Episode 19: What’s Your Problem: Back-to-School Wins, AI Cheapskates, and Key-Man Chaos

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Sarah: Welcome to Founder Problems podcast. Today is an episode called What’s Your Problem, where we talk about all of our founder problems. I’m Sarah Schumacher, and I build websites for small businesses and also kids’ gamer tag business cards for some reason

I’m joined by my co-hosts Lee and Zach

Lee Zuvanich: And I’m Lee Zuvanich, and I build apps, to build one for myself, but mostly build them for other people

Zach: And I’m Zach Oshinbanjo. I run a nonprofit that is supposed to build houses, although we are not doing that right now

Sarah: What a way to start off our problem episode. We’re all just like, “Meh.” Can you all tell that it’s the first week after school has started and we all have sick kids and just lack of [00:01:00] enthusiasm?

Zach: Yeah

Sarah: So we’re supposed to do one win…

Lee Zuvanich: sleep.

Sarah: Yeah, I’m not gonna be able to either. So one win, one struggle, one thing we’re working on.

That’s what we’re supposed to do on this thing. Do any of you guys wanna kick it off with a win so we can maybe get out of our little… Or do we want to start with

Lee Zuvanich: oh.

Sarah: the opposite?

Lee Zuvanich: I could start with a win, and

Sarah: Okay

Lee Zuvanich: just because school started. School has started

Sarah: Oh yeah. Okay, that’s also my win.

Lee Zuvanich: we were traveling so much, between Europe and the US and then state to state. We’re doing a lot of stuff on a personal side with my family and figuring out where my kids were gonna go to college. So we just got settled after, I did homeschooling for two years while we did all that, and we were homeschooling for other reasons before it started too. if you can imagine the summer you just went through with your kids, stretch that out over two years plus two moves. That’s what I just finished.

That’s what I just wrapped this week, and I’ve got a kid now in school every day, and the other s- kid is preparing to go do WOOF and travel and do college stuff, and everything [00:02:00] is very quiet, very peaceful. I feel like I’m getting my brain back. that’s a win

Sarah: That is huge

Lee Zuvanich: Huge

Zach: tremendous W.

Lee Zuvanich: Love my kids, yeah.

Zach: What is wolf?

Sarah: Yeah, I was gonna ask that too.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, okay. Sorry, it’s like a niche thing. I probably should know what it stands for, but I’ve just known of it for 20 years because it’s a work exchange program and that’s what I did starting out as a teenager. you can go and trade your labor for food and housing. You meet a lot of other people who wanna travel the world and see other cultures this way. And so it’s organic farms. It’s like worldwide organic something. And basically you’re volunteering to go help out on farms around the world in exchange for food and housing, and you can do whatever you want. You can be a, like a learner or be a digital nomad or just be a hippie that lives on a farm and chills out half the day. So they only ask you to work four or five hours a day. Most places they try to aim for about four hours a day. I was [00:03:00] working 10 hours a day 20 years ago, and I did not have a website with reviews to tell me who was cool. it’s way cooler now.

Sarah: Huh, that’s cool

Zach: really, that’s, yeah, that’s unique and cool, and I think that’s speaks to the power of, the internet is you can’t have a crappy business or a crappy service anymore because now everybody will know

Lee Zuvanich: Exactly.

Sarah: You can’t even have a good one anymore. It’ll get taken by AI. Sorry.

Lee Zuvanich: yet, I hope.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, good point. Farms are safe

Lee Zuvanich: if you go… So Work Exchange I think is another one and if you go to Reddit the subreddit for work exchange travelers will say things like “Okay here are red flags to watch for.” A refew- a review that isn’t five stars and hyper enthusiastic is a red flag. If it’s

And sounds kinda meh then that is their way of politely trying to warn people.

Isn’t that

Sarah: You’d

Lee Zuvanich: like

Sarah: read between the lines kind of thing, huh?

Lee Zuvanich: the world we live [00:04:00] in and it’s their policy this is interesting to me on a business side the policy of that website is if it’s a two star review or lower they don’t show the review And somebody said if you see a like review has been removed or hidden by work exchange read our policy,” and you can see that and then from the host and then the worker than the host and the workers oh They went at it like in the con- In the back and forth and then The removes it.

They leave the Hidden thing the Stars the two stars up or whatever but people are saying obviously if you see that’s a major red flag but you

Sarah: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: for the gray areas of You know Saying something like Oh she really She knows how she likes things. She’s very

Sarah: okay. That can all be applied to like business stuff too, right? When you’re like, “Oh, so and so needs blah blah blah service,” and I don’t know. There’s just, there’s ways … It’s almost like a, a reference, a work reference of someone’s like, you call someone for a work reference and they say or don’t say cer- certain things, to be like, “Yeah, they’re a little w- [00:05:00] they’re lukewarm.”

Lee Zuvanich: I can confirm those dates,”

Sarah: Yeah, exact- yeah. That’s a major… So yeah, I would say that is a lifelong skill to have, is how to read between the lines.

Lee Zuvanich: total– 1000%. So I’m trying to

Sarah: That’s interesting.

Lee Zuvanich: how to do that right now. But then

Sarah: Nice

Lee Zuvanich: means is she’s gonna leave me, and my we thought maybe he would just get his GED and go to college Spain alongside her because, I did that at his age, and why not? We were homeschooling.

That’s the next step up for a homeschooler. but he really wanted the social experience of high school, and he could do with some more math anyway. So he’s now at a private school. And I don’t see him anymore. He leaves for school, and he comes back at 10:00 PM ’cause he has a social life now. I’m about to be like basically an empty nester, and it’s… still talking about wins. That’s gonna be a struggle, but, overall, for work, it’s gonna be a win. I’m gonna be I got started early, so I’m gonna be a 40-year-old, like, traveling between cities and doing whatever the hell I want soon, so that’s pretty crazy to think [00:06:00] about

Big life change happening over here

Sarah: Yeah I think my kid being in school is not quite as much … That’s a way bigger deal. But it’s still, again, I feel the same. Like that was also the win. I…

Lee Zuvanich: Mhm

Sarah: He was gonna be a bus rider, it ended up not working out. But there was one day,

Lee Zuvanich: too bad

Sarah: last week, so it was the second. We did the bus the first day.

It’s like, okay, this is, this works well whatever. The second day, smooth, goes smooth and I’m just like wow. Like I went and sat at my desk and I worked like the whole da- And then he’s it was crazy. I was like, “This is the most normal work day thing I have had in months.” This is insane.

This is amazing. I have to drive him to school now. Now he’s a car rider again which kind of sucks ’cause it’s not as close as his other school was but it’s fine ‘Cause he’s still there and I’m able to come back and have a quiet house and actually get work done and it’s just, it’s insane what huge difference that makes.

So that probably is my win as well. I don’t really have any like work wins that I can think of at the moment. Just a lot of stuff to complain about so

Lee Zuvanich: Wait,

Sarah: what about you?

Lee Zuvanich: have work?[00:07:00]

Sarah: Do I have work? So the irony of being burnt out is that if you don’t have work that can also be considered a win

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: ‘Cause I’m at the point where I’m like… Okay, so I, my first day back in August. So I, as a recap, I- I don’t know what the order these are gonna come out in, because we’re still I’m still trying to get through publishing them. But I took off July. I come back in August. My first day back in August, I had a d- discovery call with a potential new client, sent them the proposal.

