Sarah: Would you say that you have to have employees to be an entrepreneur? How do you pivot from being a? How do you. A freelancer to an entrepreneur? Or are they the same thing?

Zach: I’d say the difference is structure. Freelance, you can go onto Contra, Upwork or something and you can pull down gigs and pick ’em up, put ’em down, and get paid and keep it moving. But an entrepreneur, my mind thinks that that’s more who’s trying to craft systems to make it highly repeatable.

And you’re dedicated to doing one thing, like if you’re freelance doing random drawing or random designs, that could be super [00:03:00] different every time. But if you’re moving towards entrepreneurship, you might exclusively focus on a word for like people who are in their eighties or whatever. Like you focus on birthday cards for

Lee Zuvanich: Octogenarians,

Zach: or something like you. I.

Sarah: Oh,

Zach: There we go.

Sarah: yes. That’s it.

Zach: So you exclusively focus on that and that moves you, I think maybe towards an entrepreneur and having your own business.

Lee Zuvanich: I would conflate employee with contractor when it comes to, I. Hiring because I’ve helped lots of founders who’ve raised upwards of a million dollars who still haven’t gone over the line of having a staff full of employees. And that includes myself. I will stick with contractors versus employees for as long as I can, but I think maybe a lot of people start to feel like you’re really a true business owner once you’ve crossed that line.

A contractor with a bunch of subcontractors is often just a dude hiring their friends.

Sarah: I think that’s it though. Like I think you just nailed it. For

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: [00:04:00] is you’re a freelancer, if it’s just you, the moment you choose to hire someone else. Including contractors. That absolutely counts. Then you become an entrepreneur. You’re thinking outside the bubble.

You’re the hub of the wheel. Everything comes to you, you’re doing all this stuff

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: as you add another spoke to that of I’m going to delegate work. It’s the delegating of the work that makes you an entrepreneur. In my mind, that’s kind of how I feel about it.

 I’m the same way. I don’t hire employees, I hire contractors and frankly, I don’t think a lot of businesses need full-time employees,

depending on how you

Lee Zuvanich: Agreed.

Sarah: to structure it,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I think that’s the line for me because you have to make a decision. There is a huge pivot that happens between you doing the work and delivering yourself and then bringing in another person. That’s different in a way that means you’re thinking more entrepreneurially, I think, is that a word? Is

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Zach: Entrepreneurially.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah. I would say an entrepreneur is someone who’s making money. And on the,

Sarah: aren’t making

Zach: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: a business. No, I think [00:05:00] freelancers are entrepreneurs and small business owner is the jump . Solopreneur, entrepreneur, freelancer, consultant. To me, those are all the same thing.

When I was dabbling in things like a baking and catering business . I just felt like doing it and I made some money doing it and sold to coffee shops and I never hired anyone else to help me, but I was providing for my family. Then I had a yoga studio at a different point in my life.

It was similar in that I was just doing something I really enjoyed. People kept wanting to pay me. I. To provide that service to them. I was trading my time for money. I started to hire people because I couldn’t teach all the classes and meet all the demand on my own.

But in a lot of ways, nothing felt like it changed. I went from teaching a class to working on scheduling and payroll and operational stuff. So I was still trading my time for money and it was still a [00:06:00] pleasure based lifestyle business. That felt the same to me.

Running Adva digital solutions feels different. That’s more of like, there’s scale and momentum and full-time employees in some points and interested investors and more of a brand and a presence than anything I had been dabbling in before.

But in all of those moments, I felt like an entrepreneur and I think I would’ve been offended if someone would’ve come along and been like, you’re not really an entrepreneur.

I felt the same spirit and drive and creativity and work ethic with each of those.

Sarah: I think there’s a lot of personal difference in how people approach that kind of thing. If your whole thing is I just wanna do the work on my own, that doesn’t

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: to me, entrepreneurial means that you wanna build something that’s bigger than you, I

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So in my mind, if you don’t want to do that, if you wanna keep it contained and manageable and simpler to run and [00:07:00] less complicated it’s still business. You still have to pay taxes, you still have to do all these things, but your approach to it is different because you wanna keep it simple.

As someone on growth mode I’m building something that is bigger than me. I’m actually building a business. So that’s why I see myself as more entrepreneurial. But on certain days, it is great to fantasize about bringing it back down to

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: individual thing, right? I know someone who did the agency thing for a while and he flipped it back and he just does work under his own name at this point, and he

Lee Zuvanich: I know people who’ve done that too. Yeah.

