I think the lesson there is again to repeat what you've been, you started with is like, you don't have to grow. You can still be super successful. Not going there, but also you can actually come back. You might get to that small business level and be like, ooh, I don't like this. I need to go back to just being a solopreneur. I liked having no worries except for myself. I don't even like having a couple people. Like, I just liked having that one freelancer and that was it. Like, like there's nothing wrong with that. That's not a step back. That's an adjustment based on having new facts and new data to work with. And I think that's hard to do because our ego gets in the way. Yeah, because it's fun to be like, oh, I got a team of 22 versus I have a team of five. Which is not as fun to say, but I think you got to get that ego out of there and be like, no, no, no, why am I happy? Like, I need to be happy and I'm happy here. And I think that's, I think this is a really important lesson. I hope I'm that I'm coming across the right way here.

Welcome to Small Business bs, the podcast designed to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit through thought provoking ideas and actionable business strategies. Each week, entrepreneurs Adam Witmer and Jeff Gargas dive into creative marketing hacks, proven sales methods and clever growth strategies. Get ready to unlock the full potential of your business with insights that are both fun and impactful. And now, here are your hosts, Jeff Gargis and Adam Whitmer.

Welcome to episode 14 of the Small Business BS podcast. I'm Adam Witmer. I'm here with my co host, Jeff Gargas. Jeff, how are you doing today?

I'm doing wonderful, my friend.

You doing extremely well. And I'm extremely excited to talk about this, this topic today. So I'm going to kick us off, Jeff. I want to talk today about a framework that I've been thinking about for some time and I guess we can narrow this down to the seven types of business owners. And the reason I wanted to bring this forward, Jeff, is sometimes we think as business owners we're supposed to do something. We're supposed to grow our company to be this large organization with all these middle managers, maybe have an initial public offering and be a public company and be this national organization, but that's not really true. I truly believe that there are different ways to run businesses and to do things really well. So let me start in, Jeff, by talking about the seven types of business owners that I see. And so the first type is really not a business owner. It's an employee. And the reason I want to start there is a lot of us in our careers started as employees. And whether it's somebody who was a yoga instructor or who was a plumber or an electrician or an H VAC person, sometimes we start as employees because being an employee is a great training ground to learn an industry and to learn a trade. But over time, we say, you know, I think I could do this better. And I don't really like being tied to the requirements of an employee, because as an employee, we may get a couple weeks vacation a year. We have to show up at at a certain time and do things the way that somebody tells us to do them. So the next level of a business owner moves in from an employee to being a freelancer, where we're still doing the same work as an employee. We just don't get the benefits of being an employee. And those benefits include paid time off. So as a freelancer, we have the opportunity to take two months off in the winter and go to Fiji or wherever we want to travel to, but we don't get paid. And if we don't service our clients, we could still get fired. But we're doing the work of an employee just a little bit more on our own terms, but we're still truly trading time for money. Now, beyond a freelancer, the next type of business owner is to move into a solopreneur. And so a solopreneur is a little bit different than a freelancer, where it's still just a single person working. But a solopreneur is really trying to take the business and build it strategically with different divisions of the business and to not be dependent upon a single client or multiple clients doing a single task. And so it's more of having a strategic business than where a freelancer is more of doing tasks that somebody needs to outsource. So solopreneur is building a business by yourself. And a lot of digital marketers or people who have digital businesses start out as solopreneurs. And in the physical business world or the local business world, you see people in farmer's markets or maybe even a yoga studio, a dance studio, photographers sometimes will be solopreneurs, where they're doing everything by themselves. Now, after the solopreneur, Jeff, the next next type of business owner moves into what I call a small business and this is where the business owner is still running the core operations. And, you know, maybe you have a photographer who's the main person, but they've hired a couple of assistants to help with editing, to help with scheduling, to help with unloading equipment, to maybe even have a second photographer on hand for weddings or to farmers market. The person doing the farmers market still doing the baking and the goods. But they're paying a high school or college kid to sit at multiple farmers markets so that they can be at multiple farmers markets on a single day. And so a small business is still very, very dependent on that owner operator to be doing the majority of the work and bringing in the majority of the sales. But they've got this team that assists them. Then from the small business, we move into the next level, which is the large business. The large business is when you get to the level where you have to have a line of middle managers because the business is too big to be dependent solely upon the owner. Now, you may have a main location that's dependent solely upon the owner, but you try to open up second, third, fourth, fifth locations. And you have to figure out how to do that because the owner cannot be operating all those locations. So that's the next level is that large business. And then beyond a large business, you have more of a national brand, which could be a publicly traded company, it could be private, but it's a national brand like all the large corporations we think of. And then the final level, then a business owner would be beyond that is to be an investor, where an investor is somebody who is purchasing businesses and has them in their portfolio. And I think of Berkshire Hathaway, where you have, you know, Warren Buffett, who is the, you know, the investor of all investors owning this portfolio and is on the board and overseeing and kind of orchestrating this. And so, just to recap, Jeff, you know, the seven types of business owners I see are, you know, first employee, then freelancer, the solopreneur, and then you have small business, large business, national brand or public company, and then investor. And those are the seven types of businesses. And the reason I want to bring this up, Jeff, and I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this, is I think a lot of times it's very easy to think that when we start a business, we need to be moving down this as a line of success. And I don't think that's the case, because I think every level of business, apart from employee, can be successful and can be a perfect fit for some people. And so I don't think that every business is supposed to become this national brand or public company. I think that some freelancers need to stay freelancers, some solopreneurs need to stay solopreneurs. Some small businesses need to stay small businesses and not become a large business or national brand. So I've talked a lot, Jeff, I. What are your thoughts on all of this?

