Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: Does growing without hiring, mean never getting help or just working with ai? Many successful consultants and founders will eventually face a crossroads where the lead flow is consistent. The retainers are healthy and the systems are humming. But instead of feeling relief, a new question appears. What's next?
[00:00:22] Ken: Is it time to add someone to payroll? Here's the thing, you've done the hard part. You've iterated on your offer, you dialed in your positioning, you clarified the market and built a go-to-market engine that actually brings clients to your door. But then comes the question most founders never expect to face.
[00:00:44] Ken: How do you keep growing without accidentally building the very agency you are trying to avoid? Because this is where many solo operators take a wrong turn. They bring on help too early, or they over expand. Maybe even they recreate the [00:01:00] more people, more clients, more problem cycle that eats their time optionality and freedom.
[00:01:05] Ken: As you know from past conversations, I call it the Hungry Dragon. In today's episode, I'm bringing you inside a real session with a client who reaches this exact inflection point and they're doing well. They've put in the work to get there. They have the right components in place, and now they're hitting the 50 K months that so many of you are aiming for.
[00:01:28] Ken: So their question is a different kind of question. Not how do I get clients, but how do I grow without losing control of the business I worked so hard to build? You're going to hear in real time the decisions, the traps, the reframes, and even the aha moments that allow you to stay lean while expanding your bandwidth, including why optionality is the real currency of a modern one person agency.
[00:01:55] Ken: So let's get right into it. If you're gonna love this conversation and how it [00:02:00] helps you grow without hiring.
[00:02:01] Ken: Evan, it is good to see you, sir. you and I have known each other for a minute. We've been working together for two and a half years.
[00:02:08] Ken: You've somehow stuck around so I, I must be doing something right, but you're also doing something right
[00:02:12] Ken: And so we're doing this chat today. We're letting people in to a chat that you and I would normally have But the most important lens for today, and you can set some context for us, is that we have gotten you and are we fine?
[00:02:26] Ken: Kind of talking generally about the kind of numbers we're hitting. Are we fine with
[00:02:29] Evan: I'm, I'm an open
[00:02:31] Ken: Yeah, I think you, I mean, you're, you've become very prolific online as well. But we have worked hard and done multiple iterations of your offer, multiple iterations of your positioning and done what a lot of even your clients do, which is like you hit a certain part of the market and you move a little bit more up market and we've hit those 50 K months, which is a goal that we had and why, it's not why you hired me the first time, but it was why you hired me the second time.
[00:02:56] Ken: And you've hit some numbers in terms of like agency style. [00:03:00] Rates. But at the same time, we have now gotten to a spot where we're looking at this and we're like, what else can we do in this model?
[00:03:07] Ken: now we're looking at it and saying, okay, we're going into next year. What else is there for us? You know, I love this word optionality having optionality in the business.
[00:03:17] Ken: And now we are looking at optionality where we're not trying to become the agencies that you're eating the lunches every day, every single day. But we're looking at what else from those models make sense. So I'll let you set a little bit more context for us, but I think that's kind of the direction that I heard from you in this chat today.
[00:03:31] Evan: Yeah. So to to level set a little bit as Ken mentioned, we've worked together in the past to set my current offer and it's built on a good, better, best conception of how I can serve B2B tech companies. I work in the marketing operation space, primarily serving early stage companies, so my sweet spot is eight to 10 K monthly retainer.
[00:03:55] Evan: And that includes a very codified playbook driven [00:04:00] offer that I have constructed and run to great effect with clients. However, I am now at the point where I have enough inbound, I am right knocking on the door of turning work away. And the work that I have been doing in the background is templating everything that I've been doing over the last two years.
[00:04:21] Evan: Also laying the groundwork in tools like Clickup elsewhere to start to hand off some of the backend work to trusted contractors. In this case, a former employee of mine who was laid off while still retaining the strategic face of the engagement and looking to expand where I still am the front facing the, the face of the company, but.
[00:04:47] Evan: Amplifying my impact in the backend without diluting the product.
[00:04:51] Ken: Really good stuff. And you know that we are fellow kind of men in arms around operations. you do a different part of operations, but we love systems.
[00:04:59] Ken: [00:05:00] And you know, I talk about this concept of async client delivery where instead of like sitting in. Slack and sitting in teams and sitting in meetings, we have a way to deliver value without having to be in front of clients.
[00:05:13] Ken: You know that when you and I work together, it's not that we don't enjoy chatting and that's why we have a session like this, right? And we, we get certain work done, but we don't need to have this every single time to be able to make progress, to get guidance on, Hey, what would you do here with this objection?
[00:05:28] Ken: Or Here's some signals from the market. So I love that you've done that. You know, I'm a big fan of tools like. Clickup and Trello and all those things, and having first the standard operating procedures. I said it before and I, I believe you could do this too, it's just a decision that you wanna make.
[00:05:44] Ken: Actually, I said this to you last year, that you can get to a million dollars a year in your current model without having to have a full agency. And you're like, dude, tell me more about that. But we've, we have talked about it and we're like on the path to that right now. A lot of it has nothing to do with this thing that [00:06:00] we both like and use called ai.
[00:06:02] Ken: I just wanna say that out loud, right? and I'm using it in a way that I think a lot of people aren't. You probably are as well. Like we're, we're using it for actual systems. Not a better Google search, but you can do what you're doing right now, I believe, and largely get to the million a year without even having a single employee, which is a whole conversation I've had of like, Hey, here's how I got to a million bucks a year when there was no ai, when there were not even.
