Episode 16: What’s Your Problem – January 16, 2026

Episode 16: What’s Your Problem – January 16, 2026

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 16 of the Founder Problems Podcast. What’s your problem?

Zach: Hello everyone and welcome to the the Founder Problems Podcast. This is the What to Problem episode where we’re gonna talk about some things that we have going on. We’re gonna talk about one win, one struggle, and one thing that we’re working on. my name is Zachary Oshinbanjo. I am a former pm and I’m exploring some new things, and I’m joined by my co-host, Sarah and Lee.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Schumacher and I launch really complicated websites right now. That’s what

Lee Zuvanich: Lee Nic and I build apps and web apps for businesses that want to be more secure.

Zach: Right.

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Zach: In true transparency, it has been a, it has been a little bit of time since we’ve had one of these episodes, so we’ll try to get into all the happenings, all the developments, some good, some [00:01:00] bad tears, maybe laughter. That’s kind of just the way that these things go. I I can go first unless someone else is just bursting at the seams to talk about what they have going on.

Lee Zuvanich: I will take it away.

Zach: I was really hoping someone else went first, but All right. enough. I will go ahead with my, my first win. So speaking about wins a lot last year, 2025, I spent a lot of the year trying to get things organized and centered for the nonprofit that I’m the executive director of. And it is it’s been a journey.

I will say one of the biggest takeaways of, for anybody trying to get into the nonprofit world or trying to do good, I would say timelines are always gonna be different than any municipality, any city, any federal entity, any local government, or even a funder. Even. So, when you have plans and projections, [00:02:00] taper them, almost make them seem non-existent.

Every time you hit submit on a grant, it should be a surprise if you get it, that’s the kind of mind that

Lee Zuvanich: absolutely. Yeah,

Sarah: Good advice.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah,

Zach: Be surprised if somebody emails you and says, congratulations such and such. And then you have to go back, you know, wait, which one is this again, needs to be your position because it’s,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: forget ’cause so much time.

I’ve had applications that went in November, 2024 and were approved August, and I, I’m still in kind of the throes of trying to get things together. So you know, fill in the blank there, but you don’t

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Zach: everything you need when you need it. So always kind of move with that kind of cautiousness.

But that’s moving into a negative light. But the win is that there is some activities happening. I’m getting some opportunities heading towards the organization so that we can do the work that we set out to [00:03:00] do by helping people learn how to do construction and environmental work. Learn, or, sorry learn. be a part of the home building process and also land remediation. So we’re getting some funding, we’re getting staff. I’m, no longer kind of what is that? The a dead man’s key or a key man. I’m no longer a key man in the same way that I used to be. So there’s some, some growth happening and I’m really enjoying being on the other side of it where you’re not a, a grant treadmill where you’re looking for the next dollar, next dollar, next dollar, next dollar, and you can just, what’s the work that actually set out to do?

It’s my work to just get

Lee Zuvanich: Mm.

Zach: and not get, so it’s been fun. It’s been fun. I guess that

Lee Zuvanich: That’s amazing. Love that.

Sarah: Dang. That’s cool. Yeah, I. I mine’s not super exciting. I mean, I guess it’s kinda the same thing. It’s, it’s you plug away over and over again and then eventually you see some traction and that’s [00:04:00] the win. So I guess neither one of ours are really exciting, but mine’s, I guess, similar in that I’ve just gotten a bunch of unexpected inbound leads in the last week or couple weeks or whatever. I, I think just a lot last week, because I was supposed to be outta the office for my annual planning week, which I mean, I still did, it wasn’t as defined. I didn’t do an auto response. I still had to keep tabs on some things just ’cause we’re in the middle of so many projects right now. But I just kept seeing these emails come through.

Like someone would book a call, a discovery call, and I’m like, I, it was this person, you know, like, and I remember just last week thinking about that’s only happening as a result of a decade of networking in person online, you know, having coffees with people.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: of this stuff that I’m doing when people ask. When people ask how, like, how I market myself, it’s like, I’ve never done marketing. It’s like, it’s always the networking but it takes a really long time to get traction and to feel like you have kind of a, a flywheel going. And [00:05:00] so I,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: just thinking about that in the last week. Like, okay, I have a flywheel.

Like,

Lee Zuvanich: Nice.

Sarah: I’ve not even done that great of a job with any of it last year because I was so focused on the rebrand in order to

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: the point of promoting stuff more. But it’s still, I’m starting to get stuff from, know, like one, I’m trying to think of like examples to, to flesh this out for people.

So one was another, like technically a competitor, like another agency that was just a project that’s not a good fit for them. Somebody I haven’t talked to in several years and was like, Hey, do you, is this something you can do? And I’m like, yeah, we could. Here’s our information. You know, send ’em over. I don’t know if anything will come of it.

It’s not necessarily like these are all good leads, but it’s just the fact that like, okay, someone thought of me and reached out. Not, that’s not anything I was expecting, you know, if so and so referred me to so-and-so, this other person asked it. Like just, it’s stuff like that and you have to reach a point of critical mass just takes a long time.

So I just feel like, oh, I’m, I’m seeing the fruits of this finally after, you know, so, so many years of [00:06:00] just doing, showing up. so it’s just been nice. It’s just like that’s, that’s what I want. I want inbound leads. I don’t want to run Google ads and have some random person like, oh actually that is a really specific lead I can give.

I have I have a potential client from chat, GBT. That’s how they found me. So

Lee Zuvanich: Whoa.

Sarah: yeah, I haven’t even put, that’s actually the second, that’s the second I have gotten from, from an AI search, but I

Lee Zuvanich: Wow. That’s

Sarah: put a bunch of effort

Lee Zuvanich: crazy.

Zach: It’s gonna get monetized.

Sarah: yeah, yeah, I put a

Lee Zuvanich: Wild.

Sarah: amount of effort into AI search.

’cause there, there are certain things you can do to gain the system. Currently it’s always gonna change,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: done much with it and it’s still like, that’s pretty cool because this was a very, very, very good fit lead to it’s not just like a random ’cause the fir the other one that I’m thinking of is not, it was like a one-off, help me with this technical thing.

That’s not really what I’m looking for. So, but yeah, I, I’m like, okay, that’s cool. More of that

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: As, again,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s great.

Sarah: good fit, I, I need people to be a good fit. But [00:07:00] yeah, it’s, it takes a long time. I hope people like take, that’s my takeaway for anybody that’s like, it’s really hard to get business.

Yes, it is. It’s gonna take you a long time to get to the point where you feel like stuff’s coming in, so please

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: more pressure on yourself, because it just takes years to do that.

Zach: That’s

Lee Zuvanich: I have,

Zach: Go ahead, Lee.

Lee Zuvanich: oh, good.

Zach: At just, I was gonna say, I, I,

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Zach: like, and here’s my theory, there’s probably some cool businessy person that’s would say the same, that people hire who they know.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: for like products, it’s people hire and or buy what they see. ’cause I feel like there’s that distinction. You need some social vetting.

Like even, I think as recently as last week, I asked you about some folks that you knew within the, the finance world. And I was like, if Sarah knows them, that’s good enough for me. I’m not gonna do anymore de deliberate research. So, so think it just makes it so much easier, obviously, like in jest, but I [00:08:00] think it, it takes that leg off.

