Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: The hype around the one person business model is real. There's even talk of building billion dollar unicorn startups, for example, with a single founder and AI plus AI agents. Let's be honest. It sounds like a dream, but it also can seem like a lot of work compared to having a team that at least in theory, allows you to delegate and quote unquote takes things off your plate because when you are a one person business, you are full stack.
[00:00:33] Ken: You are someone that has to know how to get leads consistently. Close those deals and deliver the work to keep your business turning. Now, you know from other conversations that I have been doing this for a while, I have the self-proclaimed title of the OG Remote solopreneur, and I have really helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, if you include my past business, really thousands, but definitely hundreds of consultants, [00:01:00] founders, solopreneurs, and so forth.
[00:01:02] Ken: Really fine tune their one person business, but meeting after meeting call after call, I always hear the same excuses, the same problems, the same anxiety, and it kind of goes like this. I can't keep up with BD and deliver on the work I just sold, or How about this one? My clients want me in Slack 24 7. And my favorite, which I've talked a lot about on social especially, is I absolutely need a VA because I'm drowning.
[00:01:32] Ken: And somehow this lower cost labor is gonna solve all your problems. But what if I told you that by making some key shifts, you can make this one person business model way, way easier to manage. And hopefully by now, if you've been listening along, no the answer is not just ai
[00:01:53] Ken: It rarely is. I've been doing this one person business model for. Really decades. It [00:02:00] doesn't mean that you don't get any help. It doesn't mean that you don't have ways to grow. It doesn't mean that you work alone in the basement in your pajamas.
[00:02:10] Ken: And you've heard me talk about that before because that is what a lot of people think about folks like us, that we have quote unquote lifestyle businesses, and we're not taking it seriously and it doesn't actually help us to get to where we want to be in life from a. Standpoint of income, revenue, so on and so forth.
[00:02:29] Ken: So let's jump into this today and really understand what makes a one person business model way easier. Also knowing that it does not mean that you can't have any help, and you've heard me talk about that as well. And the way that we start is something, again, that we've gone into with lots of different conversations, but not precisely this way, which is that when we talk about having a way to attract and close clients [00:03:00] without necessarily having.
[00:03:01] Ken: A big audience or a large sales team. It is something again that I have personally lived through and helped.And again, for reference, I have had clients who are large content creators or who have bigger audiences, but that really is the exception to the rule.
[00:03:20] Ken: And the best first example of this, thinking about what I did as a $5 million a year agency founder without being known on LinkedIn without having any VAs and no sales team. Again, no big audience, no sales team, no notoriety. I did write a book at some point, and guess what? Later on in my business, no one even really knew about that.
[00:03:45] Ken: It still was a little bit of a credibility builder, but the most important thing relative to your growth that we have talked about in conversations, especially things like Go to Market Signals 2.0 in the unusual case for LinkedIn. [00:04:00] So double back to that is. Really having that strong lighthouse client.
[00:04:05] Ken: That lighthouse client being the way to replicate your best client of all time. Just use that simple definition and the go to market signals that allow you to go from challenging sales conversations or no replies, which happens regularly when you don't have signals behind your outreach. You don't have clarity in really understanding why.
[00:04:27] Ken: A social post is gonna resonate and cause someone to actually reach out to you or why you just generally are not having a way to scale your leads because you're not using signals like predictive fit. As one example,
[00:04:41] Ken: as I've talked about before. I have no problem with you aspiring to build. An audience, I have no problem with you if you actually already have an audience like me On LinkedIn alone, I have 30,000 plus followers. I've worked really hard to get that, but what was more important when I didn't have that, what was [00:05:00] more important when I didn't have a sales team, is the way to attract and close clients without having to.
[00:05:09] Ken: Wait around for them just to come to me and I talk about this from the standpoint of consistency. I don't care that you can get a client. I care that you know how to get the next 10 clients. What does that look like? It looks like having messaging that resonates.
[00:05:27] Ken: It looks like messaging that allows you to, when you use it, open up conversations without crickets. I promise you that this is gonna be really hard until it's not. I tell my clients this all the time, but as an example, working through some problems for clients this week. I have someone that I've worked with now for multiple years, and this business is actually only about that old, so they were in early and have still continued to work with me.
[00:05:56] Ken: And this person was someone who regularly gets [00:06:00] inbound leads. They're someone who, in some ways does better with that than I do, and i'm doing more revenue than this person. But from a pure inbound lead standpoint, probably one of my top clients. Just posting a alone based on all the work that we've done for what they do.