[00:06:25] Ken: Tools like Zapier or Make Right, which are like now almost old school kind of tools that I know you play with as well. So I want to kind of walk through that today. I mean, we have the offer portfolio nailed, that's really important. We don't just wake up one day and get to 50 k.
[00:06:38] Ken: People wanna get to 50 K and they try to jump straight to that without having some of these things in place. You have some of it in place and I love where you're starting. Which is you have someone that you trust. Not everyone has that. Right. So you had that. Did that person reach out to you or did you kind of see them on the market and you just opened up a chat?
[00:06:54] Evan: They, when they were laid off, their manager who was still at Google reached out to me and said, [00:07:00] Hey so and so has, has just gotten laid off. I know you're looking to potentially expand, you know, his skillset. You've worked together, you trained him. Is there room there? And fortunately, I was able to offer him a rate that was much better than the agency that he was working at previously, right from the jump.
[00:07:20] Evan: So, I had someone that I trusted that knew my working style, that knew my communication style. So I feel like that was a bit of a cheat code to start experimenting rather than meeting someone that knew who I wasn't sure if they would stick around or their work style. And so that's been really great to not only get him into some of my engagements, but also.
[00:07:42] Evan: Poke holes in what I think is good enough or well documented. All of that learning kind of going both directions is be huge, has been hugely valuable.
[00:07:52] Ken: By the way, people should do more cheat codes. this isn't the like, you know, jump straight to the end of Sonic, or,Nintendo and so forth, or OG [00:08:00] stuff.
[00:08:00] Ken: But that's totally fine. And I, and I think a lot of people just start by looking on, Basic sites like Fiverr or Upwork and just get really, really cheap labor. When I work with people who are going through this transition that you're going through, I help them understand, since I've done it, at scale, you can pay more, right?
[00:08:17] Ken: And get someone who's more trustworthy, who is smarter and needs a lot less handholding. Or you can go with the cheap talent and have to have a lot more SOPs and be more frustrated. But also retain more of those dollars in the backend if you can find the cheat code for somewhere in the middle, like that's the best of both worlds.
[00:08:35] Ken: And a lot of the people that I first went after were people that I knew and I saw, and I, by the way, like my personal thing, and I know we haven't talked about some of this before in the past, but you also were a hiring manager in the past, so you get some of this,
[00:08:47] Ken: If I had to choose between talented jerk. Or someone who has the right attitude, who could be upskilled. I'm going the other side of the spectrum all day, right?
[00:08:55] Ken: I've had those other folks. So it sounds like, you've had a, a little bit of a unicorn [00:09:00] there. Did you start by giving them almost like a full-time contract? what did that look like for you?
[00:09:04] Evan: So I'm still playing with the. Model. Right now it is strictly hourly at a rate that was two x what he was making at his previous agency and is still very healthy for my margin. So to your point that, that sweet spot of they're highly motivated, they're making twice what they were with half the hours at their previous agency.
[00:09:26] Evan: That's been a real game changer for me. I'm also looking at potentially. Giving them a set fee per client because we're running the same playbook for everyone. And if they can make that playbook more efficient, the more clients we get, they can potentially shoot past what they could make hourly.
[00:09:44] Evan: That's another model that I may experiment with in the near future once we shoot past what I can personally support. But it's been, it's been a really. Great start. Like with hourly, all of the training [00:10:00] that we've done, testing each stage of the playbook, so letting him deploy the playbook across three clients.
[00:10:08] Evan: We're gonna run this thing over and over, stress test it. So we've been kind of slow ramping it, but we're now getting to the point where I feel confident in the delivery, confident in the training, and I will probably turn him loose wholesale on the next client that I take in.
[00:10:23] Ken: Okay, let, let me ask a couple more questions and I want to give you some different considerations 'cause that's why you're here, right? I mean, you've got some of these things in place. But these are things that I, I played with a lot and obviously now, today with others, I'm, I'm helping them kind of navigate.
[00:10:36] Ken: I don't like this word anywhere else. but I do like the idea of like a niche or a boutique agency, right? Or a one person agency. I know when we say one person agency here, you're like, dude, there's someone else helping me, but you effectively are gonna retain all equity and
[00:10:49] Ken: You didn't go straight to trying to hire someone full-time on payroll. Okay. It's, it's almost like you and I like each other and have some similar shared ideas around how business should [00:11:00] work. But how many hours is that person getting right now?
[00:11:03] Ken: And how many more hours do you think they can get? Let's just say per week? Let's say in the next quarter, because it sounds like it's, it could ramp really fast, possibly.
[00:11:11] Evan: Right now it's between 10 and 15 hours a week. And could easily ramp to full-time if he wanted it. If, if the pipeline, everything in the pipeline closed by Jan, January one. If he wanted full-time, he could have it.
[00:11:26] Ken: Yeah, so I think this is where we start to get into the first big decision because the hourly works fine until it doesn't, and I know that sounds funny, but it would start out that way and then all of a sudden you're getting an invoice and it's probably not this amount, but I've had this happen to me, going through this where it's like, okay, this is fine.
