How to break free from subcontracting, with Anna Schardt Baker

Anna Schardt Baker 0:02

Leah, when people started knowing me more for the agencies that I was partnering with and less for like, the name of my own company, like that, is when I was like, Okay, we might have a problem here.

Leah Neaderthal 0:16

Welcome to the Smart Gets Paid podcast with me, Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share.

Leah Neaderthal 1:10

Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress in your business and taking some time for you. So you might have noticed that things have been a little crazy recently. I mean, not me, I'm fine, but if you've been paying attention to what's happening, you know, in the country, as I sort of wave my hand at all the things, things are like, I don't have words, it's unbelievable, and it's chaos, and it's out of control, and without, you know, going into everything that's going on, because that's not what this podcast is about, all these things have got me thinking about this idea of control, like what I can actually control, And what we can control, like as business owners, because when things feel out of control, it's important to remember and to really focus on like, what you can control. And we actually hosted a session about this topic for the broader community of women consultants. And one of the exercises we did in that session was make a list of what we can't control and what we can control. Like, we can't control the actions of a select few who are trying to, like, bring down democracy, but we can control how much time we spend on social media, how we show up in our business, how we take care of ourselves and our bodies and our minds, the businesses we support.

Leah Neaderthal 2:45

And what we find in that exercise is that there's a lot more that we can control than we think. And it's a really nice exercise for, you know, these times again, sort of waving my hand at everything. And if you were in that session and you did that exercise, and some of the other exercises we went through, I hope it was meaningful for you. And I was thinking about that exercise, about what we can control as my team and I were working on this episode, because this episode is about a woman who went from subcontracting to agencies, for you know, a good chunk of her consulting work to getting out from under subcontracting to agencies and getting all of her own clients, and we're going to talk about that in a second. But really, at its heart, this episode isn't just about subcontracting or not. At its heart, this episode is about control, and really who's in control of your business and then creating client relationships that you control, pricing that you control, time that you control, and revenue that you control.

Leah Neaderthal 3:50

So in this episode, I'm talking to Anna Schardt Baker, who's a communications consultant who works with healthcare nonprofits. And when I started working with Ana, she was getting about half of her revenue, half of her income from subcontracting to an agency. But as you're gonna hear, she realized that that model really wasn't working for her anymore, and wasn't letting her actually be the business owner that she wanted to be. And as you'll hear, she was able to make the shift from subcontracting to having all of her own clients, and how that's impacted her business. So you're going to hear why Anna made the commitment to get out from under subcontracting and when she really realized it was time. You'll hear the strategies she implemented to help her make that shift, and over what time period, which actually was a lot faster than you might think. You're going to hear now that she's made that shift the one word she'll never say again, and you'll hear her advice for women consultants who are working within that subcontracting model. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation. It's really inspiring. Even if you haven't subcontracted to an agency before, you'll definitely find something insightful and helpful in our conversation.

Leah Neaderthal 5:00

Question. So take a listen to my conversation with Anna Schardt Baker, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson that you can apply to your business, and then hopefully someday soon, you'll partner with us to help you build your consulting business, and you'll come back on the podcast and share your story. Enjoy,

Leah Neaderthal 5:18

Anna. I'm so happy to see you here. So nice to see you again.

Anna Schardt Baker 5:22

Hi again. Thank you so much for having me and back on the podcast where it really all started.

Leah Neaderthal 5:27

Yeah, totally. Well, so Anna, let's start at the beginning. Why don't we? Why don't you introduce yourself, tell the good people who you are and what you do. S

Anna Schardt Baker 5:35

Sure. I'm Anna Schardt Baker, my company's three story strategies, and I help healthcare associations and nonprofits tell the stories of their purpose, their people and their power. What that really means is that I work with these organizations to elevate their brand content, their thought leadership and their storytelling on behalf of the patients that they serve and the healthcare professionals that they also represent. This is really important strategic work that busy marketing communications teams just simply do not have the time or expertise for and I know this because I was a marketing communications leader in a healthcare nonprofit for many, many years. I was drawn to this space because I believe that health is wealth, and I believe that people should be empowered with trusted information about how to get healthy and stay healthy, and then when something goes wrong with your health, you really need trusted information in a community to help you through that. And I know that from my own personal and family experiences, basically, I'm a lifelong writer who loves words and science and people, and you combine all those things together, and this is the kind of career that you end up with when you love those things Use your skills in a space that means some things.

