Show Notes
Every so often we come up with these random episodes and this time we're talking about 10 things that we've learned from running our own business. Maybe some things that we'd even realize that we've learned. So stick around, this will be a cool one!
10 Things We’ve Learned From Running Our Own Business
- Investing in your business is key - Since the beginning we’ve had this mentality of growing and investing in the business. Making sure that we had the right software, hardware and education to keep growing. And as we’ve grown, something pivotal to our business was investing in hiring the right people. Hiring isn’t cheap, but there’s no way we could grow without them.
- Being a leader AND a manager are equally important - Being a leader is one thing, but being able to manage people is another. Leadership and management usually gets thrown together and used interchangeably, but the skills needed to be effective are different. Leadership involves looking at the big picture, while management involves focusing on the details. As a business owner you need to be able to handle both sets of skills. You need to be able to motivate and get your employees to see your vision but also keep them accountable.
- You can definitely live on less income than you think - It’s not easy by any means but you can definitely do it. Having to cancel Spotify Premium and cut back on eating out is painful but you can do it if you have a goal and action plan to follow.
- There is a steep learning curve - As a new business owner you have to learn about LLCs, sales tax, creating proposals, insurance, websites, hiring, developing a culture, etc. The range and depth of topics you need to learn about are endless. Business owners and entrepreneurs have to be constantly learning and adapting to all these new things.
- Time management is absolutely crucial - To be your own boss you need to be self-disciplined and have a clear understanding of how your time needs to be used throughout the day, week, month. It is very important to keep a calendar with set deadlines.
- You need help - We used to do our own bookkeeping and accounting and found that we couldn’t keep up, so we hired a CPA. We made friends in the industry and in business to help us bounce ideas off of. Sometimes it’s a professional in a specific area or sometimes it’s another business owner down the hall. Trying to go it alone is a recipe for disaster.
- Your business will never outgrow you. Making sure that you are constantly pushing the vision and developing yourself personally is crucial to overall success. In the same vain, stop being the smartest person in the room. It’s cool for a little bit, but you never grow.
- Passion isn’t a business model. Just because you love something or you like doing it doesn’t mean you will be successful. It’s popular to say right now that you should follow your passion, but without execution or understanding how to turn a profit, you are probably better off working for someone else.
- Being an entrepreneur is not what society says it is. It’s not lambos, beds full of money, and riding on private jets. At least not for us it isn’t. Being an entrepreneur is giving up time with family, sleeping less, putting others before yourself all while trying to bring in more business and make sure you can pay everyone. Now, we have not had this problem (knock on wood), but we talk to real entrepreneurs every week and most of them can’t keep their head above water because they are chasing a dream. Entrepreneurship is absolutely glorified right now, but 15 years ago it was looked upon as similar to a starving artist. Nothing has changed except the public perception of them.
- We’re just happy to have a glass - There is no reason we should have quit our jobs in September of 2015. We both had very little savings and only a small profit from starting the business. To be fair, we didn’t have many expenses either. We opened our business banking account with $2,000 and that was supposed to pay for operating expenses and give us enough money to live on. Our parents thought we were crazy, and in hindsight, we were. We were blinded with a vision of what could be. So, looking back, whether the glass was half empty or half full, we were just happy to have the glass.
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Transcript
Christian [00:00:00] Every so often we come up with these random episodes and this time we're talking about 10 things that we've learned from running our own business. Maybe some things that we'd even realize that we've learned so stick around. This gonna be a cool one. This is the Marketing Natives. Providing actionable ways to grow.
Aaron [00:00:32] Hey guys. So Christian just got to me and even though he's not the one behind the micr so that's kind of funny. All right. So this will be a really fun episode for us. We're gonna jump in to number one here.
Aaron [00:00:43] Dang this is increasing to change the title on us to just see the title.
Christian [00:00:47] The thing is we've done it was it was a Bring 10.
Aaron [00:00:51] Yeah we didn't bring ten. No we didn't bring ten but we also wrote a medium article too, 10 things what we learned from quitting our job.