[00:11:44] Ken: And all of a sudden it's like 10 15 KA month, 20 KA month. And then you start to be like, yeah, this doesn't probably make that much sense. I'm not saying it's going quite there right now. I don't know exactly where the number is. If you wanna share, that's fine. The point is that it can grow in a way that we don't want it to [00:12:00] grow.
[00:12:00] Ken: And that's the the point where I started moving away from hourly to, Hey, I'm gonna give you a set contract per month. Having some predictability around it is obviously important. And it sounds like you're at that stage soon, almost like yesterday, And then.
[00:12:15] Ken: full-time contract for short periods of time, or giving them like a three month, Hey, it's a three month contract, so it gives them some stability and it's gonna be for, let's just make up a number and say it's for, 10 KA month.
[00:12:26] Ken: now you have a model where, obviously you can't give them 75 clients, but you have some predictability built on that, on the backend. Ultimately, Evan, and this is where, you know, I don't like to go, my whole point of this podcast and the name of it's called Grow Without Hiring, minute that you look at numbers though, and you have two or three people like that, I will tell you on paper it's gonna make more sense for them to be employees.
[00:12:48] Ken: But the minute that you make anyone an employee, you have to go down the, I need to go build culture. I need to have a model for growth. And you will have to do that to some extent with even just a person who's a, an important [00:13:00] part of the business. But you're gonna have to say, okay, what, what does that look like for them in five years?
[00:13:04] Ken: Like, why would they still be here? Right? So those are some considerations. But how far are we away from being able to move them into like a Yeah, they're gonna get paid this amount per month. and I can give them a three month contract. Is that as soon as like maybe within six weeks?
[00:13:18] Evan: We absolutely could. If everything held up to my normal closing rate and some new inbound that came in last week, it would absolutely be possible if everything came together.
[00:13:29] Ken: I wanna also just ask a bit about this because this is another mistake that I see a lot of people made. I would say I made it a little bit, you know, in terms of, I like that you wanna be the face of the business, you're not going away. I still, even when I had 20 plus people, and I still said I was a remote solopreneur, right.
[00:13:44] Ken: Just the way I was doing it, they were all executing on my playbooks, my systems. They didn't have ownership in the business. When you think about client interaction, do you have any client interaction as it stands today, or is it completely just, you know, you still run [00:14:00] the meetings and are they on any calls?
[00:14:02] Ken: what does that look like?
[00:14:03] Evan: For now, it's 100% me. The way my model is built is reduced meetings.
[00:14:09] Evan: so the only way they get higher level access to me, including an internal Slack, anything like that, is my highest level retainer, which can scale up quite rapidly. But at my mid-tier retainer level, that is one 30 minute weeding meeting a week.
[00:14:26] Evan: All of the work done by my contractor is handled internally in my own Slack. It is not, they're not interfacing with the client. They do not have direct access to the client. So I am maintaining the face of the engagement, the strategic oversight of the engagement, and signing off on anything that goes out the door.
[00:14:44] Evan: So for now, they are not touching client interaction.
[00:14:47] Ken: Yeah, and I think that is fine for where you are. The minute you have, I'd say probably above five clients. with other people helping you with those cl I know you have like, you've had more of that yourself, but the minute that you [00:15:00] have these other folks involved is where this can get a little bit tricky.
[00:15:03] Ken: Thankfully we have some of the models set up to prevent that being a problem. But in terms of your setup, independent of having these other folks are you giving them access to your, clickup tooling? Are you giving them access to something like that and when they're not in your higher. premium tier, what does that look like in terms of the client interaction?
[00:15:21] Evan: So the client has access to a filtered dashboard in Clickup where they can see the most recent completed tab. Ask any comments or ongoing work tag to them, any blockers. And then they'll also receive twice weekly standardized emails from me on the state of the project. And then async updates typically via tele for anything ongoing where I need direct interaction during the week.
[00:15:45] Evan: So they have a filtered view, but they're not given unfettered access into Clickup where they would see what the contractors are doing, et cetera. There's an internal facing view where I have everything. External side is where they have a filtered view.
[00:15:59] Ken: That's [00:16:00] great. And this is where your background actually helps out. 'cause most people would not have built that. Like literally Basecamp has a feature, not that I've used Basecamp in years, but I just track whatever's out there. Where they can actually mark something as client facing versus not.
[00:16:13] Ken: So essentially you've created that with your marketing, you know, ops background and just your ops background where they have this view. 'cause most people wouldn't have that. What I typically try to do, and I don't mind putting, and I actually like the more access people have, especially if they're paying, I'm talking about async, not like, I don't, even in my premium stuff, I don't recommend people to do Slack channels.
[00:16:32] Ken: Right. I understand that you have a, that as a, a toggle, maybe your toggle actually becomes. They could have some comment level access, right? For different views as opposed to you joining Slack. I'd like that better. The point being though, that you can actually create a version of this where as long as you don't have 15, 20 clients, you don't have to worry about that being a problem of, oops.
[00:16:55] Ken: Some contractor said something that they shouldn't have said to the client, but I do [00:17:00] like a model where there is that level of exposure. To show them exactly what's happening. So I know that you have that in place, but a, a lot of people don't. So I want them to hear that like a lot of people are afraid to actually create that.
[00:17:10] Ken: And I was like, look, you could either be in a situation where the client has zero visibility into what you're doing and then maybe like gets upset or you could just create transparency. They can see how the actual factories producing the thing, and if they see a problem, it's like, okay, let's go fix that thing together.
