232: Using a Fractional Team to Support Your Business

Michele 00:00

Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. Joining us today is Shayna Rose of Shayna Rose Interiors and 4DBiz, Shayna turned a really tragic event into a new business model that is changing the way that interior designers run their business. So, listen in today as we discuss the hallmarks of overwhelm and how to get the help that your business needs. Every day empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Michele 01:04

Hey, Shayna, welcome to the podcast!

Shayna 01:06

Thank you so much, Michele. Good to be here.

Michele 01:07

I am excited to chat with you. We got lots of fun things to talk about. Before we get started and kind of jump into the meat and potatoes of what we're going to talk about today, I would love it if you would just share a little bit of your business journey and what has brought you to where you are today.

Shayna 01:25

Absolutely. So, we're going to go all the way back to 2017. Actually, it was in 2016 when I left a design firm in the Hamptons that I was working for. On January 1, right before that ball dropped, I filed my paperwork and opened Shayna Rose Interiors, and was your classic solopreneur focusing on high-end custom luxury bringing that to the space. A short year later, I feel like I personally killed it as the one-man show with a six-figure profit. But a short two months after that, I had a terrible accident. I flew into a train at 45 miles an hour, I broke my pelvis, I was airlifted off the scene and my whole world kind of just flipped upside down. It took me a whole year to re-learn how to walk, but more importantly, I had zero support for my solopreneur business, and I required a team. And in that time, I learned a ton of things about what that means and what I needed. Long story short, I ended up problem-solving around what I needed. Fast forward to today have created not only a technology but a team that supports other interior designers to operate their businesses by providing them with a virtual team.

Michele 02:40

Let's dig into that a little bit. You and I've spoken for probably a year and a half, if not more, and I think what we both have realized in our journeys, and I would submit other people have as well, is that our situations influenced our business changes. My consulting firm was built out of having a massive health challenge that sidelined me that I could not do what I was doing the way I had been doing it. It just wasn't even an option for me anymore. So, the only option then was to make a different decision. To say this has got to change, something's got to give. And I didn't always know my way out and you didn't either. You were telling me this story where you were in a third-floor or fourth-floor walkup. This wasn't like, Oh, I'm sitting on a beach somewhere drinking Mai Tais with a broken pelvis, this was in a really tough situation.

Shayna 03:46

Yes, it took me about 30 minutes one way, to get up a flight of stairs and no one could pick me up. I couldn't fall. That was my number one main instruction do not fall. But I did have to get to PT eventually after three months for three days a week. I didn't have family close by. I had recently just moved into the city. So, I didn't really have a strong friend network either. Of course, as you know, in Murphy's Law, everything goes wrong at once. I get home from Syracuse where I was flown back to New York, and my buzzer stops working. So I lived off of Seamless food delivery. And, for a whole month I had to throw my key out a window, they knew that they had to catch it or find it so they could let themselves into my building. They knew I couldn't come down. And it was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. They said with that level of accident there's nothing you can do. There's no cast, there's nothing. There is just lay there and wait for this bone to set and try your best to minimally move so you don't shift the bones and things like that. So, it was crazy. I don't come from a lot of money. I came from a $ 14-a-day budget. When I went off on my own, I was couch-hopping between three friends' homes, just trying to make it happen. I ended up making my salary in the first three months of going into business for myself. I didn't have good credit, crazy backstory on that, but it basically meant I had to pay a year of rent upfront to even get into this apartment that I ended up healing in. It was nuts.

I was your classic solopreneur, who was stuck inside the business. I had a financial advisor. I joined a BNI, it was the first networking group I'd ever joined. It was the best decision of my life, as I was learning how to sell and build a network around me. But at my first meeting, it was actually just one short month before I broke my pelvis, this financial advisor, who today is now my financial advisor, is doing a presentation about the accidental business owner. And going on about these are people who fall into business, which commonly happens in the interior design world, never thought they would run a business, and all they're doing is the day-to-day things every single day inside the business. They never think about their own protection, their own insurance, their own disability, or what happens if they get injured, and they never worked themselves on the outside of the business so the business can thrive without them. And I sat there in that presentation nearly laughing at this man like if I don't have to pay someone, I'm not paying someone. At that point, I was installing my own drapery, which had its own comical story, but for the full first year, if I could charge for that and do it, I was doing it.