So first off, I agree. We were all, we were all sitting here going, man, he's talking a lot. No, I. So, so I want to go. I love. This is really cool. I, if I can, I'm going to kind of. I want to kind of touch on each one of them and add sort of my thoughts to each one of these. A couple of things. One is, first off, 1 million percent agree that there's space for success and happiness and joy at all of these things, depending on the person. I actually would actually add to that. Some people like, it should be an employee and you're going to be super happy there and you're going to be amazing at it and it's going to be a great life being an employee. Now, this isn't the podcast for you if that's the case, but we wish you well. Still, I also wanted it like a freelancer can also be someone who was doing one job as their. As an employee and has that side hustle rights of side hustlers. I think falls into that position as well, where I may be freelancing on something that has nothing to do what I'm doing with what I do as an employee. But still to that point, I love how you touch that. Like, as a freelancer, you're typically doing an employee's job, but you're not getting the benefits of the employee. However, you are getting the benefits. You're getting some of the benefits of ownership. Business ownership, though, that freedom that you talked of. I also want to know on solopreneur, I don't know what the word would be, but I think this can also be like a copreneur. Is that a word? Because, for example, when we started off, we were basically a solopreneur, but it was myself and Chad. We started as a partnership. We weren't a small business at that point because we were. It was the two of us. It was relying 100 on all on the two of us @ the same time. It wasn't the same as like when you have a small business. And I think from there, I also. The other, other little tweak I put is when you, when you went into large business you stayed in like multiple locations. I think that's true in a lot of states, but I think about like our business, we became a large business. There's no locations. It's an online business that can absolutely grow. I think the key to that is when you can't manage it and you can't really work in the business the same way. You have to like move yourself into that, that CEO or in my case, like the CEO position because now you have other people and it just brings a whole world of other things. But I think, I think where you were going with this, the thing we want to harp on in this episode, is the fact that it is absolutely, I don't know where or why drilled into us that we're supposed to grow it. Like you're a freelancer, it's like, okay, great, like, how are you gonna become a small business then from there, like, when are you gonna hire your first person? They're like, you, right? You have your, your, your coffee shop that's doing really well with you and two people. When are you gonna open up another location and when are you gonna go public and all this stuff? It's like, but you don't have to. You can, and that's awesome, but you don't need to. You can be really successful and have a lot of fun and love life in different places. And I know you have spoken how. In, in past, I don't know if on these podcasts or just me and you individually and our mastermind or whatever, how you're very intentional tensional about. Intentional intentional. If I can say words about staying in that I believe probably in the solopreneur small business area is probably where you find yourself, if I'm guessing correctly.