[00:17:28] Ken: So I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of that. but I would also just say this, Evan, don't be afraid for this person over time. If they prove themselves to you to get exposure for a client that's not paying you, 20 KA month, right? If you have a client who's paying you 5K or 10 KA month, and this person actually has an ability to be good in front of clients, there's no reason why they shouldn't have some of that exposure.
[00:17:53] Ken: Obviously, you set them up with something on your domain name. There has to be some playbooks around that, right? In terms of like, here's how we run a client meeting and so [00:18:00] forth. But have you thought about that? Is that something that's on the radar?
[00:18:02] Evan: if this model does expand, absolutely. I would look to give consultants more autonomy to drive some of those engagements.
[00:18:13] Evan: Ultimately to your point. Optionality being the goal. If I can work on the skunk works, really difficult projects and that's the work that I do in addition to selling, I'll be a happy man. So eventually, absolutely I would look to step back and have a more codified account manager role or someone who loves that type of work.
[00:18:39] Evan: I am okay at it. But I do not consider myself a, a incredibly strong communicator when it comes to managing client comms, managing those relationships. That is absolutely something that I think could be changed in the future.
[00:18:54] Ken: Here's the cool thing, man, and I, this is where I think the conversation gets even more interesting. you've done a bunch of things that [00:19:00] most people won't do,that's why you got to 50 KA month. a lot of people just don't build things the way that you've built it.
[00:19:06] Ken: And obviously there's some shared DNA around our philosophy on this, the part where we can go forward. Is actually just to say to ourselves, we can do that, but why bother do that, In other words, if you are in a situation where you love the way that you function today, then we only take on clients that don't need that political maneuvering, let's just call it that, or that need so much comms that that is an element that would be beneficial to the business.
[00:19:35] Ken: Think about it this way, if you actually lean even heavier into your. Let's, you kind of said the eight to 10 K retainer, but let's say you leaned into one that's in that four to six K range, and it's truly just async. And there's not even a meeting, honestly, like there's a once a month meeting or something,
[00:19:52] Ken: you get into a model where you can find more of the individual you have and just replicate this right at scale [00:20:00] and really, truly take on the ones that you get excited about. You call them the skunkworks, And maybe having two of those. I don't think you even wanna have three of those, right?
[00:20:07] Ken: Imagine you had two of them that were pushing 40 to 60 KA month, which arguably is a large, too larger percentage, but it's okay, that's fine, because I also have a bunch of other ones that are paying me on average $7,000 a month, and now we truly are at, do the math. It's 80,000 plus a month to get to the million dollar range.
[00:20:27] Evan: right now the focus of the business has been strategic operations or platform operations, which is that. 8K plus level, and that's the work that I enjoy doing because I despise campaign operations, which is the blocking and tackling of sending email, webinars, events, et cetera. It's just, I can't stand it personally.
[00:20:50] Evan: However, to your point, there is absolutely a lower level retainer where people need that type of work. There that could absolutely be [00:21:00] served by a contractor workforce. Doing that level of work and doing it well, I know how to do it. I built it in the past. It's just not something that I have pursued as a solopreneur up to this point because it's not an area that I want to work in.
[00:21:16] Evan: Absolutely. Could become an area for the business down the line.
[00:21:20] Ken: I, I think though, and again, this is the beauty of what we're talking about, it's not that you need any of those, it's that you have the ability to take them on if you so desired. But I would just say, and you tell me like, this is where we're trying to have some okay. Like that this is real stuff that I haven't thought about before.
[00:21:37] Ken: When I look at those, I imagine though that they need a lot more handholding. Right. It's, it's like they, those kind of campaign driven ones, unless they have all their stuff buttoned up, which I imagine they don't, when those campaign level items, unless they have someone internally who's kind of doing the strategy and you're truly doing just the marketing operation side of it, that's when I think it makes sense for your [00:22:00] business.
[00:22:00] Ken: But if it's someone who's like, okay, I'm, I'm, we're struggling with the copywriting, we're struggling with if we don't hit this, we're not getting our next. Level of funding, which honestly in the market today, like there's gonna be a lot of AI businesses that die in the next couple years.
[00:22:13] Ken: That's where I would say, okay, we could do that. But that's not really where I was trying to drive us to. It was more what is that type of engagement that doesn't need a lot of the, let's just call it, I like calling it mama birding 'cause it's a very vivid thing. we don't need you coming over and spitting the food into the mouth.
[00:22:29] Ken: we just need to do more blocking and tackling. So is there a, a distinction there? Where there can be an async level engagement that gives you that retainer without getting into the people who are gonna need a lot of handholding.
[00:22:43] Evan: There absolutely is. One element that I have been experimenting with is after we run the playbook, which is typically a three month sprint, could be longer depending on the scale of the company, but call it three to six months, typically max [00:23:00] at the end of that engagement. One thing that I've been experimenting with is leaving behind a monitoring tool stack Moxie in this case, but having something set up that monitors their critical workflows, the things that inform the infrastructure that we just built, and having someone at the wheel who can check it on a daily basis.
[00:23:21] Evan: This is running autonomously, and you are charged for that. It's a small price, two to three KA month, but you will know immediately if anything inside your operational infrastructure breaks. And I've had two clients bite on that and that could potentially build up as we, as we get into more engagements, it's absolutely something that would serve clients.
