Chelsea And TFD Co-Founder Lauren On Building A 7-Figure Business From Zero

hey guys i'm chelsea and i'm lauren and we are the financial diet now listen some of you guys who are listening to this or watching this who did not watch the channel like six years ago are gonna be like what the hell was that well the true historians amongst you will know that i used to co-host the tfd youtube channel with the person sitting here in the studio to my right uh lauren verhaig my co-founder and business partner uh who are you lauren for those who don't know i'm lauren um so yeah uh just a little bit about me um you know we co-founded the business together way back in like 2015 2015 um at the time i was working at an ad agency so yeah i've been here since the beginning um i feel like you know when people come up to me at events and they know who i am it feels crazy because i i forget like that i was at one point on the channel very regularly um because it's been a minute i had to like you know bust out the lipstick you know fluff my hair get back into you know the vibe of being on camera it's a little intimidating um you know but a long time has passed so i'm here again um and i'm the chief design officer which is really exciting it's a big responsibility to make sure that tfd is always looking fresh and cool and you know popping in the design space you know it's uh i i love doing it i'm a huge design nerd and it's just like super fun to have seen the company grow over so many years my heart yeah um so okay so for people who watch the channel you know they back in the day you've been to their eyes gone uh for quite some time but uh fun fact she's been here the whole time uh she's never stopped working here it's just she doesn't do it on camera anymore other things have happened in your life tell us a little bit catch us up yeah so since i've left the youtube channel visually as a co-host i have been you know just behind the scenes doing a lot of design work you know working on pitches and branding and like everything that you guys see the podcast branding like the stuff on the website on a personal note like i could be wrong here but didn't you also give birth to a human being on a personal note i was gonna say movie beyond work stuff um i had a baby um we have a six-month-old daughter lily who is just like my absolute obsession i could just cry talking about her i look at photos of her every night before i go to sleep um i'm like i typify that like mom meme where it's like you like spend all day trying to get a five-minute break from your child only to like spend like an hour on your phone scrolling about like a photos of them before you go to sleep at night um which is totally me but she's so wonderful and my husband and i bought a house which is really exciting um yeah i lived in ireland for a year a lot's been happening i mean it's been a i mean the pandemic like everything's been it's just been a rough in some ways you got a dog i mean i got a dog um yeah no like the pandemic that chapter of the last couple years was rough but everything else i have to say has been really wonderful and yeah everything from like the dog to the baby to the house it's like i really do feel like yeah i feel like in some ways the same person but a totally different person you know that's so from when we started it's so funny because like anyone who knows lauren like all the people on the team and like anyone that we know in common like you're just like such a like nice positive sunny person and it's so funny how like i mean it's a great thing like you deserve it but it's so funny how just like it's like that lego song of like everything is awesome like you had a great pregnancy you like bought the house of your dreams you like married the man that you like everything is just great for lauren that's so funny but i also feel like i mean i i do get that maybe from an outsider's perspective that could be the vibe that they're picking up on but i do think in some ways it's a concerted effort to like always find the silver lining and to be like positive by choice and i mean we've talked a lot about this and you're someone who i think exemplifies that in their own life about like choosing joy which i think is like an important mindset to have like at the end of the day i do feel like um you know i try to always have a positive attitude because like you know it helps a lot it really does i also feel like for me at least i don't know how you feel but the job that we have is such a huge part of my happiness like i really do feel especially now we have like the four day work week oh my gosh yeah we work with you know all women we have a flexible schedule like everyone is so nice and great to work with and i really do feel like when i look around at a lot of you know people in my life who have you know jobs where they're working crazy hours or you know they have terrible bosses or you know a dreadful commute every day or you know all these things i'm just like it is it is very much a privilege to have the work life that we have even you know though it can be stressful at times 100 and i think that you know what i think about a lot is that you know i never ha i have the privilege as do i think i mean most of the women that we work with communi like say this similarly which is like you don't feel like after a vacation you're like coming back to a job that you're like slogging away at and like it feels really sort of tedious and not fulfilling like it's a joy and a privilege to work every day at tfd um and i do feel like year after year especially now having a baby and being a mother like it's just an enormous it's like the privilege of my life to work at tfd like i know that i'll never have a job like that's better than this like it's i mean it's true it's like you get to work amongst people that you actually like and enjoy spending time with i mean joe jokes around with me a lot he's like i just forget that you like are friends like genuinely friends with the people that you work with i'm like yeah i mean it's it's really pretty amazing and rare to like actually like really enjoy the company of the people that you work with yeah you know it's it's really interesting i feel like the the transition has been so let's just give some context right so why is lauren here you know with a bold red lip and all right why am i here uh why are you here what are we doing well we're talking about our really awesome workshop that we're going to be having for one evening in july july oh let's let's pull it back okay i'm going to say the date all right i think it's the 28th it is thursday july 21st so you were right on the day but a week off so it's thursday july 21st and you guys will be getting an exclusive discount at that link in our description and in the show notes so it's called the entrepreneur boot camp and basically it is a two deep dive on entrepreneurship freelancing building your small business kind of striking out on your own because obviously we started tft together from literal zero and now it's a seven