’cause I gotta

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: somebody, you know, they’re running a kind of like, they’re running a bit, so they’re gonna give you their best presentation. Look at our little folders we press for you this morning. And it’s like. Have you,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: you talked to this person outside of a, a pitch conversation? Yeah. Well, X, Y, Z. Okay. Well that’s good enough for me. I don’t, I don’t want to have to be going back and forth with people and I hate getting services. I hate it.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, because people, it’s like we were talking about before we even started this con, like before we hit record about how people will. and present themselves in one way, and then you find out all of it’s a lie. And that’s just, I mean, it’s, it happens in all relationships, but in the business world, it’s just so easy for people to be like, oh, look how successful I am.

I’m like, yeah, you’re real successful.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: yourself look successful.

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: the same thing as actually knowing your job, like doing your job well,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I always like, it’s like I wanna have a guy, I [00:09:00] got a guy for that. I got a guy and it’s like the,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: yeah, I got, I got a guy for that. You always wanna have a guy person or whatever.

And so I, I try to actively cultivate like a network of people. And like I had, you know, I’ve had calls like with a Squarespace designer recently, right? I don’t do Squarespace sites, I’m like, okay, you seem like you’re doing a good job. Like, let’s get to know each other a little bit.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: be able to refer people.

So when they

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: I need this. I’m like, I’m sorry, that’s not what we do. Go talk to so and so. Like, I always wanna have a person.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that goes two ways. And so it’s like, I wanna know good people. I want good people to know me. ’cause then when someone comes to that person and they want a WordPress site, they’re gonna send ’em over to me.

Right? So that’s, that’s how you get clients in the service business. It’s a

Lee Zuvanich: Yep.

Sarah: and trust thing. And you have to build your network and you have to know people that know you and know you do good work and you have to do good work to get that reputation. And then it just takes a long time to build that up and you have to actually put some effort into it.

So it’s nice to see some fruit of that, especially ’cause I have been so busy. I, I’m barely surviving [00:10:00] over here and I have not put any effort into keeping things going. But that’s the other mistake people make is they will not work on the flywheel when they’re busy. And then as soon as they get through the projects, the work is gone.

Lee Zuvanich: It’s true.

Sarah: to keep plugging at that. And I am con always sending out proposals and stuff. You’re never gonna get all of them, but it’s just nice when they come to me.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. And you know, I feel like I have not done any of that either. I’ve never done traditional marketing or really any marketing for my consulting business that I’ve had now for eight years. And I’ve only had a gap with no client work for two weeks in eight years, and it was last year and it was as a direct result of me, like narrowing our scope and firing clients and repositioning.

But, but I am actually doing marketing like without meaning to, it’s probably meeting people, you know, networking to some extent. I’ve been moving between cities so much for the last 18 months or so, maybe, or a year [00:11:00] that, that’s been harder. I think, like I’m a little worried about that I’m not building my network in the same way that I was because I keep moving between cities.

So now I just write on LinkedIn like I always did, and that seems to be doing it. That plus the network I’ve built over the last decade. It’s working for me now. But yeah, I have people call, like reach out to me lately saying, Hey, I wanna do digital nomad stuff. Can you tell me, like, I, I’ve decided I wanna be a freelancer starting soon and I’m gonna leave my full-time job.

How do I do that? And I, every time give them a lecture about, what a pipeline is and how, like in the digital world, it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, it’s an 18 month pipeline and that’s smaller and shorter If you’ve got small businesses and startups, but also those clients are less stable, you really need those people that take longer to make decisions as your backbone.

So I don’t have, I, I hate this ’cause I know these people are listening. I don’t have great advice [00:12:00] for people who are trying to do that quickly. It is what you were saying, Sarah. It takes a long time. A lot of it just

Sarah: I don’t

Lee Zuvanich: consistency.

Sarah: quickly unless you’re just, I don’t know, maybe right place, right time. There was a lot of luck involved, I guess. I mean, I’ve seen, I saw somebody do it recently who got into consulting and editor replaced like within six months or a year, replaced her consulting in her full-time job income with consulting income.

Lee Zuvanich: Well, that happened to me. That happened to me immediately. And it was not luck so much as I’d worked at four agencies already. So.

Sarah: you, you had the network before, actually,

Lee Zuvanich: I have the network. Yeah,

Sarah: to be like, even if you’re in a job, you should always be working on your network because you don’t know

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Sarah: plan to

Lee Zuvanich: Exactly.

Sarah: maybe you do wanna go out

Zach: Involuntarily.

Sarah: be building your network.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Because, yeah, it always, and again, I I, maybe we should also qualify here that we’re all talking service businesses. We’re not talking about products or like, you know. That’s kind of different, but in the service industry, again, it’s very much the know, like, and trust thing.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm. [00:13:00] Well, and that like touches on something. I know we’re not gonna talk about politics on this podcast even though in our personal lives reach out if you wanna, if you have opinions, I guess. But like, that’s not what this podcast is about. But I think it’s very just across the board acceptable and good advice to say we’re all supposed to be.

Participating in building community more than ever right now. And that’s just an extension of that. I don’t know if more than ever is even a good way to say that ’cause it’s something we should not neglect in general. But I just see a lot of people saying things like you know, we should all be getting off of our screens and going out indoor communities and like getting to know people, knowing our neighbors more.

And like, I’ve been doing humanitarian, I was doing humanitarian and social work and disaster relief work 20 years ago. And when people reached out to me a couple years ago wanting to bring me into a project like that to do digital things, they were vetting me from a 20-year-old relationship. And like, this stuff just stays with you.

So [00:14:00] it’s never a bad time to be going out and meeting people and just trying to be a person that helps other people.

Sarah: Existing in the real world. What

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: idea

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: It can be a, it can be scary at first, but eventually you just get out there and if you get a booboo, you can, you can put on a bandaid, so, yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: Well so I’ve been single

Sarah: these words.

Lee Zuvanich: for two years and I’d finally decided after 20 years of like serial monogamy and dating that I would put more personal time and, and investment into friendships and my community than I would into dating. And I think that, I don’t know if this is true in other countries as much in the US I’ve experienced that.

Like people just start dating someone and then like, you know, if your friend says like, I’m seeing someone seriously, or I got engaged or I got married, you’re not gonna see them very much after that.

Sarah: Yep. [00:15:00] My

that were the couple, I remember my husband and I started dating our friends were all like, you’re the only couple we’ve ever

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Sarah: that like nothing changed.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not true for everyone, but

Sarah: no, we like, but it was, it was, it stood out so much to people that they had to mention it.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: guys are just the same. You still hang out. Like we, we always were

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: out with people and so that Yeah. You’re absolute, I totally agree with that. It’s just like people put too much expectation on the person that they’re dating to fulfill their every

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And that’s not

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve actually made a lot of friends in the last year. It’s been really cool.

Sarah: Hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: to try. Apparently

I was like, I guess you just don’t make friends after 30 and like, well, also, I wasn’t like leaving the house or talking to people, so

Sarah: I’m back next week for more deep tips on how to live life.

Lee Zuvanich: earth shattering, [00:16:00] groundbreaking advice on how to have a healthy life in the real world. Leave your house.

I mean, but people, like, they say like there’s no third spaces anymore and all that. Well, I was reading some, a ran rant about this to this morning. For some reason someone was saying like, were there really free third spaces everywhere in the nineties? Like, really? Or are we romanticizing things?