Leah Neaderthal 6:44

Yeah, you've mentioned back all started. What do you say more back where it all started, on the podcast? Say more about that? I first discovered you and smarts get paid, gets paid, and the Academy through the podcast, you appeared on another podcast, and I enjoyed that particular recording, but it was you as the guest on that podcast that I just immediately fell in love with. And I'm like, Okay, I need to hear more about this, what this chick is saying. So I downloaded spark gets paid at that time, went through the entire back catalog, listened to every single episode, and within a month, I was in the Academy because I was your target audience. I was your target client, and it was exactly what I needed at that moment. I honestly it sounds cheesy, but I had never felt more seen than when I discovered you and that podcast, this podcast,

Leah Neaderthal 7:35

oh my gosh, I just got the chills. I just got the chills. I I love hearing that. And thank You for Being Well. I mean, having worked with you, I know what a good student you are, but even you know, even in diving into the podcast, you know, I have so many questions for for you, and I want the, you know, the listeners, to hear your journey and your story. But I'm also curious, what were you doing before you started your business.

Anna Schardt Baker 8:02

I was working inside of nonprofits, first in the education space and then in the healthcare space, in a progressive series of roles in marketing communications. Actually, a lot of my earlier career was around the dawn of social media for brands and for businesses, which sounds very quaint now and also dates me a little bit, but I spearheaded, you know, like, let's start the Facebook page. Let's start the Instagram account. Like, for several of the organizations that I worked for, and by the time that I left, I was working for one of the biggest, largest voluntary health organizations in the country, as the Managing Director of Strategic Communications and storytelling, overseeing a team of seven people. Wow, so that's a long way from let's start the Facebook page. Yes, yes, my career grew pretty well. Yeah, let's sort of back up a little bit to in terms of your journey. You mentioned that when you first im yourself in the podcast, you felt like i You were the target audience, right? You were the target client. What was going on? I didn't have the words for it until I met you via the podcast, but I was in the messy middle. I had started my consulting business in the summer of 2017 so I was six years in. This was early 2023

Anna Schardt Baker 9:19

and things were going great. I had a bunch of referrals. Most of the people that I worked with were people from my community, or maybe, you know, one level out via referrals. And I was just humming along with a lot of repeat projects and a lot of repeat work, which is, I think, very common in marketing communications, the work never ends, right? So one project always leads to another, and after a while, it would almost felt like I was just piecing together five to six part time jobs at any given time, like that's how meaty the work was, and that's how consistent the work was. However, then in the fall of 2022 one of my clients eliminated the contract But overnight that was, I was subcontracting to a PR agency in that particular case, and I know we'll get to that in a moment too. So there went about 20% of my revenue overnight. But I thought, Oh, I'm diversified, like I have more than one client. I, you know, I'll make this up somehow. But that was harder than I thought it was going to be. And then with other economic, you know, things going on in the general landscape, even my existing clients started to scale back on their budgets or rescind projects. And so I found myself in like, spring 2023 looking at the rest of the year and realizing my numbers are down and I have absolutely no plan and no way to get new clients. I had spent the last five, six years almost thinking that I didn't need to do business development because the universe always provided, because referrals always came, and then suddenly they didn't anymore, and I was panicking, yeah, there's so much that you said that I want to sort of pull out.

Leah Neaderthal 11:06

But when you talk about these seen together, five to six part time jobs, what did that look like, to feel like you have, you know, five to six part time jobs, there was a lot that was good about it, and remains good about it. I mean, I would say that that having five to six consistent clients at any given time that still remains my model. What that meant was that there was consistency. The work is kind of regular and ongoing. And of course, we were working on contracts that had start and end dates. But really like it felt like it could be going on forever, which, in reality, I could not count on that. And so that security was, in some ways, I think, a false sense of security. Yeah, and it's when you say the universe always provided, I think it's really, it's sort of a nice thing to believe, right? You know that, but I think we always learn that, like pressing the universe isn't really a strategy, you know? I think I knew it, but until that thought was proven wrong, I wasn't necessarily motivated to do anything different. Yeah, well and go ahead, yeah,

Anna Schardt Baker 12:22

because I was so busy, you know, I was so busy working in the business that I that's all I could really think about at times, you know, as a working mom who's starting her own business and growing her own business, but also, you know, taking care of three children, like, I sometimes felt like That's all I really had the bandwidth to do. Yeah, no, that is real. That is real. So you were in this moment. I mean, what were some other problems that sort of either maybe not problems to be solved, but like things that you just knew you wanted to be a little different? Yeah, I was relying a lot on subcontracting to other agencies, which is again, a very common model in this line of work. When I first started my business, you know, and I was kind of telling everybody and anybody about it, I reached out to several agencies that I had relationships with, and I said, Hey, you know, I'm freelancing now, and they were more than happy to add me to their rosters, and that was a great way to get my business going, to fill my pipeline, to get clients that I perhaps otherwise would not have gotten on my own.

