Starting a Business and Setting Boundaries

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well hello and welcome back. We are continuing an interview, continuing that season of interviews as well. We are into part two of our conversation with Annalise Warren and we are talking about starting a business but a lot of it is really focused around making sure you get the right value, that you get paid what you're worth, that you understand what it is that you bring to the table so that it's not in a way that is sort of like begging or something like that, like oh hey please will you take my business. But coming forward with that confidence that what you bring to the table is valuable, that you are out there, that you are trying to help them and that you're going to make them better off, that whatever it is that they pay, they will get more than their money's worth. That's the goal for any such transaction and before I get too far off on the rabbit trail, let's go ahead and get back into our conversation and let Annalise tell us in her words how she approaches that. I'm glad she said that, that you mentioned that and we brought that up because I said that's always been what I've seen as well. People will come in, they'll be very hesitant about charging what the value is but then also about saying hey okay we need 10% upfront or 50% upfront or whatever the payment arrangements are and I don't know that I really haven't had people that have come back that I've talked to in these kind of interviews and that where they've said oh no then in that case we could have paid you if we're going to pay in two weeks but other than special circumstances or something it's like they'll just be like hey send us a PO and then we'll drop it in the mail or something but usually I think that kind of stuff, especially these days it seems like it's more accepted and just expected even that it's like hey if I'm going through there, there's going to be a process and it helps you because then you don't have to worry about it, it just gets done, you don't have to call them, you don't have to email them, you don't have to do all of that billing so it goes back to that, now you're saving yourself time as well. Totally and I think you'll find that no one will work for free so like even if you have to explain that we're going you know sorry we don't have anyone here that is willing to work for nothing but I don't think you'll need to have that conversation because like I said they're excited to get started if they've said yes but I get that it is scary, the first time I had to give a big quote that's another thing I learnt about selling is that if I just sent them a quote via email I pretty much never got the job, maybe 5%, I got the job then if it was a referral only since I don't think I've ever got a job from just sending an email so what I did was I made them get on a Zoom call with me and screen share their proposal and go through it literally line by line like page by page and that is what upped my close rate, my first 20 I think it was 21 sales calls were a failure. Total failure. Didn't get anything, I think it was the 22nd call that I did, I finally sold something. But then yeah so I would go through the proposal on with them and that was great because then I could go through any objections that they had which are just questions right going like oh but what if this happens or what about that and what happened was that they understood that they weren't comparing apples with apples, it wasn't just they scrolled to the bottom line and was like oh well this is $3000 a month and this is $4000 a month so we're going with $3000 and not even understand actually what it is that we were providing. So that for us too was a really big game changer in terms of actually being able to sell and the strategy that I learnt was after you go through what you're going to do and all of that and then you say okay the set up is X and the monthly retainer is X and then I had to literally like bite my teeth together because I was terrified right, I was scared and it was big for me to be quoting thousands of dollar fees and so I had to just bite my teeth as soon as I'd said the price I had to bite my teeth together and wait for them to process and then that's when the questions would come and it was almost never like oh my gosh that's so expensive like it was like oh but what about because people don't like I think you thinking that they don't have enough money either so they don't want to be like I can't afford that like maybe some people do but most of them will reasonably try and kind of logically process that and then come up with any questions and that's when the selling would happen and you can be like oh well if that is out of your budget then we can take out these things and reduce it you know you get to have those conversations and so with my heart pounding the shutting of the mouth after you know you say the price that's that also got me through that that actual asking for money but literally gritting teeth but hey you made it through yeah now you mentioned that you you had some issues hiring the wrong people as well but you you know you also mentioned you've you know got a pretty good team you very early on started building out a team and now granted it was you know a lot of junior people and sort of that's not an uncommon approach either I think so what how did that come about and how do you maybe even a little bit about how did you define or realize that you had the wrong people I had no idea what I was doing Rob I was like oh we can hire someone to write blog posts and I'll just get the cheapest person I can and like I did I did all the wrong things I hired people offshore I hired friends and family I didn't have proper position descriptions and now what I do is I help people build systems and team into their business because what I didn't