Sarah: Just streets and bicycles after

Lee Zuvanich: yeah, yeah.

Someone responded talking about like Hastings and, oh God, I forget the other ones. Barnes and Noble and I forget the third one. Big bookstores with couches. Right. And media places, teenagers like me would gather in those places and spent whole afternoons just we’d like literally walk around looking at CDs and talking with our friends and then sit and read and like, I’m a nerd, so me and my friends, we’d go to the library and read and we’d, we’d go to bookstores but we’d always be at each other’s houses because there wasn’t like the concept of gathering online.

So. It [00:17:00] wasn’t romanticized. It was just like we had, we had to.

Sarah: I mean, yeah. Like there, there, and there might, like, it was an aspect of you could, you know, you go hang with your friends and then you’d, you know, hop on aim after you hung out with them to chat more,

Lee Zuvanich: Right, right,

Sarah: both like, I can’t believe I’m thinking positively of malls here.

Like, I would

Lee Zuvanich: right. I know

Sarah: third spaces in high

Lee Zuvanich: they were, they were

Sarah: didn’t

Lee Zuvanich: totally,

Sarah: are anymore. They still exist. Like,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s an example.

Sarah: what’s

Zach: just use them for exercise now.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Older, older people do.

Sarah: that.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. ’cause it’s like safe and climate controlled and stuff.

Sarah: Yeah. I had I that, that not even occur to me, huh? Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I think a lot of it is just, it’s you’re tired, everybody’s working too much and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you’re like, I don’t have the energy, so I’m gonna plop down on the couch and scroll through my phone or what the,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you have to put some effort into going and seeing people and I think that’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: of it,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: really, we’re turning into like. How to win [00:18:00] Friends and Influence People podcast or something here.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, but it’s, I mean, it’s relevant to, to the idea that like there is no founder that exists in a vacuum, I think

Sarah: Oh, and that’s

Lee Zuvanich: truly.

Sarah: actually. I mean, if you’re talking friendships, everyone needs friendships, but if you are in a space of trying to build a business,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: have to have people in that same space too. ’cause no one else is gonna get it. Like they just

Lee Zuvanich: Right,

Sarah: And,

Lee Zuvanich: right.

Sarah: emotional support from people that are like, yeah, it really sucks when X, Y, Z happens.

Or, or

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: about, I mean, the reason that’s top of mind even is, ’cause I’m in a group where someone recently was like, this is really hard. Like, I’m new to consulting and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: not, I haven’t replaced my income. And I was like. It’s going to be hard and it’s gonna take a long time.

Right. Like, because

Lee Zuvanich: Buckle up buddy.

Sarah: Yeah, like everybody thinks that, oh, I’m gonna start this thing and I’m gonna get clients. No, that is not how it

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, I know.

Sarah: I mean, props to you. If you somehow, you know, like, again, if you’ve got a really good network, I guess, I mean, I’m not saying that never happens, but [00:19:00] people expect that it will in a way that is not realistic.

And

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: of the fact that it’s already hard, their expectations made it hard. Make it harder for them.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you need to have people around you that are like, no man, been there, done that. You’re fine. You are, you

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: very normal space. You’re having very normal feelings. It’s totally okay. Keep plugging away.

Try this, this, and this.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that’s really important for founders.

Lee Zuvanich: Totally.

Sarah: Do we wanna jump into struggles I guess now that we’re

Lee Zuvanich: did we all sh did we all share wins?

Zach: Yeah,

Sarah: Oh yeah. I was gonna ask, is your win,

Zach: friends,

Sarah: like what you Yeah, yeah. That’s what

Lee Zuvanich: Friends?

Sarah: think, because I, I started to say that

Zach: how many of us have them?

Lee Zuvanich: I feel like I have bigger wins than that, but I guess it is a pretty big win. I

Sarah: it

Lee Zuvanich: it’s pretty cool. I, yeah. ’cause I, I do compulsively start like. Groups and stuff. And so I, I started a, like a group of and, and have made a lot of new friends. But no, that’s, that’s my personal life. So talking more about business, my win is that I spent the last two years, [00:20:00] now, year and a half, almost two years, maybe taking the advice of multiple trusted advisors that if I was serious about my startup that had already received funding and was in the process of fundraising more, then I would shut down my consulting agency that was building apps for all kinds of people doing all kinds of work.

And I would consolidate all of my energy and my team under the startup. And then like I was in the middle of multiple projects while getting this advice and those projects were paying my bills. I am not a trust fund kid. I am the opposite of that, whatever that is. And

Sarah: A normal person.

Lee Zuvanich: a what?

Sarah: A normal person.

Lee Zuvanich: normal person. Yeah.

Well, my family is blue collar. We’re from Oklahoma. I am one of the first in my family to go to college. There’s no like backup plan, right? I saved money for probably a year, maybe more before I went out on my own with this last business because I have kids that I’m the primary caregiver for [00:21:00] and I pay all their bills and there’s no one else.

When I started other businesses, when I was younger, I, I did do it as a single parent, but it was a little bit different. It was more like me and money coming in. Like I started a home daycare because it worked. I started a yoga studio because like I had people just right there saying, yes, I’ll pay for this.

And then that’s how it started. Versus launching as a technical consultant, hoping I can keep a pipeline of work coming in. I saved a lot of money before I went off and did that. So to hear from. These people saying, Hey you really need to just shut down this thing that you just spent the last six years building ’cause it’s in the way and it’s taking up all your time.

And I’m like, no shit. That’s how I pay my bills. Can you give me money? And they’re like, well, we’ll give you money when you get more focused and you prove that you’re focused. So I it’s probably looking back foolish, honestly, I would not recommend doing this. It was borderline, I would say dangerous.

But I did it. I started getting rid of clients. I started kind of pricing them out [00:22:00] and making it to where, well, if you weren’t this type of project and with this type of timeline and could spend this much money per month and kind of get things standardized in such a way that I could hand this off as to a white label or sell it and I’ll just shut it down.

Then I didn’t really want that client anymore. And I did this as the economy was shifting. So. I lost almost all my clients. They were like, oh, you’re raising prices and making us do more to be a client. I was hoping to pay less and do less. So I guess this is like peace out by which was part of the process.

And I knew that I did still have a couple more consistent clients. I have only had two weeks out of. The entire time I’ve had my business where we didn’t have client work coming in, so that’s cool. But my staff size has varied wildly. It’s a consulting business, so that didn’t feel good, didn’t feel good to go from like 50 people on payroll.

20 of them like working every day, like depending on me for rent [00:23:00] to like four people. But yeah, like it had to be done. So anyway, I made sacrifices, my kids made sacrifices. We went through some scary times financially over the last two years trying to follow this advice because I knew they were right and I needed to find a way to move all my energy and focus over to this startup.

And now we’ve come out the other end of it. And my big win is that all of my current contracts are through my startup now. So the startup is making money and we are currently building customizations that are completely in line with. The tool that I’m building on Soma Base. So it’s like AI tooling for data management, and we’ve got med tech clients coming in and manufacturing and all and similar that are all building on top of Soma base now, or in conjunction with the security offering that Soma Base brings their project.

So it’s, it’s been a long time coming and we’ve we’re doing it.[00:24:00]

Sarah: That’s another thing that takes a long time, is to get to that point too. So that is a

Lee Zuvanich: Oh yeah.

