Building a Business

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 with Jay Ogner. We're going to be speaking with him about building a business, about continuing from that, we'll say those humble beginnings of getting that first project, getting that thing to grow and building it into a sizable company now, mostly because he found ways to scale his skills and his abilities. And now as he's shifted focus a little bit as you get in, he sometimes do, and looking at where he said, hey, you know, there's some other things that maybe I can do, maybe I can do better as part of not only professionally, but having a full and well-rounded life. And we're going to speak a lot about that as we get into this part two of our discussion with Jay Ogner. So without any further ado, let's dive right back in where we left off last episode. You've talked a lot about transitioning over to owning a business and the sales and marketing side of that. What was that like? Was that something that was just sort of like you stumbled into it in a sense? Or forced into it and like, hey, I really enjoy this. Or was it something where as you were building the business, you realized that that was where you needed to be as the business really grew? Yeah. I mean, I think it was both. I stumbled into it. I stumbled into realizing that's what I needed to do. And you hit on it earlier, like your confidence level goes up when you start to do consulting and you start to land clients and make money and they rave about you and everybody's happy in your. So you start to develop profiles of who those people are that you're working for, that you've done well. Right. Like for me, it was and it still is CTOs that are newer to whatever company they're working at. They come in and they go, well, what the hell is going on with the QA department? Right. And I think that was a great time for me and my business to get in there and go, don't go and hire a bunch of W2 employees that are going to sit around and not do anything between cycles. Hire me and my team who can scale up and down and like do all these things that are a great reason to hire us. But I didn't used to do that. Early on, people would go, I'd rather have a W2 guy. And I'd go, all right, thanks a lot. Have a nice day. And I'd get off the call. Now I love it. Now I'm like, please say you want W2 because I've got a full list of things that I can tell you why you don't want W2 and why you want to work with a contracting company like me. So part of it's the experience. It's the confidence. And it's just like public speaking, right, if you if you really know what you're talking about, then it's less scary, right? It's less it's less intimidating. It's that you can talk about it for hours. I could pitch to anybody. And I don't even really pitch. I just I listen for pain points now. I jot little notes down. And then when the time comes for me to open my mouth again after they're telling me all the reasons why they need somebody like me, I kind of unload with exactly what they want to hear because I've heard it. You know, nobody's nobody's building a fusion engine that they need my help with. Like they're building an e-commerce product or they're building a fintech platform. They're doing something in health care. They're doing all these things that have like I've seen a million times now. So the sales side of it has just become not easy, but exciting for me because I kind of know what I'm looking for. And marketing is just. Marketing is just like is. You know, wild west of stuff that like you could spend your entire life trying to figure out how do I market my business properly? And that challenge is exciting to me. All the different tools I mentioned, the different processes and strategies you can do kind of understanding who bites on what, how do you get your message out there effectively? How do you spend your money in an effective way? Kind of starting to realize, like if you invest in a couple of different things marketing wise, that the return will be much more than the money you spent, you know, to do the marketing. If you spend five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars a year on LinkedIn ads, but you get five clients from that, that should easily eclipse the ten thousand dollars you spent on those ads like that sort of stuff. Just the new discoveries, I guess, running a business, especially in the marketing sales area, have been super exciting for me. And so, yeah, I kind of stumbled into it, but I realized it's something I really enjoy. And once again, the old saying or whatever, you know, like if you if you enjoy it, you don't work a day in your life. Like I legitimately feel like I don't work. I feel like somebody's going to knock on my door one day and be like, hey, what the you've been bullshit this whole time. Get it. Get back to work. Like I'm I'm enjoying myself too much running this business and kind of providing value for people because that's that's what we do. Now, how did you grow out of because I'm assuming that you have a lot of customers now that you don't get through Elan's and Upwork is how did you sort of grow out of that into into what you saw, how you market it today? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. We always wanted to get out of Upwork. I wanted I'll say that differently. We wanted to transition upward to be a sales channel for us. We didn't want that to be our only sales channel. We don't do business with anybody in Russia or Ukraine, and we don't have any Russians or Ukrainians on our staff. But when they chopped off the entirety of Russian freelancers and agencies and Upwork, it like really snapped for me like, oh, it's as simple as that. If you don't do something to get out of this mess that you're in, you are going to go right under if they were to take your account offline or if they were to do anything like that. So that was a big catalyst was just seeing that happen. And then I kind of went, oh, wow, I need to like make a real business at this point, because if you're doing just an Upwork based consultant, so you can do a million a year. Not really a big problem. But if you want to be a two or a five or a ten, you've got to kind of step out. Solidify those channels. And the first thing you really have to do, in my opinion, is get somebody to run Upwork for you. Right. Hire a VA, hire somebody to run Upwork, walk through everything that you do with them and show them how to submit proposals in a way that you would answer requests, answer messages, refresh all the time and see what works out there. Because that was also part of it, because you have to sit there and constantly refresh and like, you know, if you're not doing that 24 hours a day, you're potentially losing contracts. You're losing bids that are just going to go by and you're going to be like, oh, well, that's just money I'm going to lose if I'm not sitting there watching the screen all the time. So the biggest thing I did there was I solidified the channel. I put people in place, I put processes in place, I made it repeatable. And then I kind of stepped out and said, OK, now what? And so I hired a marketing, this kind of the stars align this girl used to work with, started a marketing consultancy firm, Jessica Corrado from Corrado Consulting. Shout out to her. She helped me kind of identify who we were as a business, who our customer profiles were, they were going all the kind of standard marketing stuff, because I don't have an MBA. But it all kind of came together with like, OK, here's who you should be going after. Here's some messaging that you could potentially use. And we've taken that over these last couple of years. And like I said, I've created LinkedIn campaigns. I did a lot of LinkedIn kind of outreach, but did connection requests and got people, you know, in the network. And then I hit them up a couple of months later and say, hey, how are you guys doing with QA? I attend a lot of events. We're in the Philly Chamber of Commerce, the Philly Startup Leaders Group, the PACT group, the Lower Bucks Chamber of Commerce. So joining some of these groups as well has been helpful just to get visibility and just kind of talk to other business owners. And then for one of those programs, for the PACT program, the Philly Alliance for Commerce and Trade, they had a mentorship program where they assign, you know, you basically apply, you interview and they will give you like three or four mentors who are still really good friends of mine to this day. And they were super helpful earlier on, too. They were like, you know, lean into the things that have been working for you. Partnerships are also really big for us. There's something just kind of, you know, I'm sure I saw it somewhere and I kind of reached out to some QA automation companies and partnerships have been huge for us, massive for us. Like they've been a massive drivers of business. So like they're a separate channel. Like we get partnership deals all the time and referrals through our partners. So, you know, I would say the biggest transition was was the Russia thing that forced it. And then we stepped out and said, LinkedIn, we've tried email outreach, which, you know, it's kind of hit or miss. There's a lot of work involved and not a lot of, you know, return for that. But it's pretty cheap. So we kind of keep investing in that in-person stuff, networking events. And some of the clients that I would go after on LinkedIn that I could never get in touch with. I got warm introductions to those people through the Chamber of Commerce groups. They're like, oh, yeah, I know that guy. And they would send me an email. And now that guy's a client of mine. But like I couldn't get to him. I could not get him to answer an email or a phone call or a LinkedIn message. I couldn't get his attention. But then the guy at the affiliate Chamber of Commerce introduced me and it was a nice, warm introduction. And now he's a client of mine. So like there's a million different ways and it's, you know, it's a daunting task. But that's why I think I like it, too, because it's just so much so much to try to figure out. Right. And like nobody's really mastered it in the SMB space. Otherwise, we'd be, you know, retired by now. But it's a fun challenge for me. Now, as you as you've scaled out essentially your the marketing and sales side of it, do you you continue? Are you sort of the I guess for like a