They openly said they had sticker shock. Heard nothing for two weeks, and then I got an email saying, “Hey here’s your website. We just need help with the marketing now.” And it’s an AI built website. So I guess that, that could be my complaint or my struggle. I don’t know. I guess I’m jumping ahead here, but the irony of the fact that I’m burnt out and I’ve been running for so long is I don’t care.

I really don’t care. It is slow.

Lee Zuvanich: Okay

Sarah: It is slow on purpose. There is stuff that I’ve seen that I could bid on that ha- could be a good [00:08:00] fit. There’s people I could reach out to, and I haven’t. I have, I actually have some clients who are wanting to do redesigns, like existing clients, and hosted existing clients always take priority.

So if I’m talking to anybody about work, it’s going to be them first. Like w- we always have, like internal projects we’re doing. Somebody’s got an update or something.

Lee Zuvanich: say, as

Sarah: That’s,

Lee Zuvanich: by you, you are amazing at that. You

Sarah: That, that’s the whole point. That’s literally the whole point of what I do is ’cause it’s … Yeah, so it’s like that’s now you get priority, so it’s like we got a client that’s like they wanna redesign their homepage random.

I’m like, “All right, cool.” Whatever. But as far as new projects that are like the big time sucks, I’m like, I don’t even care. I really don’t. I’m not… if it lands in my lap, I will take it if it’s a good fit. If it’s not, it’s whatever. I just, at this point I’m like, whatever. I’m kinda, I’m getting

It’s a tangent here. That’s like the struggle part, so let’s let Zach do his one and then I can jump back into that. But yeah, it’s not lo- less business is not a struggle for me right now mentally, yeah. Yeah, okay, Zach, how about you? For your win

Zach: I, I would guess… I’ll say I got into this program. [00:09:00] Yeah given when this should air it’s called READY boy! I cannot remember what it stands for let’s just say it’s Real Estate Development and Institute or something like that but it takes some folks for about 16 weeks And it teaches you about ground up development It’s hosted by the Urban Land Institute facilitated by UMKC and they bring in like a bunch of real estate developers commercial and residential and you just go through everything and You have like this What do they call it? Capstone. You have, like this capstone project where you have to go through a whole development sequence to see if it would make sense and then you present it I think in front of City Hall as like–

Lee Zuvanich: Oh

Zach: To see if it’s something that they would legitimately support and they give you real feedback. I think in the last two cohorts somebody went through the program and theirs was to repurpose the vacant lot next to a school and they presented it in front of city hall and they said [00:10:00] “So could you really do this?” And the student per- the… She was like, “I– Maybe.” “Okay we’re gonna pass it,” and so I guess she’s actually doing it now. So

Lee Zuvanich: Whoa.

That’s amazing. Oh

Zach: that’s yeah so I’m in that program. It starts next Tuesday. It’s to 6:00 for 16 weeks so I’m looking forward to it

Sarah: Good lord. Okay, so for the listeners at home, Zach works full-time, has two kids under what? Five. Is now doing a program… I guess you don’t have the startup anymore. I was just like, how do you manage, dude?

Lee Zuvanich: do you still work out at 4:00 AM?

Zach: No. Little du- little dude said no. That, that’s done.

Sarah: Oh, no.

Are you super sad about that?

Lee Zuvanich: feel more human. That’s so relatable. Thank you

Zach: I have to do it at some it’s usually 9:00 or 11:00-ish, or I’ll,

Lee Zuvanich: in though. Good for

Sarah: Yeah. We’ve talked about that before, ’cause you said men- like your mental state, you have to, right? It’s not an option for you

Zach: Jekyll and Hyde. Like I’m just, I’m useless if I don’t do [00:11:00] it, but now it’s like it kinda sucks ’cause sometimes I’ll have to take her to school or I’ll go to a meeting like 9:00 AM, and then ugh, when I come back I’m gonna do a full like hour and a half workout in the middle of the day. Gonna be yucky. Gotta get out of business clothes and get back in business clothes, ’cause that’s never been my thing. But,

Lee Zuvanich: can’t do it mi- middle of the day

Zach: it’s just

Lee Zuvanich: point it’s

Zach: makes you

Sarah: I work it in though. I work it in throughout the day like if I can. I- I’m not super great about that but like I created ag- like I guess this is the fruits of my labor July of taking time off me and how to have mental space again. But I built out like basically what they call a minimum daily workout.

It’s like a two stage thing so I have like bare minimum like need to hit this every day and then if I have the time do like the stage two level stuff. But I will try to work that in. His my kid’s school drop-off time is earlier now so it’s okay I’m gonna try to fit this in after I take him to school.

So I’ve been trying to do that but I also I just have stuff we do around the house. Like I ha- we have a chin up bar in our kitchen so like I do

Lee Zuvanich: my

Sarah: Yeah, so like I do chin ups when I [00:12:00] make my cacao or my coffee drink whatever like so

Zach: way to do it

Sarah: yeah. So I’ll like do chin ups in the kitch-… That’s my, the main thing I might d- ’cause it’s done.

I’ve got a kettle bell over here by my desk. Our bed frame is really great for tricep dips . Like there’s a certain level… Yeah and actually had s- so free weight th- My stage two is just like whatever weights so it’s like nothing insane but it’s like I can make time for some, like if it’s five minute-.

It’s honestly more stretching. We’re all getting old now

Zach: appsta

Lee Zuvanich: I

Sarah: like partial yoga stuff or whatever or like stuff that I … Or like my back like if my back is whack there’s always like some yoga stuff I’ll do. So anyway I,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: work o-… I think you can do that if you don’t view it as a full workout which Zach’s I’m sure yours is way more intense than what I do but I’m just like man I just need to do something that’s not sitting at office chair

Lee Zuvanich: level. I’m like, I’ll do two yoga poses right now and feel like that’s a win for me for the

Zach: I need to do at least an hour. And then I think

Sarah: Uff, ja

Zach: day she went back to school and it was just like a clear house,

Sarah: [00:13:00] Oh man

Zach: I did an hour bike ride. I think I dang

Sarah: Wow

Zach: rode all the way to your house and back, ’cause that was

Sarah: Oh man

Zach: And then I was like, “That was like a good pump up. Let’s lift.”

Sarah: Hey are you… Okay, this is, we’ll talk after the thing, but have you ever played disc golf? My husband is super, super into disc golf now. He’s literally out playing right now. He goes out freaking early in the morning to go play disc golf ’cause it’s a f- like, we have a heat advisory here. But he’s like, him and his friends are super into it.

He’s got a special bag for his discs.

Zach: Yeah

Sarah: it’s… I was joking it’s just golf for millennials.

Lee Zuvanich: I, I,

Sarah: it really is

Lee Zuvanich: Hedberg when I think of disc golf.

Sarah: Does he have a bit about that? I’ll have to look it up

Lee Zuvanich: N- I don’t even know if he does, it’s just like a stoner sport,

Sarah: Oh, none of our friends are do it or stoners. None of our friends are sto- well,

Lee Zuvanich: fit that vibe. Your

Sarah: no, none of, and none, nobody he goes with

Lee Zuvanich: chill golf if

Sarah: They’re all, yeah. They’re all middle-aged dads who it’s like getting away and … [00:14:00] It’s the… You know what? You know what it is? It’s the same as playing games online. It’s like getting online and playing like PUBG in- after the kids go to bed.

It’s a way for them to hang out, but this is a way of doing that is physically active. So he’s like joking. He’s like, “My right arm is gonna get really buff.” Just I was thinking you throw with your left, or throw with your left arm. But anyway, soyeah we’ll have to, I’ll have to tell you about that more later ’cause we’ve got some great disc golf course around here if you wanna go do things.