Sarah: it’s like you can’t, you can’t get to that later step without going through the earlier steps. So.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah, keeping the faith, like, I think this has been one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever gone through because I am an A DHD founder that would love nothing more than to shut something down and go do a new thing and to stick with this for eight years through this last two years of so many agencies shutting down and like, I have every justified reason to shut down.

And just give up and walk away from the startup and everything and be like, well, I couldn’t get the funding and whatever. I’m gonna go do something else. But instead just saying, I kept telling myself like, really keep the faith because that is the only thing that separates me from all of the founders who are giving up.

And if you can make it in a recession, you’re gonna do great. Right. Like, just hang on. So again, this isn’t good advice, it’s just what happened, but I just hang, like white knuckled it [00:25:00] until we got here. And now maybe things are turned around in the digital industry a little bit. I’m not sure. ’cause Sarah’s also seeing work come in, but it, it has turned around and it’s pretty exciting the stuff that is happening right now.

Sarah: It’s definitely turned around in a wild, wild way since I would say like right after school started, I mean around

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: October November

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: started happening and then it’s just been chaos like abs and that that’s actually a good transition into the struggle.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: what my struggle is right now, is just a completely unsustainable workload.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: a lot of it is, ’cause you know, that’s such a slow year with people. No one wanted to make decisions last year because of the uncertainty just to, people still

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: uncertainty. And I think maybe people have just decided like, this is just we have to

Lee Zuvanich: This is the new normal.

Sarah: like, we’re just, we’re the dog in the, you know, firehouse.

Like,

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Sarah: I guess.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: keep working. The, the dog has his laptop on the table now in the middle of the flaming house. Like this is just what we’re doing. So it’s [00:26:00] interesting ’cause. just kind of all come in at once and I’m, I’m curious to see if it continues through this year, but it is, it’s showing signs that it will, so it’s changing.

I mean, I wanna make that sound like, oh, it’s a great time to be in a digital agency space. No, it’s not. don’t, don’t start that now. If you’re not,

Zach: Don’t do.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: not. A lot of people shutting down AI is absolutely having an impact. Not in the way people say that it will, but it is

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. True.

Sarah: spaces that are not great right now to go into. It’s gonna really suck for juniors.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: is, if you are a senior person with expertise, this is a good time to be doing whatever you’re doing. But. I mean, God help the poor people that are graduating or getting into stuff right now because

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: there’s just not, there’s not a pipeline for them to grow career wise with the way that AI and stuff is, is impacting the industry.

So I don’t wanna make it sound like, oh, things are great again. ’cause it’s not stuff’s changing, but people for whatever reason have decided to go [00:27:00] ahead with projects and we’re just gonna do stuff anyway. And so now all of a sudden people are getting back to us. People are getting us what we need. I’m getting more

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and I am, you know, and there’s this, the holidays are crazy.

So I’ve had, you know, I had something that got dropped on me ’cause somebody get me what I needed when I asked for it, when we were slow. And so then they get it to me when we’re busy and now they really need it. And it’s like, okay, now you’re throwing off our whole schedule. And now we are behind because I’m waiting on people all the time.

So I’m still in that I, we have to make it through a couple really large, complex projects right now. And once we do that. I, I will feel a lot better, but you need wiggle room in anything technical. ’cause there will just always be troubleshooting. Like, it doesn’t matter how good the planning is, there always be some weird bug or something that happens you can’t plan for.

And then that will delay timelines. Or like people can’t make a decision or you’re waiting on assets to be provided. There’s just always something. And so I just don’t feel like I have any space at all for anything. [00:28:00] And I am solely, there’s, there’s still too much that I personally have to do. I think I have, I guess, guess I can transition my other, I, I know what my working on thing is now. just answered. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, like, to say what I was working on, but now I know I, I’m transitioning into a different way of working that I’ll get into later. But I would say right now the struggle is just surviving the next two months, I guess the next six weeks there’s just. The project workload right now is crazy and it’s not, it’s crazy on me personally. There are

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that are waiting on me personally. There is not. There is stuff I cannot delegate until I do X, Y, Z, that is a lot of weight right now. So I’m just trying to make it through that.

Zach: I definitely sometimes feel that pressure it’s, you, like, you look into the, the flow of where things are at and you’re trying to check the box and see what’s going on, and you’re like, oh, it’s me. Wow.

Sarah: Mm.

Zach: t [00:29:00] thunked that, you know? So.

Sarah: Or,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: because it’s faster to do it yourself. It is always faster to do it

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: to delegate. So if you have the pressure on, we have this, you know, timeline that we have to meet, have to do it myself now because,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: because like, you know, if I can design and develop at the same time and I have a

Lee Zuvanich: Right?

Sarah: done, I don’t have time to have a designer do mockups to delegate to the developer because I have, that’s two skill sets and I have both skill sets, so I have to do it because I can do ’em at once.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: is, is what’s been happening

Zach: Delegation piece is so gosh. ’cause, like even within, because by Trade I, I’m a Grants. Grants man, grants person, and now I’m at the point where I’m like, I kind of don’t necessarily, you know, want to be the primary vehicle for being able to produce those, especially as we grow to capacity. And some of it just becomes a sustainability thing like. Organizations might need you to check in quarterly or I [00:30:00] not necessarily having an interest and or time to do that when you actually are moving around and doing things. So I think it’s, having conversations with some grant, you know, some grant firms or stuff like that, and it’s like do I just wanna do it myself?

Because some of the, the initial kind of sticker shock for someone,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: be like, oh, we’ll, right. we’ll help you with, I don’t know, 10 grants and it, 10 grants for 80 grand or something crazy

Lee Zuvanich: What? That’s insane. Oh my God.

Zach: that’s, you know.

Sarah: You are like, all the money from the grants is going to pay the person that got you the

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: like the number gets so far up there, you’re like, I mean, I should just do it myself. I mean, I’m

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: industry and I can write them pretty easy as long as I have context for what it needs to be around. I mean, you know, why not?

Sarah: Yeah, that’s, and that is exactly what it is. It, to delegate work. It costs more, it takes longer [00:31:00] and it’s not as good.

Zach: Yeah,

Sarah: I, I have been dealing with this four years, I didn’t wanna say how many years I have been dealing with this because I enjoy hands-on work. That is, that’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: thing, is I actually like it.

And so easy for me to justify it when you have all these factors. And I, I am stepping away from that a little bit this year. So, that’s the, so yeah, the struggle for me is the workload. Zach, do you wanna jump into your struggle?

Zach: my struggle. What’s, my goodness. Yeah. That would’ve had to been edited out. I almost of offline. Offline perhaps.

Sarah: We will connect after.

Zach: So I would say my struggle. It’s something, it’s I don’t know, I think we even touched on it. One of our initial top of 20, 25 episodes might have been like, how to be the Best Multitasker or something like that.

Or

Lee Zuvanich: Oh yeah.

Zach: can do three like Me or some, something like that.

Lee Zuvanich: Yep.

Sarah: oh yeah. It was, it was don’t quit your day job. It was just learn how to [00:32:00] multitask.

Zach: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Sarah: Yes.

Zach: I got new thoughts on that.

Sarah: That’s the beauty

Zach: Some some new thoughts I would have is this, like, I think

Lee Zuvanich: Love that.