mention is I don't know how many about two and a half years ago I also started a VA agency so now having grown two agencies to be successful I now coach people on how to do that not people getting started but once they've kind of got the the ball rolling and they're in that place where I'm like I'm drowning in client work and I don't know how to fix this thing and so now I have a really great process but before I did not I didn't I thought I didn't even I didn't even know how to approach it or think about it and so I was just like I'm busy and I don't want to do that and I've met you and you know how to do that thing so you can take that piece I didn't even think really strategically around my skills of this my you know my expertise is this this is the gap that we need and what I learned was that when you have the right person in the right role that brings in profit it's not profit and then you hire the people you kind of need to figure out how you can make each role that you bring in profit producing whether that is because you're hiring them out and you can get four times what they were like what they're charging you or whatever whatever the case but that was the first step in doing that and then how to hire the right person as in like the role we thought about where we were where we were going right and I'm going if I want to serve if I want to bring personally in this much money then the company needs to make x amount of money and then in order to make x amount of money we need to have this many clients in order to have this many clients we need to have this many people like it was just really massaging it like that and reverse engineering and going okay actually we need an account manager we're going to need this many tech people and then thinking about it like that and hiring the right people comes down to a really stringent filtered process on which is that hiring process so having a really great job description so that they know what good looks like actually measuring what they do what they do having kpis and making that known up front because some people really thrive having metrics and some people really kind of shy away from that so you want to get the people that are driven to achieving and then having tests in that process in that hiring process so literally in the job ad I would put maybe three different tests I'd be like well where's the spelling mistake at the end I would write tell me where the spelling mistake is address your letter like write banana in the subject line and tell me your favorite joke and so by having these different things I'm scanning for attention to detail which for us is really really important from their joke I was like do I actually like this person because if it's their favorite joke like that says a lot about kind of their personality like can I spend eight hours a day with with this type of person or not because it is actually important to like the people you spend time with and and then we went through a process we implemented a process of giving them tests so the top three that we'd shortlisted and we would ask them to send a video to just introducing themselves so we could again get a feel for how they would feel about are you going to fit in with the team is there chemistry there like do you have the nature that is going to be able to talk to our clients like all of that is really important it's not just skill set because that can often be taught it's more like the character and the the chemistry pieces that we hire for because that is what really matters with maintaining that that you know that internal culture and brand and the top three we would give them a test literally we would give them a client's work for the month and give them a paid test and we'll pay you know probably not a lot like here we'll give you two hundred dollars here's the here's the task and we would compare them so that we had actually tested them and of course that's optional if they didn't want to do that exchange then fine and that is the process we went through to be able to get the right person and then we had SOPs and checklists and videos coming kind of coming out of our ears to make sure that we trained them really well after that as well. Now have you always been I'm assuming you have but have you always been a a virtual organization and so that these these are also remote workers that you're hiring? Yeah yeah for a time we had people in in the office with us like we hired a co-working space and we did that but then COVID happened so then for a time I had someone in my home office one of the team or maybe uh actually there was time where maybe three of us would would co-work in the same space but most of us are virtual yeah. Now did that change as you as you shifted from that that shared space to now more virtual did you do just a little bit how you were how you were looking for the ideal candidates and some of the questions in the interview process as well? We time track and I like to be really flexible with hours I kind of as long as I could make team meetings I know that I started my business for flexibility and that's really important to me so I wanted to be able to provide that to my people so as long as they were tracking their time and they showed up for the meetings that we had agreed on I kind of didn't care when they did then when they did the work so that it didn't matter so much it actually opened it up because then you get talent from wherever like we have clients all over the world so I could have talent from all over the world and that like that's really fun I think that adds diversity and interest and it makes it easier so you don't have to you know be limited to our little regional town. Yeah it does make it you've got a lot bigger pool to to draw from to you know figure out who you who will best do that job and fill that role now you mentioned something that I think