better sort of the face of your organization or maybe more the brains of the organization? Or is it really just the organization and you just you're almost like you're an employee there at your at your company at this point? Certainly not the brains. That's for sure. I'm certainly not the brains. I've hired all the brains. Yeah, I mean, I'm the face of the organization for sure. I'm a team member. You know, I support my team, the executive team and all our engineers. I support all those guys with whatever they need. I do some finance stuff. I farmed off most of the day to day, you know, in the month to month finance stuff. But, yeah, I mean, I'm basically the face the organization. My job now is to land contracts. There are some contracts. There are some contracts where I still go in and I may pivot back to this a little more because it gets you more into the enterprise space is now that I've built this established business is to be the consulting. The high level consultant that brings his team in to do the work, right? So typically I'll bring people in. I'll hand them off for scoping and, you know, they'll they'll work through my team and my channels and everything's great. But for bigger enterprise clients, they need somebody like me to come in and land out a strategy and a roadmap for them. And then I say, oh, yeah, by the way, this is how many hours it's going to take. And you guys should use my team for it. So like, that's a separate, that's a separate type of responsibility and engagement that I have today. They're higher ticket, they're longer sales cycle, but it's kind of like the evolution of being a business owner is, you know, you can kind of be that high level strategist while still not being in the day to day in your business, but but bringing in business from different avenues, right? So I'd be bringing in enterprise business by doing that work instead of doing a podcast or instead of doing, you know, outreach via LinkedIn or whatever it is. So, yeah, I would say, you know, I'm the face and general cheerleader for most of my team. You mentioned the podcast and you do have one, what is called the first customer. And you guys can go check that out, you know, particularly if you've, especially if you like listening to Jay, that would be a good way to listen to him more. Even if you don't just still listen to it. Don't leave him a five star review. Tell him how much you love him. Now, is that a, was that a, is that a marketing effort or is it more of a hobby kind of, you know, talking about the things you like to talk about kind of podcast? It's a marketing effort, but not a good one. I love doing the show. I found out that I love doing podcasts. I would like to do one that's more targeted towards my target customer persona. I have one that I'm kind of cooking up. I think that I could kind of have people on the show that maybe even if they weren't potential leads, I can get on their social feeds of people who are a little more aligned with what my customers need to be. But yeah, I just, I don't really know. It kind of started as like the personal branding thing, right? Like get me out there, get me on people's feeds. And it's been fun. It's been, I've met a ton of great people. I kind of screwed up and did, ran my LinkedIn automation for the podcast and send it out to like, and I didn't screw up. I did it on purpose, but then I didn't realize I'd have like, like 400 replies to be on the podcast because, you know, everybody loves to talk about themselves. I mean, look at me for the past 45 minutes. And so it's been intense. It's been a, it's been, I mean, you know how it works. It's, I mean, I do three or four a day sometimes and it's a lot. My wife said to me the other day, she's like, do you do any work or you just do podcasts all day? I do work still, but yeah, so I mean, it's a hobby, but it's, it's, it's taught me, I think, how to create a podcast in an effective way. I just, I just got to the point literally today where I was talking to my team. They do all the scheduling and all the other pieces of it, like getting people on and like doing all that, doing all the posting on social, but I was still doing a lot of the editing and it's just a lot, I mean, you know, it's a lot to like put together an episode, put together descriptions and summaries, upload, you know, make sure it's there, post, I'll do all the stuff. It's a lot. So one thing for me is like, as soon as something really feels like work, I try to get it off my plate, like if it's not fun, then I'm going to do a shitty job at it. And it was fun for a while and I love doing the recordings, but the, the, the post-production, especially if you're using like Descript or something, which a lot of it's automated, it's just clicking through stuff and kind of, you know, making clips and doing other stuff. Like I don't, so anyway, yeah, I enjoy it and I think it's for personal branding. And I'm glad I did it because it's teaching me how to maybe build one a little more targeted to try to get business out of it. And that's, yeah, very much the experience. So a lot of the same where it came out of, you know, some of us say, Hey, I think this would be fun to do. And it, you know, actually