Zach: you start to feel, you kinda, you kind of feel, I don’t know. I would, I would like it vi liken it visually to like. Someone breathing like chest contractions or whatever, like someone, like the rise and fall of activity that you have spread across all three jobs or opportunities or whatever you’re doing is

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Zach: Like if you just kind of just stamp it, oh, if this stayed like this for the entire span of my life, I could do it until the, but when one thing goes up, you’re like, okay, it’s getting a little crazy and another thing goes up. Then it’s kind of like the Titanic, you know, the, the front’s starting

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: you know, so you

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: into this position.

And I think I reached that maybe near the end of last year, or maybe even [00:33:00] towards end of last year, and kind of moving into this next year where I’ve

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: had to kind of move some, some things off the plate.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: I, I don’t know, I, I felt like, you know, Atlas, I, I put the world down. I was like, wow, I only have to do two things a day.

This is Rather than like

Sarah: Don’t tease us like that.

Zach: the, the,

Lee Zuvanich: I know. Shut up.

Zach: the, the code switching, the lane switching of, oh, I

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM shake hands, kiss babies from 11 to two 30. Oh. And, and then also have to do other things. And then, then, and then also be man and cook ahi tuna by 6:00 PM This is like this cook.

I say somebody who’s super cooky, I’d be like, why are you cooking ahi tuna? It’s not shimi grade, so you have to cook it.

Sarah: It is quick and

Zach: yeah, so it’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: but just going through [00:34:00] that experience, I would say my biggest struggle has been focus, but it’s also like a, a revelation that. I’m feeling such an immense freedom to explore and do more of the things that I want to do, which will

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yep.

Zach: into my working on, I’m finding

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: oh, I like more of this. So I will say that as part of that, that year of doing 3, 4, 3, 4 fourish at a time where I’m like, okay, I like this. I don’t like this aspect of it. I like this, I don’t like that. And it’s just been really eye-opening. And I think maybe I was, maybe I was drifting to the breaking point where I’m glad

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: factors outside of my control my reduction in what I was doing.

So my struggle.

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: Agreed.

Sarah: seasons. I think there’s seasons for stuff too like that

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: like, I mean,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: can do that for a [00:35:00] while and then you know, one, but yeah, it’s like when you describe like the, the graph I was picturing like a, just like a. Line graph of like the stock market or something.

And you have like three, if you got three jobs, you have three of ’em. And then if they all go up at once, like usually they’re kind of like, if one goes up, one goes down, you know, and you can kind of deal with that. But sometimes, I don’t know, sometimes there’s seasons in your life where like when my kid was a, you know like two BA babies are pretty easy, but like the, crawling up through like two or whatever, right?

Yeah. Like I, I wasn’t hardcore pushing business stuff during that time ’cause I’m sure, are you kidding me?

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: as soon as he’s in school now, the season’s different, you know? Now I

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Sarah: of

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: do. And so I think that that’s the thing sometimes people forget about is like, things are never gonna change the same.

And that’s

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a bad thing. Sometimes it works out to where, you know, it’s a slow season and you needed a break. So just enjoy it. And sometimes it works out the opposite where it’s a crazy season and more work is coming in and I know that there’s gonna be an end in sight and I’m gonna, you [00:36:00] know, deal with

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But yeah, I think that’s. I think it’s important to, I’m glad you mentioned that. We had a podcast on that too. I’d kind of forgotten about that. ’cause yeah, stuff changes. I mean,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: point in time, you know, maybe juggling a ton of stuff was great for you, but now it’s like time to do something different. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Lee Zuvanich: Yep. Yeah. While we’ve had more time, I had have had more time with my kids over the last. Year and a half as my client workload has gone down, I looked through some spreadsheets. I think I had 25 clients at one point with most of them active projects and the rest of them on maintenance retainers, like where they would have ad hoc requests.

That’s insane. Like even for the size team I had that I was the one that was like the point person for every single problem. And now that it’s just like a few clients, it’s like three right now and one on retainer. With maintenance needs, I’ve just been able to be with my kids more and I will worry about money and worry about what’s gonna happen next.

And you know, [00:37:00] ’cause now if I fire one client or lose one client, it destabilizes my income and what I’m paying my team and I just. Do more shuffling again. But I mean, at least I’m, I don’t wanna be working for someone else, and then that’s one point of being hired or fired instead of multiple. So I still feel lucky that I have these clients, but I’ve had plenty of thoughts about, well, this is just so unstable and maybe I’m gambling too much and I’m risking too much, when really my kids need more stability.

But I’ve never reached a point where I really had to just shut down and go get a job. So I, in the more tumultuous questioning phases, I would always remind myself like, it always comes back that everything’s on a cycle. We always make enough money. It’ll be me, you know, in the future too. I’m also there figuring this shit out.

I don’t have to like try to see the future. Right now. I have, I just have to trust that. When problems arise, I will [00:38:00] rise to meet them. And in the meantime, do we have enough? Yes. Is everyone happy and healthy? Yes. So maybe I should enjoy this time with my kids because when it gets busy again, they won’t see as much of me.

We all know that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: And so I’ve really tried to be present with them and I’m so glad I did because now I’m getting busy again. I was just telling them today like you’re not gonna see as much of me. I’ve been working from home a lot. I’m, I got an office again, I’m gonna be going there every day just ’cause I’ve got too much to do again.

So it was good. It was good that I did that.

Sarah: I’ve been irritated lately ’cause it’s like, I don’t feel like I have the time to it. There was my kid went back to school on a Tuesday and so I was like, oh, it’d be really cool if I just did like a date day with him on Monday. Right. Because it’s like we could

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: stuff at places that are open during the week, you know, and he’s not back in school yet.

There’s just no way. I just, I had the thought and it was just like. No, no, I

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: much to do. And it’s honestly irritating because it’s like, that’s the whole point of running a business in the first place is the freedom to do stuff like that.

Lee Zuvanich: [00:39:00] Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you

Lee Zuvanich: You still have to,

Sarah: your time and your projects.

So you have to, you have to be very intentional about that kind of thing. So I’m like, I, I need to build, to build more time in. I mean, I’m a lot better about

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s not like I, you know, I don’t pick him up from school and go right back to work. Typically,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I will do stuff with him when I pick him up.

I get him home and all of that. So I’m not like, you know, there’s, there’s some boundaries there. It’s not wild, but I just feel like my brain is taken up with too much, like, oh, I have so

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: to do. Like,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: all I’m thinking about. Like, I, when can I work this project in? Do I need to go work this evening?

You know?

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: So it’s, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s really important to work that stuff in when you can. Let’s see. Do we have, okay, so I guess working on stuff then, what are we working on?

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: man, Zach, you wanna kick us off with that?

Zach: Yeah. What do we, what is, what is Zach working on? Zach is working on

Sarah: Not five things. Now.

Zach: yeah, it’s, it’s a handful now, just easily manageable handful, but not like loose [00:40:00] candy where it rolls out the side or something. But

Sarah: I’m glad you defined that for us. It’s very important.

Zach: as, as far as what I’m working on, I think I’m spending a lot of time just thinking about like what I want to be doing. ’cause I think I’ve had a good, good birth of a birth of experience. Swath, whatever. I, I had a good amount of experience doing a couple different things that I wanted to do last year.

