Picking a Side Gig | Multithreaded Income Episode 7

I'm going to ask you what, what was the big idea you pulled from Brett's interview?

And this has been diagram and the things he said was it needs to be feeding me, not draining me. He said that has to be bringing in revenue. And it needs to build an audience. So those are the three things. Um, and I just think that's kind of a critical thing to keep in mind. So, you know, uh, Stephen Covey, uh, whole book had, um, yeah, multiple books, but one was, you know, um, seven habits of highly effective people. And one of the habits there is beginning with the end of mind. Right.

And, uh, that's just like a principle. I just hold on to a lot, try to anyway, not always good at it, but that's what I try to do. And. I think just trying to when you're starting out or trying to determine, you know, how you're going to go and create side income, uh, and or grow your side income to so it can be your main income. I think this advice here on this whole Venn diagram is really, really good.

Because if it's not feeding you and it's actually draining you, you can't keep it up long term. It doesn't matter how disciplined you are. It doesn't matter how hard worker you are. It doesn't, you know, it's like, if you don't, if it's not feeding you and it's actually draining energy out, you, it really cannot be sustained. So I think that being in there is super important. And then of course, if it's not bringing in revenue, it's not bringing the money. Well, you don't have a business.

Uh, you're not going to be in business very long there. So it has to be a critical. And the interesting thing is. Um, I, I tend to go on premium pricing versus trying to be the cheapest on stuff, uh, because. You know, there's no advantage to be the second cheapest, right? There's no advantage being second cheapest.

And if you're the cheapest, well, somebody, it's just always going to be providing as much value as you can for as little as you can, and you just can get priced out, out of the game anyway. And, uh, which is great for the market. Uh, but as consultants and, you know, providing value, it's, it's all about, uh, determining where that value is and having a premium price, but also like in order to charge that price, you can't just say, Oh, I'm gonna raise my prices.

But you charge a price in order to do that. You have to provide tons and tons of value. Something nobody else in the market is doing. That's, I think, where the key's at. So it's not just about, Oh, I didn't charge more money. I'm gonna double my rates. You have to actually provide value. But the whole point is revenue has to come in. And if you have that revenue coming in, and it's actually a premium revenue, you can then hire a team. You can then bring in other people.

You can actually solve problems in more creative ways.

So it is interesting to try and figure out what, what is the right price to start with, where you're just trying to, you know, you know, get, get, get a bunch of, and we see this a lot actually, where people come in new businesses, especially in the, um, labor industry, right. Manual labor. Living fences, for example, down here in Gulf Shores, it's like people will come in and like be the cheapest contractor. Right. At first, just to get the business. Right. Or like mowing lawns, right.

Landscaping and stuff. And then once they get it, they start to realize, you know, like good clients, bad clients, and, you know, now I have the opportunity to really start raising my prices and, you know, reducing the amount of jobs that I want to take. It's more becomes about quality over quantity. At that point,

You haven't, you haven't proven that you can do that or that you will do that. Um, and so unless timing is just right and you have just the right person, it's very hard to kind of charge this premium rate and go straight into it. So usually you have to build yourself up into that. Uh, but knowing Knowing that that's your end goal when you get started, is a really powerful thing.

Uh, versus just getting in, just trying to get business and then spending a decade working at these low rates, not realizing that, oh, there's actually a better way, a better way to do this. Um, and the other thing he mentioned that that third person, third piece of the diagram was building an audience. And if you, and again, I think this is more from the content management side, uh, of stuff that he's doing, but in general, if you think about the audience, it's all about.

You have this notion of a funnel, right? So you have like what's called a sales funnel and you have potential leads that come into your funnel and you kind of filter down, then ultimately they become a client. Or they buy your product, right? Depending if it's a service or, you know, an actual product that you're selling. And in order to Um, in order to actually make a decent amount of money, you need to have a lot of people coming into your funnel.

A lot of people coming in to know about you, uh, to cause the best, the best sales you can get are inbound sales. When they call you up and like, Hey, Kevin, I want to work with you. I saw you online. And I'll work with you and you're like, well, great. My fee is this. And it's, it's like the hard parts already done versus, you know, people have to go out and call, call and send emails everywhere. I mean, it's just a totally different, totally different ballgame.

So that's where that, that build audience to me, it's all about setting yourself up, uh, so that, uh, lead generation is much easier.

It's the. All right. This is how much it costs. You get X, Y, and Z. And I, it's not even an option. Like there's no negotiation. It's like this, you want to employ me for, for a project. These are the terms. It's not like I can go to Walmart and pick stuff off the shelf and go, all right, well. You're telling me it costs this much, but what if, what if I only give you this that much, um, yeah, consulting works the same way. And you're talking about the Venn diagram. I have another thing.

It's a, it, if it's not a hell, yes, it's a no. . The way that I gauge a lot of things I'm working on because we just have a very fine amount of time and energy to work on projects. And I know bright feels the same way. Like if I'm going to start working on something or make a conscious effort to work on a project or initiative, it's gotta be a hell yes. If not, it's gotta be a no, because I need to keep the room open for the things I'm going to be very passionate about.