[00:23:43] Ken: Yeah, and I think for that level engagement, there's two ways to kind of think about that. So I like where you're going with it. 'cause there's, there's the, this exists within the current offer portfolio, right? If we say 20 K is on the high end. And we said six K is on the low end and we're targeting kind of eight to 10 ob I, you know me, I [00:24:00] wanna have an actual number, but I'm just helping flesh this out for folks.
[00:24:03] Ken: Then there's a separate offer portfolio that's kind of more for this type of a support level engagement. And what I like to do in that case is take the intro, offer pricing of your high ticket portfolio and make that the, the high point on this new portfolio. on the higher end of this type of thing, we, we do it as a four to six K month thing, and you get some actual strategy in addition to this other stuff.
[00:24:29] Ken: On the lower end, we get to two to three K and this is like save your bacon kind of stuff, And then there's something in the middle there. So that would be like a new offer portfolio that you could present to that prospect. And then instead of going and finding these, this is more of a down sell at the end of the engagement to allow you to drive the lifetime value up quite a bit more.
[00:24:47] Ken: So I think that's kind of a. A conveyor belt that we could possibly run.
[00:24:51] Evan: Yeah, I think I really like that because I hadn't considered that downgrade as a separate offer portfolio, but rather [00:25:00] just a. All in one downgrade, but pitching it in that way I think could absolutely keep some MMR in the hopper there. So, yeah, now I'm gonna, now my brain's already firing on how I
[00:25:13] Ken: And so it's, it's almost like we were trying to get to that point. The other thing that I would just say, man, is when I would have my team and my team, you know, at some point was rather large, I would like to typically align them. And my rates were a lot higher for a different kind of business, right?
[00:25:29] Ken: could, I essentially allocate a person or a team per client. You don't do that in this case, but I do think there could be something interesting. Where if you were able to get like 10 of those clients that were paying you in that sort of, let's call them the maintenance mode, you essentially have a person allocated to like those types of clients,
[00:25:49] Ken: And it's like, okay, now with yes, it's a little bit of a glorified babysitter, but they have 10 of those clients. You have 10 of those clients paying you essentially 20 KA month. Those people probably don't need to be full-time. [00:26:00] They're more reactive. They could be hourly, right? So we have the hourly for those people.
[00:26:04] Ken: You're getting paid money. It's, and it's gonna really be a take it or leave it for the client, right? It's like, Hey, we're here to just make sure that we're a backstop. You're now having hourly just for those. It's like, hey I kind of think about this as a whack-a-mole that actually would work, right?
[00:26:17] Ken: Like you're actually hitting them as they pop up, but that your job is solely that this other person over here is kind of doing the next level up, right? And they're actually dedicated to. The four to six K kind of things and now you're really focusing on the eight to 10 K or maybe even just that one or two of the 20 KA month.
[00:26:36] Ken: So I think a lot of people will make a mistake though, Evan. That's why I'm highlighting it. I was talking to someone last week who has a very similar setup, but there's a couple steps ahead of you, right? They have one person who is essentially full-time, they actually are overseas too, which actually makes sense 'cause there's like a cost savings.
[00:26:52] Ken: They're not real, they're like nearshoring, right? So they, they have a nearshoring rate. they speak English really well but they are just [00:27:00] on other strategic accounts. This other new person though, they initially wrongly allocated them to a couple of projects that they shouldn't have been allocated to, and I'm like, look, we have to look at the dynamic and the state of that project.
[00:27:11] Ken: This other project had some variables in it that weren't codified as well. And so what I'm just kinda highlighting for you is if you move into this model, I would kind of put people in lanes
[00:27:21] Ken: And the same thing with client account management.
[00:27:23] Ken: On the backend, there is someone who's gonna be good in front of clients. You actually have a business where you don't want any of that. You don't want that DNA, you don't need to have the DNA of like. You know, madman style consultant. Okay. Drinking whiskey and smoking in the back room together. Okay.
[00:27:35] Ken: That's like a different time, which I think is dying, honestly, especially with ai. So I'll stop there. Any like comments? I know your brain was moving on that, but does that make sense in terms of like how you can keep people in lanes?
[00:27:44] Evan: That does make sense, I think. One of the ways that I look at growing the business is carving off to, to the point of client management. Some of the things that I know are not my zone of genius. [00:28:00] I absolutely am looking at carving that off. So thinking about it in terms of lanes and, and having the contractors that I bring on, not just be. Hourly tactical work, but if they have an area that they excel in, giving them more autonomy there. That's exactly what I would want to do as I grow, is buy back my time, move away from areas of the business that don't interest me or could be given to someone else where it's truly what they're passionate about or what they love to do.
[00:28:34] Evan: That's exactly where I'm looking to. Build the business to is all the stuff I love. None of the stuff I don't.
[00:28:42] Ken: Yeah, so one thing I would just be careful on that I, I like it philosophically, but in practice it could become a little challenging in this stand from this standpoint. I think if you told me, and which honestly is something that we might decide changes, right? Like in next year. But if you had told me I definitely just want to build a, [00:29:00] let's call it the niche agency or the solopreneur agency, and I want to actually build it to three to five people.