I mean, I’ve kind of explored real estate, I’ve explored construction, I’ve

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm

Zach: in development, and I think it’s given me the opportunity. You know, exposure is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself, even if it’s just

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: a night or a weekend or,

Lee Zuvanich: mm-hmm.

Zach: minutes a day masterclass, whatever it may be.

That exposure shows you a lot. And I think one thing that I kind of tried to make sense of is just the trajectory of my working career from my first job as a popcorn scooper [00:41:00] at a movie theater yeah, that was my job. I was really good at it though. But having that job and where I’m at now and things I wanna do, I think I, I. I know more of what I’m thinking on, and I probably will in a future podcast when I get more immersed into it. But I’ve been doing a lot of work around real estate, a lot of work around development. I’m really locked in, so to speak, for this for the nonprofit. I’m looking to see these houses I’ve, talked about all last year. Things change, but still looking to see some things built. Hoping people get some new skills can become employable. Helping the city clean up acreage of land just sitting idly as people continue to pound desk and scream at the top of their lungs. We need more houses. There’s nowhere to build that.

And there’s like. [00:42:00] 2000 acres, you can look out and see. Right now it’s just could be

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Zach: wants to do the initial investigation to determine if it’s dirty, if it’s a brownfield or there’s another term. Lulu, I’ll drop that in the show notes. Lulu land. Ugh,

Sarah: a new one.

Zach: golly. I’m gonna I need to know it now.

Land.

Sarah: Not my favorite local Asian restaurant. Then.

Zach: Land, Gosh, do this real quick while it’s in thought, but also sucks. I’m not finding it, but it’s like land underutilized, locally undeveloped or something like that, which basically

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Zach: brownfield, but just vacant land. Land that’s just sitting reason. But yeah, I definitely wanna spend a lot more time this year getting into that.

I have, I bought some paper-based books. This probably won’t go to

Sarah: [00:43:00] Ooh,

Zach: video

Lee Zuvanich: Nice.

Zach: but I got the, the, the perceived bible of real estate development

Sarah: I read some boring

Lee Zuvanich: Wow.

Sarah: That looks like really boring. Hey, that’s a good one. That’s a good book to read.

Zach: and then barbarians at the gate.

Sarah: I’ve heard good stuff. I’ve not read that one. I’ve heard

Zach: Yeah. So I’m, I’m, I’m moving in this space where I’m like, okay, I know what my life needs to be. I know what I want to do for my family, so I’m gonna spend a lot of time doing that. So that’s what Zach’s working on, and I

Lee Zuvanich: nice.

Zach: expect things to happen because manifest,

Sarah: Oh, that’s awesome. It’s, it’s really nice to like have, it’s really nice to have a direction after, like

Zach: yes.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: the ’cause. I

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I think that’s the thing people get hung up on is like, oh, I need to know exactly what I wanna do. Nobody knows exactly what they wanna do. Like just, just pick a lane

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: out.

You know,

Lee Zuvanich: Just go do something. Yeah. [00:44:00] Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and you’ll be like, Hey, I really like this. And now, you know,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: takes some time to get there. So that’s exciting.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. That’s awesome. Zach, you seem like you’ve got more energy than I’ve seen you have since I met you.

Zach: You know what it is? It’s have man, whatever. I don’t have anybody’s boot on my back. You know, that’s

Sarah: That helps.

Lee Zuvanich: really. All right.

Zach: that, locally unwanted land use, Lulu.

Sarah: That is a very straightforward acronym.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I’m losing my voice now. On meetings all day. Yeah. I hmm. I have never heard of that. That is really interesting that they actually have a

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Same.

Sarah: that means that there’s enough of it that they had to make a term for it.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: interesting.

Zach: Yeah, and stuff like that.

Sarah: And people,

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: to figure that out too. So I’m glad that you are like someone that’s willing to like figure that out. ’cause somebody needs to, and the professional real estate development book that you just held up does not look like something I would ever [00:45:00] wanna read.

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: As much as I’ll read everything, there are some, some subjects that I’m like, no.

So I am, I am glad that on behalf of, of everyone that lives here, you are. You and the people that you work with and the nonprofit

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. That’s awesome.

Sarah: stuff out.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: So working on wise for me, I I kinda mentioned transitioning. I think I just have come to the conclusion that I need to step away from delivery.

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm.

Sarah: Sorry. We have a popup that says Lee received an error. I

Lee Zuvanich: It says an unknown error occurred. Please try again. I haven’t touched my computer. So it just says an un unknown error occurred.

Sarah: any other errors, so let’s hope nothing bad happened. I can still hear you and see you. So let’s hope we’re okay.

Lee Zuvanich: Hmm mm-hmm

Sarah: So I, I think I need to step away from delivery. I,

Lee Zuvanich: hmm.

Sarah: foot, I say I, I’ve had both feet. I never have left the delivery

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: things because I just do too much.

I do too much hands-on work. I enjoy the hands-on work. I’ve, I am, if you’ve read the E-Myth, I am the technician who started a [00:46:00] business. So I’m the

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: knows how to do the work that started the, you know, started doing more of it and turned it into a business. But my end goal is not to be the person that continues doing it, because I have a team and my end goal is to hand off more of the work to the team. But because I

Lee Zuvanich: I,

Sarah: feel like I want, you know, a certain percentage of

Lee Zuvanich: of it.

Sarah: I’m involved in it, it still ends up bumping back to me. ’cause again, what we talked about earlier,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: much easier and faster and better if I can just do everything myself. That is not a long-term sustainable goal, and that is why I have the workload I have currently.

’cause there’s too much that only I can do. And so what I’ve. Think I have figured out this year, like last week during my planning week, is that I just need to say I’m stepping away from delivery entirely. And so I, I am

Lee Zuvanich: Sales.

Sarah: am strategy, I talk to clients, we go through all like the, the proposal, like what do you need?

Like, it’s a technical, a lot of technical consulting. Like what do you, what’s your current website look like? Is it working for you? Is it not? Like, is this platform gonna work? Is this one, are we gonna do this or this, blah, blah, blah. Figure all that out. Figure out the proposal, do all the sales stuff, bring them in for the onboarding.

And at that point, I need to step away and actually let my project manager do her [00:47:00] job. Shocking.

Lee Zuvanich: what?

Sarah: What I, well it right, it so many obvious things, but the hard thing is like, we already know this stuff. It’s the actual doing it. I’ve known this for

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: The problem is that I can’t remove myself from the hands on.

And so what I’ve realized is I think I just need to be like I am. Not doing any delivery anymore. And I’m overcorrecting if I can do that, then I’m still gonna end up getting pulled in probably.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: maybe I can get it to the percentage that I want. I just need to like, have, I need to flip a switch in my brain and go, you know what?

I don’t personally build stuff anymore. unless it’s so, and I see the exception is wise unless I want to, but it’s like, that’s all the things that’s too many. I’m like, Ooh, I’m so excited about working on this. Ooh, this would be really fun. I wanna start this right now.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I can’t. I, no, no, I have to move on to the next problem solving thing because that’s, that is my zone of genius is looking at, you know, our tech stack and, and how we build stuff and why we build things a certain way and what people need and what their current

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: figuring out how to turn [00:48:00] that into a solution.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: can delegate that and there is no

Lee Zuvanich: Yes.

Sarah: that what I delegate my developer cannot do.