figure business it supports a whole staff of employees we got an office we do quite a lot with it and you know that journey has been uh you know we've had our we've had our moments but and also it's really important to say it's far and away not just us right like we did have other people throughout this process but it is something where i feel like especially for the first year and in those first steps there are a lot of things that i think we both would have done very differently um and so this is really the workshop that we're doing together it's you know longer than usual we're doing two separate office hours where we each do an office hours about our own areas of expertise you know her more on the branding marketing side um of your business and me more on sort of the more revenue financial structure all of that um because you know i really do feel like there are very few people at least in my opinion out there who are speaking in the business sphere the entrepreneur sphere who are also really focused on running kind of a holistic workplace uh you know a family-friendly workplace you know one that i think really prioritizes uh work-life balance and you know being a human first and foremost i think a lot of this is really caught up in that whole you know hustle culture maximizing revenue showing off how much money you make you know all that kind of stuff yeah absolutely and i think that it's an important it's important for us occasionally to sort of like step back and think about you know like you said what we could have done differently um and how that informs some of the changes and decisions that we make moving forward um what are the things that we really believe in what are the core you know morals and like ethics of a workplace that we really want to see implemented because like we want to be especially as co-founders like i i feel like you know it's important for me to stand by the business that we've created with like pride and like that everyone here is respectful and respected and um you know you have to put those into practice and what does that actually look like and how can we be doing better and how can we be evolving and making sure that we're running like a sustainable financially sound business because there's a lot of people that we're responsible for um at this point and it feels like every year you know the stakes get a little higher and that certainly wasn't the case when we started tfd i mean it was just the two of us and we had support systems in place which i'm sure we'll get into but yeah so it's always worth having things like this you know that gets in so we have a lot of questions from you guys that we'll get to but you know that kind of brings me to the first thing i wanted to kind of talk about because i i really like what i'm interested in is kind of looking at where we were at the very beginning which is where a lot of people watching this might be with their own kind of journey and where we are now and you know you mentioned like you know we are at this place now where we have all this responsibility for people like and it's funny you know i said in that little promo there that we are a seven-figure business which we have been for a couple years and i remember i don't know if you remember this but like years and years ago there were like there are other people in our industry who would talk on their blogs about like i made seven figures this year and we would be like that is so effing crazy like could you imagine like that would i couldn't even imagine what life would be like blah blah blah and i'm really interested i have my own thoughts but i'm interested like does it feel the way that you thought it would feel to be on that side of it um in some ways it does not feel the way that i thought it might feel back then because i thought that it would feel like these people to me had this aura around them like i did it myself and i'm the one like for whom riches are just like falling out of the sky like i hacked my business and i'm just like rolling in money and it kind of felt like aspirational yes because obviously everyone likes to earn a good amount of money it's a tool for many important things but at the end of the day it's like i don't want to stand behind something that i feel like is not sustainable or like scamming anyway or just sort of like built on matchsticks and whatever like i i do feel like it took us a while to build up to having a seven-figure business but i do feel like you mentioned earlier like it's not just us we have a team of people around us and so i think that it's like a shared experience a shared journey a shared undertaking and at the end of the day i share joy that we've all like put in the work to make something that's successful so i do feel like it's exciting and wonderful but i'm like of course it is like we work hard we're like keeping our heads down for the most part and like really just like doing things the right way and it feels like i don't know in some weird cosmic way like and we got rewarded for it like it feels good and like i'm like yeah we we deserve to have seven figure business like totally yeah i actually so first of all hats off to you to being like yeah we did it right and we deserve it because i feel like there's way too much self-deprecation from women in this space or like really entrepreneurship in general like there's all that imposter syndrome and i used to feel that way a little bit but it's been years now i'm like i don't have imposter syndrome like truly i do not anymore like and now that we've been around the block several times i'm like most people like are for the most part just like not very good at what they do in this like you meet so many people in this industry where i'm like yeah this is like this is not you're no longer intimidating like now that i've gotten like a peek behind the curtain or like under the hood it's just like we are 100 capable of doing that and probably better and like faster and we're like a very nimble business and i feel like it's no surprise to me that when you get this many talented women in a room with like a shared vision and like a happy pleasant place to work like you can do good things you can do awesome stuff 100 and like we have been we have seen behind the curtain at like some big businesses and we're talking about there's the media space there's the financial space there's the kind of influencer space like and you would i think i was shocked at first at how like first of all there's a whole level of it was just like people are crazy unprofessional not reliable like all of that set it aside there's also like a whole level of like you're seeing top level executives who don't even know what the meeting is about when they come into the room like and you know just like a level of complete lack of preparedness and then you've also seen like in media and in a creative industry like i personally part of what has always made me feel very like good about where we are and like for context like lauren and i don't earn the most in the company and