So anyway okay wins, wins. Wait, hang on. What’s the next thing we always do

Lee Zuvanich: Zach was in the middle of saying he’s doing the Ready program. Was that all your wins, Zach? Do you have

Zach: Yeah,

Sarah: Do you have more than that?

Zach: that’s my win. That’s a W

Sarah: It is R-E-D-Y, right? Or sorry, R-E-D-I. Okay, I think I found it.

Zach: I can, yeah

Sarah: Link it in the show notes

Lee Zuvanich: So, and I’m just curious I know we don’t need to go down this rabbit hole too far, but it’s Real Estate Diversity Initiative. I went to the website. It

Zach: There we go

Lee Zuvanich: that it is for people of color and women.

Sarah: Data resp…

Lee Zuvanich: in the

Sarah: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: feeling good about their, the funding for this program [00:15:00] continuing? Do you, is there talk about that?

‘Cause

Sarah: Oh

Lee Zuvanich: like that now I wonder if it’s

Sarah: It can’t

Lee Zuvanich: know?

Zach: I think they have a… i’ll get a real sense of it ’cause it starts next Tuesday, but I think they’re under the Urban Land Institute, and I think that they’re positioned enough where whatever happens in certain other places isn’t gonna dictate the type of thing that they do

Lee Zuvanich: I’d love to know about how they stay, keep that going, ’cause, there are so many programs that are being chopped because of it. And as someone who was very benefited by a program like this on the entrepreneurial side I just hate to see it these, these programs going away or losing their funding.

And not even just this, but for entrepreneurs too, just lots of stuff losing funding. So it’s really cool that this is still up and running

Zach: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it

Lee Zuvanich: It’s awesome.

Sarah: Sweet.

Lee Zuvanich: It looks cool

Sarah: Okay, so s- oh yeah, we’re supposed to do our struggle now. So even though it’s like we threw, I threw some stuff in anyway. What are [00:16:00] we struggling with this last, I don’t know, month since we recorded the last one of these? Who wants to kick us off?

Lee Zuvanich: so should I start with my struggle now?

Zach: Yes

Sarah: Go for it

Lee Zuvanich: Okay. Let me think. I know that the main

Sarah: That’s a good thing if you have to think about this.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, that’s true. I- I have to

Sarah: I was like, “Wait, you have to think about…”

Lee Zuvanich: well, I

Sarah: Sorry, continue

Lee Zuvanich: I was complaining to you guys about client flakiness but that is nothing new. Nothing new under the sun,

Sarah: That’s true

Lee Zuvanich: in consulting. I don’t know why I take it personally or even let it ruffle my feathers. I think it’s just because personally I give so much more than clients do as a rule. I can’t help it and so I had to learn to go find better clients and learn what that looks like and how to do it. We’ve done other episodes on what that looks like and how to do that so I don’t need to go into it. But sometimes I still get my own like boundaries tested and it irks me ’cause I’d rather just do my best work for people who are gonna be [00:17:00] reciprocal instead of haggling. And I know you get a lot of this Sarah but like trying to– we’re trained to get everything as cheap as possible and as quick as possible and cut some corners if you have to and that’s, those projects never go well. If you’re a consultant or if you’re thinking about getting into consulting, that’s the, the bullshit that you staircase, that you have to climb like staircase of shit and which is a really interesting mental

Zach: Put that on a sh-

Sarah: That’s a T-shirt.

Zach: Yeah, I

Sarah: That’s a T-shirt.

Lee Zuvanich: It’s

Sarah: All right, man, that’s really five ideas.

Lee Zuvanich: and it’s terrible. It’s slippery. And you you have to do it because no one else is going to give you work and when you prove yourself with these people who are gonna be like, “I want it fast, cheap and good,”

And somehow you manage to make that work eventually you do get the good clients.

So I’ve definitely climbed that mountain or staircase or whatever and I’ve gotten to the other side where I have good solid long-term projects with awesome people and s- and it’s just a matter of maintaining [00:18:00] my boundaries when I have to figure out if this is a worthwhile project but there, there’s really no budget for it, there’s really no good timeline, there’s really no good communication. Other than that I think things are good. I was actually telling a close friend of mine have any crises to solve or fires to put out makes me kinda antsy. So know, that’s a good thing. that’s a win.

Sarah: Yeah. That’s it. That’s sounds like a good thing to me

Zach: that your cortisol levels don’t know what to do.

Lee Zuvanich: No, yeah it’s growth for me that I recognize it and I can just tell a friend and be like I’m feeling skittish.” My son is in an amazing school. daughter is putting together her own program for her future and her studies right now. I only have the two kids. I don’t have anyone else stressing me out.

I’m not dating anyone. And my- Just generally, my life is awesome in a lot of ways that I have very rigorously engineered over the last several years It’s been a [00:19:00] lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point, and now it’s calm, and my brain is looking for something to do, right? And my projects are good.

My work is good. Everything is pretty good. I just … I’d like a little more stability but the… I really couldn’t get any more stability than this unless I got a job. So

Sarah: I believe the term for this is foreboding joy

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, I like that.

Sarah: I’ll have to

Lee Zuvanich: It feels like… And you know what? I’m looking at- I, so I got to sorry, I’m just, it just winds over here. But

Zach: Stop winning!

Lee Zuvanich: don’t worry, something will happen. But I was house sitting for a friend in July, and it’s like a mansion where she lives. It’s just 40 minutes outside the city by metro, 20 minute drive. Gorgeous. Just, I would kill to live in a place like she lives. found out the rent is the same as mine.

Sarah: Wow

Lee Zuvanich: living in, in a relatively sho- in a shoe box in three bedroom apartment in the city. And she’s got a pool and overlook of she’s got all this outdoor space [00:20:00] and that’s a big deal for Barcelona. I was like, “God, this is amazing.” I was joking to a friend we should live here together if she ever moves out. I was telling her, “If you ever leave this place let me know.” She’s moving out and she’s offered it to me and my friend and we’re considering moving in together ’cause it’s too big for both of us to take over by ourselves.

If I’m, my kids are about to leave me I, I really don’t need all that space. So I

Living in like paradise on the outskirts of Barcelona when I’m not flying to Kansas City or San Francisco where I also have places to stay. and my brain c- doesn’t know what do with it. Like normally I would start another business but I know better now. So I just need a, a therapist

Sarah: on. I gotta add that to the T-shirt list now. Normally I would start a bus- another business, but my brain knows better.

Lee Zuvanich: But I know better now.

Sarah: But I know better. Yeah, like that’s yeah. That’s

Lee Zuvanich: And business is

Sarah: so

Lee Zuvanich: the startup is going well. So I guess, yeah, it’s foreboding joy. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop right now

Sarah: Great

Lee Zuvanich: Which is interesting new problem,

Zach: is an interesting problem [00:21:00] to have.

Lee Zuvanich: Good things.

Sarah: Ja, nee Joke

Lee Zuvanich: my mantras, “I deserve this. Guys, I deserve to be a billionaire.”

Sarah: Yeah, none of us are gonna reach that in our lifetimes. Oh man. Also you could be happy on way less than that.

Lee Zuvanich: no, I know. I would take 5

Sarah: Like I think the stats are 70- 70,000, I thi-… 80… I don’t know it’s probably higher now ’cause inflation but the amou- amount needed for an average person or couple or family to live on for them to be like happy is way lower than what people think it is.