Michele 06:39

It's a scrappy mentality, right? So here is the balancing act. There's a book by Mike Michalowicz called Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. And that's that scrappiness, that we hear about like the garage band that started in that garage and they're doing all these things. It's the same kind of thing for us and it is so easy to get into the mindset of I can do it faster, I can do it cheaper without looking at the tradeoff. The thought that was coming to my mind, Shayna, when you were describing being in that space and how bad things were but knowing the beauty of what's come out of it, was that it makes me remember the quote (I don't even know who wrote it) "that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Kind of the way that it was, and I even look at my life and my business now. I am 10 years past kind of those major turning points and almost dying and really having major health issues that I still am challenged with. I'm 10 years on the other side of those diagnoses and surgeries and things and I'm still looking back thinking, while I hated the things that happened, I am so thankful for the outcomes and the results of what I allowed to happen on the other side because I could have kept fighting it. I could have dug my heels in, I could have done a lot of things. But I just kind of realized I need to submit and lean into what's happening right now. And then trusting that there would be something better on the other side. Let's take a step forward with what you were talking about, that accidental business owner.

It certainly is a lot of The E Myth Revisited, I'm throwing out our books here today. I think it ties in beautifully to our conversation, but I've had a lot of conversations lately with people that I've been supporting and working with within my business and saying to them, you know, you have been the one baking the pie, (he starts off talking about baking the pie). Now all of a sudden, you find yourself opening a bakery, because everybody says you bake such beautiful pie shame that you should open a bakery, and Shayna opens the bakery. And Shayna is like "Wait a minute, now I've got to sell the pie, I've got to market the pie, I've got to hire the people to run the place, I got to clean the place, I got to keep up with all the standards, and I got to make that dang pie. I've got to do all those things". We can't. Then we have to step out and we have to hire a team, I would even submit that many solo entrepreneurs who think they're solo, do not recognize that they are part of an ecosystem. And so even where we talked about aligning your team, we talk about a team as any two people that work together. So, you and your installer, you and your wallpaper hanger, you and a vendor, you and a client. We're always interacting in some ecosystem. And what you found was your ecosystem was not large enough or equipped enough to support the business that you needed it to support without you being at the center and the hub of all that activity when you were laying on that sofa.

Shayna 09:38

I knew I needed a team. At that point, I was only able to evaluate the problems and convert those into solutions. The only absolute thing I could do is stay inside my mind all day and continue to work through these. So, I ended up going down this journey. I knew I needed support so I hired a business coach. After the business coach, I knew I needed a team to help me field phone calls, emails, and social media campaigns and I knew I needed some brochures done. There were a few problems inside my business that I knew would make it very hard for me to find people who could do things such as calculate yardage, calculate widths of drapery, and really home in on the skills that I had. And I was focusing on a very niche market. That virtual ops team ended up outsourcing me to graphic designers outsourcing me to printers. And before I knew it, I had $2,700 in monthly recurring fees. I paid a graphic designer $6,000 and another printer another six to print an award-winning brochure. Who truly needs an award-winning brochure in their business? A year down the line, I was really focusing on trying to get back on my feet, and still satisfy clients, it just got out of control. Gratefully, I had a six-figure profit in my bank account, thankfully, that I had to fall back on. But all of a sudden, towards the end of this year, I'm looking at my account with $20,000 in it being like hold the phone, what is going on? Truly, what is my time actually converting to? What am I paying actually equal to? I felt like I had no control. I didn't know when deadlines were happening. I didn't know when people were working. I didn't know how much they were working. And I started to go into my next spiral of problems, so to say, which was just crazy. They all had their benefits. Every problem.