almost never have and that has always been kind of an active choice in the sense of like yes it prioritizes sustainability you know it makes because at a certain level like more money is not necessarily worth a way higher level of risk and unsustainability and uncertainty especially because in this industry like when we started out it was like the height of like the girl boss mania media was flooded with money like all the social networks were blowing you know publications and news websites and video channels up and over that time like i can't think of one of those big players that hasn't completely closed gone through like 15 rounds of layoffs pivoted to video and back fired a bunch of people to fire them like it's such a volatile industry it really is and i feel like because we never went big on the risk we never had to sort of like because we've talked about this several times like taking on investor money and what the implications of that are and like the goals that you have to hit and sort of the level of stress stress and pressure that that puts on you as a company and it's just like i don't think that we were ever really interested in just like putting that burden on ourselves because it was like at the end of the day the the risks are too high like that would mean laying people off that might mean not paying people what they deserve to be paid it's like i think that the model that we've come up with at this point is like slow and steady and it's like we've done things um that have felt risky but not really at the end of the day like the events like launching that part of the business felt incredibly risky because we had to lay out a bunch of money to hire staff um but it ended up working out and i think that we were really just sort of like you know absorbing what was going on in the industry and like seeing where the pressure points were and like absorbing it to like do it better on a smaller scale almost definitely on both sides like we made changes like you lived at home longer um i kept freelancing for like the first two years and made most of my income that way but like for the first and i have the numbers and we'll go over them in our class um just kind of break it down year by year but for like the first two years we were really not taking home basically anything yeah and it's been several years now that we've been just like payroll employees that i don't even really think about it anymore i'm sure like you i just and we have our 401k we have our benefits like it's just second nature the way it is for a lot of um salaried employees um but i i'm interested to hear kind of what you think about you know going through that journey what you think about looking back at the beginning of it when it was so touch and go and like how we knew when to stay motivated when to push through because looking back like there were many times that we objectively could have quit yeah i mean that's there's so many layers to that question there are so many different ways i can answer that um so it's just like thinking about where to start but i mean overall like i do think that i probably could have worked longer while doing tfd in the very beginning i think that if i could go back in time i would probably not have quit my full-time job as early as i did i think i probably could have um you know worked full-time and done tfd more or less full-time as well with the amount of responsibility that i had back then i think i was like 24-25 um and i i meet people now like we just had breakfast with people this morning who when they're doing you know their full-time job in their full-time side gig with a four-year-old and i'm just like amazing good for you but that's probably one of the biggest things i do just to take the stress off of those initial days um just in terms of financial preparedness like i was basically just like crushing like eating through my entire savings during those first like six months to a year and a half i would say um and that was a decision that i had the privilege of making because i lived at home with my parents because i didn't have a child because i had no other you know i had enough money to pay for things like my student loan and my car bill and and stuff like that so that wasn't a huge concern so that's one change i would make and i would also have made a change of like you know keeping myself more responsible in the sense of like you know keeping a focus on the big picture that's something you and i have talked a lot about is that like when you're running a small business um you know from the position that i was in i was very reactive um things would come in and i would have to like pivot and pivot and pivot and i think that i could have done a better job at just like narrowing down what i knew that i was good at what i could offer to the business and being very clear with myself and more importantly you about okay this is where my skill set stops we need help and if we can't get paid help like how do we find a way to get this done for like very little cost you know there are creative ways around these things but um i think i was just trying to do everything really well and not giving myself any sort of grace for not knowing how to do things i was really really hard on myself lots of unnecessary stress there were many nights where i didn't sleep i had several panic attacks like and that's just the way it is um you know when you're running a business that breaks my heart i mean it's but it's true those early days are tough for any business getting launched and off the ground and you know that was with absolutely no other responsibility than myself like now as a mom owning a home having a husband having a dog having a baby like all these different things i give people so much more credit for doing these things later on in life because at the time these felt like unsurmountable stressors but now looking back on it i'm like i should have given myself a break like i shouldn't have been so hard um and stressed out about those things that ended up not being that big of a deal but yeah i mean you asked another question about sort of um you know the issue of making money too and like when we finally got to a place where we were taking home a more regular salary you know i feel like i won the lottery i was like wow seeing that monthly like money hit my bank account was amazing and i just loved that i got to budget again like when you're on more of a freelance salary it's it can be difficult to budget you don't know what you're going to earn each month and sort of how to prioritize things as well as you can when i think you have like a more regular income coming in um so that's been something i've really enjoyed now that the business is like more sustainable and like um predictable and lucrative yeah but totally you know it's interesting like obviously it makes me you know sad to think of you being so stressed out and of course i was too but i mean you were right there with me i mean like and and things like now they just feel like so like attain like they