Yes, that is, that is correct. That's, that's where I've always wanted to be. For some reason I just, for me it just seems like the logistics of a large business or national brand. I just, I'm not interested. I've had a 20 year career in the corporate world which has been in that large business, national brand world. And I realize I don't like that. And you know, one of the things that got me thinking about this, Jeff, back in the day was when I was in grad school, you know, working on my mba. One of the things that stuck out to me, one of my professors was talking about the difference of, of, of businesses and saying that, you know, sometimes you can have an extremely successful small business or solopreneur business. And to give the example of like a five star restaurant located in a big city like London or New York that just has a reputation because they have this single chef who, you know, they just master everything from customer service and decor, and it's just the destination place to be in London or Paris or, or New York, wherever the single location is at. But it's based on a single chef. And oftentimes businesses feel like they have to expand. And you can have a single restaurant that is extremely profitable, that has this great reputation, that does extremely well and just be satisfied there. But sometimes, you know, we've all seen it where a business feels like they have to expand and they've done a really good job with that single location in New York. But then when they try to put a location in la, it just doesn't work because now you can't have a single chef in two places. And what made that business great is not what's going to make it great when they grow. And if they don't have the skill set to know how to expand that and reproduce that in different locations, it may not be a hit. So, you know, and also it goes back to the, you know, the old sailing, say, saying where you have a salesperson who's the best salesperson in the organization. Sometimes businesses make the mistake of promoting them to manager. And when you promote the best salesman in the organization to manager, that may not always work out well for them.

Yeah. Even if they're a great manager, you just lost your best salesperson. Right. So like, or they might be a terrible manager or a great salesperson. It's interesting, Interesting why you were saying that. I was thinking about Gary Vaynerchuk. I've heard him, he said this for years of, like, around the idea of. Because entrepreneurship and small business ownership is like, so hot. It has been for a while now that, like, everyone thinks, and he always jokes, he goes, you know, the number five person employee at Amazon's doing pretty well, and that person's doing a whole lot better than most, number one and number two in small businesses. So there's a like, that I think is a way of thinking of, like, you don't have to go to these other levels to be good. You can be happy as an employee, you can be extremely happy and successful as a freelancer, as a solopreneur, you talk about like the salesperson. And we had this conversation before, but in the world of education where we are, it is so like, it is like, so drilled into them that as a teacher, you put in your time, you get good, you earn your stripes as a Good teacher. And then you're supposed to become an assistant principal or principal. And then eventually, you know, a curriculum director or up into, you know, an assistant or you know, superintendent. And while that makes sense for some people, like the crazy thing is the same thing. It's like, well, wait a minute. If I'm taking all my best teachers and making them principals, what the heck am I doing to my students, right? If I'm taking my best barista and making her a manager to where she's no longer front facing my clients and my customers at my coffee shop, that's not. I just hit my coffee shop blow versus if I find the person who's great at managing something that maybe isn't great in front of customers, that's okay put, you know, it's like, it's crazy. Same thing where you, you have a good business that's doing really well and that solopreneur, you're great on your own, you got a couple freelancers that work for you and you're, you're happy, you're making enough money, you're servicing people well or providing value in whatever way that you do that going to a small business could ruin all that. And actually I'll use a personal example like out of my. I had this mindset. I don't know the. Whether I necessarily said it to anyone or necessarily even realized it, but I definitely had it when we started seeing the growth in our business. And we've had growth over year, over year, over year for, for almost, for a decade Now, I guess 10 years. And I, you know, until about the last two years I had just in my head is that we had to keep going. You know, it started with the, I'm going to call it a copreneurship. I don't know if that's a thing or not, but the two of us and then we had a few people that were freelancing. We had some interns first and then we hired one and we had, you know, a lot of part time folks and we started growing. Then we had some full time people. When we grew our team and we were into the small business one. And we got to the point where I'm like, I, like there's too many people. We have to have middle management stuff. We have to have, okay, now we have departments and you oversee these three people that are either full or part time, full time, freelance, whatever, and you oversee these. And now I'm overseeing that. And with everything that you do, like it. It was fun in a lot of instances because we had this big team and fun people. We did a really cool retreat to one year and whatever, but, like, the level of headaches that come with that and the potentials for bottlenecks and the. The. The worry of, to your point, like, the Chef, like, the consistency and the quality control, like, it gets harder and harder. And we've actually went from. We were up into the large business with the idea of, like, well, let's go large business. Let's go national, brand and sell it and all this stuff to now we are so focused on. No, no, we're going small. We are going the other way, intentionally getting really. We. You know, Chad's constantly saying lean and mean. We're getting lean and mean. We're not going. And we're at the point where, like, we're going that way, and we're never going back to that. It is. The only thing that's going to grow higher is going to be our profit margins and our profits and everything else. We're going. We're going to get really good. We're going to have the people that are with us, that are still with us get really good at the things that they do that they are really good at, and that's what we're going to do. And so I think the lesson there is, again, to repeat what you've been. You started out with is like, you don't have to grow. You can still be super successful not going there, but also you can actually come back. You might get to that small business level and be like, oh, I don't like this. I need to go back to just being a solopreneur. I liked having no worries except for myself. I don't like having a couple people. Like, I just liked having that one freelancer, and that was it. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not a step back. That's an adjustment based on having new facts and new data to work with. And I think that's hard to do because our ego gets in the way. Yeah, because it's fun to be like, oh, I got a team of 22 versus I have a team of five, which is not as fun to say, but I think you got to get that ego out of there and be like, no, no, no. Why am I happy? Like, I need to be happy, and I'm happy here. And I think that's. I think this is a really important lesson. I hope I'm. I'm coming across the right way here.