Sarah: yeah. I think part of it is just who are you personally? Do you want this, do you have what it takes to do this? And then

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: what stage of life are you in? ’cause maybe you did wanna do it for a period of time and then now you wanna dial it back.

I mean, I think that could also change depending on where you are.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s fair.

Zach: Yeah, I think it’s kind of what your intention is behind it, because you can start off doing the

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Zach: piece of it and you want to blow it up a little bit. So maybe you go towards entrepreneurship [00:08:00] and I would say that they’re different in a sense of what systems, what are you putting into place to make it easier to do.

’cause if you’re a freelancer, you have to do your own bookings,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: you have to get cleaned out every April for taxes when you’re doing freelance stuff. But as an entrepreneur you can set up an LLC flow through and all these other things that are better optimization, and you’re bringing some other people in.

It’s path of growth of what are your expectations for the business. Like even bakery, you could, I. Just make really good sourdough bread. You’re making bread. You take it down to McLean’s market or something . You give them one loaf and that could be a freelance situation, but if they put in multiple orders to say, Hey, we need 12 loafs, then you’re moving towards something else.

That might even be hard or difficult to manage for one person.

Sarah: I think maybe the financial goals play into that quite a bit because there will always be a cap on, what you were saying, Zach, about the trading time . There’s always a cap on that as an individual. So if your financial goals are [00:09:00] larger than what you can achieve as one person, then you’re going to be more inclined to lean into the business building, hiring contractors or employees. it also depends on the industry too. Because there are certain industries where you could actually make a lot more money as an individual if you’re really specialized. That also would play a part into it.

 It is a matter of figuring out what your individual goals are and then using those to determine which path is the right one for you. ’cause even if you think that you wanna build something it’s freaking hard, it’s way harder to do so you really have to know why you’re doing it. And that starts with the goal setting. are my goals freedom, financial freedom, is it to make a ton of money?

Those are on different ends of the spectrum. You want freedom and you want lots of money, those things are often incompatible.

Lee Zuvanich: This is bad news for some people listening right now.

Sarah: was just gonna say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. ’cause that is just the way it is, but

Lee Zuvanich: We’ve been beating this drum since the first episode though.

Sarah: Yeah. Let’s talk [00:10:00] you out of it and then if you’re convinced , then you know what you’re in for.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. I think once you’ve decided I’m doing the entrepreneurial journey the next thing to talk them out of is do you really need to scale? Are you sure you want to be a millionaire? Do you wanna be sane? Do you wanna sleep at night? Maybe you just make six figures a year and keep your family together and you’re happy, keep your health.

Sarah: So what are some specific traits? What makes someone a good freelancer versus someone that’s a business builder, I guess we could say.

Lee Zuvanich: As we’re talking about this, I keep thinking who is gonna be interested in this topic. And I realized it’s because I am so singularly minded to one side. I have never once in my entire life wanted to play small and keep it simple. I’ve always wanted to scale.

I’ve always wanted to make a lot of money. I’ve always wanted to get crazy with whatever the idea [00:11:00] is. Whether it was baking bread for a coffee shop, or teaching yoga or building apps. I see myself running a very large team with lots of systems and processes and money flowing through and having clients and customers I’ve never even met before being managed by the people on my team. That’s always my vision. So that’s just who I am. I’m a founder. I wanna scale shit , move fast, break things, sell companies. So this isn’t even a discussion that is for me.

Sarah: Well, that’s

Lee Zuvanich: necessarily.

Sarah: because I have a visceral

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Sarah: to you saying that. Specifically when you say having customers that you don’t even know

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: That sounds horrible. This is where when we need to talk about the E-Myth, which definitely will be a linked in show notes book, if people have not read it, he talks about the difference between people that start businesses.

You might start out as a technician, you might be an entrepreneur and you might be a manager. I think

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: the three that are in the book. If you’re [00:12:00] a technician, that means you’re a person that knows how to perform the work. So you just start doing the work for yourself and then all of a sudden you’re a business owner.

That’s how a lot of us

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: out. And it begins with freelancing. ’cause we’re not intentionally like, I’m gonna build a business. People just ask us to do stuff when we start doing stuff. So we often have this passion for the craft that is hard to balance with scaling. If it’s good because your hand touches every part of it and then you scale, it is much more difficult to make sure the quality meets your standards. 