Shayna 11:37

I always like to say my success has failed upwards. Everything has been created around a failure and it's the best thing you can go through when you hit that problem, whether it's working with a client, whether it's integrating an E-commerce, whether it's trying to build new avenues of business, or a team, you have to learn some way. So, it's okay, if it happens one time to you analyze the problem, you figure out ways to adjust, just don't let it continuously happen. After that I made the adjustment, I had someone reach out that wanted to do an internship via my social media. I was like, wow, the tenacity of this individual to reach out to my company to say you want an internship. It impressed me. So that was my next journey. I fired the virtual ops team and everyone I just mentioned, and I went to the intern. And this intern was coming to my apartment where I was lying in bed and trying to work with her during that and things were just taking forever. I was paying her full-time to come to the apartment and I just didn't understand how and why things were taking so long. The level of what she was doing should have been a one-day task and it was taking all week. Also, the level of organization was disturbing. We had a big renovation going on downtown, RallyRoad, they have high-end cars in their showroom and we're redoing the whole thing. I was creating a time-lapse, so her job was to go there and keep changing the SD card in the GoPros that were all set up all over. And at the end of this project, not only did she lose all of the GoPros, but she lost all of the content. So, all of that work that I paid for nothing came to fruition for that whole project. That was disheartening. Time to cut ties lesson learned on that one. Okay, now I think I need someone seasoned. I don't need full-time support, but I was just floating in this in between.

At that time, I was also developing everything that I could develop from home. I was building an E-commerce platform, I was developing a custom bed line, and managing the project flow that was going on. At that time, I had a friend that reached out, she was in Europe kind of traveling around and she needed some income and she's a phenomenal copywriter, and her experience is in the marketing world. And so that was the next journey where I had a dedicated part-time employee where I was just passing off my weaknesses to her. And that's when I started to get a taste of how it felt to have someone quality only doing what they specialized in and only paying them the hours that they were putting in. And that's where the realization of needing a fractional team, not even a full-time, part-time single individual. I needed a part-time part-time team that was able to sit in basically three different buckets for me. I needed someone in that marketing seat, who instead of me taking three hours to write a newsletter, could just bang it out within an hour and have it be exactly perfect and on brand. I needed that design assistant where when I needed shops when I needed floor plans, it didn't take a whole week to get the drawing set done. They're busting out the floor plan in an hour and a half doing that shop drawing in the same amount of time that I knew it should take. And then I needed that administrative person, someone who was type A.

My life was a hot mess and I couldn't wait for someone to come in and help me pay my bills and just stay organized. To haul for product tracking when something was delayed, like the worst waste of your time when you're doing all the things when you have to call a shipper and track that product down and why hasn't it delivered, and I went on a journey to try and find it and I couldn't find it. It didn't exist. The technology that we have developed, that's the basis for what it's developed around. How am I going to be able to obtain this team? How am I going to be able to delegate with ease? Track down to the minute what they are doing and then curate an expert team. Whereas with a collaborative network, I certainly couldn't have a full team of full-time individuals, that's not what my solo business was about. How do I bring this to the industry so we can all share? And I reap the benefits of having that collaborative network for myself as well. Fast forward, that's basically what we've brought to market, and we've taken off. We have about 27 design firms on an annual contract with us where they are fractional. They are, on average, seven hours of weekly time where they get to use that time, and that time is fluid, where they get to tap into all these different experts and only pay for what they really need and reap the benefits of having a staffed employee team. But without all the headaches, the payroll tax, the overturn, the training, all the stuff that comes with it but get the pros of staying in control and being able to scale their business through those ebbs and flows that we all experience. And can always say yes, and always can stay profitable. The goal of a business owner is to add people to your routine to profit off of. That's ultimately the goal. The more we have, the more we can prosper if done properly, I think you would agree. And that comes down to proper coaching sometimes and contracts.

Michele 17:10

I love the book Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell, I also think about what I think about as experiential learning, that very tactile-kinesthetic, but learning from our mistakes. And you've mentioned a couple of different things such as I tried this, and then this didn't work, but this did and then this didn't work, but this did. My experiences have been quite similar in that I've tried different things. I've shared before in my courses and in my classes that I teach and in seminars that I do, if anybody tells you they ever got it all right all the time, you need to run and be very afraid of them, because they're either not trying not doing something or they're copying somebody else so directly. They're not necessarily thinking and trying and they're not branching out and something's odd. Because even if you follow the recipe, I can screw a recipe up that I'm following.