[00:29:06] Ken: Right. I think that what you described makes a lot of sense for that because you're gonna have people that are plugged in and you ideally don't ever want them to go somewhere else. Right. In that model, in the model that we actually are trying to build, I would just say trying to keep it simpler and think about them more as cogs in the machine that sort of operate within your machine versus you saying, I'm gonna go build a new machine, or a different kind of machine.
[00:29:33] Ken: The idea being this man. When you are building out a full team, like an actual team, I used to have a scorecard where I could say like, okay, I don't need another type of this person. But when you're building your thing and you're not really looking to build a true agency, which I think right now most people are trying to become you, instead of you trying to become what I call agency 1.0 or Agency 2.0.
[00:29:55] Ken: Agency 1.0 is like madman style agency 2.0 was. [00:30:00] Consolidate, add all the capabilities in house. Agency 3.0 is decoupling and being really good. Getting have, having offers, having systems, having lower headcount or zero headcount, right? One person agencies that are scaling to a million dollars a year, it's a real thing.
[00:30:15] Ken: And now some of these micro businesses that are more SaaS side are literally like $1 billion, like Gamma just announced their. over a billion valuation add 20 people. It's SaaS, but it's just directional to help us understand what's possible. So I think that makes sense from that standpoint. I don't think it makes as much sense for Evan who wants to largely have discretionary time, not have people asking a bunch of things, not have someone who's leaving, by the way, Evan, that you now have to go backfill because they had that skill that you didn't have and now that skill is gone again.
[00:30:46] Evan: Yeah, that's a great counterpoint. I would say everything that I'm doing with the business right now is an active experiment, so I have, I have strong opinions loosely held, [00:31:00] and the the nice thing is having grown to a level of. Income and revenue. I have the space to experiment and go slow. And so as I expand into using contractors, I can pick and choose the things that I like, dislike, and find a model that maps exactly to where I want to go.
[00:31:21] Evan: But to your point, I do, do look at this as keeping optionality. And discretionary time, especially with a young family, is my number one, two and three KPI. And so, I will always have that as kind of the north star of everything that I build, especially in the coming year.
[00:31:43] Ken: Yeah, and I think really my point, I know we, I was getting excited about it, but I think there was a little bit of a light bulb for you that I kind of saw some, little lighting storms above your head again. We'll, we'll be audio only, but that's what I saw. And, and the most positive sense, right, is people have this [00:32:00] mentality because that is the way that we actually, historically, even for you as a hiring manager would build a team, right?
[00:32:05] Ken: We like fill in the gaps in the team, but what I'm kind of saying, and I think you're loving it is. Just do what we have today at a slightly higher scale. I was talking to someone last week who's at like a half a million dollars a year and they're like, oh, I need to figure out the, the revenue model to get to the million.
[00:32:21] Ken: And I said, congrats, you already have it. We just have to do more of that. Right? And we have to build in some additional systems and capacity within marketing, sales, and client delivery. But if you have a style that's working so far, and ironically, not only did you find a client like that, the first person you found is also like that model that thrives in async, that thrives in low or no drama.
[00:32:44] Ken: You're not, you're like the most no drama person I've ever met. Okay. Like, you know, you're like, yes, that's, that's true. And I would have, independent verification of that. So you don't want clients like that. You don't want to have to develop the comms, you don't need a person like that on [00:33:00] the team, in my opinion.
[00:33:01] Ken: So it was really finding more of people that value that. and I know, you know, you participate in this, you've actually been one of the people to, to like show up for these workshops and these briefings and things that I run. But last week when I did a new version of how to plan your next Best year in business, and I keep coming back to the 2030 company, which I talk about a lot on this podcast.
[00:33:21] Ken: Is the three different components that are important, by the way, props to you. 'cause you've invested in authority over the last year, right? Building a stronger voice in the marketplace.
[00:33:30] Ken: We, we kind of started that journey and you reinvested into it. That's a thing that I'm like, okay, you've, you've kind of, I don't wanna say it's like done, but if I were to think about the other pieces that you need, that's not the one I would go to. You know, the second part is execution.
[00:33:44] Ken: I would actually say I would go there right now 'cause you actually have really good systems, which is the third component. So execution right now and speed and extending out the ability for other people to do this work. And finding someone else, honestly, because if this other person that you really like [00:34:00] just goes, bye-bye tomorrow, that also falls apart.
[00:34:03] Ken: So I'd rather you find two more people like that person than find a new person that has a different complimentary skill. Does that make sense? In terms of now, like coming back to my previous point, that's where I think you lean into more.
[00:34:13] Evan: I should mention, I do have two other candidates that I've been speaking to that fill that same role specifically to make sure I'm not caught flatfooted on client work. we haven't scaled with them beyond paid training up to now because they're, they're not looking to fill capacity immediately.
[00:34:32] Evan: They could, but right now, for example, one's on maternity leave just coming off and doesn't want to go back, so there's. Some extenuating circumstances there, but I am absolutely looking to have a roster of trusted contractors to flex with as this capacity starts to get filled in the new year.
[00:34:52] Ken: I do think about like having two stallions that are like challenging each other versus just one unicorn.
[00:34:59] Ken: Right. Now you kind of [00:35:00] have a little bit of a unicorn, but for the next people that come in, I actually want them to be pushing each other and like, I want them to be linked together so that we're kind of seeing as well like, oh, this person's a little bit better. We could actually go with this person more.