Like they’ve done studies on that. I’ll have to see if I can find ’em for the show notes but it’s like you don’t have to be a millionaire. You just have to have your basic needs met and have a little extra kind of thing which also depends on where you live and such but I just remember seeing that some study being like yeah, that’s way less than what people would think

Lee Zuvanich: I like to tell people, especially people from Kansas City, I don’t know if you guys know I’m not gonna pronounce his name correctly, so I’m just maybe gonna butcher it, but Tope Awotona, he’s from Nigeria originally, or [00:22:00] he’s Nigerian-American, but he’s from Kansas City. And he founded Calendly, and

Sarah: I was gonna say that’s the Cal League guy, but he’s from K- but he’s from Kansas City

Lee Zuvanich: b- he lived in Kansas City when he founded it, I think, and then

Sarah: Oh, I think I do remember reading that. Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: He, I know he moved, yeah, he moved to Georgia. I think he’s, he went to University of Georgia. I pulled up his Wiki.

Sarah: He’s got a great interview. I’ll link to this. He’s got a great interview,

Lee Zuvanich: Awesome.

Sarah: Guy Raz in How I Built This. I’ll link to that

Lee Zuvanich: that’s awesome. Yeah, I’m fascinated by his story just ’cause Kansas City and he’s worth 1.4 billion now. So whenever my kids say like there’s no ethical billionaires maybe it’s true that when you reach that point you should start giving your money away in earnest. I’m not really sure at what point you should start just giving away your money in earnest instead of reinvesting it different ways. I don’t know what he’s doing with his money but I love the idea that I can make a little calendar widget and become a billionaire. Like,

That idea

Sarah: I think he keeps his team deliberately small [00:23:00] maybe from what I remember.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I

Sarah: I know

Lee Zuvanich: dive on him when I learned this, and he did

Sarah: I, yeah, also Ma- MailChimp got bought out by Intuit. Don’t use them anymore. Intuit’s evil. But the the original team I believe was the same with MailChimp. It was like a pretty small team, and they were very effective before they sold the company.

So

Lee Zuvanich: they’re a $3 billion software firm that is still running and they have 10 million users as of 2024. Now

Sarah: Which, which one? Calendly or Mailchimp? Cal- Calendly? Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: And if if you use k- mail tools, you know that or mail links, you might know that Google built their own version of this, Google Calendar, and they started blocking other people’s calendar links.

Like they made

Sarah: No way. I didn’t…

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: I didn’t know that

Lee Zuvanich: I used TidyURL which I bought through AppSumo for 40

Sarah: I recommend that a lot

Lee Zuvanich: Yet we don’t because to anyone who uses Google Calendar they blocked it so it wouldn’t put links on my calendar anymore and I was missing meetings.

Sarah: Sounds like Google needs yet another monopoly, like class action lawsuit against [00:24:00] them for their, scores of them already.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, but

Sarah: Like

Lee Zuvanich: their fucking tool ’cause,

Sarah: they just-

Lee Zuvanich: gonna do?

Sarah: They got the ruling that’s I think it’s still coming out but like they just ruled that they don’t have to split up their ad business ’cause they’re like yeah that’s a monopoly that your ad business is connected to your like you’re selling thing and you’re selling the other thing for then they’re like no you don’t have to break it up though because there’s other…I forget what the reason was it was something really stupid and its just are you freaking kidding me?

Lee Zuvanich: Oh my God.

Sarah: Come on guys It’s gross The level anyway That’s whole side tangent Of how google Is evil also But

Lee Zuvanich: brought– The only reason I brought that up was coming off of a really positive of the story, was because I think it’s really important for people to remember you can build a little widget that is going to get disrupted. ‘Cause investors are always like, know, why should I invest?”

Or, “Why is this so exciting? Someone like Google Calendar is just gonna disrupt you back.” Like, how are you gonna disrupt them? He did disrupt them for years, built something worth billions of dollars, has

Sarah: Mhm.

Lee Zuvanich: users before Google got around to doing their own thing.

Sarah: [00:25:00] And their name is synonymous with booking calendar apps. It’s like Oreos or Kleenex or something, right? It’s it’s just, it’s Calendly. People like, they, people that have no idea about… My cat is trying to chew on the cable. Sorry. The, the people that don’t know anything about this kind of thing what was that?

Lee Zuvanich: I said like doodle polls, like If there’s a poll

Sarah: Wait

Lee Zuvanich: me what date I wanna meet, it’ll be a doodle poll, whether it’s a doodle poll or

Sarah: Oh, that’s– I forgot about that. It took me a second ’cause I’ve only ever seen it like once or twice, but I did remember seeing that at one point.

Lee Zuvanich: a lot. They’re- and that’s

Sarah: Oh, okay.

Lee Zuvanich: Google

Sarah: That’s probably why.

Lee Zuvanich: but they haven’t.

Sarah: Oh, like SurveyMonkey.

Lee Zuvanich: you.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s like cert- There are certain products that become mainstream popular, I think, and it’s like they become a default just because people have used them.

They’re like free and accessible. Like Typeform, SurveyMonkey, the Doodle thing I forgot about. I’ve seen that a couple times. Calendly has become one of those because they’ve got a freemium plan that is great. It’s like one… for a person starting out that does need to pay for something. But yeah.

Anyway, that’s a [00:26:00] lot to I’ve got a lot of show notes to add is what that is.

Lee Zuvanich: I’ll

Sarah: I’m like over here like writing, writing things down like all these links we’re telling people about.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: struggle. Hang on. Let’s we’re still in struggle. Like Sarah trying to keep us moving here. Struggle. Yeah, my struggle is caring anymore.

Lee Zuvanich: No.

Sarah: Should I be saying that? I’m saying that. I’m sorry. I’ve been d- doing this for

Lee Zuvanich: struggle

Sarah: two decades at this point I think. Think next year it’ll be two decades. Yeah what is… Yeah so I started freelancing in like 2007. And then that, that, the freelancing quickly turned into a, a business and then I ended up going full time a couple years later.

So I’ve been officially like working with clients for almost two decades at this point. And I’m just kinda tired. I’m just done because I, the level of service I deliver with things is just … It’s mismatched sometimes between what people are … Okay, so I was on a call, this feels like a tangent, but I was on a call with some agency people this week, and one of them said, “AI has [00:27:00] made cheapskates free to be cheapskates.”

So the people that don’t wanna pay for work, it is now possible to just go use AI for everything, and so it’s given them this license to when they’re talking to professionals be like why should I hire you? I can do that myself with ChatGPT,” right?

Lee Zuvanich: Viena

Sarah: And it’s true. It’s also given them AI psychosis which we’ve talked about before,

Lee Zuvanich: Oh

Sarah: so they think they know things that they don’t, and it’s just made everything harder because th-…

And for me, so part of the reason or the main reason that we actually host websites, ’cause hosting websites is a pain in the butt, and when people talk to me about building websites I’m like, “Don’t host. Build the thing, help the client inform them-” “… do whatever, but connect them with somebody but don’t do this yourself.

It is not worth the hassle; most people don’t have the skills to deal with all the stuff you gotta do.” But the reason we do it is because we want a long term relationship with people. It’s like it’s about building relationships. Like I know your business, I know where you started. I have one of my probably the client I’ve had for those almost those f- full two decades.

They have pivoted, I have rebranded that same business like three or four times because they’ve pivoted over the years, right? So it’s like I’ve seen [00:28:00] all the changes, I’ve seen where they’ve “‘Cause no I’m not actually,” but I helped you do that too. But like that’s really common, right? It’s like I know like I’m working direct with the founder.

