Scaling A Solo Creative Business w/ Matt Essam | Ep 448

**Matt Essam** (0:00)
There are subconscious patterns that are either moving us closer towards what we want, or they're moving us further away.

**Chris Do** (0:05)
So you're stuck in your phantom loop.

**Matt Essam** (0:07)
Everyone has a version of this. My name is Matt Essam, and you are listening to The Futur.

**Ray** (0:15)
Welcome back to The Futur with Chris Do. Today's guest is one you're familiar with. His name is Matt Essam, and he recently published The Creative Studio Roadmap, and he's here to walk through the pillars of building a creative business that scales. Now, this is for solo operators specifically, and here's the pillars, differentiation, communication, and delivery. Now, the cool thing is, this episode was recorded live in front of a studio audience, and Chris and Matt were able to pull members into the hot seat and work through it live. Now, you know they thrive off helping people solve those problems in real time, but it helps us as well as audience members. So, we really hope you enjoy it. You can leave comments on Spotify, you can take screenshots and put those on IG, anything you want, but we'd love some feedback on this. And hopefully, you get a ton of value from it. Let's get into the episode.

**Chris Do** (1:01)
A freelancer is typically someone who goes into an office or works remotely, but sells their time by the hour. They're not really competing. They're not writing proposals or bids and procuring clients. Somebody books them and it's usually hourly, daily or something like that. And when they're done, they send an invoice and they're good. So, they don't have to deal with contract negotiation, none of that. You're a work for hire. You're a freelancer. You're a mercenary.
Once you transition from freelancer to solo business owner, you actually have to acquire those business skills like marketing, bidding, negotiations, contracts, terms and conditions, things like that. Invoicing, accounts payable. You're operating as a business, but you only have one employee. That's you.
So now we're going to move from solo operator to what's the next level? Founder. Founder. What is that?

**Matt Essam** (1:50)
Well, if I identify as a founder, I founded this business and therefore I am kind of the owner of the business rather than being a business.

**Chris Do** (1:58)
Okay. So can a solo operator be also a founder?

**Matt Essam** (2:02)
Yes.

**Chris Do** (2:03)
Okay. So there's a condition that we need to move them. What's the thing that separates a solo operator?
Oh, what is the mindset difference between a solo operator and?

**Matt Essam** (2:14)
Your business as a separate entity to you and you treat it as a separate entity to you. You don't see yourself as that business.

**Chris Do** (2:21)
Okay. So you created and founded a business that's separate from you.

**Matt Essam** (2:26)
Yes.

**Chris Do** (2:26)
You are not the business.

**Matt Essam** (2:27)
Yes.

**Chris Do** (2:28)
You are the owner operator founder.

**Matt Essam** (2:30)
Yes. And you realize that that business needs certain things in place in order for it to run and survive.
And interestingly, that definition of freelancer is important because when I first started my career, I had a long time where I was going between going into businesses freelancing on kind of like a contract for big agencies and having my own clients. And I kind of saw that as all one and the same. But if you had said to me that at the time, it would have made a lot of sense because I think a lot of the problems I had in my solo operator career were caused by the fact that I thought those two things were one and the same.

**Chris Do** (3:08)
Chris, do you want to say something?

**Chris** (3:09)
Just one quick thing.
The big unlock for me as a mindset shift was going from charging hourly or by the day to by the job.
When you're charged by the job, you build in margin and that job has value. So you're getting profit through the value you're providing. And that was the door that going from freelancer into founder.

**Chris Do** (3:33)
So there's a system in place, so you're absolved from feeling like, oh, I'm an idiot, why am I doing that? Because there are a lot of models out there where people are charging hourly. And when you talk about this, Chris, when you shifted from charging hourly to project base, which is decoupling it from the time in which you work on something, you then become aware of profit margin.
Outside of the hours I put into this, what is my business actually earning? Not just paying me. Let's get back to the example. You said you were working with a business owner and it took a lot of time and energy for you to convince this person they don't need to show up to the shoot. What is it that you said or did that allowed them to change their mind?