So there’s this push and pull thing that happens.

then the other people he talks about are managers. So there’s people that know how to manage well,

Lee Zuvanich: mm-hmm.

Sarah: a skill to be able to manage people like what you’re talking about. need that if you’re gonna build a big team.

Then the entrepreneur, I’d have to read the book again. I don’t remember what he said about that one. The person that just wants to build and sell things. ’cause that’s another thing

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: build and sell things. I’m

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: have any interest in selling. I do what I do because I love to

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: The idea of an exit is not , I’m not saying I would never entertain it, but that’s not what my goal is. So I [00:13:00] think to me that’s more of an entrepreneur.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: is I’m gonna build it and sell it, and then I’m gonna build something else and sell it.

And I just build stuff and never let go of them, like podcasts.

Lee Zuvanich: Well, yeah. And if we’re getting into the semantics of all of this, like we were at the beginning, to me that’s, I’m a founder. A founder is not necessarily going to be a good CEO. I love building culture and that’s a CEO trait, but I just happen to have that trait. It is really secondary to my desire to wake up in a cold sweat with the next world changing idea and go implement it quickly, scale it quickly, sell it to whoever’s gonna take good care of my idea, because I’ve already had five more and go do the next one.

The idea of having to stick with one business or one craft forever sounds like a prison sentence to me.

Sarah: That’s a good point. There’s a very big difference, like what you said about the CEO.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: versus being a founder and [00:14:00] the best founders, then we can get into the traction concept

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: versus the integrator, right?

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: A good CEO is gonna be an integrator, and founders are typically the visionaries, which are not good at the integration.

They’re good at

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: of the thing, right? Which is why

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: those people.

You’re a great integrator.

I’m also very much a visionary too though,

Lee Zuvanich: I know. Yeah.

Sarah: Fighting against each other.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I think I’ve just learned to channel it a lot. Zach, where are you at on the spectrum?

Zach: Know, it’s hard for me to even say, I would almost say that I lean more visionary because I can fill an entire notebook with the concept or a product and images and sketches and be like, oh, it’s gonna do this. And then somebody’s like, well, what does that look like economically? I don’t know, but we’re gonna sell it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: Don’t ask me how it works or how to make it, but at the same time, I’m also cognizant there should be a business behind this, but I think I become too enamored with the idea of what it can do and what it can

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: be.

Lee Zuvanich: That feels [00:15:00] almost like an inventor mindset,

Sarah: Mm.

Lee Zuvanich: Inventors and founders are so similar. For me, the idea is almost secondary it’s the desire to just business for the sake of business. Special interest is business like that’s me. I enjoy the cogs of a well-oiled machine.

Interlocking with human psychology and how do I get this team to run like a well-oiled machine while preserving the culture and the dignity of the worker which is really hard. I love the challenge of that. That idea for me is really just a vehicle. I’m glad that someone liked my idea.

I’m glad it got funded. I’m glad I have buyers, but really I don’t even care what we’re selling. I love the puzzle of business. It will be probably my entire life’s work of trying to fit those pieces together in different configurations around different ideas.

Sarah: That’s how

Zach: Yeah.

Sarah: I get it that makes sense, but also. [00:16:00] I guess my angle is different. ’cause

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I think I’m that way about building processes and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and especially technical I’m a maker at my core.

You said inventor, maker. It’s the same thing. Like I make stuff, I want

Lee Zuvanich: Mm.

Sarah: I write, I have to create things,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: is why it is hard for me to delegate. I love that, like we’ve said about building something. For me it’s building the systems and the processes that create this machine that has bigger impact, I guess, than what

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: could have.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: really is more about what are we building? And it’s always, here’s an idea, how do we build the idea and that’s the integrator part of me. My background on my computer forever has been, it’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: We have an idea how do you execute it?

And I’m all about executing and building and developing and making. And then also the processes that go along with that. I wonder if I could ever get to a point where if I got my agency be like, it’s perfect. I can’t improve on it in any way, would I just be bored? Like that would never, it’s impossible. I’ll never get there. Let’s say theoretically it did. [00:17:00] What would happen? Would I need to go build something else? Now I’m curious,

Zach: scale of what you do would just increase.