A lot of these people become friends, like I’m helping you work through, like we’re, I’m a sounding board for what you’re doing. I’ve seen all these iterations, like we’re here when you’re like, “Hey, we- we’re gonna refresh our website now ’cause we’re pivoting this direction.” Great. That’s what I wanna do.

That’s the whole point. And now it’s like people are like I’m just gonna do crap myself” or they don’t realize how much goes into something or how much like the technical level matters. So I have a project I’ve been working on for a real long time that I was so excited to work on because I just personally love like what this organization does.

And they took everything in house again after a, a ton of work. And it’s like there is no way That you’re going to get the level of service that you would have gotten from me. ‘Cause I had all these ideas and feature plans and things I was like, “We can do this in future when y- this thing comes around.

I think we should do it [00:29:00] this way.” “We can build this functionality,” whatever, right? And I was a personal, like, user of it as well really know it very well. And it’s like, okay, I just stressed… That was part of the stress level is a couple large projects, and it’s one of them that is now no longer even a client.

And it … I s- I will make an exception, and I was like, I’ll work on this project if you guys need future requests for stuff i- in the future. I’m not maintaining this anymore. We’re not hosting it. If your site goes down at 2:00 AM , good luck. Hope you got somebody to call, ’cause it ain’t me.”

But I it’s just like, but I was willing to do that because I love their mission and want to see them succeed. And so it’s like after all of that, and I don’t even know what the reason was for sure. It just was really unclear, because there was no clear answer given. I had to try to read between the lines, and I’m still kinda guessing.

I feel like it was probably about the money even though they said it wasn’t about the money. But it’s I dunno, man. It’s just yeah it’s just, it’s a very frustrating thing to be like, just communicate, just talk to me, right? I have a client that has not paid bills for a while, [00:30:00] so I’m like, and no communication.

And I’m like, “Just talk to me.” Another client

Lee Zuvanich: When they don’t pay and they don’t talk to you,

Sarah: I have another… I have two, two people, okay? Two different clients. One of them is in a downturn situation with their business and is like, “Look, I don’t have a lot of money coming in. I just need to be upfront with you.” Like the website hosting cost is like, dunno if I can get…”

Like what, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Let’s figure something out. We can talk about this. The other one, radio silence, right? And it’s I … Just communicate about it, and we will figure… I am amazing at working with people. Be like, “Oh, I have this budget.” I’m like, “Cool. You can’t do this, but you can do this.

Let’s write this in the budget,” right? And so it’s like all these things that I have done, and then at the end of the day, people will just ask, Claude or something and go do whatever Claude says, whether it’s true or not, and you’re like, no. I… Okay, whatever. You’re on your own. I don’t… I wash my hands of this.

I care too much. I’ve known I care too much ’cause I really I wanna see people succeed. Like the hosting thing, when you host sites, you gotta we have to [00:31:00] have uptime monitoring, right? If I see any blips on stuff, I’m, like, on it that kind of thing. And it’s people don’t appreciate…

And I can’t… i’m being overly broad here. There absolutely are some clients that are. There, I have a, some really amazing clients, people that have always paid their bills, always been great to work with, whatever. But it’s just like there’s been a string of things this year on top of me being burnt out that I’m just like, I’m just gonna keep working with the clients I have.

Again, that’s always a priority with hosted clients, always get first priority, and I’m gonna be really selective about who we take on, and we don’t work with sites, on sites we don’t host. We have, ’cause again, it’s a partnership. Do not call me ’cause your crappy, f- whatever WordPress site that’s running on PHP 7 that hasn’t been updated in five years broke something, and you’re like, “Can you help me?

I’m a GoDaddy host?” No. That’s not my problem. I’m not helping you with that. I’m sorry. We don’t do that kinda stuff. We will host your site. We will rebuild it so it’s solid. We will, whatever. That’s different. But at this point, I’m like, you know what? I’m just gonna be really…. [00:32:00] And I already was. To be clear I already was careful about who I picked, and I did not have a problem firing people or just not working with people if I didn’t think they were a good fit.

But at this point, I’m like, I think I’m just going to be super hardcore, and I might even make a cap and be like, “I’m refusing to host more than X number of websites, and when my slots are filled, they’re filled.” And if I don’t like, like this person is hard to work with or whatever we’ll just be like, “We should part way.”

I, that’s just where I’m at now. And it’s, that’s the, I guess the struggle is just balancing, I don’t know, figuring out how to deal with that. It’s it’s just, I’m, again, I’m just doing, I’m doing the daily stuff, and I’m not doing any sales is basically what’s happening.

I’m like, I’m not doing sales right now

Lee Zuvanich: When I met you, I think we bonded over the fact that we both loved helping small business owners and founders.

Especially ones who maybe would dig themselves into a hole without realizing it. Non-technical founders,

Sarah: Yes, 100%.

Lee Zuvanich: of. And those people make terrible clients ’cause they don’t understand the value you bring, [00:33:00] which is why they get themselves into trouble, which is

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: them.

Sarah: So- sometimes. Not all I would say not all of them, but some of them, yes.

Lee Zuvanich: That this, we never stop talking about this. It’s always a problem. There’s always at least one.

Sarah: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: I was telling someone the other day, I used to… They were telling me about their volume of clients, and I was like, “Yeah, I used to have that many clients.”

I think it was like 20. And it was like with active projects. That’s insane. That’s an insane thing for one founder to be managing. I was just a masochist, and I was– Because of that, I was never not putting out fires. I was always losing sleep over someone’s problems that weren’t even my problems. things like their lack of ability to communicate,

Sarah: Yep

Lee Zuvanich: ability to see the value of the work we do. And it was never ending to the point that it was making me physically ill from the stress. So I’m really glad I don’t do that anymore, and I’ve scaled way down. I think I have or four active projects at any given time. Sometimes two if they’re big. it’s just, like I was saying before, life is so peaceful, I don’t know what to do with [00:34:00] myself but that, the flip side of that is, and I don’t know where you’re gonna go next or what you wanna do after or beyond what you’re doing now if you scale your client list down, but I could see you, like, running a program at UMKC or something. You just love founders, and you help them, and they don’t even realize they’re being helped. There’s a

Sarah: Well, and some of them do. I’ll never forget like the guy who r- I randomly … It was just one of those really gregarious people that everybody you just love him when you meet him, and

Met him on a phone call for some completely unrelated thing. Somehow came up he needed help with his website, and I remember talking to him about the thing he needed help with which was like nothing to me, and he was like crying on the phone.

This thing had stressed him out for so long, and he had nobody to s- figure this, solve this problem for him. And I was like, “Oh yeah, done.” Like 24 hours fixed, done whatever, and it… He just he was like … And it’s like that’s why I do this, is like people like that are like, “Thank you,” “I just need someone that

‘Cause I don’t understand this. It’s always technical, right? It’s always “I don’t understand why this email thing is not doing…” or whatever. [00:35:00] And again, I’ll still … I have clients, again appreciate that, like they love that’s great. It’s just you have to … it’s more widespread I think that people are again just using these AI things to be like, think they know more than they do.

And it’s you know what, I, you just need to go fall on your face and find out that you’re, th- this is bad choice. So the, the thing I kinda mentioned earlier, this client that built is a Canva AI website, and it was a, a business and a person you would not have expected to know about AI. But like this could’ve been a kid or a grandkid maybe that built the site for them, ’cause again they were like, they saw the package.