And I was like, and you know, I was like, well, this is the number that comes to mind initially that would, that I would, make it happen. The project was exciting, but also I knew that just time wise, right. I'm fortunate enough to be at a point. You know, in my career and where I feel like, you know, I don't really have to take on some of these, you know, jobs that are kind of lower quality or trying to like bid the lowest and all that stuff.

So really it's a point where, Hey, I know like I can do a better job, higher quality. I can hire someone to help me and I can really kind of manage that. Um, but here's the price. You know, and it is what it is, but I know people get sticker shock when they see that. And this person did as well. So it's I'm kind of glad they did in this case.

And I didn't have to pick up that job because I know if that didn't happen, I would've got probably stuck in something that I really wouldn't have enjoyed and really wouldn't have seen the value that, I really needed in order to make that job happen.

It's like, it doesn't matter if you can, if you know that you can bring them in 250, 000, you can easily charge them 50, 000 without blinking an eye because, you know, the amount of value they get. Is extraordinary, especially if you can work it out where they don't have to pay once they get their first 50, 000 or whatever. Like when you're confident and what you can provide and you can provide that type of value, you can charge.

Uh, really high rates, even when somebody else's would charge, you know, a hundred bucks an hour and, uh, you know, charge them basically a thousand dollars for that. You're charging 50, 000. It's like, well, that's 50 times what the normal radius. Well, yeah, but I can guarantee that you're getting, you know, pretty much five times the amount of what, of what I'm, you know, charging her. So it's all about figuring out what you can provide and the value you can stack on.

I've heard before, and I think it's really valuable is you don't decrease your prices. You increase the value, right? Instead of saying that I'm negotiating on my price, Oh, you're a hundred dollars. Now I need you to really be 85 an hour. It's like, no, I can't do 85. Now I can't do 95 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour or 200 an hour. What was the number? It's right. And it's like, well, if you're trying to negotiate on that, it's like, no, but this is what I will do for that.

And again, in general, it's a bad idea just for folks listening to charge per hour. So you want to charge per hour per value, uh, and not actually do the, do the hourly thing, because it's very difficult. Cause at that point, as soon as you started going down that path of charge per hour, you are the commodity.

And then I can go and get, and get Sean for 95 and Kevin for about, and actually you can't obviously, but the whole point is you can, you can go get somebody else for just a little bit, a little bit less if you're at the commodity. So you don't price yourself as a commodity.

As I get more into private equity, actually, this is something I think about more is like, how long would it take for me to regain my investment, to make my money back? Right. Um, that's a, always a good thing to think about when you're going to make a purchase or an expense or build something, not only how much time it's going to save you, but how long it's going to take to get back. Also, now that I have this time back. In addition, now, what new value can I create?

And that, that kind of shifts me in a direction I want to talk about a little bit, which is the more of the like strategical prioritization stuff. Cause this has been, so he talked a lot about time management. One of the things I kind of saw Brett evolving into, honestly, as I heard him talk was like from small consultant shop or, you know, individual really right into now he's kind of growing back into, Hey, I have a team.

And I need to make sure that whole team's aligned on the right priorities, you know, going after the right objectives, doing the right thing for the week. He said something like this is the big goal of the week, right? That's what, where's he's kind of at right now. I kind of see him actually evolving more into that strategical, like running a whole, you know, a bigger company kind of, kind of transitional phase. Um, and I've been in large corporations, I've been in small companies.

A lot of the time what happens is. And I'm, you know, more and more is just aligning. You're trying to get alignment across the board constantly on the right priorities, the right things we should be doing. Like I have engineers that can do great work. They can, you know, I can coach them. I can build an awesome engineering department that can, um, you know, deliver stuff. But the question is always, are they delivering the right stuff? Right.

And, um, you've heard the whole, or you maybe haven't heard, um, but there was. You know, a book in the past, I think Kevin may have introduced it to me, or maybe you, Chad, about putting the important before the urgent. Right. Um, and ensuring that every way or every week, right. Every day, almost that you're chipping away at the important stuff. So I know me personally, like, I want to walk away at the end of the day, feeling like. I was pretty productive.

Right. I hit, I hit something that helped achieve that big priority that I know I need to work towards. So in the morning, the first thing I always do is like, I'm going to go for the one big rock every day. Like, that's my focus, like do a big rock first. Right. And then maybe the other stuff that comes up throughout the day, I'll chip away at.

it's the worst feeling in the world to get to the end of the day on Friday and realize I don't feel like I accomplished anything. This was a week, this was a wasted week. What, what am I going to do with myself? All right, I'll just start fresh on Monday and it turns out it's the same thing. Um, I could really learn from that. You know, there's one big task that needs to get accomplished every week, and there's nothing to say. And if you get it done on Monday, you can't have another big task.

You try to get done that week.

Then that's a great way to again, Some that gets more into almost trying to fine tune your daily calendar, you know, though, and sound like Brett, that's not really his, his gig. And that's fine. Um, he, he mentioned something about the Pomodoro technique, uh, on this and he, how he kind of shies away from it. And I'm kind of the same way I used to really enjoy the Pomodoro technique, but the 20. 25 minutes was just, it was too short. So I pretty much did like three in a, three in a row.