Lee Zuvanich: That I could see that. Yeah.

Sarah: I wanna keep things to a certain level though.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: My ideal would be a small core team. Cap it. Done perfect. Growth for the sake of growth, I’m not a fan of at all. I think you need to know where your limit is and stop there, and then if you build something else, it should be something different. But that’s my personal viewpoint. That’s not how everyone feels.

Lee Zuvanich: I think this is why people smarter than me met me years ago and said, I belonged in tech and I belonged specifically at their agency as a business analyst because I love the challenge of business, scale. Just the concept itself of how do we take this thing to market? I would get six projects at a time, and how do we build their system and how do we help them take it to market and just do that over and over and over again.

So I’ve been in the agency world doing that for so many other businesses for so many [00:18:00] years. That’s what I enjoy. So then sticking with just my one business, my agency I’ve still gotten to do that for other people’s businesses. But if you told me to stick with one business with one go-to-market strategy for years, I don’t think I could be happy doing that.

I. Yeah, because that’s not the goal for me, the goal is all of these different challenges across these different industries and applying the same concepts to them. So Sarah, you were saying building something and scaling it and making it perfect. In my mind, you would do that and then you would wanna go to maybe another vertical with the same processes and try to apply them there, like a new challenge.

Sarah: I just heard a podcast with a guy who did that. He had an agency that was in one vertical and then he just duplicated it.

Zach, your current business or what you’re working on now, are your goals for that, building that into something bigger?

Zach: Well,

Sarah: I know that’s 

Zach: a loaded question.

I’d say, yeah, I’d say six months ago I [00:19:00] thought what I was working on was going to be super high market driving machine, but now don’t necessarily have the same stance and viewpoint on it. So I think I’ve moved more into the freelancer role. I’m looking at the possibility of that freelance opportunity becoming more long term.

I do construction project management and I’m getting a lot of behind the scenes, permitting, zoning, surveying, plumbing, carpentry, everything all at the same time. So I’ve reached this position as a freelancer.

There’s a means for me to maybe go into real estate development, take all that, create a agency or a firm, and go that way. When I was more naive to what building a business, a startup, a founder, and all that look like, I was like, yeah, I’m gonna have 6,000 employees.

It’s gonna be super great. It’s gonna be standing room only, it’s gonna be incredible. I’m like, nah. This [00:20:00] 10 people who actually care about what’s happening.

So it’s a big shift.

Sarah: You basically said yes to an opportunity that grew more and now you’re thinking about a whole different angle and direction you could do

Zach: Yeah. 

Sarah: doing something on the side.

And I feel like most of us start that way. Is there ever a time that people don’t , I guess if someone’s like, I wanna own a business, I’m gonna go open up franchise or something? I guess you could just

Zach: Yeah, if you I almost feel like the freelancer part of it, is a preview of what it looks like if you started a business. I think a freelancer’s stance is probably the easiest way to experience it.

Sarah: It’s like the proving ground or it’s the real world education that you’re never gonna get. You just have to do it and, and it’s

Zach: Yeah. Like do I want to do this?

Sarah: Ex Yeah, exactly. I had a friend that went to school for graphic design and he started freelancing and he is like, oh, this sucks. He did it for such a short period of time. He is like, this is terrible. But his whole degree was in design, right.

Zach: Yeah.

Sarah: I think that freelancing in a lot of ways is the real world way of [00:21:00] doing that without having to spend a bunch of money in an education that may not even give you real experience that will tell you what the world is like.

Zach: Yeah. Those types of experiences help you to really understand if that’s the market you want to be in. ’cause I likewise have a friend , his background was graphic design, and then he became an animated voiceover guy.

Sarah: Hmm.

Zach: And he went through like four years of that, and now he runs enterprise security for a multinational cybersecurity company.

Lee Zuvanich: Whoa.

Zach: like, I was like, dude, how did you get in that job? He has no real answer.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s amazing.

Zach: like that’s a pivot.

Sarah: That was a topic of conversation on another podcast I listened to yesterday , where they said that people are still stuck a hundred years ago, mentally you got a job and you worked the same career for your whole life.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: stuck in that mindset. And he was like, you could have three, four great completely wildly different careers over the span of [00:22:00] your life now. And that is completely normal. And most

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: don’t think of it that way, but you absolutely can. so you’re not stuck with the first thing that you picked. Saying yes to things will give you more direction on where you could go.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: Curious from an agency’s perspective, Lee, and then also kind of from the freelance to small business kind of type perspective. Sarah, could you explain the customer pursuit? ’cause for a freelancer,, there’s like 30 websites you can go and that almost takes it all off your plate.