they just feel like problems that were like easier to solve but at the time when you have a lot going on and there's like your to-do list is like 50 items long like the smallest thing can really feel very crippling totally and i i mean we had some early failures i mean for me i think the issue is more like i definitely i have personally just like a lot of regrets from that early time in the sense of like you know how i handled things how i handled stress like i probably should have been in therapy for the first two years honestly like i wish i had honestly and i honestly think and we'll talk about it in the workshop but like looking back i would have budgeted for at least some counseling because i was so stressed all the time more from a perspective and this is something that i still kind of struggle with a lot but i feel such an outsized sense of responsibility for everyone else and like i cannot let this fail you know and like sometimes these things are totally out of your control like if we didn't get the ppp loans during kovid we probably would have had to stop and not but i don't think like sometimes i feel like looking back or in those early days like i don't know how i would have dealt with it if i did have to stop and in my eyes fail like i think it was so tied up in my identity i had you know especially because a lot of it was me public facing like i felt like it was just not an option and that stress for me i think made me in a lot of ways like a worse person like i was more you know controlling and anxiety ridden about everything and would get manic over these like really small details like on an instagram post would be wrong and i would fully spiral about it and lose my mind um but i think that because in that beginning like you were at my kitchen table like we didn't have any separation of personal and professional life and like that i think is one of the things that was most kind of that was the biggest mistake looking back was like not allowing myself for giving myself the tools and resources to like fully really separate the two out yeah um whereas now i mean it's definitely like we have six weeks vacation a year we have the four day work week we have a physical office that we go to regularly so for me i very rarely think of work outside of work for the most part same like i excuse me like i remember like not going anywhere without my laptop because it felt like at any moment something could pop up and just like need fixing and that sustained level of um that flight or fl uh flight or fight response in your body yeah when you are stressed out about something over time like it just leads to some serious like burnout and i don't think i really grappled with that until like i i hit the breaks when i went to ireland where i was working part-time for a little while and i got to truly step back for the first time in like five years and be like i feel so burned out and i remember you saying something similar to me where you're just like i've and this happened recently where you're like i've just been doing this like on this like hamster wheel for so long but like if i don't take a step back i will burn out in like a seriously big way that i don't know if i'll come back from and it's scary um but i'm i feel like you know hindsight's 20 20 and obviously the confidence that i have now as a 32 year old woman you know i would have told my younger self like if you need to step back that's okay if you need a month break that's okay if you need to say i'm not up for this and i can't do this that's okay and i would 100 do that now but like lauren of 2016 2015 like i would just power through until there i was just like running on fumes and i would have never given myself that like um out to sort of say to you or joe or my family or my friends who watched me do this very scary thing that not a lot of people i know did um like i wasn't i wasn't giving myself that ability to just be like you know what this is very mentally taxing i need a minute totally um so like yeah i mean you mentioned that that happened to me recently i don't think i've maybe i've talked about it on tfc maybe not but i definitely the hardest time i've had at work has been this past winter and i almost was hesitant to talk about it because it it is pretty isolated like i've said a lot here like 99 of our work life is i think more ideal than 99 of people have like i definitely think that that is uh you know something i don't take for granted but you know there was a time last year where both of my business partners left in rapid succession you went on maternity leave our other partner stepped down totally to focus on being a full-time mom um and we had a really tough winter because of you know omicron coming back up and the market being so unstable and all of that and it was like it was you know the scariest time the most stressful time financially like and it was one of those and this happens sometimes in business these moments where you're just like you know rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic because there's only so much you can do and there's only so much you can um you know offset the things that were happening which is why we you know went more aggressive about you know promoting the membership program um and you know doing things to help you know diversify our revenue beyond what is out of our control um but i did i mean i had i like fully broke down in a meeting sobbing couldn't even talk because i was just like and interestingly that happened once things were a lot better you know once she was back you know the revenue was backward it needed to be like on paper it should have been easier but like you said like you don't realize the extent to which your body is just like accumulating elevated cortisol and you're just constantly stressed but now luckily with you know the hindsight that i discussed like because i feel like i know how to recognize it and deal with it because i've been to therapy because i like you know have kind of changed my approach like i do think several years ago i might have just totally quit i might have you know freaked out i might have you know not been the person that i wanted to be at work but you know i think now one thing that especially the volatility of the past few years has taught me when it comes to entrepreneurship is that like there is going to be a lot that is out of your control and you have to accept that outside of what you can personally do better like the rest of that is not a professional question it is an emotional slash therapy question of like how do you deal with that stress but there you can't you can't try to force it i think is is such a powerful lesson and i do think that like when i look at people who who start out and they quit early like obviously i can't speak for you but i don't regret regret not quitting like i'm so glad that we did this so we have this and we powered through yeah um but there is no guidebook as to like which you know um disappointment or you know we had our first publisher go out of business and