Aaron / Christian [00:00:58] But that was like that I think was like a month into quitting our jobs. What do we what did we learn from quitting our jobs. It was like. Yeah. It's like oh my gosh. Nothing.
Aaron [00:01:10] Well we said we've learned a lot and we probably did learn a lot like Oh crap that's crazy. So. All right. Number one here. You wrote this I'll ask you some questions but you said number one was investing in your business is key. What do you mean by that.
Christian [00:01:25] Yes I mean this since the beginning. We've had this mentality of you know we had this vision or this goal to grow this business into something huge. Really. So we've always had that mentality of investing in our business. And you know purchasing you know if we need the software if we need equipment like OK let's get it that's going to bring us closer to that goal. But part of investing in your businesses also investing in people. Right. And hiring and hiring isn't cheap at all. No. So that's probably one of the biggest things is you know I don't think we we were necessarily too focused on getting paid. I guess you know when people own their own business they're like Yeah I like doing this because I want to get paid. But for us it was more of OK. We had this vision of we need to grow this business and that means getting a pay cut during this time then that's fine. But let's keep growing this business and putting more money into the business.
Christian [00:02:34] So I think that's like I don't know something that maybe doesn't have to be as extreme as we've done it but it's something that you know I think every business owner needs to take into account as you know what's your long term vision what's your long term goal and what is it going to take it you know to get there and I mean investing your business is huge. Right.
Aaron [00:02:56] And I think that gives some context we're both twenty nine as of now when we quit our jobs when we were 25. So when we're giving this context out there it's like we were pretty young. And so it's not like we both had families that we had a support with it too. So we were able to make different decisions because of that. So everybody starts at different points it's always a good time to start. So it's just a matter of what the investment looks like for you guys. All right. Number two you said being a leader and he capitalized the word and a manager are equally important. So I think I kind of know what you mean with this. But you wrote a lot so why don't you give us the version that you're thinking about.
Christian [00:03:39] Yeah I mean so I mean first off you know being a leader of being a manager to complete different things and I feel like sometimes they get you know people use it interchangeably like leadership and management are you know one of the same. But I do think that they require different skills. You know leadership is definitely more of a division or the long term sustainability of the business. Looking at the big picture while management is more of the you know day to day you know accountability you know that type of role. And I think that's something that we've had to learn as we especially grow our team is that we need to be both. You know we need to be leaders. We need to be have that long term vision always in place and be able to motivate people to follow us into that goal and to achieve that we want to have. But at the same time we also need to be managers and you know make sure that we keep them accountable for for the day to day things that happen in the business.
Aaron [00:04:47] Yes. So it's kind of a it's a blending mechanism and I guess if anybody has figured out how to master the two already we would be interested in understanding where that book is that or where that article is. There's a lot of people who I think are really good at leadership like John Maxwell comes to mind and there's a lot of people who would talk about the management style but I don't know if there is and maybe again somebody can tell us but I don't think there's a really good staple that says like here's you know I'm kind of doing some blending thing with my hand here where the two of them are blended in like what this actually looks like specifically because in a small business if it's a big business is easy because the leadership role is like OK look I just have managers report to me and they kind of take. Here that we're in a small business. You have to like OK this is our vision for the company. And then like you said earlier. OK now we got to do the management side because I got to make sure that this is done and then also take care of clients so it's like your management and leadership pattern like literally simultaneously on at the same time and it's just like flipping them.
Christian [00:05:47] Yeah. And I think another idea with this number two that keeps coming to mind is you know educating yourself and reading books and listening to podcasts and all this stuff like it's all great. And it will definitely help out but until you just go through those things you're not necessarily going to learn from them. So being a leader I mean a great manager. I think there's a lot of just trial and error and a lot of failing in order to become truly good and great.
Aaron / Christian [00:06:23] It's nice. It sounds like it could be a good book. Good from good to great movie.
Aaron / Christian [00:06:27] Is that a book by Jim Collins.
Aaron [00:06:30] Go check it out. Amazing book. All right number three you can definitely live on less income than you think. All right. So my question to you is how much income did you think that you could live on like you want to say no but maybe like oh I could live on like you know say you had your regular job you like oh I can live on half of what my regular salary was when I'm four I quit my job to starting a business or or like I don't know how to do without giving any number of or whatever but like is there a percentage you really.