is you know sort of just in passing but I think it's very important for people is that you mentioned you can earn more money but you can't earn more time and I think that's an essential thing to understand particularly if you're going into you know business or you know as an entrepreneur and particularly if you're in a situation with services where a lot of times you're selling you're effectively selling time for money and making sure that that's a you know it's it's a transaction that you're comfortable with now is this something that you have sort of learned over the years as you've been as you've been building your business or is that something even early on you you sort of had as a as a cornerstone for you? No it didn't it wasn't early on I mean I started with the I think like a lot of people I started my business because I wanted the freedom and then what often happens what I see and what happened to me was that we go out and we're really great at what we do and we charge too little and we just go out and get clients and then we realize that we're totally just stuck drowning in the client work and working these crazy hours and just you know getting calls at all time of the day we just we haven't laid boundaries down because we haven't learned all of the business skills that we actually need we're just really great at our thing and we just want to do our thing and have the freedom to do it when we want to do it but actually when you start a business there's so much more to it we have to become experts at marketing we have to know finance we have to be able to you know have that leadership piece if you don't want to do every single piece of your business yourself which I haven't ever met anyone who wants to do every single piece of their business themselves so even if you don't want a big team it's likely you're going to need at least a support person and it's your job to to leave them like I think often we try and just be the employee in our business and that gets to the point where like how do I say it that businesses are insatiable like a time and money hungry monster and it will take from you as much as you will give it as much and for me that got to the point where when I had a team that couldn't quite serve my clients in the way that I needed if things came up that what would happen is I would pick up the slack and I would be the one working you know 16 18 hour days trying to fill in the gaps and make sure that everyone was happy and produce products that were actually you know to the standard that I wanted to produce and that was on me but I think a lot of us do that and it was at that point when I realized I'd created a prison for myself like I'd started for freedom I'd built this thing really quickly not really thought about it very smartly and then found myself in this place where I'm like I can't get off this this I can't escape this because I have all I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to staff every month every week and like I just I had nowhere to go and so it was then that I was like hang on like let's just re-break this I could put some scaffolding around this break it down a bit and restructure and restructure in a way that I can keep doing this for 20 years not just because this is life now and I feel like a lot of us will sacrifice go ahead down by my arm for this thing that we're trying to create or this dream that we have and we kind of forget that that's not even promised right like things life is life and sometimes life can be really harsh and really horrible and we don't know how much time we have and I know that sounds morbid but that has really been kind of brought home to me more and more over the last 12 months personally and so that has been a really big focus over the last kind of two years is going well this is life now and even though the bank account doesn't look exactly like what we want it to or you know we haven't got to the top of the mountain whatever that is for you this is life now the in between and so how do we enjoy this now and have what we want as best we can now and for me that was about looking at my calendar and putting in the things that I enjoyed in life in first like kind of like profit first but going like like what does life first actually look like and can I make that work like can I you know put in when I want to exercise because I was sacrificing my health when I want to have date night with my husband when I want to see my girlfriends when we're going away you know for the weekend when like all of the things that that you love like hobbies and all of that can you put that on the calendar first and then figure out okay within that this is when I'm working and of course life is going to happen we're not robots kids are going to get sick like that's not going to look exactly like that but if we start with that in mind at least then we shrink the time and money hungry monster to within the boundaries of kind of what we set for ourselves tame the beast a little bit as it were exactly that was a really big monologue sorry that was awesome that was great so this and this does come with one of the things that actually was initially that I wanted to talk a little bit about and we've ended up having a great time talking about everything else but I want to touch on this before we wrap it up is one of the things you talk about is going through all of these challenges and especially as you've laid out your story is going through all of this and then getting to getting through business and not getting burned out because that was sort of we started at the top where you know you end up where you've you've made mistakes because we all do we you know you're at that we're at that point we've made these mistakes it's not making the money we wanted to do it doesn't feel like it's it's going to be successful and you just sort of and you're just tired