still owed us like nearly a hundred thousand dollars which was everything to us at that time and like i think we both definitely thought about quitting um but i think you know looking back especially from these past couple years with kovid like i would have even gone back to myself and said like make the choice either way no choice is right or wrong but understand that like you have to exhaust everything in your power and then once you're past what you can control give it up to god yeah yeah totally i mean um yeah and i just feel like in terms of like wanting to quit i i felt like i always was thinking in my mind like i can't go out on this note like oh we can't i can't step back now like i want if i'm ever going to walk away want to end on like a high note and like that's in a weird way what kept powering me through because i'm just like i don't want to look back on this in five 10 years and be like man you really like bowed out when the going got tough and i was like that was just like a hang up that i had even though it's like totally 100 fine to do that if you need to do that but at the time i was just like i want to just like you know make sure that i'm like leaving on the up and up but i'm very happy that like things worked out and that we didn't each quit at certain points i know and here we are today and here we are today yeah yeah no i mean the real tough thing i think is having a litmus test of like where you are genuinely trying your best and when it's out of your control yeah and i mean this is maybe like directly related to that but also it was very difficult to be like your own boss for a very long period of time i mean i'm still my own boss i mean we work for ourselves and i think that what i really struggled with especially in the early stages was like understanding that there was like no one who is going to like tell me to do something or not to do something like it was within my power to either continue down one path until it was like no longer serving the business and like i wasted a bunch of time or to like have to step back and say no you have to pivot like that's just been like an ongoing challenge and like even to this day it's sort of like it's a struggle to find motivation on certain days because you're just like when i don't have to answer to anyone i can just phone it in but then i'll feel bad about it so maybe i should work harder and actually while i'm at i'll do this thing and then your day gets going and it's fine but it is it is difficult to be your own boss for a long period of time and i think that what's been helpful for me is to see the just entire team as the people that i'm accountable to like and if i don't show up and if i don't do what i have to do then like i'm disappointing several people which is in my mind way worse than disappointing one person your boss and like getting someone pissed off or like getting reprimanded like i would feel super bad if someone like that i genuinely like working with and respect has to come to me and be like i've noticed that you're like phoning it in that would be horrible to hear so that would be horrible to hear that's a nightmare um it is that is an interesting point i mean i think and obviously again we'll talk about this in depth in the um in the class but i do think the be your own boss aspect of it is and i think probably it's fair to say that i had that to an even greater extent than you did because as the ceo i think there was an extent to which and majority owner like i'm sort of a default not your boss but like the head of things yeah you know and so there has to be i think some level for any healthy business i do think that there has to be someone who's like able to run the ship with a certain degree of like authority not that like i look at you like a boss but i think that it is important because when you're doing everything like 50 50 i think that would be a little bit challenging for you especially because you were the more public facing person because you had that audience from your previous job and you were the one who was like leaving the channel after i had left like i think the stakes definitely felt higher for you um than they did for me because i was like okay at the end of the day and we've talked about this very openly like at the end of the day like if the business collapses like i'm just gonna like walk away and sort of like no one will miss lauren for hank on the internet like i don't have any sort of like presence um thank you but like your following is more substantial than mine and you would have to like address it in a way that i wouldn't have to like publicly address it and i think that that there is freedom in that whereas like you you felt definitely more like i'll have to answer for like the failure of tfd and i have to be the one to like shoulder that visible responsibility even though on the back end we were both involved in it but um yeah i mean it was a stressful position for you to be in and i think that like very early on we understood where each of our strengths you know were and where they lied um and for me definitely um you know being a leader comes naturally i do enjoy working with people and i always like i i've had a like a really wonderful time working with the designers and like you know creating that environment that safe work environment where we're going back and forth on things like that and i really do enjoy it but it's difficult for me to handle the pressure of like managing a large team whereas i think that's like more suited to your personality type and you really thrive doing it um so yeah i mean it's a long winding road it feels like from where we started to where we are now but i don't have like a lot of regrets and i don't have a lot of like big sweeping changes that i would have made like one thing that's not a regret or a change but i do feel like there's no way to give a sweeping generalization but i do feel pretty sure having freelanced for a long time and having started a legit business like if you're gonna freelance obviously you're solo and i think that can be a great career for many people like i'll probably never be an employee again after tfd like i'll probably just be freelance unless it's like the most chill amazing job ever but like even then i've seen a lot of people in media get called in by these siren songs at these big companies with the executive titles and get laid off seven months later but that's a whole other story but if you're gonna start if your goal is to start a fleshed out business where eventually you'll probably have staff you might have inventory you know office space all that stuff i mean my personal recommendation is that you have a partner because i really feel looking back like no question this would not have existed if either of us had been alone no person no way but also like one thing and i have to say like hats off to us i will never forget someone that i knew in the industry when we were first starting out like warned me so much against having a partner was like you're gonna end up in a