Failing Forward is just a really great book. But one of the things that it talked about, I think it was Thomas Edison, and I don't even know the number, so I'm going to butcher it, but we'll go with it, we'll just assume that Michele's getting this right, but go check it out for yourself. But it talks about after he finally invented the light bulb, and somebody made a comment "How many times did you try?". And he's like, let's say 475. And they're like, Wow, you failed 475 times before you got it, right? And he said, No, but I learned 475 ways the light bulb doesn't work. And just that reframing has been super helpful for me. I know, Sarah with Spanx talks about coming to the dinner table at night and her dad would ask the question "Where did you all fail today?". And he encouraged them every day to say this is where I failed, or this is where I missed the mark because there's growth and a learning opportunity. And so, I just really want to point that out. Because number one, you've probably had more than your fair share of having to figure it out, but I also just want to share that because our listeners may be going through something in their own business, in any method or fashion and I just really want to encourage them that you can grow through that, you can look at it as experience, considered a field trip. I learned through the field trip, I'm going to fail forward, what was the term you used? Failing upwards. It is the same kind of thing. We're looking for ways and I just really want to acknowledge that and talk about that for a second.

The second thing is, I was sharing with somebody the other day, I may have even been telling you about it when we had lunch a week or so ago, back in the day when I worked in software, you were full-time or you were part-time and there was nothing in between and even part-time wasn't very common in corporate. There was just something coming into kind of the foreground called job sharing if you've ever heard that term, but what they would do is they would usually have like two moms. Let's say that two women who had children wanted to be with their families, and we would split and share jobs. And one would work in the morning and the other would work in the afternoons or one would work Monday and Tuesday and the other Wednesday, Thursday. But together, we made one full-time employee, but it was called job sharing. It was so cutting edge back in the day, you could barely get a job like that. So, when I came home to raise my children, there was no gig culture, there was no consulting that you could do on the side, and there was very little opportunity to do anything part-time. You were in or you were out, it was one or the other. And things have evolved so much. We're now hearing this term fractional and so for people that don't know what it means, what it means is you don't need the full-time FTE (full-time equivalent), you don't need the full-time resources of one person. What you need is a fraction of that, a piece of that. So instead of just saying I need to hire you part-time, so if I were to hire Shayna part-time, it might serve as 20 hours per week, what if I only need Shayna for a five-hour week, it is rare that you will be able to hire somebody at five hours a week and have them dedicated to your project like really dedicated for those five hours. They're not going to do it. It's hard for them, right? Even part-time can be really hard for people to be dedicated while they're there. However, in this type of, let's call this a fractional environment if they have a business model that allows them to fill up 40 hours or 30 hours or whatever they want fractionally, five hours for Shayna, five hours for Michele, five hours for you, five hours for you, five hours for you. Then they've got the amount of work that they need to sustain their family or do what they need to do. They've got variety because they've got a lot of different people, but they're doing one thing or one or two things that they're really great at.

I shared this on the Metrique podcast, but when we started hiring for Metrique Solutions, we went around and hired for what they love to do. So, I don't have somebody who loves writing test plans writing my documentation. I've got somebody writing documentation and education, who loves that. I've got somebody creating test plans who loves that. That was part of our question and answer in the interview "What do you love to do?". Because when we love it, it's easier and it's faster. I think a lot of designers or listeners today, workrooms, it doesn't matter who you are, listening and thinking "I need help", "I don't need enough help", or "I don't have enough money to hire one full-time person". Or the second challenge that I'm going to throw out and you alluded to it, but I want to put a pin in it and that is, I remember when I was first looking to outsource or to get help. All I could think of is I need them to be able to do this, this, this, this, this, and this. And none of those things were connected to skill sets. They were completely different skill sets, there were the things that I had hodgepodge together enough in my business because I was scrappy, I was hungry, and I needed to do it didn't have the money, so I had to figure it out. But if when I went to hire somebody, I couldn't hire one person who had had the same opportunities, and then expertise in all of those areas. They didn't exist. Some people are great with language. Some people were great with numbers. Some people were great with organization. And finding that I need, to your point, I need two hours of your time a week, I need one hour of your time, I need six hours of your time and you, I need 15, and this is what I need help with when it's not the same skill set, therefore not the same person. Did I sum up kind of what you were looking for?