Aaron [00:06:58] Yeah I guess I can sacrifice a little bit. Like I don't really need to get groceries I can you know I can you know buy some catch a beer.
Christian / Aaron [00:07:08] No I mean I don't think I have a number specific thing in mind but I think for this you know I was just looking back at you know what we were getting paid when we first started it was like nothing. And the way that we I don't remember how much was we did we parasail five hundred dollars something like that.
Aaron [00:07:27] Yeah it was that five hundred dollars plus like if we got extra or something like we'd pay ourselves a little bit more maybe.
Christian [00:07:33] Yeah I mean we had savings and you know different things that sort of made us stay afloat. I love it. And I think that company Ellis like because we're investing so much in the company. I think at that point. Like pay for gas and maybe a lot of the meals and stuff like that. So we were sort of trying to make that work. But I think I mean I think adjusting from you know I have put here like I have Spotify Premium before I started this and I had to cut back on that I cancel my Spotify Premium maybe not eat out as often I remember what I actually had. You know I could tell it like I would go and buy clothes and like all this stuff that I don't know. You do need clothing you need these nice things but you don't necessarily. It's not a make or break you know especially if you're trying to grow a business or you're starting you know a branding business you have to make sure that you know you take care of your necessities and then everything that's just a luxury which I guess what if I was like doesn't seem like luxury. You're like getting a new shirt maybe doesn't seem like a luxury but I mean it kind of is you know it's much easier it is when you're in that position of wanting to grow this business at the time I was like it is impossible. Like what. Like but now like it is possible you just have to set your priorities and and sort of you know make it work. Yeah you get very creative. Yeah yeah I think so yeah.
Aaron [00:09:02] It's like oh I can make this food you know less two weeks like I'm going to be tired of it but it's only going to cause me 20 bucks to eat for two weeks.
Christian / Aaron [00:09:10] Yeah it's definitely not easy by any means to you know get paid less than you were before and get paid even less than minimum wage. I think you think you're getting paid like maybe 50 cents an hour or something like if we were looking at working a lot of hours. Yeah yeah. So I think I think it's possible. Like you said I think you have to just get creative and you know just try it out I guess.
Aaron [00:09:41] And I guess the good the good part here is that we increase our salary so it's not like it's up for ever sitting at that part you know.
Aaron [00:09:50] So it's not like you have to realize that it's OK. This is a tough time that I'm going through right now or this is the time I have to be creative right now.
Christian [00:09:56] Right. That was the light at the end of the tunnel. You know while you're going through all this is that yeah we're suffering now two way bigger pay off.
Aaron / Christian [00:10:05] Yeah I think we could have paid ourselves more than five hundred at a time. I wouldn't do it for that long. No we didn't.
Aaron [00:10:12] Now we increase our salary but if we paid ourselves that little or we could've paid ourselves a little bit more but we're like No let's actually like you know we'll talk about a little bit later but like we don't want to have a smaller number in our bank account than in our personal accounts like our goal was to build the business not necessary to make ourselves personally look like we have a lot of money.
Christian [00:10:33] Yeah. So the next one here is another thing that we learned is that there is a steep learning curve with running a business.
Christian [00:10:43] In the beginning you know you sort of put all your time and effort into the product right where you're offering your clients. But there's a lot more than just that. I mean I'm thinking about like maybe someone who's starting a bakery know that might have the most awesome recipes for these muffins but it's evolved way more than that. That's just like a small portion of what it truly is to run a business. So that's where I think. Like the steep learning curve comes in. It's like you have to know a little bit of accounting you need to know about sales tax you need to learn about for us like creating proposals insurance you know creating websites you know for us and marketing which is what we do but we still need to do it for ourselves. Hiring developing company culture. So there's a there's a lot of things that are involved that from the very beginning and that's something that we as a company agreed upon was education and make sure that we're staying on top of not just these things but within our industry and the services that we're offering under technology and software that we're using that you know we're the very top of knowing you know what's going on. So we've sort of outsourced some of these things like accounting and some of the taxing stuff. But at the same time it is important that we know how they work you know. And that we just at least have a general knowledge of how they work.