But it’s like the website packager’s not just building the website. It is me walking you through all the stuff. It is the consulting. It is the helping you with the copy. It is telling you like you need more whatever, like all, like way, way more. The hardest part of the website is not actually the building of it.

It’s how, it’s what goes on it and in it and how you talk about things. And so I was like, “Okay fine, if you wanna do that, but like then you come back to me and you’re like, ‘I want marketing. We need to market this.'” [00:36:00] And I’m like, “Yeah, if I connect you to like my SEO PPC guys, they’re not gonna run you ads for this site.

It doesn’t even have a site map.” It’s not structurally technically built in such a way that you want to b- … there, there’s stuff that people don’t understand there. And I’m not 100% opposed like AI build websites. There’s a place for them, and I’m experimenting with some stuff. Like great, it’d be great for a startup landing page, right?

But not for what this client needed. So at that point I’m like, sorry, you’re not a c- you’re not a fit for us. We don’t do what you’re asking. I’ll connect you with this other person. Maybe they can help you. Bye.”

Lee Zuvanich: Ja

Sarah: I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m not like … at this point it’s just no, if you are a good fit for what we offer, ’cause I know exactly what we offer, that’s all we’re gonna do at this point.

So tha- that’s

Lee Zuvanich: So

Sarah: the struggle

Lee Zuvanich: care? ‘Cause you sound like you care.

Sarah: The struggle is how to transition into… there’s another component I’m not mentioning too, and that is I really wanna build some sort of an AI-enabled website package. That is not what we typically do. [00:37:00] So it’s also okay, if I have … Yeah, it’s ’cause again, there are clients, like I have one client that’s using Claude for literally everything, and I’m like, “I honestly don’t think you need this WordPress site anymore,” that you seem to g-…

was, we built sites to be updated, but people do still struggle with it. But it’s like if you probably just need some sorta like Again, good luck editing it, ’cause the problem with th- these things when you build them, they can’t edit them easily. But they probably just need some sort of, like a static site with some sort of Claude connection, and they can just deal with it.

And it’s out of my hands, right? Just I can help you get there, and then good luck with whatever. Maybe we support it, maybe we don’t, but like that’s the transition I’m seeing is… I used to offer a DIY WordPress package, like years ago, and even that people struggled with because WordPress, when you do it correctly, the self-hosted version is hard to know how to set up, so we would handle all of that and just give them the keys, and even that people struggle with.

So now I’m like, okay, AI will enable you to ge- to get a starting point, and then you just need some consulting support and technical support. [00:38:00] So I’m not sure exactly what that’s gonna look like, but that’s where I’m like, this is where we need to go, and so I need to find time. I need to find time to figure that out while also still being burnt out and being like, I’m doing client work, but

Lee Zuvanich: to help with that. I agree

Sarah: yeah

Lee Zuvanich: where things are headed, that’s where I am living. and I have been this idea with my startups and just every– all the work I do. I’m helping a client right now build out the same type of package ’cause he-he’s… We’re like B2B2C, he and I together, with the stuff I do for him. And I was just telling him I’ve been studying Aptible, it’s A-P-I-T-B-L-E dot com someone who is living in the same space that I am moving into with SomaBase. But something that they call out really clearly on their website is that they don’t just give you… That what they do is more like HIPAA compliant hosting.

But then

To now get into the like MCP enabled security offerings, which is what we’re working on with SomaBase [00:39:00] right now, and like the ability to de-identify your data. And then you get into it on their site, if you’re really into that kinda thing and it says “We’re not gonna leave you alone.” “We’re your team. You can Slack us. Our response time is sub three minutes, we’re the team that takes care of the hosting that you need, the data security questions. Like you can’t afford a team of your own yet. You’re not there yet, but you still need the technology. We’re your team.” And I really think that’s where a lot of us consultants probably should be moving into, is we can now automate a lot of the things we used to do manually. and then there’s this weird hybrid space we’re all living in where we could maybe automate some of it, but they really need like expertise on that. We are the humans in the loop, not the buyer.

Zach: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: we’re helping approve things and help them understand where when they get stuck, we’re gonna dig them out of their little hole.

But then let them go do their 3:00 AM iterating with Claude. Don’t bother me with that stuff. I don’t need

Sarah: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: your ideas that are terrible. Come back to me with the one you’ve, you landed on with [00:40:00] Claude’s help. It’s kinda nice to have that.

Sarah: And also…

Zach: it out

Sarah: Sorry,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: that, is that coming

Zach: I was gonna say let them flesh it out, let them burn out their

Sarah: Mhm.

Zach: where Claude tells you that you can’t use it again until 5:00 PM. Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: eventually they’ll also

Sarah: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: Cloud’s, like at that level, it’s not free either.

Sarah: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: developing with it, they’re also spending hundreds. Hundreds is better than the thousands that they have spent with consultants like me. So I get where the tension is there, but I’m happy to give that part over to them and then let them come back to me

Sarah: Yeah that’s the same with like website mock-ups or even like rough logo designs or whatever. If someone like does that in a, an AI tool and then brings me like what they think they kinda want I’m like, “Perfect, I can work from that.” Frankly, I prefer it because people suck at communicating what they want design wise, and they’re gonna do that anyway right?

So I just … That’s fine bring it and then we clean up or do whatever I’m okay with that. I think the direction is getting away from delivery and more consulting I guess is s-… What you just said to recap essentially what you said [00:41:00] maybe that’s it maybe I just need to lean more into the consulting side which is already part of what I do but it’s usually consulting with intent that we actually build stuff and at this point it’s like maybe I just need to lean more into being like,”Okay I’ll give you feedback on where you think you need to go with this” But like we’re just not going to deliver…

if you’re asking about like what your website goals are and then you think you can do X ill tell you if that’s gonna work or not what to keep in mind maybe. But if you’re just gonna do it with like whatever tool lovable thing that self deploys and all that like Im not gonna help you with that there’s no like not …I’m not interested in that kind of thing.

The reason our packages and stuff work and are so efficient cause ive been building the tech stack for you know a decade at this point And its great again if you need a WordPress site but Ive also never said that wordpress works for everybody thats why i always offered static sites and im .. Thats

Lee Zuvanich: You’re-

Sarah: he discovery call im like which is it what do you actually need and Ill tell you and build you the thing that you need So Its just leaning away from WordPress

Lee Zuvanich: in the loop. And I put the link here we can put it in the show notes but

Sarah: I’m gonna say that right now. I think

Lee Zuvanich: It’s [00:42:00] a

Sarah: it happened

Lee Zuvanich: that I think applies to your business model and maybe mine in some– We are thinking about it as well on my team but I think a lot of consultants would do well to understand that we’re becoming like people who can ship tools that are scalable instead of having to sell our time But then we are the expert in the loop that gets tagged in when they get stuck with those tools.

And

Like more scalable business than consulting So I’m trying to make- I’m going into the security space because I think that’s the safest like moat for me everything is getting disrupted but security is always gonna be a need that you need humans for

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: you know we’ll

Sarah: Z- sorry, we’ve gone really long on this. Zach, we need to hear what your struggle is. Sorry.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh yeah

Sarah: It was like a long tangent about websites that

Zach: of, man. Besides

Sarah: Do you also have to think about this? ‘Cause that’s a good thing

Zach: It’s

Do I want to s-

Lee Zuvanich: we

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Zach: what

Sarah: Yeah

Zach: to say? Who do I want to expose? [00:43:00] And am I ready to burn it all down?

Sarah: No. Filter, yeah, fil- just be very broad and high level. How’s that?