Shayna 23:43

Yes, definitely. And to take that even one step further is to do that by yourself and go get these freelancers, now you have four different people.

Michele 23:54

Where do you find them? Got to interview them? Right?

Shayna 23:58

So, let's just let's make the argument that you do find them. But now they're not one cohesive team, they're freelancers. It's just you delegating to one person without them being connected to everyone else. And the third issue with that is you're busy every week and this business is so niche; your business has different needs. So, while one week, you might need that person who you said, I need you 15 hours, but the next week, you might not need them at all. And so, to be able to have an average collection of hours that you know that you need and be able to co-share those hours with a network of people where you can tap into that expertise. The reason there's no one cookie-cutter way to build a business is because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.

As you build the team, your team is being built around you primarily first or around your weaknesses, then it shifts over to what you don't really want to do in your day anymore, and then it starts shifting into I'm just a manager and I really get to oversight of everything and cherry pick where I want to spend my time because I am profiting off of every single individual that's helping me in my project to execute and get it done. And this is how we station our team, right? Just like you guys and your interview process said, " What do you love to do?", ours is just in a different language saying "What are your best strengths?". Yes, "What do you love to do, but what are you really strong at and know that you are the absolute best?" because that's where I'm going to seat you. That's where you're going to shine on this team and that is where you're going to be so helpful to another interior designer. So, we have those three very different team sets, marketing, you either have the grab those graphic design skills and those copywriting skills, if that's your specialty, what you're good at all day long, that's where you sit. Administratively, you know the invoicing, you know the markup world, you know how to keep things really organized and love it. Because your job often is going to be contacting those vendors, getting pricing, getting CFAES, and all the fun stuff of the ordering and the expediting world. And if you're in misery, you're going to not thrive in that space.

Michele 26:24 If you don't like detail and follow up and be patient and sometimes have repetitiveness the job is hard. You've got to enjoy them.

Shayna 26:33 And you use different sides of your brain, and that design seat leading to that third seat of design, that's a creative seat. They're also highly proficient in the technologies; they're in CAD, V-Ray SketchUp, all day long. They know every single shortcut on that keyboard, they're not using the mouse to go click around, maybe in the way that you learned it, they have those shortcuts ingrained in them. They're quick, they can jump on a call and make quick edits. That's what we focus on. That's what I would say to listeners out there who are trying to build a business, your little homework assignment is just to really self-analyze for yourself. What area am I actually lacking in? You can do everything, everyone knows that you can do everything. You've proven that. You're a small business or solopreneur. Are there things that are taking you way too much time that someone else could be doing faster? Are there things that are sucking your soul from you, and you're all you're not enjoying your business anymore? You went into business because you love the space. You didn't like working for someone else. You have it in you to do that, but if that's being depleted in you, then there's something that needs to be taken away so, you can go back to thriving. Because in the end, the best marketing vessel is you. The best marketing vessel that can sell yourself, sell your services, is you. But at the same time, you need to also be there crafting those systems of procedures, telling people exactly what you want them to do. And we talk about this in two different fashions for delegation. Cast delegation is its own coaching world and it's very hard to start delegating. Number one, Michele, you said in the beginning, it always feels like things take so much longer to delegate and you're like, you know what, let me just do it faster. That might be true the first time around, even a second, but that will expedite. If you do work and screen record, you can even train while you're working and create evergreen documents to send to someone that you want to train and get on-boarded. There are best practices to streamline it so you can keep moving at the same pace, maybe a tiny bit slower to go press that record on your screen and talk through your workflow when normally it's all in your brain. But you can integrate.

Michele 28:52

Yeah, we talked about that is doing significant. We talk about what is urgent, and what's important, but this is about looking at what's significant. So, delegating the significant. I use the example sometimes, that for my two-year-old child, it would have been easier for me to always brush his teeth because he's wiggling, he doesn't want to be there. When I waited on him to do it, we got to play we're going to do all the things, but I wasn't going to college with him to brush his teeth. So, I needed to make that investment and teach him how to do it, even if it took a little longer at the beginning.