I just want to try it and then realize that I enjoyed it. And then sort of got to the point where it's like, okay, now what I want to do with it and again, sort of took off before thinking about it as a very targeted type of a podcast, but then it's, yeah, it's gotten to the point where you, sometimes you get into that. You're like, I'd rather, it's like a hobby. It's like, you know, I'm like, you know, with your private pilot, it's not like you're saying, Oh, I'm going to go be a professional pilot. It's like, no, I like to do this. And so I'm okay. Not, you know, maybe not, not getting my IFR or getting, you know, jet qualified or something like that. It's like, I can just go with a, you know, go out and do what I want to do. Much like that. It goes back to the coding thing too. It's like there's sometimes there's that, that context or a certain level that you like doing, but you don't want to do it almost, you don't want to do it as a job, you don't want to do it competitively or professionally because that like, that takes the fun out of it. It's like, nah, I'd rather, I'd rather take a little bit of that stress off and just, you know, like you say, do the things you want to do. And then as you get to a point where you're like, ah, this is, I don't enjoy this as much. There's somebody else that does and go, you know, find them and have them go do it and you still get a very, you know, quality product that's produced that you can be happy with. And it's hard too, because I think with, with, you know, people like us, we'd like to go hard at something and like, when you go hard at stuff, you get, you can get burned out pretty quickly. And, um, you know, it's, it's hard to just go, I'm just going to go halfway on this and see how it goes. Like, it's not really the type of person that I am personally. And so, uh, yeah. And I'm just, I'm very fortunate to have a really good team that we've assembled over the years. And like, if there's something that needs to be done, um, you know, they'll do it and they'll get it done right. And, um, I'm looking forward to not doing editing and just being able to do the show and just kind of hand this stuff off to them. So, uh, delegation, delegation, delegation. And that touched on something that in our conversation, I think that you've got to probably got a pretty good hold on is how do you, um, how do you avoid burnout? You know, with this, as you've got all the, and it's like going through even your introduction, you're obviously a very driven person. There's a lot of stuff that you've done. How do you avoid burnout with all of that? I don't do the same thing really ever. Like I don't, I don't know what, I mean, I know what burnout would look like because I've certainly been burned out, but I don't do the same thing enough to be burned out, you know? Um, and that's why I think I love hobby so much because you can have a million of them, you can do anything, you know, you know, it's a lot of work. And I think that's like, and running a business same way. There's no, I don't do, are there, there's not even, I was about to say like there's times that I get burned out with the business, but there's not, like there's not, um, I think maybe that's the key is I just don't, I don't do the same thing over and over again. I don't do things enough. I mean, even the shows that I do, you know, sometimes you'll find yourself, you do a lot of work to set up a podcast, get everybody on the show. You do, I have your questions ready. You get them on, you do all the stuff and you ask questions and then you start to zone out and some of the answers. That's when I realized I need to switch it up a little bit, right? Like if I'm spending all this time doing all this stuff and I'm not even engaged and I mean, I'm engaged and I'm doing my thing as the host, but that's like, I need to switch it up. And, uh, I was on a podcast mastering the smart minds with else Kramer, uh, who was fantastic by the way. And she had this deck of cards that she had, uh, just like posted notes that she had different words written on that she shuffles up before the show and she'll ask like different questions. Like, you know, uh, this one's about money. She's like, so tell me your, how you feel about, you know, money today as opposed to forever ago, um, just different ideas and different ways to keep the show interesting. So I guess that's, that's kind of it. It's like, I don't know, even my workout routines, I may get up at five and work out, but like, I don't do the same thing every day or else I'd get, you know, I'm as a huge Peloton junkie for years. I still do the Peloton, but now I do a bunch of different strength training stuff with that. So I don't get, get burned out by it. That makes a lot of sense. And that's, uh, yeah, I think that's the thing is if you can change it up enough, you don't get, you don't get stuck in that rut. So you end up getting burned out as you've, you've always got something else to lean on, which again goes back to your earlier, you know, that's, that's why I think you should do consulting. It's same thing as unless, unless you're really comfortable being that, that guy or that gal that gets up every morning, he drives