You don’t even have to do the work. You make a one page and people come and find you. But if it’s your business, your agency, you have to be out there spinning a sign and smiling on camera all the time for people to

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, I haven’t done my sign spinning this week, actually.

Sarah: I just had a vision of doing that. That was

Zach: That’s why the calls are down.

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t wanna speak for Sarah, but we talk about this a lot. I don’t know if either one of us are good examples of what we’re supposed to be doing for our pipeline. Sarah might be,

Sarah: I am

Lee Zuvanich: [00:23:00] I, I function like. A freelancer because that’s how it started. I didn’t want to own an agency. I wanted to help my friends and it turned into a business that helps my friends, which is not a good model, don’t do what I did.

But I’ve always gotten clients and scaled through word of mouth. As times got tougher with every agency owner I know, not just in the Midwest but across the country having a harder time bringing in clients, a lot of them doubled down on their marketing strategies. I didn’t do that. I continued to be like, word of mouth will continue to work, or I will go do something else.

Because this was never about me making a brand where people see Adva digital solutions and they think that I’m some VML, which is one of the biggest, agencies in the Midwest. I don’t want that. So it’s either gonna work or it’s not, has always been my mindset with this business.

[00:24:00] Maybe that is a bad example for the people listening, but I’m a big believer in if the pain is great enough and the service offering responds well to that pain, then you will have a steady stream of buyers. And if you can’t figure that out and you have to double down on your marketing and your messaging and positioning with the agency world especially, you get into a slippery place of snake oil after a certain point.

So that’s how I approach it and it’s probably bad.

Sarah: That’s typical though. I would say most agencies are relying on referrals. That’s the most common

Lee Zuvanich: That’s true.

Sarah: is that it’s all word of mouth and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a consistent, wise, long-term strategy, but doing something different requires investing a lot of time that most of us don’t have.

So it just never ends up happening. It’s like the web designer that doesn’t update their website. So think that that’s pretty common. I’m actually in the process of updating my website, so

Lee Zuvanich: Mine’s been down for like a year, I think. I don’t even care.[00:25:00] 

Sarah: need to help you with that.

Lee Zuvanich: It may be because I approached this from day one backing into it kicking and screaming. If I were advising someone in my shoes, I would not say, oh yeah, dig your heels in and do referral only, and good luck with that.

I would say brand and go-to market strategy around any business especially service based needs to just follow that rule, which is you gotta get in front of someone seven times before they even reach out. They just need to keep repetitively seeing you.

To be even the slightest bit strategic you just wanna stay in front of people and it’s not a duplicitous thing to do. It’s human nature to be like, oh, Lee just made a really good point in that LinkedIn post. I should call him and then get distracted. Then a week later, oh, that’s another post where he makes a good point.

I’m definitely gonna call him. And then they don’t. But eventually they do. That’s how I get a referral. Right. If I were better at my go-to market strategy [00:26:00] and a little more diligent and professional about it, then I would have a posting schedule. Because that’s pretty much where my referrals come in at this point.

Everyone already knows me. They just have to be reminded.

Sarah: that’s personal branding.

 For most small business owners, small agencies, whatever, if you’re the face of the brand, it does kind of have to be that way.

And that’s

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that I’m doing as well. I’ve been networking in Kansas City for years, so I’ll go to stuff now and people will be like, oh my gosh, you’re everywhere. Not really, actually never leave my house. But I go to the things that count. I show up enough. It’s a momentum thing. I’ve been doing it long enough that a lot of people know who I am at this

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And that’s been very strategic. I’ve been doing this for like

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and it’s taken that long to hear people make those comments frequently enough to be like, okay, I’m starting to see some traction with this.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I do a lot more online too. Being part of Slack communities or just interacting being helpful. I’m not marketing per se, I’m just in a lot of places being helpful to people that

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: LinkedIn is the only , social media platform that I do much [00:27:00] with. When someone wants to work with my business, it’s ’cause they wanna work with me and , yes, they’re also getting my team. But there’s also that one-on-one thing that is just different about working with a smaller business versus a big agency.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: today with a guy that has the same exact approach I do, and works with the same type of clients. And it’s like that, that’s, we’re the same wavelength with how we work with people. And that’s what you want. You wanna be on the same wavelength with

Lee Zuvanich: Totally.