Because the payoff is the only way to reclaim time. This delegation is super important because that's how we reclaim our time to do what we can do best. I'm going to give us kind of a tickler for those that are listening to how they can tell if they are in a stage that you're referring to because this is one of the ways that it's phrased to me quite often. "Michele, the phone is ringing, opportunities are coming in. I want to say yes, but I can't get everything done or I'd really like to design but my time has been wasted doing all these other things. If I could just have somebody else do this other thing so that I can sell so that I can engage in the design so that I can direct the flow, and then let other people help carry that workload." That's kind of the way that most people are thinking when they start. We all have to have some arm of marketing, we all have to have some arm of operations, we all have to have some arm of financial support, financial management, financial analysis, we've all got to then have the arm of the doing of what we do in our business. You've got the doing of the design, and then you've got client management. So, we all have to do these, whether we're the ones who were doing it, or whether we're outsourcing it in a fractional way or in a full-time way.

Shayna 30:48

You're wearing so many hats. As a solo, you are wearing so many hats. Now, to your point, when you're at that point where you're stressed out, you're turning down business, that's your marker for growth. You're growing great jobs, pat yourself on the back. If you got yourself to that point where you're listening or like, well, that sounds like me, I'm stressed out, it's just me, this is an amazing problem to have. And sometimes when people are flipping out, I want to change that dynamic. It feels crazy now. But if you can work yourself, and pass off even just one pat, pass off just one pat, feel how that alleviates some stress for a week. And then when you're doing that successfully, you will realize you'll become a little junky to it. In the C-Suite Network, I did a presentation when I didn't have 4DBiz, and I was still just Shayna Rose Interiors. I did this presentation, and this guy comes to me and he says, you know, you're really not a business. And I said, Excuse me, he said, you're really just self-employed, like, that's all you are. And it really just felt like a knife to the chest. Like "What?", I felt like I had to get so defensive over it. But he was right. I was self-employed, I wasn't a business, I wanted to be a business. I spoke to clients and in marketing, I spoke like I was a business, but I truly wasn't. A business is somewhere where the owner can step away and the business is still running. There are procedures in place where it can go on without you. You can get injured, accidents happen, and it's okay because your team has your back. And that's something to work towards. And I will say as you continue to grow, there are always new problems that emerge. It never stops. There are always new things to learn from. How am I going to control my cost per lead? How can I even learn how to understand how much it costs me to acquire a client? That's its whole other journey that we're I'm still learning from this year, and how to control and things like that. But the first thing first is those strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is different, there is no one cookie-cutter program, your team is built around you and what you need. That's it. You are the sales vessel. Everyone sells differently, everyone is different. It's also about the level of confidence that you bring to the table. Like you said, if you're talking to someone who has one systematic method, run. That's my experience. Run far, run fast, it'll save you in the long run. You're really looking for someone who's going to help pull this information out of you, where are those weaknesses? Where is the data? Where are your reports? And financial analysis is imperative. And so often, people don't understand the data of their company. And that's the major proponent.

Once you start to create those operations. build a team around your need. Your next step is to increase your client flow, or invest back into marketing, know what your bottom line needs to be, and what income you need coming into your household. And when you can start investing in other buckets that are going to start to build you more money. And it's shocking. Even my accountant who also does my books, like where's my where's my monthly report? And he's like, you are literally my only client who harasses me for your reports. I'm like, how am I supposed to analyze my business? If I can't see those numbers if I can't start to integrate KPIs, key performance indicators, and start learning from my data? Now we know what 12 conversations in a month convert into business. How can you integrate that into your business? And it comes down to having that time going back to the beginning, you need to have time to work on the business. If you're stuck in it, it's going to be a constant stressor for you. And I was forced to do it. Honestly, truly, I probably would have kept going as it was going and never built a business, I would have burnt myself out. I probably would have been done in 10 years, installing and doing the things. Once I had a family it would have been game over. Absolutely. Game over. That business would have truly gone downhill. So, it is the number one focus.