courtroom like blah blah blah blah like it never works out is that the other it has worked out seven years later plus um so it can happen but it's also that like you know on paper when i was starting out because i had a media background a creative background like on paper it would have been more intelligent maybe to get like a financial person or a salesperson but i always think and say like i don't think it would have worked with almost anyone but you because you did have well not only did you have the support system at home which so few people have and that in and of itself it was almost like we were four people at first you know because of that um but also like you had the complimentary personality type and the ability to power through things and we could kind of motivate each other and hold each other accountable and things like that so i actually think in terms of partnerships like yes complementary skill sets are important but often what you're getting in a partner is just the ability to not be alone to have someone to help keep you accountable to have someone to push you forward and also to give just from the get-go a reason to have more structure in place 100 and also like someone that you i mean it's essential to me like if you're finding a partner that it's someone that you genuinely like and you enjoy them and like their company and i don't know how you would do this with just like somebody that you like randomly found because they had like a good qualification or some like letters at the end of their name that you were like ah check i need this person in my like you know network to like help me do this thing and to entrust with this business like i don't know like we didn't really know each other beforehand but um it was clear to me very early on that like we just clicked and we we did get along our husbands get along quite well yeah and like we're genuinely friends and that's difficult to find i mean people like bemoan the fact that it's incredibly tough to find friends as an adult um you know but like it's the most profound friendship that i've made like it's it's i mean it's so meaningful and um yeah it's like as an adult it's incredibly rare to meet someone like that um you know and i definitely consider like 24 25 adulthood like totally um but yeah so i think that that's just something that it's important to reflect on and that's a good piece of advice to give to someone like find that partner find your someone and um if it doesn't work for the long haul that's okay you know if it's a great partnership for a less amount of time like that's fine like it doesn't need to be uh you're not getting married to them necessarily like no um in terms of i mean in paperwork and on in terms of contracts and stuff it does kind of feel like a marriage of sorts but and i will say on that note like two things one um even if tft hadn't worked out and this is something to stress about entrepreneurship like it is almost inevitable that in doing the work it takes to start a small business or you know create a personal brand or whatever like you are going to be adding a ton of really invaluable skills to your resume like for whatever job you end up doing after so i i truly don't believe there's ever anything that is a complete negative unless you were very you know not super responsible about investing money and things like that which we'll get into in the workshop but we've never taken investment we've never put money into this except for occasionally like quick loans for payroll and and stuff like that when you know the company was tight on funds but it's never like we were like oh we put a ton of money we did we didn't have an office for years we kept costs as low as possible um so i would say that like even if it doesn't work out it's important to keep that in mind but then the other thing as far as partnership goes you know what really i mentioned that like it forces you to add structure early on and i think it really speaks to why prenups are very important because you know the first thing we did starting a company was get a lawyer to do an operating agreement that was like this is what this person owns this is what this person owns this is what they have to be in agreement about this is what happens if the company goes away like you know this is how they give you you know they get to give themselves raises or payments or all of these things like all of those things were really established up front and you know that i think allowed from the get-go there to be such a level of you know trust protection and of course like you're a very magnanimous person like i think neither of us have ever been you know selfish about money which has been a huge privilege but like yeah i think a lot of the messiness in small business comes when you don't set up the rules early on and then once money comes in i wha was it our lawyer someone said i think was our lawyer who was like he called it money madness he was like yeah you have to put the rules in place and decide the amounts before the money comes in because once it's on the table people go crazy well i mean yeah because like especially when you're in this like zone of you know you're getting paid very sporadically you don't know when it's going to come in it's very exciting and overwhelming to finally get that chunk of money where you're just like we should take it all and it's just like well actually no you know we we should reinvest it in the business in the in this way or that way and it's be like you need to make sure that you guys are on the same page before you ever see that money because circumstance and life and things around you that are not directly involved with the business have an influence on like the decisions you're making for the finances of the company of course you know we're human like it's it's it's gonna have an impact but um yeah getting paperwork done and contracts in place and all that stuff done before you really get into the nitty-gritty of running the business i think is essential and just keeps you you know safe down the road totally and it's and that's why again i bring it back to the prenups it's like i've become more and more shocked as this has gone on that it's less and less a concern for married couples you know when the divorce rate is 50 because like we've had conversations about like you know to be a business partner is to have a level of shared financial commitment and intertwinement like we have to co-sign on loans we're responsible for keeping payroll going like we like have both bought homes in the past year and that has huge implications for you know the company's line of credit and things like that and because of the nature of that relationship like obviously there needs to be all kinds of contracts in place these need to be like you know above board meetings that are you know very well laid out and all that but like when you're marrying someone you're getting more financially entangled and legally obligated than literally anything else in your life and we don't even we don't even