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You're listening to Shorts and Suits conversations about business, leadership, culture, and families through the eyes of two entrepreneurs in the small business community with Ben Kaulfman and J.W. rayhans.

Today, we're talking about transitioning from a solopreneur mindset. So we're going to start out with is just kind of talk about, you know, how we went from the idea of just being ourselves, and we actually got some people to help us do the work that we do. And, you know, when I started thinking about that, jw, the first thing that came to mind was how we met way back then. And, you know how we ran into each other at the chamber of mixer that they had, and you and I both were just kind of standing around there like, what are we doing here? Right?

Because sometimes I remember that moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you're just in those mixing events, and you're just like, I don't know anybody. Do I really want to go say hi to somebody? And so you and I kind of ran into each other and started talking, and that's kind of where it started, right?

Yeah, it did. And you're exactly right. I mean, we just kind of two guys standing around in the room, and I think we both caught on to the fact that neither one of us really knew anybody in there. But I don't know if it was just that we could tell that we were both from the Midwest or what, but it was a good start. And, you know, if you think about in the previous episodes, we talked about that startup, right, where it's just you. But there's this. There's this point in most businesses where you think about, okay, who am I going to hire? Like, how am I going to go from the capacity that I have as one person to starting to hire people or starting to even hire that first person. You go through all those thoughts of, like, well, can I afford it? What kind of responsibility am I taking on? How do I even do that? What are the rules I need to follow? And you start to get all these questions in your mind, and quite honestly, that's probably what hangs a lot of business owners or entrepreneurs up from even hiring that first person, which keeps them in that solopreneur mindset for so long. But, yeah, let's walk through that of, you know what. What takes you from that solopreneur mindset to really wanting to build a team and build an organization and walk through that together. Because that's a big decision.

Yeah, it is. And for me, it was not even so much like the Desire to hire somebody to help. It was the overwhelm that I was feeling from the amount of things that I had to keep doing. When you are running all those processes or operations and let's be honest, I didn't have any processes back then. It was kind of like, this is what I do. What I knew how to do is create the craft of the thing that we produced. The website, the logo, whatever it was, but the invoicing, the marketing, the all the follow ups and all the project management, all that stuff, that's where when you start adding up the pieces to the puzzle, you get that feeling of overwhelm. And I vividly remember that conversation with my wife Lindsay, where she saw that in me and she realized I was just stressed and she's seen that many times in my world and she was the one that pushed me to say, you really need to think about getting some help. And then my question to her was, how do we do that?

Right. Yeah. Well, that's probably what started getting Lindsay involved in the HR aspect of what you guys do, right?

I think so, man.

I remember we went and we decided, you know, as our friendship started to build a little bit, we decided we're going to go in and get that office together. Remember that?

I do.

And that courtyard office building. And, and there, you know, you and I both are thinking, man, this is a risk we're taking on, a big risk because now we're going to have a lease that we're responsible for. And it wasn't too long after that we were like, well, maybe we could share the first employee. Maybe, maybe neither one of us have to take on all the risk, but maybe we could just share it and see what happens.

Exactly what we did, you know, and you look at when you're solar. Solar. When you're solar entrepreneur and you're running it out of your house, like we both were right. Their overhead was nil.

Yeah.

And so when we looked at now, you know, sharing a space that rent that we have to, you know, sign our name on for what was it, a two year or three year lease or whatever it was, that's a lot of risk because we like, can we sustain that? And you looking back on it, you're like, it was such a small amount in the big scheme of things, but it was one of the first big expenses that we had to do beyond just having Internet, things like that, Utilities.

That's right.

So it was a big risk. And I think that's one of the blockers. I think a lot of people have is getting through the minds. You know, it's. It's. You know, even looking back now where we are today, I go, man, we. I think I feel like I made more money, you know, per capita back then that I do now because I didn't have as much overhead. But that overhead is really what catapults you into the next step. I think it does. And that's really. For me, when we took that step, what took me from the solar mindset to more of a bigger vision of what I wanted to do, because I didn't even think that far yet. Yeah, I don't know where you were with that.

Well, you know, I think some of this might be human nature, some of it might just be. We'll call it entrepreneur nature. But it's almost as if the more responsibility you take on, the more you step up to the challenge. And that may not work for everyone, but if we could give any sort of encouragement. I think as both of you and I look back on that. You're right. You look back on that and you think, God, seems like that was such a small amount, but at the big. At the time, it felt like a big amount.