you're just burned out so what are some of your recommendations particularly because it sounds like you've really you know you've tackled a couple of those beasts is what are some recommendations for somebody that's either feels themselves going that way or feels themselves in that burnout is how do you you know avoid it or or maybe get out of it yeah definitely the exercise that I mentioned and how I like to think about business now is through seven systems and so I think we can add too much into business we can get distracted we can be like oh shiny object or we can just get burnt out because we're not charging enough so kind of figure out what the problem is first and actually properly identifying that am I just doing busy work or have I taken on too much that I actually do need to do and figure out like actually what's it called like diagnose the problem properly but in business we need seven systems I believe there's the traditional five which is marketing sales service delivery and a finance and legal and HR like the people part so we need processes around all of those five things and I'm all about simplicity so for marketing how can you do that as simply as possible well you need to get in front of new people you need to nurture and build relationships with those people and you need to sell to them like that's the marketing and sales but we we do a hundred things but we just need one way of each really rather than being I know I'm on this platform I'm trying this and I'm networking and I'm like no just pick one channel like just one just one and nail that and then you can add on but start off we start off way too like too many buckets in front of us and then service delivery you're going to want to outsource some of that eventually most likely and so as it's just you if we set out processes and checklists and really have that really tight as to like have repeatable things that we do then that is going to make it a heap easier so that someone can take that on finance and legal having systems around that protects your business and so you know know what those are for yourself and have a system around okay we do this weekly we do this quarterly we do this monthly whatever that kind of looks like for you and then the other two things I mean we already talked about people and that onboarding process so I'll leave that one but the two that I added in were and are well-being and impact so the well-being piece is I heard this saying and I think it's Joe Polish who I originally heard it from was that we are the million dollar racehorse but we don't treat ourselves like the million dollar racehorse we we run ourselves into the ground often like I did and if you think about you are the thing that runs your business right you are the you're the you're the racehorse but we don't we wouldn't treat a racehorse how we treat ourselves we would make sure that the racehorse got enough sleep was eating the right food was you know was getting trained was getting like was looked after so that it could perform but we treat ourselves like crap and then expect good performance like I think that was like oh yeah that's what I'm doing so adding in that piece so that you can be strong to hold the weight of your business because sometimes we don't think about it like that but we are holding that like we we are supporting the weight of our business the people the clients like all of that is on our shoulders as the founder ceo whatever you want to call yourself and so if you don't look after the foundation you're not going to be able to do it for the long term and so I really embedded well-being and made it a non-negotiable that you know I go to the gym however many times I look after my mental health like I see my friends I actually have fun and enjoy my life so that people get the overflow of that not like I'm not trying to pour from an empty cup and because nobody wins then and what I learned pretty early on was once I brought my husband home like we could afford what we wanted now right we had pretty small calls originally I was like great we can pay the bills like what's more like I wasn't you know a Lamborghini type of person not that we were at that point but do you know what I mean like why am I continuing to grow this business and for me it came down to having purpose and embedding impact and philanthropy in the actual business activities that we did and for that for me offers again like why am I getting I'm up every day it's not just because business can get boring right when you do the same thing again and again for me I needed something bigger and I and then for me that is that piece I get to add now I get to make a difference the more I grow my business the more I can you know give back in different ways we do I mean we do it in lots of different ways so they're the two systems that I recommend building into your business for longevity sustainability and avoiding burnout yeah just as you're saying that I sort of get this this vision of a sort of a rise and fall of the of the life in the business as you start out you know you're you're gung-ho you're really excited about it's like I want to this is what I want to do and then you get into that point where you say you sort of have to you have to grow the business because it has to have there's a certain point where you it's got to have enough girth I guess to be you know to be sustainable that you can't you can't just be you all the time there's a point where you've got to grow it so that it has some you can automate things you can have processes those things can get done and then as you get over sort of over that hump now you get into sort of where you're at is now you're back into okay now I've got that that momentum I've got that thing built that machine now that's there so now I can sort of grow again and go back to this is why this is where I want to make impact this