Sarah: So it’s a personal connection and you have to figure out how to make that personal connection evident in a random post on a platform consistently. that’s my only strategy at this point in time. People run ads I’ve never done that. 

Lee Zuvanich: Same.

Zach: Yeah, that’s always been like a,

challenging weird part for me oh, I’m gonna make a inspirational, helpful post every day.

Sarah: Oh,

Zach: like two days into that I’m like, this is the worst ever. This is not gonna [00:28:00] happen. So then two, three people will reach out to me, Hey, do you know anything about this? I sure do. That’s a lot better for me. ’cause I just can’t put on a top hat and, walk around town and ha ha like, no.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I,

Sarah: you don’t

Lee Zuvanich: I think we all, we all like the three of us. From what I know, we don’t love those personalities.

Sarah: no.

Lee Zuvanich: We all know them. Everybody listening to this can think of someone. And not only do we not really wanna hang out with that kind of person usually, but we definitely don’t wanna be that person.

And I think that’s why it’s so hard for so many people to do marketing is ’cause that’s how it feels. It feels like the whole top hat, like

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Zuvanich: and dance.

Zach: bit.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Can you guys think of any examples of someone who is not the cheesy, snake oil salesman type person, but it’s someone where you’re like, I really like the way they’re putting themselves out [00:29:00] there and they are marketing their brand, but they’re doing it in a way that earned my trust.

I.

Sarah: Justin Welsh is the immediate one that comes to mind. It’s funny, I can’t even tell you what he does. He has a LinkedIn course but he focuses on business related stuff for solopreneurs, and I see his

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: around a lot as an example of someone that does this well, I don’t spend a lot of time on social platforms, so I see his stuff on occasion and I reposted one the other day that was about how important it is to marry well, basically if you’re an 

Lee Zuvanich: mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a spouse that actually is just someone you wanna hang out with all the time, and someone who gets it. It was a really random thing. It wasn’t even about whatever he is selling or whatever,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: He seems very genuine.

He’s not pushy or salesy. He’s just very, very open about, I am building a million dollar solopreneur business. That’s his whole thing. And so

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: Oh, that guy.

Sarah: be a solopreneur and you wanna make a bunch of money, you’ve probably seen his stuff, but he doesn’t come across in a bad way. And he just feels really [00:30:00] normal to me.

I that’s a great model.

Lee Zuvanich: I love the build in public thing. I’ve heard people talk shit on it, but I’m trying to remember the name of the first founder that I ever saw do it. They scaled and sold a platform for SaaS analytics.

They were just so transparent about what it cost them to get to that point and the tactics they used to get in front of their buyers and how they managed, loss of traction, why they sold, how much they sold for how, long they stayed on. That kind of honesty earns my trust for sure.

Sarah: Hardcover app is what I use for my reading tracking. It’s a newer book app. They’re still very, very actively working on it. It’s still a new product, but the founder is a hundred percent building in public. He

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: the first of every month. He gives numbers. He’s like, yeah, we’re completely, completely rebuilt everything.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm.

Sarah: many paying subscribers we have. Here’s what our costs. We might actually break even, whatever. It’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: really cool to see that. 

Lee Zuvanich: Is.

Sarah: [00:31:00] that they’re successful.

Zach: Two guys outta Nebraska . One of the guys’ is Ramsey Schafer, and the other one is Sam. I can’t remember his last name. But they started their original business and it was centered around sentiment analysis for financials, and they would give it to hedge funds or something.

They did that one, two years and they ended up shifting it. Now they’re doing , don’t even know what they’re doing, but the entire premise centers around hey, we thought this now we think this, and it’s very open. ’cause no one wants to be candid about quote unquote making the wrong choice or the wrong decision with the business.

But they’re very vocal. Ramsey blogs a lot and he seems very comfortable, yeah man, , we were gung ho 100% to sentiment analysis for financials now we’re doing another thing.

Lee Zuvanich: My favorite thing is when they talk about, well, we assumed this and we went all in on this, and we pushed the dev team to ship it, and this is the feedback we got, and [00:32:00] we are devastated and our investors maybe don’t trust us anymore, so we’re pivoting and here’s what that looks like and that’s the journey of every entrepreneur I’ve ever met.