think about that yeah yeah i mean that's a another conversation for another day but i mean that is 100 true yeah um yeah so before we get to uh the audience questions she was like traffic copped that conversation i'm not going to go down that route because i don't know enough to intelligence there are many other people who can but like suffice to say that yes you are correct so you guys send us in a bunch of questions so we're just going to go through them nice and quick [Music] someone actually did ask us if we would ever do another business like would you ever start from scratch again i think they wrote in and like do another business from scratch um my answer yes they did i'll go first um is that yes i would do that again um i've had like so many ideas for like very very creative like artistic design forward things that i would do but on a very small scale like there are a number of things that i would do like you know that and i could channel into like an etsy shop or something like a website and sell things that way but it would be a product driven thing that was very small scale and probably just me and like maybe one other person um like an arts collective or whatever what have you but i don't think that i personally would want to do something as big as tfd again just because um yeah i would always be comparing it to tfd and i don't know if it would ever feel like um like i could put that kind of energy and like single minded determination to something else in the way that i had to do for tfd it's intense and i feel like i had it in me like once um but like i could do it again on a smaller scale is the answer whenever you meet guys who are like serial entrepreneurs they are the most dead behind the eyes it's like i mean i respect it like on some level i'm like if you have the energy and like the the ambition and the drive but i'm like i feel like again just like thinking about everything else that's going on in the world like i just feel like mildly sapped of the ambition to like do something like that again like it just it feels kind of like what's the point yeah also like you made it big with the one thing that you were really good at and you were like really invested and implicated in and then now your job is to like go give a little bit of money to a bunch of companies where you meet with them once a month and you have like no idea what's going on and just like hope it works out like no anyway oh also to my answer the question is would i ever start a business again only if it has nothing to do with media like i would love maybe one totally that's this industry ever again um but i would definitely like one like tiny dream that i have is like i would love to maybe one day own like a little not own i don't know about mom maybe own like a really like a small boutique hotel somewhere oh chic i would love to do that up your alley i have a ways to go but i love uh i love hosting i love entertaining i love even just like when people spent like we have a lot of overnight guests and i love like i put out their little slippers and their little carafe of water with their little lemon and i just love it you love curating an experience for people i have to say and it's it shows i mean it's your love language like getting a little granola bar on your pillow with your little thing of water your fresh towel like i've seen it people in person chelsea fagin residents at the estate uh okay uh okay but i know that industry is no joke so i don't take that lightly okay wait uh this person i just have to shout out for how many question marks they use balancing entrepreneurship with exhaustion five question marks how four question marks um sounds like you could use some sleep i don't know i mean i drank a lot of coffee i i mean that's how i battled exhaustion i just like put a band-aid over it but i mean i i there wasn't that's i guess to the point i was raising earlier is that like i don't think i did have a lot of balance in the beginning i was exhausted i was overstimulated i was like stressed out constantly and not doing so great um you know and i feel like is that inevitable for people starting up a small business like probably to some degree it is inevitable i mean it's a terrible thing to say but like i don't think i really did a great job in the early days now i have a much more balanced life but it's because we have a staff despite having a child yeah i mean yeah lily's a very good sleeper she does 12 hours every night i have to say anecdote on the coffee thing um a fun fact about lauren is that as i've mentioned she is just like the nicest most pleasant ray of sunshine but having traveled extensively with her for work the only time like there was a different side the mornings that we'd be like traveling for work and you did not have access to coffee like yeah i'm not proud of that but i do need a cup like asap like i'll be in bed in the morning and i'll hear like joe get up and i'm like can you go make us coffee like i don't want to have to start the day without just like my morning cup of coffee and i just like i can go like maybe two hours but then i start to get like nasty testy yeah i guess definitely the manifestation of like the don't yeah speak to me until i've had my coffee memes a little testy um okay if you only had 500 to start with what tools would you invest in first i love this question well i'll let you start with that one because i'm i need a minute um what tools i mean it totally depends on the type of business yeah but i would say what i would invest in is um some software for just like bookkeeping um you know some basic legal stuff and you know invoicing all of that kind of stuff and then just setting up your web presence getting all your domain names getting maybe paying for you know some help with the logo like and probably that might go over 500 although a lot of this is available for less but like definitely like setting up your online presence as soon as possible yeah absolutely and there are websites that make it super duper easy to like get graphics going and get a website started um and so like there are a lot of things that if you spend enough time on youtube learning how to do these things you can do them yourself it's not i don't think it's um outside of anyone's capabilities but it does take a lot of time so that's what you're really thinking in there instead of money but i agree those are essential okay and i feel like even with like canva now you don't even need photoshop no i mean yeah they have so many tools like online that you can get for free indesign would be the one no it's photoshop yeah but they they they're like sort of you know a hybrid in design photoshop but i mean yeah there's just like so many good free tools available now okay um how do you find clients i'm kind of an introvert and this worries me so one quick note is we do have a whole section of the class that's literally just going through client outreach like the tools we use examples of emails that work like where we find them all of that kind of stuff and it does