Aaron [00:12:18] Well I think that one of the an area that I don't know I guess is not talked about here is like how to run a business even if you go to business school or you go in you have a marketing degree or you have any of these things like what they teach you there. You retain a little bit of it you know like oh yeah I remember just a few things but it's not the same as owning our monthly sales tax or do our quarterly sales tax or do our federal sales tax or do. And just making sure to pay those and to I mean to do all do everything. And I like to I actually talked to quite a few business owners are like Yeah I didn't pay my monthly sales tax I'm like OK that would scare the crap out of me like you know are people going to audit you. Are they going to do something like that. That's just a you know these are huge pieces or a huge part of being able to run a business as you get to make sure that your taxes and your numbers and everything are in the right place. Yeah. All right. Number five here is time management is absolutely crucial which I absolutely agree.
Christian [00:13:25] Yeah there's something that we talked about when we did the 10 things that we learned from quitting our jobs you know type of one isn't always like did you find the article or Bring 10 OK.
Christian [00:13:36] I like the nice so that once you know part of part of that one because back then it was a huge readjustment to you know having a someone above you telling you what you needed to do what times you know like we have this Deadline. So we're starting we had to set up our own I guess for us like keep each other accountable. So that helps. But yeah absolutely time blocking and I think for us like having a physical calendar that we can look at and put things in and create our our own deadlines and things like that is absolutely crucial.
Aaron [00:14:14] Right. We did. We used to time block. I think at the very beginning and we're like let’s time block everything. And there was like 10 things like OK we're gonna do this from this to this to this to this to this and looking back at it now I'm like OK that was freaking genius but then we were like No that's just too too disciplined in detail that like we shouldn't do that. But now I'm looking at I'm like We should have just stayed doing that because like we got so much down what we're like now we've got free time you know we should have like a little hour here wiggle room so we don't just focus on one thing and at one time which is what I'm saying it allows. Like why the heck did that was a good idea because then you're just like Oh well like we we have. I mean for us when we just started out or anybody just starting out you have very few clients you have a lot more times you just like well I've got eight hours to do this one project right. Like I don't need to worry about growing the business. But then you're like oh crap I need to grow the business otherwise I'm not gonna be able to have eight hours to do this.
Aaron [00:15:10] So yeah very smart of us in the beginning and then we kind of get away from it for a while and then we've gotten back to it. So calendar blocking is crucial. OK. So this is the time of the podcast where we tell you guys a little bit about us and I don't think they're going to jump into that you know that we're a marketing agency in Allen Texas. In this podcast actually breaks down a lot about who we are and how we started the business and just some things that we've learned so I'm not going to talk about that but I do want to talk about the ability for you guys to messages on Instagram and just ask any question. Obviously we are come in 10 things here we've learned probably quite a few more things than 10 while starting our business as of the time of this recording. We're at least for me. Christian quit his job September 10th. I quit my job September 4th. He probably doesn't remember that. Yeah I do. No you don't. No. So anyway it's been about four years now and we've learned more than one or two things obviously. We've got 10 here we've got quite a few more. So if you're on Instagram and you wanna shoot us a DM and you say Hey I got a question about this shoot us a message. We'll be happy to answer any questions for you for free. Before starting a marketing agency if you're starting another business if you will just want some insight. Maybe we don't answer that on the rest of this podcast. We're happy to help you. So just go over to Instagram at BitBranding make sure you follow us. That's crucial. And then shoot us a DM and happy to answer that.
Aaron / Christian [00:16:44] All right we're back. We're back.
Aaron [00:16:46] Nice. I really hope that the middle of the intro or the ads spot song is a good song or like it. Yeah a jingle jingle. I think jingles. Yeah it should be. You know those old cars that like they're like did you do do you do doo and it ended like in the parades.
Aaron / Christian [00:17:07] You don't know. Yes. We see that a lot. OK. Anyway number six. You need help dude you need help. All right. So I alright number six. I don't need help but maybe so Christian talked about this a little bit earlier.