Yeah, no, exactly. And I think that one of the keys is to Be very intentional about your business and to, to be able. Where's our sweet spot? And not only that, is to understand what your skill set is and the skill set of your organization. So, you know, if your goal is to be that large business or that national brand, you've got to figure out a way to expand the skill set. Because what got you here today is not what's going to get you there tomorrow. And so if you are moving to that national brand, that's where a lot of organizations will hire an experienced CEO with an MBA who, who understands how to run a corporate business. And that's an expense and it makes a jump. But I, you know, I've seen times too where, you know, I've seen small businesses where they're, they're really doing well with a single location. I think of restaurants a lot of times where they're doing really well with a single location. They decide they want to add a couple of more and they just don't know how to scale and they just struggle. And in my community, we've had a few that go from this really small restaurants that go from this really small location that you know, has maximum seating about 50 or 60 people, to maximum seating of 120 or more where their building's now bigger, their overheads now bigger, and for whatever reason, they just can't make the jump. And for some reason they just weren't happy where they were at. They thought they had to grow and the growth was what actually killed the business. And so I think it's important to just understand where your skill set is at and to understand what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy. Because the more you get away from being an employee, the more you're getting away from the trade and the skills. So if you love teaching, you probably don't want to be moving away from the classroom. If you're a plumber or a yoga instructor or a photographer, if you're going to be building a national brand, your job in a national brand as the CEO is not taking photos, is not being on the dance floor. It is not working with pipes. It is being a CEO and managing people and setting the direction for the organization. Managing marketing, managing sales. That's completely different than the skill itself. So if you love your trade and love the skill that you do, you probably want to hang around that freelancer, solopreneur, maybe small business line where you can be very hands on and do that really well and you can have an extremely profitable and great business. It doesn't have to be this national brand that takes you away from all that. Now, of course, as a business owner, when you get further away from being that employee, you have more of these business tasks you have to deal with. And so, like you said in the very beginning, Jeff, there are some people who would be better off being employees. And we. We've run across that in masterminds we've been in. We've. We've had mutual friends who we've said, you know, off the record, they would probably. They should probably just be an employee. And if you're not happy where you're at, try to find another job that fits you. Because if you love the skill and the trade, there's. There's a lot to be said for being able to clock out and go home. For those of us.

If I can interrupt, I will tell you. I. I know you're talking about. And they're happier today.

They are.

They're happier. That's the point. And they're doing great, and it's awesome. And I think that's. Not to interrupt, but like. Yeah, that's so. That's so crucial. And. And you kind of. You said it a bunch of times in different ways of like, you gotta find, like, where do you fit in? Where are you happy? And there's. And. And don't let other people's thoughts, opinions, or your ego drive that because. And I'll actually throw. Or greed drive that, by the way. Like, gotta find, like, what's the point if you're not enjoying it, man? It's stupid to do this. It's too hard to not be loving it. Right, so.

Exactly. Well, my wife has a friend who's a mental health counselor. She's a mental health counselor too, but her friend basically is working at a place that she loves. And it's easy because she goes in, there's a team that does all the billing, that does all the scheduling. She just goes in, does the therapy, and then she goes home. When the therapist goes out on their own, they're now responsible for the rent, they're responsible for the WI fi, they're responsible for the computers, you know, the technology. They're responsible for the website, they're responsible for getting lead, they're responsible for the billing, they're responsible for taxes. And it's a lot easier as a therapist to get a W2. And if you love being a therapist, it's probably best to just work for somebody. Now you can make a little bit more on your own, but at the end of the day, there's a Lot of costs and expenses that go into that. And I know my wife has experienced several people tried to go on their own, but they didn't have the skill set to do sales and marketing. And so it's a whole different realm. And so I think it's important to understand where you fit in this line of types of businesses. Do you, for me, as a business person and Jeff, you're a serial entrepreneur. That's how I refer to you. You know, we love. As much as I hate doing financials and taxes, like, we love that. Like, at the end of the day, we geek out on it.