It’s a privilege to get those stories without knowing them personally. So I love seeing that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. That’s really cool.

So what happens if someone decides they want to run the agency thing or build a business? They want something bigger than themselves and they start doing it and they’re like, crap, I made a mistake.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s never happened to me. So.

Zach: Mistakes happen. Mistakes are all in your mind.

Lee Zuvanich: No, I can speak to that. I’m sure both of you can too.

Sarah: I think you just pivot, you listen to where you’re at and where you’re going. And I think you can shift back and forth if you want. Not that that’s an easy thing. Let’s you hire employees and you’re like, it sucks.

I don’t want employees anymore. You’re just gonna like fire all your employees.

Zach: you guys.

Sarah: Peace

Lee Zuvanich: yes.

Sarah: like, like,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Unfortunately, [00:33:00] yes, that is what has to happen. Yeah, it sucks.

Sarah: Well, ideally maybe you sell the business to one of the employees. That would be a best case scenario. I don’t know.

Zach: That would be a good outcome. It’s not the worst thing if, say you’re starting off as a solo person and you bulk up and you’re running an agency. You’re like, oh, liked some of those things. But this agency, I think it’s a learned process.

You have to be able to experience know I don’t wanna do the agency. You tested it out. I don’t wanna seem callous, but sometimes there’s collateral damage that happens along the way, you have to have that experience where you’re like, I really enjoy being a solo entrepreneur.

I’m doing my own thing. We’re doing design work. Okay, let’s bulk it up. We’re doing five people. Okay. Now we’re able to pull in some larger scale companies, and they’re like, oh, I actually. I don’t want to be engaged with Oracle for design work or whatever it may be. So let’s go ahead and back this up a little bit.

Sarah: Man. [00:34:00] Oh man. I have a couple thoughts on that. So I’ve done that. I worked with a larger company that I was excited to work on this project for that was just layers and layers of bureaucracy and the inability to affect meaningful change from the outside and the lack of a person on the inside that could also do that.

And I, I’m not interested, I’m not interested in working on projects that takes six months to get a contract. I’m not gonna do that. It’s just not a project I’m gonna take on. That’s one angle.

Then the other one is e-commerce sites. We can do that. I’ve done e-commerce. I don’t want to, it’s kind of a more specialized thing. I’m not really into troubleshooting your shipping auto populated API from USPS to make sure that you’re correct price. I built some of those and was like, Nope, we’re just not gonna do e-commerce sites. That’s not something I’m interested in doing. ’cause what I care about is helping consultants understand that when people reach out, they need to schedule discovery call and [00:35:00] then they get an email that’s a thank you.

And also here’s a pre intake questionnaire and then you ask specific questions and then you work them into your sales process. It’s connected to your whatever. That’s what I wanna build. That’s what I know. That’s what I love building because it has a deeper impact on the specific individuals that I work with.

That’s why I do that. And I can only say that because I’ve done all the other things. So that’s why I landed where I did. I don’t think it’s possible to not make mistakes and I don’t think it’s possible to not have some collateral damage when you start out and you do stuff. It could even be something like delegating, right?

I have learned more about the type of person that

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: to have as a project manager based on working with different people that didn’t work out. Or people that

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: have the right set of skills, but it took figuring that stuff out. And it’s tricky because that’s just the only way to learn.

You can read books. I read a million books, you can read ’em all day. It’s not the same as doing the thing.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you have to try to educate yourself as much as possible before you take the next step and have [00:36:00] people around you that can give you feedback and everything. But you still have to take the step at some point.

Then you just let that inform your decisions going forward. So I think it takes a long time for people to figure out where they’re going. thinking through your goals overall are gonna help you from making mistakes.

Like, I want to look successful, so I’m going to build a huge business with employees ’cause I think that’s a default people expect when they’re like, I’m gonna start a business. This is what’s expected of me. I have to do this. If you start from a place of, should I or do I want that? I think you’re gonna end up better in the long run than someone had to make way more mistakes because they just didn’t do the work on the front end to ask themselves if that was the right choice for them.

End rant.

Zach: So I think my biggest takeaway is, it’s a really good idea if you’re considering starting an agency or a small business, you can probably just like tech people love to do minimum viable products and a proof of [00:37:00] concept. I feel like a freelancer position is kind of the equivalent of that.