is what I want to do these these are the reasons I got into this and I think it is it's one of those that it's it's hard getting up that hill sometimes it's sometimes you know it's a straight climb up it feels like but I think it's good to hear that there you know there is on that other side that if you do it right and you think about it and you set up the processes and you get those systems in place you can get back to this is what I really got into this for because I don't think there's probably a few but most people don't go into this because they're just like I want to make money there's a there's something more there's a why behind there and when you get away from it it gets is I think when you do get burned out when you get frustrated but when you can get back to it is when you you get up every day or like great I'm I'm going to work this is awesome I love having you know you almost don't want to go on vacation because you like your work that much yeah or if you I think if you design it right like every day is the vacation like you kind of get like it lights you up you know you like you love what you do that you don't I remember at the end of last year you know getting close to Christmas and all my friends like oh my gosh I'm exhausted and I was like I feel great like I feel good and I was like oh my gosh we did it like I'd finally realized it'd been about a year where I'm like oh I got the balance right and like again like life's not perfect right like I'm just talking that the majority I wasn't exhausted going into that period I didn't have a bajillion things on and we just moved into homeschooling our kids and so in that that six months and I was like oh this was a good like this is good I think we finally figured out for us for this stage of life why the kids are this old what life should look like now and so it once you get there it's achievable it's hard work right it's not like it's lots of playing and testing and experimenting and not making that wrong and and yeah working hard when you're working hard and but having that pull back as well. So I want to thank you for your time this has been an incredible conversation and I guess I want to leave you sort of with the you know for anybody that's that's now introduced me I'll met you through this you know virtually in that that may be saying hey you know I really love to you know help you out with some marketing business or on the VA side I know we've talked about those as well in the past is how the what are some of the best ways to to get a hold of you get make get in contact with you? Yeah probably the easiest way is to come over to Instagram and send me a DM just come and say hi and let me know that you heard me here and yeah we can have a bit of a chat. Any words of wisdom that you'd like to part with the audience before we before they you know stand up and give you the standing ovation? I don't think I've spoken to about myself and my journey for an hour for a long time so that was a bit of a weird experience but yeah good to kind of reflect. Um, hands of wisdom I think the biggest thing is there's no right way to do this right there's no right way and we can just judge ourselves by someone else or what society says or whatever but ultimately there is no box that we need to squeeze ourselves into so really do what works for you even if it's weird to other people like for example I got on this call at 6am a lot of people that I know would think that is crazy and wouldn't do that but it works for me because my kids are still asleep like it's there's nothing you can't do it wrong right and if you're if you feel good about it do it that way like test it that way and so that would be my biggest encouragement is there are no rules so if you've been a good human there's no rules let's put it that way. Well thank you so much for your time thank you for sharing your story this was this was great because we talked about sometimes you just we go from an introduction and just go right into a story like this and it's I think there's a lot of good points there a lot of things that that I think resonate with a lot of us that have been through or in varying states of that and I think it was really pleasant to get your story and get some of your insights out of that as well so thank you so much for your time especially so early in the morning. Thank you so much Rob I hope that yeah if there's bits in there that can help people shortcut so they didn't have to go through as much of the bumps as I as I did then that's amazing so yeah thank you very much for having me. It's always fun to learn from the mistakes of others instead of having to do them yourselves. And that will wrap it up I really did enjoy this conversation with her I think these retrospective types of discussions are valuable I know they are to me and hopefully they are to you because they help us get a little bit different perspective you know we'll talk to people and they have been successful and in different ways than we have but there are lessons learned through all of that about how we should view what we're doing what we're offering and how we should you know sort of plan it out in a way that we are also able to take care of ourselves that we are able to be that that prized racehorse out there and be able to you know win the races that that we're expected to. As always I want to thank you for your time there'll be shows links in the show notes you can get ahold of Annalise if you have any questions for her or any way that you can send some business her way as well and we are not done we'll come back with a new interview next time around but until then go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers the Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts we are there and remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. 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