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: know? And like, I’m still collaborating. We’re still talking about like options, but I don’t need to be the one physically logging in to work on something so.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Can I,

Sarah: what I’m working on. Yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: can I make a, a suggestion? I, I don’t know if you just alluded to this, but I also, I feel like I’ve gone in a different, a different direction after scaling so much. And real, one of my realizations along with being told, Hey, you need to focus more, is also my standard for quality is exceptionally high, just like yours is Sarah, which is why we’re friends.

Sarah: it’s

A lot

Lee Zuvanich: real recognize real, and the moment I met you, I was like, this is someone I want to hang out with because you give a shit and that’s so rare.

Sarah: actually.

Lee Zuvanich: Also when you are that person, you’re tortured all the time. So,

Sarah: Yeah. Yep

Lee Zuvanich: so like I recognize that, I love that about you. I have the same issue, and when I got to a point where the wheels were coming off my business because it was like [00:49:00] it get to a certain point and you have to keep hiring, you actually have to hire faster and faster.

I learned firsthand you have to step into mediocrity and you have to let people do worse than you. And you have to watch your team get more and more mediocre if what you think of as mediocre is the baseline, kind of the average of what you can find in the digital worker space. Like I, I’ve been managing digital teams for a decade and a lot of these people are not geniuses.

Like

Sarah: sorry. Digital people.

Lee Zuvanich: right. Just they’re like, yeah, I am, but not the other guy. It’s, it’s just it. D difficult to continue to care while you watch things go out the door and you’re like, I can’t touch that. I have to delegate. And it drove me crazy and maybe it would’ve gone differently if I would’ve had the right people in the room, but I didn’t.

I had a couple of hires I thought I was strategic with who ended up producing just slower work, worse quality than just anything I felt [00:50:00] comfortable with. And not just me, but the clients were also like, what is going on? So I stepped back in, I took over, I downsized the team because I realized my small scrappy team that I started with was actually way more efficient if I could just consolidate and streamline the type of work we were doing.

So that’s not what I meant to say, but that’s part of like what feeds into, I had this realization. I personally went a different direction. Instead of trying to scale more, I said, I need to fix my systems first. I need to fix my offerings. I need to get it scalable. None of this is scalable. This is just me taking on any kind of work and just doing it.

And then we re reinvent the wheel for the next client. So I stopped doing all of that, but also something that I have always done that has helped me ’cause, you know, still delegating to 20 people for years or 10, just depending on how, what was going on during, on a given month is still a skill that you have to learn when you go from freelancing to growing a team.

Sarah: very, very much so.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. And so I got to [00:51:00] that point with my small scrappy team. I feel like we were very successful and we did do great work for years and years. I, I stood by, I was very proud of because every time they drove me crazy, I would not go fix the work for them. I would fix the system around them. I would interview them about it and be like, okay, this is what happened with this project.

Here’s how I was communicating. Here’s how you heard me apparently. And here’s how we missed the mark with the client. How are we gonna do this better in the future? And I would go back and I would automate more things or improve lines of communication, improve the way that I tracked the work, you know, so we could kind of go back and see, well, whose fault was this?

So I would, because I love to build as well, I would go build my systems instead of using that energy to go fix the work for the client. And then that always put it back on the team.

Sarah: I’m always doing that though. And I’m actually too, I do too much

Lee Zuvanich: That’s, that’s true. Yeah.

Sarah: very system, I’m a system thinker and so

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: like, okay, what’s what, what do I need to [00:52:00] do? And I’m always, always refining those things to the point where I very. Like very deep systems, but I have to communicate like

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: to people.

So

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: part of it is I need to figure out the system versus what I actually need to do is flip it and tell my project manager what system she needs from me. So it it, I’ve had to make that shift and be like, I need you to tell me what you need

Lee Zuvanich: Mm.

Sarah: figure it out for you and then Priya and like spend all my time doing it, which

Lee Zuvanich: Right?

Sarah: Now I can’t do the stuff I need to

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: am doing that. And, and part of it is, is is who I’m working with as well. I think it’s not you know, my team is, is great. There’s just different skill sets. So

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: it’s, for me it’s more of a shifting how the work is do, I guess. It’s kinda the same thing you’re saying.

It is shifting how the work is done.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: a designer and a developer. I’m primarily a designer. I’m an artist. I look at things and I just know what’s wrong with them and I can fix ’em. I don’t have to think about that. It’s just very, it’s intuitive to me.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: but I can also build that is not normal, so. I hate design mockups.

I have never done them. I don’t need them. But I’ve introduced ’em into a process. I have a mockup designer now

Lee Zuvanich: Oh,

Sarah: [00:53:00] if I’m handing off the development

Lee Zuvanich: just got nauseous.

Sarah: to give, I, yeah. If I’m handing off the development work, I have to give them more than what I personally need myself. And so if

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: remove myself from this, gonna have to introduce a phase that I don’t wanna have to introduce.

Now I’m gonna do it my way.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I’m gonna tweak it and I’m gonna fit in our process in a way that’s not going to be, you know, adding a lot of cost and time, whatever. Like I’m, you know, I’m experimenting with how to do that, but it

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: gonna have to change things.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: way that I can’t expect, like my developer to see that the client provided copy is actually really terrible in this one aspect, because it’s not written for SEOI just know that and I will fix it and then tell them I fixed that.

I can’t expect that, that now means I need to make sure my project manager is reviewing stuff. ’cause she has, she does SEO.

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: of that kind of thing is where I’m like, okay. I just have to figure this out with the assumption that I’m no longer touching any of it. And if I didn’t touch any of it, could I still be happy with the quality?

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that is, that is a different shift. Then what I had been trying [00:54:00] to do, which was I want them to take on more of the workload, but I’m still gonna be there to fix this. You know what I’m saying?

Lee Zuvanich: Right, right.

Sarah: like I, the end of a project is a big one where like, yeah, my, my developers will build stuff that I’m not happy with, but it’s not a huge deal.

Like they’ll get it close enough and then I’ll go in and I’ll do the finessing. Because the finessing is where you see professionalism. That’s what makes a difference.

Lee Zuvanich: Right.

Sarah: at that, it’s what that happens at the end. And I

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: that. I may always be involved in that to some extent, but I could also train a designer to do that too.

So then now maybe that’s another role that I need that is a different person

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: I have to take all these hats that I can wear and I have to put them on different people. And there’s way more hats than I wanted to have is what’s happening right now. But anyway, I’m working on it. So, yeah. So that, that is, that is what I’m working, that’s, yeah, literally what I’m working on right now.

Or we’ll be working on all year, I should say. ’cause that is not gonna be a

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. That’s huge. That’s a really big deal.

Zach: It’ll be interesting to have a, like a, well, if we’re wherever around for the end of the year, we should do a [00:55:00] year end recap or

Lee Zuvanich: mm,

Sarah: that’s a good call. What did we talk about this episode and at the end of the year,

Lee Zuvanich: mm-hmm.

Sarah: grade ourselves, which, I mean, that’s what my goals are. My goal

Lee Zuvanich: Great. Ourselves, I got an A guys.

Sarah: okay. Sorry. We will grade each other on what

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, okay. That’s more fair.

Sarah: It’s

Zach: That will be interesting. be, that’ll be our, like our December 31st episode.

Sarah: I like it.

Lee Zuvanich: I love that.

Sarah: it. We’ll do that. I’ll make a

Lee Zuvanich: I.