[00:06:14] Ken: It works really well on LinkedIn because that's where that person's lighthouse clients are, and they would just see four to six calls magically appear. Obviously a lot of work behind it, but you know what I mean, magically appear on this person's calendar, and that right now is just not happening. So being able to have a system to say when.
[00:06:35] Ken: The thing that has worked historically does not work anymore. What do I do? How do I make changes? Frankly, this is a big thing between the gurus out there who often learn from someone else and they're selling the thing that someone sold them, and someone like myself, who's just been an entrepreneur for now multiple decades, is that you have a way to look at everything that's [00:07:00] happening across your business and say.
[00:07:02] Ken: Oh my gosh, this isn't working anymore. What can I do next? But realizing that way before it actually happens, I much prefer to have your brain have systems thinking as opposed to do these three steps.
[00:07:16] Ken: And the system's thinking today needs to especially be informed by what I call these go-to-market signals 2.0. Again, didn't go through those exhaustively in episode nine, but did give you a few examples so that in this particular case with this particular person, we really are looking at some of the shifts that are happening outside of this person's control.
[00:07:40] Ken: Things and places like LinkedIn have been phenomenal, but as a result of changes within that shifts in the algorithm and so forth, they have to look at new signals and they actually do have some interesting signals because of some tests that were done to inform. Making a shift so that this person could continue [00:08:00] to attract and close clients without having a sales team.
[00:08:04] Ken: And I don't wanna say they have zero audience, but they don't have hundreds of thousands of followers. They definitely don't have millions of followers. And I know a lot of people in that range, and this person does better relative to a lot of those folks in terms of their revenue levels, especially in terms of their recurring revenue.
[00:08:20] Ken: So that is. Our step one in terms of the one person business model is how can you do that without also spending 20 hours a week doing it? And it's an important point that I'll just spend one more second on before we move on to the next really important piece here is someone recently that I was talking to is saying, Hey, I just don't have 10 hours a week to go do all the things I need to do as an agency founder.
[00:08:48] Ken: To build my founder brand to also make sure clients are doing well, and this person does actually have some employees, but I just don't have the time to generate more pipeline myself because of all those [00:09:00] other problems.
[00:09:00] Ken: So I'm not asking you independent of having a smaller team or being solo to dedicate 20 hours a week, 10 hours a week to this. That is the point of having a way to attract and close clients without that big audience or that sales team.
[00:09:16] Ken: And that is on the far end of the first system if we think about the three systems of marketing, sales, and client delivery. But I wanna now jump over. To a little bit of the sales and client delivery side in having a way to drive value without deliverables and meetings. A lot of people get excited about the idea of moving from being that doer to the advisor.
[00:09:41] Ken: I understand in certain cases though, that you have to actually have things that are output. And you might have heard me talk about in the past, I don't mind about having output, I just want them to go with you because of the outcome. But it's really important when it comes to your sales and your offer and having that scalable offer [00:10:00] to move out of the more of mindset, I get paid more.
[00:10:03] Ken: When I do more things, the scope is bigger. Or potentially even bringing in team members or having contractors or subcontractors. But this all kind of falls into the doer mentality, the order taker mentality, and really this more, better, faster.
[00:10:20] Ken: I recently spoke to a go to market agency, and I find the irony of this is that I help a lot of marketers or go to market folks, but they need that help themselves. It's always easier to do it for someone else in a lot of ways, and was really proud of this person. Who sold their biggest deal yet unfortunately, it was also about half the market rate based on all the data that I have.
[00:10:45] Ken: And it also required them to do all the things. It was sold at a much higher clip and rate than they ever had done before. So I gave them props on that, but it also is under the side of the house of [00:11:00] the doer. And there was just so many things there that they are responsible for. And the more things, by the way that you are responsible for, the more deliverables that you have, the more risk.
[00:11:11] Ken: Listen to this next part, the more risk that there is for you in something not working well, and you being the person that's blamed for that. So now we have to work on getting this person. Into a spot where they can sell things at that rate a better rate than they ever have before at the proper rate though, and also move them out of getting the hands on keyboard work,
[00:11:35] Ken: and a fairly high expectation in terms of the things that they're gonna be doing, the amount of revenue that has to be driven, and even in some cases. The hours required, although they did a good job navigating that to some extent, and I can't take credit for that. They did that themselves. But we have to be able to move forward in a way that gets them out of deliverables, milestones, [00:12:00] meetings, and all the hours being in the Slack instance, almost feeling like essentially an employee.