You’re, getting an experience that is project based, you’re trading your time for money, and then you can make a decision if it’s something you wanna do long term.

 I’m doing retainer based, project based project management and now I’m kind of getting to the point where I could probably start a firm and go into this 100%, but I only reached that conclusion ’cause I’ve been doing retainer based project management for nine months now, where I’ve been able to kind of get that experience. If you wanna start a bakery? Well, can you sell of cookies to a church or something? Start,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: small project based. See what that looks like, see what that experience is, and then go from there. That would probably be the biggest thing I would recommend to anyone.

Sarah: MVB minimum viable business.

Lee Zuvanich: Thought you’re gonna say minimum viable, baked good.

Sarah: or that[00:38:00] 

Lee Zuvanich: But yeah, that’s, that’s 

Zach: name for a bakery.

Sarah: it is actually

Lee Zuvanich: NBC minimum viable cookie.

Sarah: a bakery.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh god. Well, I did exactly what Zach just described. I started baking for the coffee shop down the street when I just was so busy with family stuff, I couldn’t really do much else. But you know, me, well, I’m not gonna do nothing if I’m home baking for my family, I’m gonna sell some of these loafs.

So I did that and talked my way into a little gig with a coffee shop I like to go to. And they were excited to be buying my baked goods for bottom dollar ’cause I figured to get my foot in the door. That’s what I had to do. Then very quickly realized my standards for my own baking were extremely high, like whole foods level and up high.

And I was in an area where no one was gonna pay what that would cost and I was gonna have to switch to wholesale white flour [00:39:00] and vegetable oil instead of using butter and all this. And immediately I was out. I was like, this isn’t what I want. I wanna be able to only make things I would feed my family and I feed my family all very healthy Whole foods things.

So I was just done in that moment, and that’s how I’ve approached every business concept is as a minimum viable, freelance kind of mindset, helps weed out the bad ideas pretty quickly. So I would second that.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

Lee Zuvanich: Also, I would say as we were talking about before, when it comes to your personality, are you a CEO? Are you a founder? Are you a freelancer? Are you an inventor? Or, or a mixture of these things? And how is that going to play out as you need to hire a team, delegate, watch them do it badly, want to take the reins back outta their hands.

How is this gonna play out over the next year or two as you try to scale? One way that I’ve learned [00:40:00] what paths to take and whether or not I’m a good CEO or COO or where I belong, is by doing tests like the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs. I like Culture Index. If you’re in the Midwest, they come in and they analyze your entire team for you and give you a very in-depth and comprehensive survey of why people belong, where they belong, and what their strengths and weaknesses might be.

And that actually was life changing for me to do. I learned that I was a tech COO and I needed to go back to being a tech CEO for a variety of reasons, all coming down to what’s gonna make me happiest and most eager to jump into the work every day. Those are really great ways to figure out what you should do next, and if it should be a big or a small endeavor.

Sarah: The zone of genius concept,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: sticking within the zone of genius instead of trying to fit yourself into whatever needs done. My whole thing is, to make sure that you start with the end in mind. [00:41:00] So that’s my biggest takeaway for any of this is don’t just do something because you think you’re supposed to or ’cause everyone else is doing it, or because it seems like a good idea. You need to really weigh what you want out of your business or freelance career, whatever that might be. You need to weigh what that looks like for you and how that might be different. And then just do what works. Make up your own thing. That’s the whole thing that I love about entrepreneurship is you write your own job description, you build your own career. So why would you do that for something that’s incredibly hard just to do it the way everybody else has?

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: What things are you uniquely good at? What is your zone of genius? Then make sure that you focus on those areas and does that zone of genius include managing a huge team of people?

If it doesn’t, maybe that’s not the right fit for you. So I think starting with the end in mind, regardless of what you build, and then just working with whatever you need to do to make that fit, depending on your lifestyle and how that might change over time. That’s my big takeaway for that. Hopefully this is helpful.

I feel like we kinda [00:42:00] rambled a little bit, but if anyone wants to reach out about. Where your journey has led you, where you started, where you ended up, or if you have different thoughts on the difference between freelancers, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, consultants, agencies, studios, small businesses, and every other possible configuration I can think of please reach out follow us on any podcast platform. We’re on all of them, so hopefully we will hear from you soon.