Sarah: Did we cover, okay, Jack, you coupled your Lee working on, did you wanna

Lee Zuvanich: No I’m working on Soma Base, so Soma Base, my startup formerly under the brand abta, which, you know, now it’s just we’re producing multiple offerings, but the main thing that everyone seems to want that has attracted potential funding and, and now is just attracting large enough clients that I may not even need the funding is this AI system that, well, I shouldn’t call it an AI system, but that’s just what investors think of it as.

It’s, it’s a [00:56:00] data analysis, data handling system that plugs in to different projects and it saves dev teams or IT teams tons of time and money. And helps ’em with the security and, you know, data handling and everything that they’re, they’re trying to be so ambitious and do on their own, but really you need a specialized team for that kind of thing.

A lot of people are realizing this right now, is they’re trying to build their AI wrappers and bring AI tooling into enterprise and finding out like, oh, you need like six or eight specialists and half a million dollars. So I’m, I’m meeting them there with a tool and I’m really excited about it. There’s a lot of demand, so pulling me outta my,

Sarah: sense.

Lee Zuvanich: my rut of trying to scale and streamline and fire and everything else.

Sarah: it’s also a timing thing too. I think. The timing has worked out really well for you with what you are already doing and

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: things are going. So I

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: like

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: thing of just keep plugging away what you’re doing and then watch

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm. [00:57:00] Yeah, I’d a, it’s a relief ’cause not just because the market was shifting and it was a scary time for many of us, but also because with my original concept, so many people would look at it and say, you know, you might be too early. And being too early is just as bad as being too late.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: And I would get mad, like I don’t wanna hear that, that I am like, you know, the Yahoo to your Google or whatever. I don’t appreciate that. I would like to figure out how to be like, find the, figure out the timing and arrive right on time and meet people where they’re at. And I think that this is doing that and I, it happened because.

I didn’t even go out and make it happen. People just kept coming to me asking for the same thing. And I was like, I already built that into my platform. But you can’t have it. A year ago, two years ago, I was saying, you can’t have it though. You have to join the platform. You have to join the marketplace to access it.

And they were like, Ugh, okay, nevermind then. And I was like, oh no, I kinda like saw where this was going. So as it continued to happen, I had, I was forced to pivot. I had to [00:58:00] listen to the market. So as it goes with all of us in our businesses, you have to listen to the market. I just do whatever the hell you want.

So that’s pretty much it, that that will be my focus for hopefully the next few years. But we’ll see.

Zach: That’ll be interesting to see. I’m, I’m digging the, I’m digging the website. I feel like I haven’t seen it in forever.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, thank you. Because a security friend of mine looked at it and she was like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at, but she’s a secure, she’s like a security specialist for startups and enterprise. And so she was looking for like the nitty gritty. You know, detailed security stuff and

Sarah: to know like, yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: I was like, you’re looking at the sales mar the marketing website for the med tech clients I’ve been talking to.

That’s what you’re looking at. So yeah, any feedback is welcome ’cause it’s still not as clear as I would like it to be. The concept is, it’s kind of like when everyone was using PayPal to pay for things on eBay and did there wasn’t a good payments platform for enterprise

Sarah: [00:59:00] Mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: these e eBay guys went and started Stripe.

That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m filling a gap for enterprise with data analysis and AI security tooling. ’cause no one’s doing it, but everybody needs it.

Sarah: That’s a good spot to be.

Lee Zuvanich: If you have money, yeah.

Sarah: spot to be.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Do we, okay, so we have any other wrap up things? I mean, I think we well covered where we’re at. I don’t know. Do we have any thoughts on our schedule or what this is gonna look like this year? I know we’ve kind of been on

Lee Zuvanich: Mm.

Sarah: for a while just because life.

Lee Zuvanich: I love, okay, so the, the idea behind this podcast that I think we’ve shared before, but just to recap it, is I wanted to, from my perspective, record friends getting together to like, go off about how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, because I’ve been a part of organizations where it’s all. [01:00:00] Like rainbows and, and you know, promises of success and everybody’s just slapping each other on the back and saying, that’s a good idea and good job pitching and you’re a genius and good job on funding and I’m sure you’ll get funded next.

And then you go out to drinks afterwards and everyone’s like, I’m getting divorced. I hate my life. I think I should have quit last year. I don’t even know what I’m doing. And it’s like, okay, you’re the same people that were just going off about how great you are an hour ago. And it’s because like the mentors were in the room, or maybe even potential customers were in the room, you know?

’cause we’re all selling to each other. But then you get around your friends that you trust and you have a couple drinks and, and you start saying like, yeah, but the other side of this is it’s hell. So I really wanted to share that with people and I never wanted it to be so. Difficult to produce that.

It was just one more thing for us to complain about. Like, this is really hard. So I would say, [01:01:00] right? Yeah. Like,

Sarah: to

Lee Zuvanich: I know, I remember when we started this, people were like, are you serious? Why are you starting another thing? And I was like, no, no, no, it’ll be different. It’s, it’s, it’ll be easy. Spoiler or whatever.

It was not, it is not easy. And Sarah has done the majority of the heavy lifting with like, everything from design to the editing. Because we have all these wonderfully edited episodes so that you don’t have to listen to all the side tangents that we’ve gone on. I mean, we’ve saved people hours of listening to our side tangents.

So I think my goal, my goal moving into the future is to make it more fun for us and easier and other people can deal and get, and maybe they’ll enjoy it. It’d just be more raw and real and more tangenty. So no editing. Or minimal editing.

Sarah: Yeah, maybe cut out like really major screw ups, I guess. But yeah, I, I don’t, at this point, I don’t, we’re not gonna be editing these, so I, if, if

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: like some of the stuff in this, sorry.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, if you imagine a [01:02:00] 40 minute episode, you’re listening through 40 minutes, you are editing and stopping and editing 40 minutes.

So just double, triple that, just, just to make sure it sounds good. And then don’t,

Lee Zuvanich: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: in any of the other things. I don’t think people realize how long it takes to edit

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll talk for,

Sarah: anymore.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah, we’ll have to be more concise. I don’t know if that will happen, so.

Sarah: But, yeah, I, I don’t know. And I mean, I think I, I don’t know what our cadence is gonna be. I think

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: we’re just gonna kind of see where this goes. But FYI, we, I mean we, we haven’t, I guess, given up on this, it’s just, it,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: to be different in 2026.

Zach: It

Lee Zuvanich: yeah.

Zach: a lot different.

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: 2020 five’s method was not sustainable,

Zach: It was not. I guess, I guess that’s it. I guess we can I’m gonna. Wrap us up here. So thanks everyone for listening. You made it all the way to the end, so congratulations on [01:03:00] that. An un un unedited episode all the way to the end. Our first What’s Your Problem? Episode hosted by myself, Zach Ochen Banjo, Schumacher and Lee Veni. And I would hope and appreciate everyone taking the time to remember that we all have

Lee Zuvanich: Have

Zach: pro,

Sarah: Problems. Someday. Someday when someone actually takes over the marketing for this, we’re gonna release the blooper episode that we have of us trying to get that right for 10 minutes. ’cause it’s really funny. I promise you, someday

Lee Zuvanich: Yep.

Zach: have problems.

Sarah: for this,

Lee Zuvanich: We, we all have problems.

Sarah: yes we do.

Lee Zuvanich: It’s true.