[00:12:06] Ken: When people use the word fractional especially,
[00:12:09] Ken: it becomes synonymous with proxy for employee lite and expectations of employees. Being online, coming to a lot of meetings because most businesses, spend 20 to 30 to 40 hours in meetings a week, and you then start to inherit the culture of that business as opposed to selling them on the Async client delivery model where your model is actually what allows them to get the results that they want.
[00:12:40] Ken: If you go back to the conversation around killing the nine to five, the positioning there of being able to step out of meetings all the time, This is really the most important thing for the one person business model. Otherwise, you will sell the thing for a larger number than you have and also have [00:13:00] half of your week gone right away.
[00:13:02] Ken: Because you are stuck in meetings, answering slack messages, deliverables, milestones, and your feet are being held to the fire on something that is more expensive than even some of the internal employees relative to a also high risk that you have said, I'll own all these areas of the business.
[00:13:22] Ken: And the only way to set up Async client delivery is before you actually sell the engagement. I have a lot of people that come to me and I can show them a roadmap, how to move out of, oh my gosh, all these clients. I'm in teams over here. I'm in Jira over here. I'm in Slack over here. I go to all the client standups over here.
[00:13:45] Ken: There's just a lot to undo and I have a roadmap for that, but it's much better to solve this upfront than to solve this thing downstream. It's not impossible. I've done it for a lot of agencies and consultants, but you really want to grow [00:14:00] without hiring. If you really want to have this one person business model, you absolutely can't spend.
[00:14:06] Ken: All your time doing all those things and then having zero time to actually provide value to your clients and work on the business itself.
[00:14:14] Ken: So if you think about. Where we have been so far, first really addressing the marketing and sales a bit,
[00:14:22] Ken: but definitely more on the marketing side in terms of attracting those lighthouse clients without having that big audience or that big sales team. And then making sure that we sell the thing that isn't gonna put us into 10 to 20 hours. Of meetings, deliverables, and a whole bunch of other stuff because you won't be able to do business development.
[00:14:41] Ken: You won't be able to attract and close clients while also doing all of that. We also then on the backend, have to ensure that if we do want to have a one person business model, and by the way, I still think I had a one person business model, even with 20 to 30 [00:15:00] employees. 'cause they all operated in my systems.
[00:15:02] Ken: And I was the sole owner of the business. They weren't AI agents, like people believe it will be for a billion dollar unicorn startup at some point, but essentially was the same thing, just at a much higher cost, right? You're not gonna have to pay $300,000 a month in payroll when you get into this new world that we are getting into almost overnight.
[00:15:25] Ken: So that is that last piece here. Of a way to get help without employees and payroll. It is the name of this podcast and in the world of remote, in the world of a global marketplace, and this little thing called ai, I really need you to understand this, and I've talked about it in the past in some ways before, three years ago when I started this, this was a preference.
[00:15:51] Ken: Today it is a requirement. A quick little aside to show you that a similar progression is at some point you could have a business without any [00:16:00] online presence. today, if something doesn't exist online, effectively, they don't have a business before 2020, I was one of the people saying remote is a way.
[00:16:09] Ken: To grow your business without having to have lots of expensive equipment, office space and so forth. No one wanted to do it. And then this thing happened in 2020, and now if you want the top talent, you better be remote or have a hybrid setup because you'll lose out on tons of talent if you don't have that.
[00:16:28] Ken: So we are moving from all of the idea of, hey, if you want to grow without hiring. Here's how to do it as a remote solopreneur three years ago to you better embrace this because it is not a preference, but a requirement.
[00:16:44] Ken: And if you go back to the conversation around the fastest way to not grow in episode six, I Introduced some of this around the community of expert peers, getting help from actual [00:17:00] peers, meaning people that have some expertise that you can install their brain into your business, and maybe you're paying a lot more for that, but a lot less than you would if someone was on payroll.
[00:17:09] Ken: But also from the standpoint of the mentors, the people who have been there and done that.
[00:17:15] Ken: But I know a lot of agencies right now, maybe even some that are listening to this and they're saying, yeah, well I'm an agency and I have some employees, so I'm not a one person business model.
[00:17:25] Ken: unless you have given away equity in your business, which you, if you did that, that was a bad decision. You really, most likely are more of a one person business model than you realize. And it doesn't mean that you don't care about people. I actually said in the past, you might have heard this in other conversations, you pick it up that I was a.