Zach: The see- let me tell you. The thing about Kansas City is … No, I’m just kidding. Let me see. What is my thing?

Lee Zuvanich: Oh my God.

Zach: s- Yeah. Boy, they’ve been on one lately. Let’s see. So my thing would probably be for the nonprofit site being too much of a key man. I think that’s my struggle right now where I’m kinda, I’m recognizing

Sarah: Yeah

Zach: every decision, every breath, every grain of rice, every grain of sand, everything has to be processed by me on the front end, the middle and the back end, and it’s a lotta, it’s a lot of in- involvement like… And so I’ve been trying to explore what does it look like to offload this like, ’cause SITE does three things. So if we’re doing a training and it’s teaching kids how to use hammers or something, I’m going out and I’m [00:44:00] hammers at Home Depot and then

Lee Zuvanich: Ew

Zach: we have a plot, a l- a land, some land we need to look at that’s on like 35th Street.

I have to go down there take pictures of it and then oh, there’s this other thing. We have a grant due next Wednesday. Who’s writing that? Oh yeah, me. So it’s like all the pieces; that’s just the non profit and then

Sarah: You need a gopher

Lee Zuvanich: a lot.

Zach: have the other aspects of working as a W2 and now I’m also like exploring the idea maybe I should get a broker’s license So I’m like, “What

Sarah: Hey, there you go.

Zach: So that’s

Sarah: yeah

Zach: thing and so I- I’ve- I’ve been having some conversations it’s like can I hand over these pieces so I can focus exclusively on vision strategy and those types of things because it becomes almost too tedious and meticulous where I submit a grant, I have the budget and then they have okay lets do the [00:45:00] reporting and like onset grant Okay Do proof and purchase Show me the invoice you received for every item and then also show me a screenshot in your bank account that shows that the money came outta your bank account.”

I’m like This is A lotta looking over your shoulder work so That’s probably been

Sarah: Ja,

Zach: struggle and its I need yeah like a Are those called like VA Or something Would Probably be great for some of this but that also goes to expansion Like the team Needs to grow There’s no reason I should facilitate

Sarah: You need an intern or something. Somebody that like wants to get into this that’s… Oh, wait, I guess you already had that, didn’t you, for a little bit?

Zach: and that… Yeah, that’s interesting. Maybe Pro X, but I don’t know how Pro X is set up. I think it’s five weeks in the summer. I think something like that could work, but yeah, I think that’s just something I’m just gonna have to explore. I gotta figure out… I [00:46:00] can’t decide everyth-

Sarah: Not go to a location and take photos.

Zach: Yeah, there’s

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, no. No, get Pro X for that for sure.

Zach: there’s… Yeah. That’s probably

Sarah: ProEx meaning the hi- there’s a hiring fair? Is that what you’re talking about?

Zach: Yeah, or they like take some high school kids and they embed them in your company for

Sarah: oh, here we go. Professional experiences for Kansas City youth. Okay, this is Kansas City specific, but I’ll put it in the show notes anyway. That’s… I’ve never heard of that

Lee Zuvanich: twice. Yeah, Jasmine did it twice and it was really good for her. I

Sarah: There’s m-

Lee Zuvanich: Great program

Zach: The way that they set it up, it’s… Interestingly enough, the guy that I’m looking at to potentially do all my workforce stuff built that program for the city.

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, wow. Yeah,

Zach: So

Lee Zuvanich: can use it. I know some startup founders who were very early stage and they were able to use it, and Jasmine worked on an app that way for one of them. It was pretty cool.

Sarah: That’s okay. So there’s a program called Northland.

Lee Zuvanich: organized, but,

Sarah: Yeah, I think that’s pretty typical. A [00:47:00] lot of it’s volunteers probably. There’s a program called Northland CAPS that’s similar that I was aware of, but I hadn’t heard of that one. I’ll link both of them. It’s obviously Kansas City specific, but

Lee Zuvanich: is more like you have to have a kid in the Northland schools, I think. Like

Sarah: Yeah it’s a little different. But in terms of embedding like someone in a business

Lee Zuvanich: talent.

Sarah: for, yeah, just like kids learning experience

Zach: What is her name? Ch-ch-ch-ch. Dang, what the heck is her name?

Sarah: Can’t help you there, sorry.

Zach: Oh my gosh.

Sarah: a look

Zach: w- she was in Pipeline.

Lee Zuvanich: s-…

Zach: Ugh

Lee Zuvanich: Oh, I know who you’re talking about. I literally just looked up, I’m looking up the same company, I think.

Zach: Fast, dangin’ nabbit

Lee Zuvanich: The founder of Workturn

Zach: I don’t know if that’s her name. I

Lee Zuvanich: of? So Worktern who had… the CEO was in Pipeline. I’m also blanking on her name. I had to look it up because one of their developers and co-founders worked for my company for a few years. It’s Worktern, [00:48:00] W-O-R-K-T-E-R-N dot io. But anyway, the founder or the co-founder went through Pipeline, and they put Kansas City CAPS kids– they, they used them for part of their anyway. They connect them as talent to people who need it, and then they were gonna expand beyond CAPS and get other talent.

I don’t know where they’re at now, but sounds like they were getting funding and doing really well. It says mentorship reimagined, build relevant work experience. So it’s kinda an app to connect kids that need that kind of experience with that need it. And actually, the co-founder was Ian, was a, City CAPS kid, and he was one of the best developers I’ve ever had.

Sarah: Oh, that Ian? That’s where he did that? Oh, I didn’t realize that. Huh, that’s cool. I just-

Lee Zuvanich: co-founder.

Zach: That’s her name, India

Sarah: Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about

Zach: B

Lee Zuvanich: oh, India w- India isn’t over that. She’s, she helped run the other program we were just talking about

Sarah: The Pro X one?

Lee Zuvanich: ProX, yeah. Yeah, she

Zach: Yeah I’m s- I’m super late. I was digging through, I was like, “I know her name. I can picture her face.” But yeah.

Sarah: Okay. I didn’t realize that’s… [00:49:00] I know who India is. But yeah, I didn’t realize the Pro Act. I’ve somehow, I’d never

Zach: Factory and then now

Wh- yeah. I think

Sarah: I haven’t, I’ve been out of the networking. I did my first networking event last week that I’ve done in like of the whole year probably. It’s like I’ve left my cave.

I don’t know what’s going on anymore in Kansas City or elsewhere. Okay, so that’s struggle. Hang on. Where are we at? We just have so many tangents today.

Zach: and

Sarah: we’re working on, we need to okay, jump into what we’re working on really

Zach: Let,

Sarah: quickly. Yeah, just go for it then

Zach: working on… Okay, so with that like I said, my struggle or whatever is the key man thing, but working on, I think I want– We’re exploring ,we’re, ha, I’m exploring different ways that the organization could be less grant, restricted.

So we’ve started exploring some paid opportunities, and it’s I don’t know if this is kismet or just magic put it in the universe and all that stuff. Two days after I [00:50:00] started being like, “Hey, I should figure out earned revenue,” I got three that kinda reached out and said, “Hey, can you do this?” And they wanna pay. And they were like can you look at this?” I’ll keep it, ’cause it’s not inked, I’ll keep it very up. They’re like, “Hey, we have some lots that we wanna build on. Can you clean it up?” And I’m just me, so I was like, “I can.” So I’m,

Sarah: Zach’s out there with like garbage bags

Zach: I, that was my first act. I was like, “Can I j- just go out there and bit it as a full project?”