Aaron [00:17:25] Number four with a steep learning curve and I've put on here number six you need help because we did hire a CPA. We have hired other business coaches. We have found friends in the industry and you just never know who you're gonna be able to bounce ideas off of who's gonna be able to help you or be a professional in a specific area to help you decide that you're not best at example accounting.
Aaron [00:17:49] And when I said that it's just more like business is ridiculously lonely. I'm just thinking like I didn't have Christian or if Christian was doing it by himself like we may be an owner or a single owner and still have five employees but it's still the business owner who has to have these conversations it's still like I see a lot of people who are just so entrepreneurs and it's like it's ridiculously lonely so making friends and hiring the right people. And like contractors or people tell to help you out who specialize in specific areas. Absolutely crucial for you to grow. Not for you to survive I don't think I mean you probably will be to survive. But I don't think that you can grow without having or getting help.
Christian [00:18:32] Yeah and there's a different version of something that we said and the first one the 10 things that we learned from quitting our jobs and we talked about yeah having each other as being a huge plus to you know to our success. And something that we've reason I don't know do we want to shout out the. This company that I'm making this is the first low yeah. It's a vestige which we're not members or anything yet. Maybe we won't but they have. This is an organization and it's CEOs entrepreneurs business owners.
Christian [00:19:12] And you become a member and then you are able to. Just like I was saying like bounce off of ideas and things that are working in your business et cetera et cetera. So yeah when we say like you need help like me help you out on things that you can't necessarily do. I mean maybe like accounting. But then again you wanna make sure that you're at least somewhat knowledgeable in that field so that you can make better decisions in there. But having sort of a mentor or a mastermind type group on which visit kind of gives you is absolutely important and I mean we had each other we had each other to bounce off of ideas and things like that. So that was hugely hugely beneficial for us for our success. So that's what we have here is your business will never outgrow you.
Aaron / Christian [00:20:08] The business owner the business owner.
Aaron [00:20:11] Yeah and I think that I've heard that before and we've talked about that before but it doesn't. So it didn't ever really resonate with me until a little bit later because I started reading a lot of business books whenever I was probably like 2013 or 2010 to 2013 I read a ton of them and I remember the CEO of Interstate Batteries I had and it was a cool opportunity to be able to talk to him quite a bit and he was like if you want to see where you're gonna be at in the next three years look at the books that you've read in the last three years and you're here now because of those three books or because of those three years of books. But I'd like on that timeline of what you're reading now is where you're going to be and that's really like a good indication of for us. I think it's like I feel like things are falling into place but it's not by happenstance it's like oh well just make sense that we're doing this but it's like no we reading stuff about this we were talking about this in our podcast we were doing this stuff in our business and because we did that it's really been we've been in business now for going on almost four years and like is just taking that three years like year one we did these things and now we're like getting the fruits of our labor from that or we're getting stuff from what we've done before. So just always constantly growing yourself developing yourself going to conferences talking to subject matter experts becoming more aware of what's going on in your industry and just always learning is gonna put you ahead of the competition because most people can't keep up with with that or they don't make it a priority. Maybe they still can. They just don't make it a priority. So I think that's why it's so crucial to always be learning because then your business is going to grow dramatically. And one last thing before I go off of that tangent is that Mark Cuban reads three hours a day and he is constantly learning about new tech and new business and new everything and he's always trying to figure out OK what's better what's you know how can I grow. And he's a billionaire. So I don't think he got to be a billionaire because he just started reading one day and had the time now because he's probably ten times busier than us. But I guess it's just a point that you've got to constantly be growing and your business will not grow outgrow your mentality.
Christian [00:22:29] You put it here. Stop being the smartest person in the room. Oh yeah. What I mean by that.