vary industry to industry but i would say like for the most part if in any industry that you're looking for clients like if you just search a bunch of terms around that you're going to find like you know forums and websites and places where people coalesce to like share tips to share email addresses um you know to just kind of commiserate and um there are a lot of really good tools like we use mixmax which is an email plugin that really helps for email outreach um you know really being good about things like trello google calendar all of that stuff and having templates for the emails having good templates that you very very heavily edit and curate to make sure that they're personalized and you're not just copying and pasting but you should have an easy way to like this is what i attached this is the information i provide these are the stats like that kind of stuff yeah and i would also add to that like we are you know as business owners i think we did several things along the way that like weren't exactly typical like we were never really super duper like networking heavy like we kind of played the long game of like if we take time to find clients that we enjoy working with they'll it'll never feel as forced as it might have if we just like went out and we're like selling at all times at any cost and it's just like those relationships at the end of the day might have felt much more like um tedious to like sustain and much like you ever have to like get it up to do that um like again and again and like as someone who's like slightly more introverted than you like that would have been difficult for me so i think that like seeking out the kind of clients that feel a little bit more i don't know just like within your like aura was the word i'm looking for is or more like your speed your vibe it makes it easier to do those things in the long term like you're not having to sort of like i don't know put as much effort into it emotionally like socially totally agree um so we have andrea asking what metrics can i use to decide that if i should to decide if i should continue or to try something else um obviously again this is very dependent on your like trade but i would say from like a financial perspective one thing that i wish we had done was like set out some benchmarks for ourselves in the beginning you know make them do some market research make them you know realistic make them based on also what our needs are um and have those benchmarks and again we'll go over this but have those benchmarks in place you know at maybe quarterly intervals um ideally while you're still working your full-time job so they're not you know live or die um but really set out benchmarks uh for the finances and hold yourself accountable to like i set these for a reason you know so helpful and then i also to add to that i would say like what's been really helpful for me and like us as a business is just like understanding like the pie chart of where your time is going and like the return on investment on that time i think it's a really useful thing to be like okay what am i spending the most time doing and like what is actually bearing at the most um like uh output in terms of like investment and dollar amount and like like revenue that you're driving with whatever that is and like understanding if you need to shift your time to doing things that are bringing in more money um that's an important thing to have just like uh your finger on the pulse of because you don't want to be like really spending so much of your resources in terms of time on one thing that's really not productive or financially fruitful for your business you know i think that's yeah i mean definitely assessing whether or not you're getting more efficient our colleague jane likes to say getting more juice for the squeeze i love it phrase she's fond of but uh it's really true like are you able to do more with less are you getting better are you getting are you learning from your mistakes are you templating things are you you know repeating what works like i think those are all really good um metrics so last question from the audience um actually it's kind of a two-parter but um how do you work on your leadership skills and how do you navigate growing a team i would say that i work on my leadership skills by really doing the work because it doesn't come that easy for me i guess as maybe i thought i did but like understanding the way that other people see me when i make certain decisions when i say certain things when i ask for certain things when i deliver work a certain way like i think that for so long i was used to being like the only person in the room outside of you and i got used to doing things a certain way but once i really took a step back and was just sort of thinking more of like how is this person seeing me when i do this or what kind of example should i be setting for delivering work a certain way or this email or like responding to something like this like i think that the more time i spend thinking about how others perceive me as a leader makes it easier for me to like be a better one um which sounds like not really that much of a action item in terms of like what other people can do it's sort of like a personal thing but um and then i just like i mean reading books i've read several in the past like six or so years just like about you know running a team and understanding just like how to be a better leader and how to communicate um that's just a huge aspect of being a leader it's just like communicating well so just trying to be mindful of all that is helpful what was the second part of the question how do you navigate growing a team um i would say navigating a growing team um i just think that first impressions really do say a lot for me about a person um and i think that like any person that i've had a really good interaction with in the first five minutes like has usually turned out to be someone really great for the the business like i think that you know someone behind the camera we work with all the time emily like i knew within like the first five minutes i was like she's awesome like she's wonderful emily's like our fa you're on your more yeah like anyone we've ever met like industry and that's just sort of like you know when you know you found a good like unicorn you know and it's just like i think that um we've had very like a lot of luck with hiring and there's nothing more important than like that in terms of business so i don't know i just i don't know taking it slow and also not hiring too quickly taking your time and making sure that you're not it's not it's not always been 100 our batting average is 99th percentile but you know there have been some missteps yeah and that's really hard to deal with honestly like there have been like my goal is always like 100 employee retention because like the very few times over the course of seven years where it hasn't worked out with someone um has been really really difficult um becaus

2022-07-10 03:12

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