[00:35:14] Ken: We give more to that person. But precisely what most people do is this, Evan, it's like one person after another person after another person. When I got a lot bigger, I literally would make sure I was hiring like three people at once
[00:35:26] Ken: They were all within the system, right? And cogs within the system. But if I could hire three at once, I could onboard them at the same time, get them up to speed at the same time and see who excelled at the same time. Not saying I then with fire them 'cause I actually made them offers, but in your case, it's actually seeing.
[00:35:40] Ken: No, this person truly is just blowing this other one outta the water. Let's go find another person like this. And now you have three really good candidates. So the, the takeaway on that one was just to say as much as you can kind of do that in parallel with those other two, that's gonna just give you a lot more efficiency.
[00:35:56] Ken: 'cause now it's not training one person 90 days. They may be able to [00:36:00] be productive. And then I have to wait another 90 days. Now you lost half a year.
[00:36:03] Evan: Yeah, absolutely agree. I'm very much looking to reduce risk around this as I grow. And so having those conversations, having people who express interest, building the playbooks of how can I quickly get people onboarded? What does the training look like? That's absolutely what I've been doing with that. Initial contractor is.
[00:36:27] Evan: Paying them, paying the entire training period, figuring out where the gaps are, what confuses them to try and make that as smooth and painless as possible for anyone else that I would bring in. So to your point, working in the systems has been a big part of the last couple of months nailing down my Clickup working system, nailing down my onboarding, the playbooks that I use, client comms.
[00:36:51] Evan: It's been a ton of systems work up to now, and now I think we're poised for. Pushing the growth lever quite a bit more from [00:37:00] me and from a sales perspective going into the new year.
[00:37:03] Ken: Which is awesome. And I, what I was telling people is, for me in 2025, I've actually invested into that second bucket You've kind of worked, I'm not saying you haven't worked on execution at all, but the speed, the capacity, the decisiveness, right?
[00:37:18] Ken: those are just really important things in that second bucket because. The reason why I talk about this, and it's not the saying that systems doesn't impact this as well, but a lot of people who actually have agencies and have even contractors, you know what they started doing? Evan, they start having conversations with all those people as if their employees are equity owners and they're not.
[00:37:39] Ken: And and I know you're not there yet. I'm saying like, this is what happens. Six months down the line, a year down the line, you have this person, let's just call them person number one that's been there for a little bit. Now you start to trust that person and you're like, oh, what do you think about this?
[00:37:51] Ken: And now you start to become agency lite, which is slower, which is bouncing things around the [00:38:00] agency and not getting things done, even just with one person. That could happen. So just be aware of that as as you go forward. I would also just say this from a, a purely operational standpoint. And you know, I wanna make sure that we hit on any final items here that you have in your brain.
[00:38:14] Ken: I always would treat people, even if they were contractors, in the same way that I would actually just treat someone who is a real employee. And I mean that from the standpoint. And I love that you said paid training, like props on that again, I would always pay people for getting up to speed.
[00:38:30] Ken: Even test projects, which I did for developers, which now, you know, they can game with ChatGPT. But back in the day,Here's the sample code base, we're gonna pay you for this. So to that end, make sure you're documenting. And I would just have like a, a Trello board.
[00:38:44] Ken: I know you have Clickup that would have a person's name and all the things they have access to, right? All the systems and tools they have access to, because when I do need to offboard them, which will happen at some point, unfortunately. There's my same way. They onboarded, same way they get off board, okay, here are all the things that I need to [00:39:00] remove.
[00:39:00] Ken: and this is also the benefit of not having additional client exposure will be beneficial for you because you're not gonna have to like, oh, sorry miss client or Mr. Client, this person's no longer available.
[00:39:09] Evan: Yep.
[00:39:09] Ken: So making sure you have some of that in place. You probably have some of it, but doing it. To a level that you probably don't realize because they do in certain cases, get access to some of the keys to the kingdom.
[00:39:20] Evan: Yeah, the, the access levels in Clickup and my systems, that's been a heavy part of the documentation having been on the. Receiving end of a disgruntled employee in a past life. So absolutely to your point, having both onboarding and offboarding paths mapped out and, and having that documented so that there's a playbook to run against it.
[00:39:45] Evan: That's absolutely the type of systems work that I have been doing is if I am going to bring people into the business, I'm going to do it right and, and have them have a good experience and also have the clients have a really smooth experience.
[00:39:59] Ken: I could [00:40:00] kind of predict this, but let's just say we fast forward a year and then I just wanna make sure I cover anything else that you have in, in your head here. Let's just say. This keeps going well with this person. You will have a decision because financially, and I, I don't th think I said this as explicitly financially, it will make more sense for one or multiple of these people to be your employees.
[00:40:19] Ken: At some point. I'll just make sure you're aware of that, right? They're gonna get to a spot where you're paying 30 to 50 KA month. You're like, oh really, man? Yeah. It can easily balloon very quickly in terms of your expenses for those folks. So you'll have that decision. I'm not opposed to look at that, but you have to make a decision beyond the finances.
[00:40:40] Ken: The minute, like I said, you have a person there, you have to start thinking about culture. You have to start thinking about the growth trajectory. But that is why I came back to, and I was just hammering on having sort of a way to replace that person. Not 'cause you're trying to, because at some point they might say, this was really cool, but I'm kind of bored now and I want to go do something else.
[00:40:58] Ken: So just make sure that [00:41:00] that is probably something, if we did this right a year from now, you will be having that conversation.