[00:17:43] Ken: Great boss to everybody else, but a bad boss to me. So you obviously do care about these folks,
[00:17:49] Ken: but it does not preclude the fact that you actually might be a one person business model and in certain cases, here, just as another little digression, you have to do what's good for you. I [00:18:00] had to make hard decisions in past businesses and at some point you have to say. This is about me and my family, and I have to prioritize that over.
[00:18:09] Ken: Even my team that I love. I have some clients who have literally saved people's lives, especially with what's happening in the world today. And I understand that there is a tight human connection there, but you still have to do what's best for you if you have a family, for your family, but definitely for your own mental sanity.
[00:18:26] Ken: You can't just keep working yourself to the bone and expect. To be any sort of entrepreneur, especially in 2025.
[00:18:35] Ken: So we're not coming into the client delivery saying, now it's time for you to do all the milestones, all the deliverables, but also you're not saying that you can never have any help, that you can never have a contractor, maybe even in certain cases, an employee, especially in the world today in the global marketplace.
[00:18:54] Ken: You might have someone who's based not in your time zone or even your country who you [00:19:00] effectively kind of treat like a team member. Just knowing that having only one of those is a higher risk. I have a repeat client right now who has sort of one of these niche agencies and has one really key person, and the first thing that we're trying to solve is to ensure that there is another key person that sort of acts as a mirror to that person so that we don't have.
[00:19:22] Ken: The same risk in the business and also that we can alleviate
[00:19:25] Ken: that person getting burnt out faster and then just leaving the business.
[00:19:30] Ken: So it's never about not having help or pseudo employees. but it's making sure that we're not always doing the hungry dragon of more people, more clients, more people, more clients. And you heard me in the past talk about the Hungry Dragon, and it is something that is very real for me because of what I've gone through myself.
[00:19:49] Ken: I think it's at least worth addressing this directly. When we say the one person business model, oh, isn't this this a fancy way to say [00:20:00] freelancing, or a fancy way to say being a solopreneur or a fancy way to just say that you're an entrepreneur, and I get that. I did a whole conversation around if the word solopreneur was actually a real term and what it really meant.
[00:20:15] Ken: But the difference is that a lot of those titles, at least a couple of them, especially when we use the word freelancer, is much more about the order taker. It's much more about getting things that just get dropped in your lap. From a client acquisition standpoint, it's much more about saying, I sell all my hours, or even sell a bunch of projects, and now I'm at capacity talking with another person.
[00:20:39] Ken: Earlier today, and they said, yeah, like I get it. I'm not doing hourly, I'm doing projects. And I said effectively, like, congratulations. That's only marginally better.
[00:20:48] Ken: When we talk about business models themselves, they are more sophisticated. They actually have strategies behind them. They have systems behind them. They have a philosophy behind them. So [00:21:00] the one person business model, regardless if. You have any sort of help and whatever that help looks like, systems, ai, tooling.
[00:21:08] Ken: You've built up ip, you've built up subcontractors or maybe these, pseudo employees. This is the way that you have to think about the world, not just through 2025, but as I allude to, and I'll talk more about this, to be the company that survives to 2030. I truly believe that a lot of businesses are going to zero.
[00:21:31] Ken: A lot of consulting businesses, especially because the information is free today. The speed of iteration is an expectation. We measure these things in the past and years and decades, and now we measure them in days and weeks.
[00:21:46] Ken: So when you have these. Pillars, these foundations. This is what makes one person business much easier, way easier, and it is the thing [00:22:00] that you have to embrace independent of anyone being on your staff, independent of actually having a payroll or employees. Because if you don't have this mindset and if you don't think about how you can get these clients consistently.
[00:22:15] Ken: Without the big audience or the sales team, you're not turning to low cost labor. You have that way to drive the value without deliverables and meetings, and you have a way to get help without having to have that bloated big payroll or employees. These are your table stakes as we come into the next five years, and honestly, maybe a lot faster than that.
[00:22:38] Ken: So that is where we're gonna end the conversation today. I always love the opportunity to have these talks with you. As I continue to get feedback that comes in. You can hit me up in the show notes to find links to be able to reach out to me, but a rating or review, if you've learned one thing today, one thing, did you learn one thing, I hope so.
[00:22:58] Ken: Please do [00:23:00] consider a rating or review, and it inspires me and helps me to keep this up and keep it at the high level in quality that I've been delivering. But beyond that, always. Appreciate your time. I don't take it for granted that you spend a few minutes with me and I can't wait to keep talking with you about how to grow without hiring.