Aaron [00:22:34] So it's something that I like whenever we first are going to networking we were easily the dumbest people in the room because we didn't know how to network or if we went somewhere. Seriously I had no clue. We never took a networking class we never knew how to do anything. And even now I don't consider myself a good networker. I consider myself a good marketing person who's at a networking event. So like 90 percent of the time people come up to talk to me and not the other way around. So what I mean by that is whether it's your office whether it's a networking group whether it's your peers like I don't want to be around other people where I'm smarter than them. And the reason why is because there's always gonna be somebody to push you to that next level. And if we level out with a lot of people we're at now and I'm like OK well these people have this size of business and these people are this developmentally professional like get you to a certain level which is nice because we're younger. So like they're older and it's always good to be with those kind of people. But now we need to go to the next level and say like OK I'm trying to talk and hang out with these kind of people in a room I'm using very generic generic terms here because I don't want to try to call people out or make it seem like I'm belittling to anything but I just always want to be the dumbest person in the room because that way you really do grow. And people can make fun of you.
Aaron [00:23:57] Yeah like oh OK we got another one.
Christian [00:24:02] I'm next we have a good number eight of the 10 things that we've learned from running our own business is passion isn't a business model Yeah just because you love something or you like doing it doesn't mean you're going to be successful. All right.
Aaron [00:24:19] So this is something that I think whenever we first started I was like oh no that's definitely true. Like if you follow your passion if you follow it you know your dreams are your hopes are you're gonna be successful and that's just absolute crap because of what you talked about earlier. You can say Suzy or whatever her name was who owned the bakery she loves to cook but that does not mean that she is an entrepreneur and that does not mean that she's going to have a successful business.
Aaron [00:24:45] She could be the best baker in a huge bake factory or a bakery. But it does not mean that you are gonna be a successful business owner. Yeah it's not a good business model like how are you going to make this happen. Well I don't know I'm I'm so passionate about it I love it so much. OK. What happens when no you're not passion or you get in a rut or whatever else so it's not a sustainable business model. And I think that at least me personally I'm realizing that it's like you got to like it because you're gonna be spending a lot of time doing it but just your passion alone is not going to be an actual business model that will make you successful.
Christian [00:25:18] Right. But here like yeah execution and understanding how to turn a profit are definitely way better thanks to maybe a focus on attitude to make it a successful business.
Aaron [00:25:33] Mm hmm.
Aaron [00:25:35] What is next. No. Oh nueve. That means nine nine nine. All right being an entrepreneur is not what society says it is.
Christian [00:25:45] You know there's there's a few YouTube ads that I've been getting of these guys saying like Yeah.
Christian [00:25:52] Look at me. It's one of those Amazon FBA’s. Yes. Retirees do you and he's like in an alley. He's like Yeah. We love the Lambo or the girls or the mansion whole ad it was a good ad you it was a good ad.
Aaron [00:26:06] And he's like. Like he gets back down and he's like squatting whatever you like.
Christian [00:26:10] You know I think the guy was like a He's like 6 foot something. Yes. He's like a basketball player.
Aaron [00:26:16] Yeah. But yes I guess the point for that ad is like we've already guessed a lot is a lot of people still believe that that's like what an entrepreneur is is like anything and put on here like the Lambo cash on the T on the bed working for Molly.
Aaron [00:26:37] Yeah. Yeah exactly.
Aaron [00:26:39] Passive income. I’m making 1 million 1 mil a year passively not doing anything.
Aaron [00:26:45] And I was like that's just so it's such not an entrepreneur. I don't know what I put in here but I wrote I was a pretty long paragraph of basically like being an entrepreneur is like giving up time. It's giving up. Yeah it's giving up time with your family. It's giving up resources. It's putting other people for yourself. Like literally everybody your employees potential your business partner potentially your.
Aaron [00:27:12] What do they call you your clients.
Aaron [00:27:16] All your taxes all your money everything.
Aaron [00:27:18] It's like literally you're sacrificing everything to chase this one hope that you'll be able to sustain yourself and be able to pay yourself and live off of being an entrepreneur versus whatever he talks about it's like oh yeah you're an entrepreneur you own your own business and then you know you wear this tie or you have these briefcases and you just make money and you have more money than everybody else and it's you know super easy like everybody seems like to start a business.
Aaron / Christian [00:27:44] And then I think there's a misconception to that. Yeah you own your business. You must be loaded man. Yes.