Oh, yeah.

And now there's times where you and I both look at that, and I wish our rent was back down to whatever it was back then. I don't remember.

Yeah.

At the time. But I think a lot of. For. For a lot of entrepreneurs, when you take on that additional responsibility, when you hire that first person, when you take on that first lease, you know, when you. When you hire that first, you know, marketing agency, and you know that you have to come through, then you do. You step up, you figure it out, that creative nature comes into play where you're like, okay, I just need to know how to do the next step.

Yeah.

And you build upon that. And I know that's what it was for me is not always knowing the next step, but just saying, you know what? I'm gonna figure it out along the way. And anytime you misstep, sidestep, then you learn from that and you build upon it and you keep moving forward.

There's a side of this, too, that I think we need to be honest and recognize, which is a little bit of the ego side, too.

Okay.

Because when I think about our first joint shared employee that we had, you know, we both decided to get a receptionist to help us at the front, answer our phones, to greet people, to help organize our meeting, to help do a lot of the ancillary things that we knew we. Well, could do ourselves, but we decided to do that. And I thought about that for a while, too, thinking, you know, was that the right person to hire for us jointly, or do we do that because of the thought of, like, hey, we're in business now, and that's what you do. You know, you get some people to help you with these kind of things because that escalates your. Honestly, your ego in some ways. Do you feel that at all, or do you see that in your view?

Yeah, ego's a tough word for me, because a lot of times I don't remember thinking about that necessarily. What I do remember thinking about, you mentioned a key thing, which was we could have easily done that stuff on our own. Right. You could have kept doing the administrative things that you were doing. I could have kept doing the administrative things that I was doing. But I think it's realizing that other people are probably gifted in areas that were not. And even though, yes, I could spend the time to do it, there's probably someone else that could do it better. And I think, you know, when it comes to starting to move that direction, and it's almost like, yeah, there might be some ego in there, but I also think it's some humility, too, really realizing that if. If I have the opportunity to spend the time on the things that I really should be, the things that I'm great at, and then I can delegate or hire the other things. Yes, it's a big step. Yes, it's a lot of responsibility, especially those first few employees, those first few team members. Right? Because then it's like, you've done that work, so you have a way that you think you want it done, and then it's like, okay, well, how do I give them the latitude? How do I give them the flexibility? How do I show them that I trust them to get that work done? Because I see that in them. I see that talent in them to be able to do it. And at the same time, there's moments where you're like, man, it'd be so much faster. I could just step in and get it done.

Yep. And that's the hard part, really, when you think about the growth of any. Getting anybody to help you do things, it's clarifying and communicating in a way that they can do it the way. And then. And then also making sure that you're okay with them doing it the way they do it, not the way you do it.

Well, I think, yeah, it is tough. And I just had a thought, too. When we're thinking about you Know any of you who might be listening on this is they. They might be in that stage where it's just them. And so, you know, maybe we could give them a little bit of encouragement. You know, as we look back on that, maybe we could give them a little bit of encouragement through, you know, what growth we've experienced each time we've made that decision to hire someone that could be great in an area of work that we're already doing. So when you think back on that, like, let's use the design part, you know, because in one of our previous episodes, you mentioned that you're a designer by trade. You could have kept doing design, but you don't hardly do any design anymore. So what growth did you experience in your business when you decided to start hiring designers knowing full well you can do design?

Yeah. So my first hire, other than the joint employee that we shared the receptionist position, was a designer. And the reason why I felt I think I needed to get designer, I. I believe now, as I look back on, is because it's what I knew the best. And so I was able to find. I knew I could find somebody to do the work because I understood how to do it that way. Right. And it wasn't so much that I could then micro them on that because that's what I never wanted to do. But I would understand what they were doing to the extent that I could feel comfortable letting them do that work and me focus on other things. Because back then I was the developer, the designer, the sales, the marketing, all the things. Right.

So you could have confidence in leading that person.

That's right.

Because you understood the role, you understood the job that they were going to be doing. Yeah, Makes total sense.