the same route. You go to the same desk, you have the same cube farm, you got the same work, you've got the same, you know, end of the day, blah, blah, blah. If you start, you know, even if you're doing that grind and you have consulting on the off hours, that was something I found a lot that, uh, being received, if you had the same as when I was doing that kind of, cause I had some of the same path where you're, you know, you're working full time, but then you're, you've got some, some side hustle stuff. And it's sort of, to me, it broke up the day because it's stuff like, Oh, hey, I can't, I, you know, in quotes, can't go on just a regular lunch, but it's like, I get a lunch break and I'm going to go work on something or I'm going to get up a little earlier. I'm going to, you know, when I get home, I'm going to do some work at night. Or once kids go to bed, go, you know, do a little work there. Is that sort of how that, that worked for you as well to sort of keep you energized when you went through, you know, cause sometimes it's a long day. Yeah. Yeah. And I am. Even doing the nine to five stuff, I never felt like, I mean, yes, everybody's long days, but I would always try to make it interesting. I'm very, I'm not going to introvert, but I feel like I'm very social. So like, I would always kind of like, I would much rather be much more likely to be found wandering around the office, like talking to people while they're still getting my work done, getting all the, you know, busting ass and, you know, doing things I had to do. But wandering around talking to people and, and, you know, trying some new process or trying some new thing. But yeah, I think having. Having something to look forward to, which is like extra money is a powerful thing, right? You can look, you can, you can find extra time to do it and you have to be creative about it. And I think, I think you just have to. You have to be somebody who's like, who wants to be challenged. It's very easy just to, just to, like I said, do your nine to five thing, go in, talk in, do your work, have your lunch, come home, and then like kind of try to live a normal life. But yeah, I agree. I think it's a great point. Having consulting on the side definitely mixes it up and you don't feel monotonous. You don't really. Yeah, it can be. It's a different kind of burnout. It's like a good burnout. You're like, I'm really. I'm really building something different for myself than just working real hard. So I get a better review at the end of the year. So I get a bigger bonus. Like it's a, it's a, I'm building a consulting career on the side is a pretty powerful thing. I think we have, we've covered quite a bit of it. I know as you mentioned, nobody's ever tired of talking about themselves, but we hit that and I know you've got a lot you've got to want to respect your time and your day and that. So I want to, again, I want to thank you for, for coming on the show. What is the best way if somebody is like, man, I can, I could really use somebody to come in and help our QA effort. What are some of the best ways to get a hold of you? Well, first of all, make sure everybody goes out and gives five stars to Rob and the developer podcast. Fantastic podcast. You're a great host, Rob. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Find me on LinkedIn, jagner, a-i-g-n-e-r. Check out the website, jdaqa.com and feel free to shoot me an email, jayatjdaqa.com. And people have no idea how to get into QA either. And I get a lot of those requests. Like, how do I even start doing that? So if anybody has those questions, happy to help me out. Happy to give advice. And thanks again for having me, Rob. You've been awesome. Thanks a lot. We'll get, we'll have links in the show notes for all of that. And thank you again for coming on and hope you have a good rest of your day. You too, brother. Thank you. And that wraps it up. I want to thank Jay again for some great things that he said about us. And then also the time. He took a lot of time that when you're in that kind of business, there is a value there and it's very appreciative. We're very appreciative of him for spending that time with us and really talking through his story, even though, as he said, you know, people do like to talk about themselves, but I think such a detailed and thorough background and story is very valuable to all of us. I know I got a lot out of it. I hope you got, you know, as always, if you cut half out of it, as I did, you're going to be way ahead of where you were before you started listening to this interview. As always, we will be coming back. We've got a lot of work to do. We're going to do a recap and we're just going to continue chugging along here, finding the ways for us to become better developers and better entrepreneurs. But until next time, 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-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, and other platforms. 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. Please check out school.developa-noor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer, and we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. 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