Aaron [00:27:51] Or we hear this from not only a shout out to our employees but also like a bunch of other people who are like oh you can't afford that or you don't want to buy that. Right now it's just a right off.
Aaron / Christian [00:28:02] It's like it's we still had to pay for it with real money for it with real money like oh yeah you're one of those people that are stealing and taxes or whatever I'm like OK.
Aaron [00:28:11] You really don't know how much we had to pay in taxes. It's cringeworthy. So nobody talks about entrepreneurship and maybe that could be a serious. Like we just talk about the down and dirty of entrepreneurship like oh yeah this is what I'm doing today I'm driving my Honda Civic to work and I'm going to go and pay my sales tax for the month to the state of Texas like this is what entrepreneurship is like. Oh I just got a call from a client. She wants to know why we misspelled her name on an application or whatever.
Aaron [00:28:39] You know it's just this is real life entrepreneurship and oh we got an employee who wants to leave for a month because whatever reason they want to vacation and why they would leave for a month I don't know. He's only four months but it was like that. That's real life entrepreneurship. So I guess what we learned and I don't think that we had this mentality so going back to like what we learned from running our own business. I don't think we had the mentality that we were gonna be entrepreneurs and that we're gonna be like throwing stacks up against the wall like we're going to be loaded.
Aaron [00:29:11] At least I didn't think that that image doesn't. Yeah yeah. Doesn't resonate. Yeah I can see like a guy was like some really dark Ray bands in a suit and he's on top of this car. Like yeah we're awesome. It's kind of like that we made it video showing that. No not really. Yes.
Aaron [00:29:30] So I think that's the realization that entrepreneurship is not what you think it is. It's really it's probably be so much easier for you to go work for a corporation do exactly what you're gonna do. Have the security of health care has a security of everything else. Do all the things that you love without having to try to run your own business.
Christian [00:29:51] Did I get this last one. We're just happy to have a glass. That was good. Why. I just read it. I don't know if you can explain it as well as you wrote it down here but let's see.
Aaron [00:30:04] Okay so we're just happy to have a glass. I think we'll make more. That's the title but I just kind of came off a whim but I guess it was in my head. So what what I mean by that is that we were just to give a context we had no reason or no one is the right word. We were never in a situation where we could just say like hey let's quit our jobs and give you some context like we September 2015 we talked about that we quit our jobs a week apart from each other worked remotely. Both of us weren't working in high paying like okay. We were both making six figures and we had a ton of money saved up. We did have savings and we did it we could survive a little bit but we opened the business bank account and January of that year I think we had a little bit more than that but it was like we open the bank account for two thousand dollars and this was supposed to be our operating expenses. It was supposed to pay us and we were so naive and our parents thought that we were absolutely crazy because hey look this is our kids are you know these are. I'm about to have a little girl right now I'm realizing like OK if she told me this right now I'm like No no no I need take care of you you need to go find a job that's more secure like you're about to just throw your life on the line here and so we quit our job on a whim worked remotely for a little bit had two thousand dollars in our bank account and then somehow still had the the and we were just so naive that we thought this could actually work and to make this into something because I think Christian and I talked February of twenty fifteen And we're like I went up there and said hey we need to start a business and then by that summer we were making some real money we made the most money we'd ever made it at one time and we got a check it was not a lot of money it was a couple thousand dollars probably and we're like All right let's get a bigger check and we got a bigger check which is actually a decent amount really. All right let's quit our job and that was the basis for us to say we're working a lot let's quit our jobs we think we can do something here and it was just that chasing the dream option. So the reason that I say we're just happy to have a glass is that I like to see what our business is now. I would have never really thought like wow we took so much for granted with that because a lot of people look at that perspective and it's more of the glass half empty glass half full and we're like oh the glass is half full we could start a business and it's like OK we don't really even have anything in the glass. We're just very appreciative to be able to even have the opportunity to quit our jobs to do something. I don't know how you interpreted that but I'm curious to hear how you interpreted what I said there because it's probably way better written and than I said out loud now. Yeah it was just reading it and realizing that yeah we were crazy dude.