Some people hire for things that they don't like, you mentioned, that they don't have confidence in. And I think that's just a decision you make as a leader yourself is to what comfort level do you have at that level? And I didn't. I had the comfort level of hiring somebody doing something that I knew because then I knew if they were doing it right, if they were outputting the right type of information that I would be acceptable for. So. And luckily I had a rock star that I hired my first time and he's still with me today. So that's really cool story there.

That's another time, but that is a cool story.

That's kind of how it went for me was hiring designer first. How about you?

Well, I think. So let's capture the fact that that's kind of a Stage right. It's a stage of business growth. It's a stage of movement forward. And so for anyone that's listening, that might be. That might be the first hire that they're most comfortable with because it might be their first time, you know, being more in a leadership or manager type position for their own company. And so they want to have a lot of confidence that they can be a good leader by knowing the role or the responsibilities that that person's going to have. And then later on, you maybe start adding to your team in areas you're not as comfortable with. You know, like I remember. So I'm going to flip it back to you, but I'll still share a little bit too. So I remember when you started really looking for someone that can kind of handle like the financial aspect of your business. Oh, bookkeeper and accounting, because you didn't like the numbers. You know, you were great at sales, you were great at the relationships. You're great at growing the business and building the business. You were great at, you know, the design aspect. What was it like when you hired that first person that was really in an area you weren't comfortable with?

It was scary because you don't know if they're. First of all, you had to make sure you find the right person. So relationships. Right. The scary part was, do you have enough confidence in that person to do what they're doing that's going to represent you? So bookkeeping, it comes really. For me, it was more taxes. That's kind of what started off with. Because I didn't have that much going on with financials. But you're right, Spreadsheets, to me, my eyes just gloss over. I'm more of a visual type person. So that's how I relate to numbers better. So hiring somebody to do that type of work was a risk for me because I didn't know how to ensure that they were doing the job well until the end result came. Taxes were filed. Right. And then Mr. Uncle Sam came knocking on my door saying, you didn't. And I'd be like, why? That was the risk for me in that situation.

Yeah. So I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to kind of share a little bit too, because similar to you as an advisor, as a professional licensed advisor, the first person that I hired outside of the shared receptionist that we're talking about was another advisor for similar reasons. I wanted to make sure that I could help train this person. I wanted to make sure that if they asked me a question, I'd know the answer. Wanted to Be confident in knowing that if there was a situation they were coming up against, that they weren't sure what to do, that I really felt like I could lead them. And so very similar was hiring that first advisor and then from there was realizing that if we're going to serve more people, if we're really going to be passionate about helping as many people as we can, then everyone has a capacity limit. And that's where it really turned into, okay, well, how can we build a team of various aspects of expertise, whether it's operationally from other advisors, from, you know, just certainly outside the scope of what the normal investment or financial planning firm. When we hired our first relationship specialist, that really we hired just to celebrate with people, just to be there for people when they go through rough life stuff. And sometimes, and I think you've experienced this too, and this may be where we actually close out this one and lead into the other one, is, you know, when you start to do things that are different than the rest of the industry, you know, when you start to hire people that maybe are different than what other agencies or financial firms, you know, would hire, and that's where, again, you start to get into new risk, new territory. So I know that you've done some of that. We've certainly done some of that. So maybe that's where we spend some time and have people, you know, everybody feel welcome to come back, check us out again. And maybe that's one of the topics that we talk about is, you know, where are the areas where you did something different? Where are the areas where you're really innovative? Where are the areas where maybe you even drew from a industry completely different than your own to be, you know, get an edge.

Yeah. And I think we should also tap into the idea of, like, how do you manage these people? Because you and I both know that we were not managers when we first started off running these shows.

Right.

We hire people in, you know, performance reviews and things like that. They didn't. We're not part of our spectrum. So that's a whole another area we can consider as well. So I think we got some good things to talk about going forward.

That's right.

This was a great talk, jw. I think we had a good discussion today. Thank you for that.

Thank you. You got Ben the shorts guy over.

There, jw the suits guy.

All right. Look forward to next time.

See ya.

Thank you for listening to Shorts and Suits. Your hosts are Ben Kaulkman of Rocket Media, a digital marketing agency, and J.W. rayhans. Of Rayhans Financial, a financial investment advisory firm. For more information, go to shortsandsuits. Com if you find this podcast helpful, please help us by telling a friend and rating us on itunes. Subscribe to our tribe and learn more@shortsandsuits.com.