Yeah.

And so that's just kind of how we're built. I love sales. I love marketing. I love doing a little bit of all of it. I couldn't stand doing just one thing. I couldn't stand just being in the classroom all day. Couldn't stand being a therapist all day. I couldn't stand just doing a single thing over and over. Some people need to do that, but some of us are built differently. And so I think it's really important to understand where you fit, where your sweet spot is, what your skill set is, and then to be intentional about that.

Yeah, I agree. And I love. I love people. I love managing people. I love leading people. I love. I love having people work with us and on our team. But you know what I hate?

What?

Filing wage reports with different states, making sure that all of our unemployment taxes are updated. All this stuff. So, like, that's the difference from a large business down to a small business who has freelancers or has, you know, that type of stuff. Like, it's just. It's. It's fine. Your sweet spots, finding that spot of. You know, I always. I always talk about, like, balance, like work life balance. I talk about harmony versus balance and harmony, where all the pieces fit together. It's kind of the same thing. You got to find your. Where does your harmony of. And I. And I know your music background too, so that works really well. Right. The harmony of where you're at, where all the pieces of your business in your life are making the music that you. That brings you the joy. Not. I don't want to get too fluffy, but like, it's. It's reality is like, again, this stuff's hard, so it's stupid to do it if you're not enjoying it. Yeah. Period. Like, well, so if you get to the large business area or even a small business, you're like, I'm not enjoying this anymore. Get the heck back. Like, it's okay. Like, go find, get back to what you love and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's. What's wrong with is the other way. Like, that's. It's dumb to stay unhappy. That's. That's where we're at right now. And I'm loving, I'm more excited right now about our business, more optimistic than I have been a long time. And we've like, changed so much because we're trying to, like, peel back down to a smaller business than what we grew into, which is such a weird thing to say.

It is. And I love that you say it's okay to take a step back because I've. I learned this lesson as a corporate employee. I had a few jobs that I had freedom to be an inside of the organization, entrepreneur, so sort of, so to speak. And I had some freedom to build a job the way that I wanted to. And I didn't realize at the time I was building jobs that I hated. And I got to the point where I felt like the only way out was to leave. And as a business owner, if you do that, that's a bad position to be in. And so I love to, I love for you to say, number one is you can go back. Sometimes it's hard to undo those things. But secondly, for me, I've been very strategic to say this is what I want to build because I've had that experience. You, on the other hand, had to take that step back. For me, I had to figure that out as an employee. But now as a business owner, I'm trying to be intentional, to understand where the sweet spot is. And so like you said, if you don't like dealing with employees in multiple states because of the individual state tax filings, or you don't like managing people, or you don't, or you just love being in the classroom or being in your trade and your skill. I think it's, it's just so important to think about that and be strategic and understand that that is okay. Jeff, anything you want to add to this before we go? Any tools or resources that you have that we can point people to?

No, I, I love this, this type of conversation. I think the only thing I'd say is like, if this is something that you're trying to work through and figure out where you want to go, this is something that I do do a lot of work with one on one clients and in our mastermind, stuff like that. So I guess I will pitch if you go to jeffgargis.net it's like a it's a real basic form you can fill out. If you ever want to meet, we can grab a, what I call virtual cup of coffee and go through this type of work. I love it. I love having these conversations. And to your point, obviously, in this episode we talked about the lessons we've learned, sometimes the hard way, and I love to instill those things. So that's all I got.

That's great. That's great. I. I found that I don't like meeting 101, so of the two of us, Jeff is the one to do. I do it occasionally, but I don't open it up as much as him. So for me, I like to build courses. And one of the courses I'm hoping to build soon is, is one based on what we just talked about, this framework. And so I will be doing that and adding that to my site@businessstrategyschool.com that's all we have for this episode of the Small Business BS Podcast. For more information on this episode and other episodes go To Small Business BS.com until next time, have fun, be strategic, and get out there and grow your business. We'll see you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Small Business BS Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe and share it with fellow entrepreneurs. Until next time, keep thinking big and taking action in your business one step at a time.