And then lastly, if you are building the right foundation and the right team, no one ever thinks about it, but you’ll have a sellable business. If you have data records of data, records of setting goals and metrics, and records of your profitability, not only is that your opportunity to bring an investor in and, not only financial data but a CRM integration, where you have client data, who's in your network. Are you communicating with them? What are those individuals look like? Did you establish a recurring b2b business with also a private client flow? These are things that just have significance when you are doing an evaluation. When you are ready to say "If I'm not passing the torch to a daughter or someone who's coming up who's interested in the business, what is all my work for years and years and years and years what is that going to convert into? I went into a whole life insurance policy, but we don't have 401k, or regular benefits as solos. What's your retirement plan? Hopefully, it's the sale of that business. Hopefully, you have operations outlined, a system of procedures outlined, how you're obtaining clients, and how you're controlling those clients. And on average, an existing client will return every seven years. It's a long haul, but if you did your job you did right, they will return in about seven years for another small project they want to do in that house. Are you staying connected with them? Are they constantly being updated on what you're doing? The value of what you're bringing to the space? Do they know how you're unique in that USP, your unique selling proposition? What makes them want to go to you versus the other drapery workroom?

Michele 36:45

Are they calling to say, are you even still in business anymore? Are they having to reach out? Or are you keeping the connection? Yes, one thing I was going to tell you that we've shared with my coaching clients, you made a comment a minute ago about delegating, what if you just delegated one thing? And we actually did the math that if they delegated one thing a day, for 10 minutes, they could reclaim a week's vacation. 10 minutes a day for 52 weeks for five days is a little over 40 hours.

Shayna 37:18

Yeah, I'll have to send you something, Michele, we created a fun little calculator. This is how much money I want to make. This is how much time I'm willing to work on billable time. And this is how many days I want to take off. And it will convert it to you and say you need to delegate X amount of hours a week to hit that salary. And it's eye-opening for some people. I did this exercise with someone who only wanted to make $80,000. She was a part-time worker, she was a mom, she coached a ton of teams, and she was highly involved in the community. But because of that high level of involvement, her client flow was extreme. And she couldn't manage it, she was stressing out. I said, Amy, how much do you really want to make out of this? And she said $80,000. She only had to clock in on client time eight billable hours a week.

That's it. And she was delegating like 12 hours a week and being able to just stay in the high-level seat. When you start to delegate, it really comes down to how you're closing your jobs and how you're staying in control. Time is money. You want to be profiting off of every single hour you're delegating. If you're paying someone $50 an hour, you at a minimum should be making $100 an hour off that time. And if you're working your principal designer rate, and let's just say it's 150, you just gave yourself a $100 rate. Now you increased to 250 an hour without increasing your fees to your client. And that's the beauty of when you start to build a team as you start to increase that hourly rate that's coming in, but you actually reclaim your life back. Reclaim your stuff, get back in your passion seat, where you feel really good and are thriving in the day, and sit in a seat where you want to sit. And it's different for everyone. Some people hate procurement, some people that's all they want to do. They just want to procure the job, everything else they want it done. So it's about creating the vision, the dream, what am I really good at? What do I want this business to look like? And go create around that. There's no one way there's no right or wrong. That's I think the biggest misconception.

Michele 39:22

And that changes too, right? Because I know the pieces and parts that maybe I loved when I started some of it I do still love and some of it I don't. And so giving ourselves the freedom, that fluidity to be able to say here's what I'm loving now, and here's where I want to spend my time, and here's where I want to reclaim some of my time so that I can focus more over here.