I’m like, “No, think of the kids, Zach. Think of the kids.” So I’m building a whole bit around it where we’re gonna not kids Department of Labor. We’re gonna employ young people and they’re going t- and they’re gonna work. They’re gonna, I think it amounts to about 50, 50 hour, but we’re gonna have them clean it up

Lee Zuvanich: You [00:51:00] know, that’s amazing. You know the work exchange program I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that my daughter is looking into? Turns out people run whole businesses using these volunteers. I don’t know if it’s legal in the US or no. It’s

Zach: habitat i-is

Sarah: Oh yeah, that’s tr- that’s true. Have it up for humanity

Lee Zuvanich: an internship. It’s not related to education, sorry. It’s it’s a volunteer experience, and you can supplement or augment your existing team with those people and just keep y- what… I’ve done this before. I used to do volunteer recruitment and management.

You just have to have a thing that random people can through. Like you were saying too with Department of Labor youth, it’d be the same thing

Sarah: Solid systems, very solid systems

Lee Zuvanich: yeah,

Zach: just… So we’re gonna we’re gonna be pushing forward on that. We’re gonna put out a bid to this. May not get it, who knows? But I think the, the rep of somebody reaching out work that we’ve never done before and scrambling around for a week and a half to figure out if I can do it, I f- I think there’s some– I [00:52:00] don’t know if it’s Ryan Serhant or some public-y person that’s like, “Just say yes to it, and then when you get off the phone, figure how to do it.”

Sarah: Oh

Lee Zuvanich: That’s

Sarah: that’s like the whole startup thing, yeah. That’s

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: any founder, that’s why founders be out there doing their own, like

Zach: that don’t scale

Sarah: Or just oh no one… Like it’s a manager at a, like a corporate job that has to show up if an employee doesn’t show up to work. That’s what founders do 24/7 . Half the time there’s just, it’s just them filling in holes or the gaps whatever which is why it’s so hard to let go of that stuff because you’re the one that knows all of it and all the moving parts So yeah What you were saying about having a hard time doing it all by yourself I’m always dealing with that myself too so I get It’s hard okay hang on Struggle Okay Lee Why don’t you go first?

Sorry not struggle we already did that What are we doing Working on! What are w-what are working o-… Or did You and I maybe covered that I dunno

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t [00:53:00] know. What I’m work- You did, I think. What I’m working on mostly is… And I say this most episodes, I think, getting focused on and narrowing down all the things I have been spread across, and I’ve just been consistently doing that for two years, ’cause I started the funded startup and was trying to raise another, like a pre-seed, and was told by people I really respect that I needed to shut down my consulting company. And then interestingly enough, over the last year, I’ve had lots of inquiries about buying my business because, agencies are super hot right now ’cause you can buy them and then automate a lot of the work and then make a lot more money. I’ve already hyper optimized everything, so once they learn that, they’re not as interested.

I’m not like a, 55, 60-year-old agency owner that has all these workflows that I haven’t optimized.

But because of that, it’s really helped me realize, like there is some value in the consulting work, but only if it feeds the startup. And so I’ve narrowed my client list down to [00:54:00] only that, now my life’s getting super peaceful and awesome apparently. And instead of getting weird about it and giving myself a little midlife crisis and I dunno, doing CrossFit every day or whatever I could be doing, I’m just gonna stay focused. This is my–what I’m working on. I’m going to grind when it’s boring on the startup that I’ve been laboring with for a couple years now. And we’ve already got revenue, and we’ve–we’re building some really cool tools, so it shouldn’t be hard to do that. There’s just this little part of my brain that’s “A crisis is coming, and if there isn’t a crisis coming, you should just do something wild.” There’s so much energy. There’s like, kids are back to school.

I should get on a plane and go somewhere. What am I doing? So I’m just gonna keep that energy back into my startup. if you’re an ADHD founder, I think you understand that’s a struggle and

Sarah: I also think because of what we talked about on like our productivity whiplash episode that the incentive, th- the unconscious [00:55:00] n- eh, I don’t wanna say need. I don’t … The feeling I think that most people have is that needs to go into a commercially productive thing. That’s the problem, is that energy needs to be turned into a business or something that makes money.

And in reality if you have that creative energy it could be used for painting or for writing or for doing

Lee Zuvanich: yeah,

Sarah: know what I mean? Like something that is like personally fulfilling that is not attached to like this I have to be busy and making money all the time thing. That’s, and that’s where you have to stop yourself and be like, “Okay, this is awesome.

What do I want to do with this, and why do I feel like it needs to be another business?” I mean some of us do just start businesses ’cause like we can’t help ourselves, but I also think that there’s an element there that we need to be careful about. So

Zach: Why

Lee Zuvanich: Definitely,

Sarah: yeah, and that’s ’cause

Lee Zuvanich: a lot of art lately, so I am… Yeah, I’m pouring any energy that isn’t startup, dev energy, any extra time my daughter and I have been making a ton of art together, like every day.

Sarah: That’s cool. Yeah, and again if you’ve got

Lee Zuvanich: That’s probably why I’m so happy and

Sarah: Yeah. I was gonna [00:56:00] say, you got the systems or not the systems, the habits. If you build the habits in then yeah, you can do it. I think just, again, in my case like I’m like neglecting that stuff ’cause I’m doing all the other things you have to hop Lee at this point?

Lee Zuvanich: I do. It’s all

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Zuvanich: I got a

Sarah: All good. You hop, I will wrap mine up and then we’ll wrap things up but yeah if you wanna feel free to jump out here if you’re good.

Lee Zuvanich: all got problems.

Sarah: we do. Which is it today, Lee needs to leave.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: All right. We’ll see you on the next one. Okay so my, what are we talking about again, working on?. I already answered yeah, working on its, it’s the direction of leaning towards a website package that might be different than what we typically offered that is more hands-off and more AI client hands-on I guess. I don’t know it’s like R&D basically. I need to do some R&D on this. I was so busy for so long that now that I’m, like took my break came back I’m like,”Okay, all these other like little things and maintenance stuff and like auditing software we provide or client [00:57:00] projects or whatever.”

That’s what I’m working on right now to just get back. Like I feel like I’ve gotten d– caught up on a lot of stuff which is great. So now it’s gonna be, okay keeping things manageable so that I can find out like what I want to offer now. ‘Cause I have the start of something but it just needs to shift and stuff has been changing so much technologically anyway with AI sites and all that stuff.

It’s like I just need to do some experimenting and build some stuff, do some test projects and I have a couple of those that I’ll be able to work on pretty quick that’s what I’m working on is figuring out what I wanna offer going forward and how that’s gonna shift and then the same thing you are which is always how do I remove myself from project management more.

Zach: Yeah. out of the cog

Sarah: Yeah it’s never not, it’s never not a struggle to do that. So it is what it is but yeah that’s what I got. You got anything else to add before we wrap

Zach: No, I… Wow. Wish I had a voice. But yeah,

Sarah: okay

Zach: I think that’s everything. I think we covered everything pretty good

Sarah: [00:58:00] We did. We spent a whole hour, so hopefully people don’t mind ’cause I’m not editing this down guys, ’cause remember there’s no more editing on these

Zach: Raw and unfiltered.

Sarah: That’s right, so awesome we will do our next episode of whatever, whatever topic we cover on the next one and until then we’ll see you guys around hopefully on I dunno around social media

Zach: See us in,

Sarah: I’m not anymore maybe LinkedIn maybe around town check out the website I dunno either way at this point we are publishing these at a regular cadence so we’ll keep coming out till we take like end of year break or something so cool peace out