And, uh, you know, it went like an hour and a half and then, you know, took a 15 minute break and that seemed to work out better for me. Uh, but then all of a sudden it was just, I don't know, I, I kind of got out of, out of doing that. And I didn't, it was kind of a neat thing, but it really didn't seem to provide a ton of value to me personally. So it's just interesting. I, I definitely think I found myself getting into weeds on what this is, this, my block a day in my block a day.

And to your point, Kevin, when something gets. You have a fire or something happens and you feel like the whole day's blown down because, or, you know, whatever, instead of just like, well, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to pack my entire day with this. I'm going to have margin. This is why I'm trying to get done this week, period. And as long as you're disciplined enough to actually start working on a Monday and not leave it till Friday, you're good.

And if you don't have enough discipline to do that, then you need to work on, on that part.

And like, you know, spend my time, you know, the little extra time I had every week. Is it, you know, is it building little tweets, right. That we can automatically schedule and ship and ship out, right. Or is it better spent, you know, going to. Network and, you know, uh, build some relationship with someone that we want to have on our podcast, right? It's all about, it's all about trade offs. Everything's about trade offs.

I mean, think of software architecture is about trade off system designs about trade off, right? I mean, that's all it is. And then same with priorities as well. I mean, you know, when you're trying to think about how to spend your time, especially in the beginning, right? Like, you know. What, what is the right marketing channel, right? Are we going to use YouTube Instagram, you know, uh, Twitter.

Of course you want to use it all, but where's the most value, um, you know, spent where, where should we target?

Um, and I know what bread like a lot of stuff he does and he has his team for he's asked himself that question. Do I need to do the editing on the videos? And the answer is no, you can pay an editor to do the editing on the videos for you. So I probably didn't really allude to this to the audience or in the interview, but I have a very long history with Brett and Brett and I have known each other for way too long.

And so I knew Brett in the first, technically the second job I had out of college and, worked under him. He was kind of a mentor to me as when I was a young kind of technologist figuring out what I wanted to do. And we just stayed friends since. And a part of that journey was we, we formed a business. So, and Brett did not talk about it at all during the interview. And it was a little business called wind sitter. we would develop basically monitoring software for windows servers.

Cause it sounds really boring and we didn't execute on it the way that we probably should have, but we had wanted wind sitter to be. That thing that we still do our full time job and then we have this thing on the side that we're working towards and we worked and we worked and we worked and we worked on it and I think it's an important thing to talk about Windsor was a failure. It's went 3 years and eventually, uh, Brett and I had a conversation. Is this worth? To keep going with.

And the answer was no. So we took the little bit of money that we made on the business. We paid off the server bills that we had. And I think we went out to a nice dinner and that was the extent of what we made on Windsitter. I've had this unique opportunity with Brett to kind of be side saddle with them on a lot of the initiatives he started. It's really nice now to see him finding success in something that works really well. I wanted Windsor to work, but things happen.

We learned a lot along the way, and I think in the footnote of his current business is actually Windsor because his docker training that he's doing now the work he's doing with Maven that all stemmed from him trying to figure out how to deploy no JS consistently. In our production environments, we can see where he is today, but it really all started with Windsitter because he picked up Docker as a solution to a very particular problem that we had. I'm super happy with where he is.

And that, that's kind of the main thing in all this stuff. So that's why I can jump back to the Venn diagram real quick. That whole, it has to energize you. It can't drain your energy. It's so important because it's all about the journey. It's all about what you're learning through this progress, through the process. Okay. He had, what'd he say? Six or seven businesses over the 20 years. Uh, and, and, and most of them didn't work out. This is the latest one is, was working out well for him.

Right. And that's, you know, uh, between us, we have the same, same situation. So the key is getting started sooner rather than later. Uh, so the sooner you get started, the sooner you get some of these failures, but again, don't, you can't look at them as failures and definitely don't look at it like, Oh, this failed, therefore I'm a failure. Uh, that messes up your mind. You can't, you can't get into it.

Can't get into that, into that, uh, pathway and I've been there, uh, once it's kind of, kind of drummed down for about 18 months. I was just, you know, it's like, well, I'm just out. I'm just not, you know, just because it actually came down to, uh, my mindset of saying, well, this thing failed, therefore I'm a failure. I'm not going to do anything else. It took me a while to kind of come out of, uh, come out of that.

But the, the key is if I hadn't lost those 18 months, I've been further, you know, further down the road than I am now. The key that I've realized since then is it is about the journey. Uh, it's about what you're learning as you go. So even if something is quote unquote a failure, it's okay. Cause that, the time that you spent there wasn't for nothing. You've actually learned what not to do at least one thing not to do, if not a bunch of different things.

Like on that, what you did and like, get the lesson out of it every time. What did I learn through that? What actually was the benefit? Cause there was some, there always is. And it's going to ultimately mold you into the next step that you have on your journey.