[00:41:04] Evan: I do think that's a great call out. I'm very fortunate to be in a financial position at this point of being very comfortable, so more money is always great, but ultimately the goal of Having my own company and, and running my own company is taking advantage of the brief window when I'm still my daughter's favorite person. So there will be, that will always be number one. And so to your point, if it comes down to a financial decision or pulling the foot off the gas a little bit, that's where I will direct my energy. And I, I think that's. That's something that you know, on the wall of my office when I walk in every day are the five things that I measure myself against
[00:41:55] Evan: And so I anchor myself in that. And to your point, yeah, I don't think I would ever sacrifice more [00:42:00] money for less Daddy daughter time.
[00:42:02] Ken: And sometimes it happens, I don't wanna say almost on accident. I, I wanted to make sure you just understood that. It sounds like you get it. There is an element though, in the business that's important which is I think that you, if you go down this path, will be in a mode where it's no longer just about getting more clients.
[00:42:20] Ken: It's always gonna be about getting more people and more clients, but not to the extreme that you've heard me say. When I say more people, more clients, more people, more clients. that's the hungry dragon. But the minute that you have. Two or three people out there is the minute that you also need to make sure that you have a way to backfill those two to three people.
[00:42:37] Ken: that's why I love that you started with the process and the systems, and that's why I'm saying make sure you take the time and attention to educate them, to indoctrinate them even with the way that you think about things and say, look like you could do your thing forever. Like I'm not trying to be your hiring manager.
[00:42:53] Ken: In fact, one of them, I already was your manager in the past. I was your boss in the past. I'm not trying to do that again. So as long as you play in this [00:43:00] sandbox here, we're gonna be able to keep doing this and we're both gonna be really happy. But you do have to have a essentially a pipeline for both of those.
[00:43:09] Ken: And that's why I don't want you to expand beyond this particular sandbox. 'cause that really does put you into the traditional agency, which happens for so many more people than they realize Evan. And that's why I wanted to have this conversation
[00:43:22] Evan: Yeah, I've seen, I've met plenty of agency owners and I am not about that life.
[00:43:29] Evan: So, really enjoyed the conversation because it's, it's not something that I aspire to and. Having ultimate control of my time while also making a very healthy income is what I aspire to. That agency 3.0 model, and that's what I'm shooting for, going into 2026, just a couple years early.
[00:43:49] Ken: I think there is a lot here that you're doing right. I think some of the other stuff were more reframes and or potential mental shifts. Thankfully you haven't gone down the path of that yet. But I [00:44:00] think looking at the additional offer portfolio, making sure we think about who fits where on the team, making sure you have some redundancy in place.
[00:44:08] Ken: Those were some of the, the bigger pieces especially like, Hey, this person here can stay in this lane. This other person here can stay in this lane. And making sure ultimately, that you do stay true to what you want to build. Right? That was sort of the underlying piece of all this. And then just the consideration of there is another pipeline now that you didn't think about before.
[00:44:29] Ken: The pipeline before was just about leads. And by the way, you could always kill off that part. This other part of the business is not locking you into it forever. As long as you have a way to either say, okay, I'm fine releasing these other clients, doing this kind of work. And you can come back to where you are, but the where I'm trying to avoid, and I'll let you get any final last question here.
[00:44:48] Ken: I know, we'll, we'll wrap it up, is that we have to have a way in the business to decide where we want to go next and if we even want to build that other business, right? And it comes back to that word [00:45:00] optionality. Any final things here today, Evan, before I let you roll?
[00:45:03] Evan: All right. I'm gonna hit you with a hum dinger. I'll give you one last question,
[00:45:06] Ken: Okay. Fair.
[00:45:08] Evan: based on everything that you have seen from me. What is the one thing that you think I am not doing that I need to be doing?
[00:45:16] Ken: Well, thankfully we've done a lot in two and a half years. Right. So that is, that is a humdinger. I do think when it kind of came back down to the offers itself, and we did this last year, we, we did dramatically raise the prices and I said, why not price right below the actual agencies. Right. And we did that and we closed that.
[00:45:34] Ken: So I think just continuing to. Not forget that DNA, that the offers are never done and actually experimenting with them, just like you're experimenting in other parts of the market or the other parts of the business, is really what I would kind of come back to and say, do more of that. Because when we've done that, it worked, but then things started working really well and we got away from experimenting on that part of the business,
[00:45:57] Evan: that's a good call out. I, [00:46:00] I am experimenting slightly in the price lever many times. I will, I will raise the price basically as soon as I'm getting to the point of capacity. I'm raising the price to make it worth my while each time. I pitch but I have not done as much experimentation in the structure of the retainer since it's been closing so well, but it's a good reminder to go, go back and play.
[00:46:22] Ken: And remember this, man, I know we're, we're up on time here. But remember that if we're closing it at a clip, that actually is too healthy, like we're not priced appropriately.
[00:46:32] Ken: So we'll, we'll end it there. Anything else for today, Evan? Thanks for the time, man.
[00:46:36] Evan: No thank you for the time. This was a, a really valuable conversation and it really frames up what I'm trying to do going into the new year really well, so I have a lot to think on.
[00:46:45] Ken: Awesome man. We will end it there and we'll see you on the flip side.
[00:46:47] Evan: Thank you, Ken.