Aaron / Christian [00:32:52] Very dumb very dumb very crazy. Yeah. Like we quit our jobs pretty early on when we didn't have necessarily a lot of security behind this. So I don't know.
Christian [00:33:08] Yeah I want to go back there but I don't know what we're going through our heads though.
Christian / Aaron [00:33:12] We said OK yeah now's the time but if we would've went back or something would've been different or if you would've made an extra thousand dollars a month from what you were worth making it pizza now or if I was making an extra thousand dollars I think we would have been too comfortable to say OK let's let's just stay in this job for a little bit longer let's stay remote and if we would've stayed remote for about another six months I don't think the business would have happened.
Aaron [00:33:38] Yeah because there is no way that like maybe we would've built up a little bit more capital but it's hard to maintain clients hard to do that and it's easy for us to work remotely. Absolutely. She should call us to work remotely where people all over the country. But when your business partner is on a different time schedule for you for work you guys can't talk about the business. You can't figure out taxes. Plus we didn't have a bank account yet and we're trying to figure out like Okay how would that work. And recently it was a mutual person that we know who's part of our academy. He recently bought out his business partner because his business partner lived in El Paso and the like oh what are you doing in El Paso. Other than me sending you a check like we have a bunch business in Dallas but like there's nothing here that's really going on.
Aaron [00:34:24] So if you'd just been in Tulsa and we'd like hey I've got a bunch of business done in Dallas like I'm sending you business but like other than you like doing this part of it like Hey I'm kind of running the business so I don't think. I don't think it would have worked if we would've kept our out. Now I don't know. But yeah we were definitely crazy.
Christian [00:34:42] Yeah. No I mean that was the only thought I was going through my head. It's like just reading this and the way you wrote it was. Yeah. We had a bank account with. Two dozen others and for some reason that was enough for us to say yes please do this. Yeah I understand why. Especially my dad was very busy better now.
Aaron / Christian [00:35:01] Like his. Yeah. On those who listen to this. He tells the truth. Absolutely. But even still it's you know that's one of his first words as well as a business doing. Yeah. How are you doing. Yeah. Yeah we're doing good.
Aaron [00:35:18] So actually I'm glad that you like the title because I'm gonna write a blog post is coming up on our four year anniversary. I was gonna type I'm actually may title at that but we're just happy to have a glass.
Aaron [00:35:28] And I was going to break down like our whole business and starting up and then I was gonna put a bunch of images of like whenever we first started to like where we're at now not necessarily for other people I think more people and get something out of it but I think it'd be more for us to look back at it to remember.
Aaron / Christian [00:35:43] So anyway we're like five days away but I've already started like in my head thinking like oh yes but even reading that and trying to look back at it like I wish we would have journal literally everything. Oh my Gosh. You know like what was going through our heads and all that stuff because I would love to read right.
Aaron [00:36:01] Yes. Well and what's good actually is I don't do it as well anymore but we do have two journals where I literally log like for the most part we went to a lot of meetings together or like a lot of stuff together. So I have an actual log of like what was going on. That's sitting over there in the bookcase. So I think I wanna get back to that one never shout up to the edged notes get another double edge note and I actually say like Okay this will going on day we actually cover these things and you know this is some ideas that I have for the business or whatever yeah.
Christian [00:36:31] All right. So I think that's it right. Yeah. That is 10 10 things that we've learned from running our own business. This is a really fun episode to write out and think about all these things and maybe things that we sort of take for granted sometimes. You know that we don't really realize until we actually write them down so episodes like these are very good for. For us as entrepreneurs business owners and leaders and managers of our company and it just makes us become better versions of that. So have you listen to this episode. Please let us know. We definitely enjoyed it. And I think like here it says it's more of a self-service for us to do these kind of episodes to go back and see what was going through our heads at that time period. But make sure to give us some ratings and reviews on iTunes. That would definitely help us and the marketing natives grow. And if you do this episode and this episode in particular you have anything to say or something.
Christian [00:37:30] I don't know stands out for you as a business owner as well. You can let us know on Instagram to send us some D.M. at BitBranding. All right. I think that's it. We'll see you next week.