Shayna 39:41

Yeah, and it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. It really is. The best piece of advice I have ever gotten in the first job I ever took was that when you feel uncomfortable is when you grow. And so, if you're sitting in a place and you're feeling complacent and nothing's changed, then you're not challenging yourself to grow and you know what in some cases, that's fine. You know, if you're happy with where that growth marker is, and you're fine with nearly capping yourself off, it's kind of the negative of being an employee, in my opinion, certain jobs are different, but your cap, there's a ceiling cap for you. And as a self-employed individual, you're kind of capping yourself as well, to a certain extent. There are only so many hours in the day, there's only so much billable work you can clock in. And time, what's the saying, oh, if I can only buy back some time in my week. You can. You can actually pay; you can do that. So, if you're feeling that way, that's your trigger. It's just a matter of organizing those thoughts in a way where just like you said, one task, think of one task. And it's funny, you said that because we have a little private Facebook group and that's kind of what I had communicated to them. Sometimes the most stressful thing, at least for me, is collecting money. Going to that client and asking for more money, or they didn't pay the right amount. It integrated a level of stress into my day. And I've heard from other designers that often feel the same. The best thing that I ever did was pass the billing off to someone else, every Friday invoicing and collection happens.

Michele 41:13

And they're not emotionally attached to it either. To them, it's just their job, they just go and do that.

Shayna 41:17

Exactly. And you get so connected to the clients. Now we're friends, and it's like, "We're over the retainer and it's in my contract that I'm going to bill you for more time". I just don't want to sit in that seat. I want to stay in the friend seat, we have a great relationship going. Now I'm third-degree removed, which is fantastic. And that stress is off my plate. It's a small task. It's like a one-hour weekly task because I'm not asking her to type up the invoices, I'm only asking her to send them out, collect, and follow up. A one-hour weekly task, that used to fill me with so much stress is gone. I don't even have to worry about it.

Michele 41:58

Well, and I bet you it took you more than an hour because you would stress over it. And then you'd have to do it. And then you'd second guess yourself, and then you'd feel bad when it was over. So even if it only took you a calendar hour, it had a heavier weight. I talk a lot about Profit First. Profit First in your money. But I always love the idea of profit first being our time, where do we spend our time on our calendar? Where are the most profitable tasks? And how do I make sure that those get done?

We talk about it in the book Clockwork as your queen bee role. What are the things that as the owner of my company, my firm that only I can do? There are some things that only the owner can do. And then what are the things that as the owner, I want to do? What is it that makes me feel joy or feel fulfilled about this business? So how do I make sure that my day allows me to do the things that I must do as the owner and then do the things I love to do as the owner? And then how do I find support to hand off to all the others? So just keep in mind, we do have a limited amount of resources, and our goal is to steward and spend them well. And that's time and money and then looking at that conjunction. So, Shayna, as we wrap up, tell everybody where you're hanging out so if they want to engage with 4DBiz, see what it's all about, check out what you'll have to offer in fractional support and a technology system to manage that.

Shayna 43:28

Yes, so everyone can go check out www.4DBiz.com. We shortened it and it stands for "for designer business". And on that website, you can see example works, you can meet the team, and see what software and things we collaborate with. But you're also able to register for a free account, get inside our software, and there's a bunch of free tools in there that cost nothing for you to get yourself organized, help manage your time, and stay on top of your retainers. And when you are ready for that team with ease and convenience, you can delegate to our team. And we'll be here to support you and onboard you and get you to a place where you can grow. Especially if you're saying no to client work, that main sign that we're saying no to money. And who likes to do that? And the only reason you're doing it is because you're feeling overwhelmed, but I don't want you to say no, I want you to always say yes and compound those opportunities. We will be here to support you every step of the way.

Michele 44:33

Awesome. Well, Shayna, thank you so much. I love having conversations about how we can be successful and grow and delegate and think about our work and the structure and a lot of different ways. So, thank you for your time today.

Shayna 44:46

Thanks so much for having Michele. My pleasure.

Michele 44:51

Shayna, thank you so much for joining us today and I want to encourage you all to head over to 4DBiz and see how maybe they can help you if you are in that overwhelmed state and looking for fractional assistance.

We can be our worst enemy and we're the ones that get in our own way. I want to encourage you to recognize that and ask for help. It doesn't have to be that way, you can sign up for a discovery call if you're looking to grow and scale or if you're looking to kind of get unstuck in your business, I'd love to have a chance to chat with you. And you can head over to ScarletThreadConsulting.com and fill that out. Or if you are looking to understand your financials, make sure you go over to MetriqueSolutions.com. Help is really only a click away. And so is profit and profit doesn't happen by accident.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.