Anna Schardt Baker 13:29

You get to be as part of a team. You get that sense of camaraderie. There's backup if you get sick or something. So there's a lot that goes for it's a very common model among people who do that types of work, because marketing communications requires project managers and strategists and graphic designers and writers and technical people who can build websites and emails and so companies and organizations don't have that skill set, they turn to the agencies and the agencies, conversely, look for freelancers who have all that skill set to kind of build up their capabilities. I would say, actually, that most agencies are built on that model. It's just a matter of to what degree and how evident is it? Because in a lot of cases, including my own experience, you white label, you know, under under those agencies. So that was, you know, give or take, about 50% of my work for a really, really long time, and it worked for a really long time. I love just real quick. I'm noticing that you're saying it's a common model, and I love, you know, not only is that true, but I like the framing of that because it's not that one is good or bad or, you know, it's not that like, if you have clients that are and you're subcontracting, it's not like you're, you know, failing in some way. It's just, you're, you're working in a different model, and you can also work in an alternative model, right? It's not a, yeah, you know, I think women, especially, you know, take a lot of like, blame, and they take a lot of this onto their plate, like they're not doing something, right? And I.

Anna Schardt Baker 15:00

I love so I love the framing. Yeah, that's definitely my intention. It's not good or bad necessarily. But as my own direct clients grew and the agency work also grew, I felt myself hold in so many different directions. Like, not only was I managing a bazillion email inboxes and Slack channels, but like my brain was just divided and compartmentalized, and it was all competing for each other. And I also felt like my personal brand was being diminished by doing all this other work for these other agencies. And there was a part of me that was not comfortable with that and did not want to keep doing that, but I was afraid to let go with that steady, you know, steady stream of business. And it wasn't really until I went through the academy that I had systems and a plan in place to gradually we myself off of that dependency and really also just have the confidence to go for it and to admit that it's what I really wanted. Well, okay, let's I, there's so many little threads here I want to pull so.

Leah Neaderthal 16:10

So when you were saying, like, it felt like your brain was sort of dividing and compartmentalizing, I remember, I don't know if this is the same thing with you, but like, there were times when I was doing all one on one work that I felt like, you know, I had touched every client and wait in a day and like my brain hurt. Did that ever happen to you where you're just like, I am, my brain is done. It's a lot. I would try a model where, you know, Monday, I'm only going to work on client a, Tuesday I'm going to only work on client B. I would try that over and over and over again. It never worked. It still doesn't even really work. And it never it doesn't work because your clients don't only have needs on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or what have you. It's really it's like a pipe dream.

Anna Schardt Baker 16:55

Well, and I consider myself to be really high functioning. I know how to manage my time. I manage my to do list, like, I do it as well as I think anybody could, but it's still a lot. And every time that I was working on agency work, I felt bad that I was taking away from my own direct business and clients. And every time that I told the agencies, like, Look, I need to be focused on something else today, or even just this afternoon, like even a matter of hours, that wasn't always met gracefully or with understanding. So because they really expected and needed me to be on call 24/7, in some cases. So it just it was not sustainable. Yeah, well, and you mentioned also you felt like it was, at some point, it was diminishing your brand that you were building with your actual business.

Leah Neaderthal 17:44

Do you feel like you've had to go through this stage to even sort of get to the place where you're like, oh, wait, I have a brand. My brand is a thing. I want to nurture it, you know? Because I think that sometimes what we see is that when you come out of corporate or working for somebody else, you don't quite realize the power of your own expertise in your own brand. And so I'm wondering like this, what you know, was this a necessary few years that you had to do this?

Anna Schardt Baker 18:15

Yes, I think so. It's what got me to the realization that I am today. It's all part of my growth and my journey, and I don't work at it for one minute, it served its purpose for the point in my life and the point in my business that I had for those first five, six years, I realized that my own personal brand was powerful. I realized that my company was attracting business and people were coming to me, but when people started knowing me, more for the agencies that I was partnering with, and less for like, the name of my own company, like that, is when I was like, Okay, we might have a problem here. I might might need to make a ship there, but it's not necessarily a problem, unless you feel like it's a problem, because, again, so many people do it, and it's such a common model in this line of work. But for me, it just didn't feel right.

Leah Neaderthal 19:02

Yeah, so you were at about 50% subcontracted, and you wanted to make that change. I mean, bring us up to speed. How are things now? And you know, what's changed for the better?

Anna Schardt Baker 19:13

I would say a lot has changed for the better. So I joined the academy in spring of 2023 and about seven months later, I said goodbye to my last agency subcontract, and it was a big one. I was effectively a fractional executive serving on the executive team at this growing, about five year old digital marketing agency, and it was about 40% of my revenue. So December 1 2023 is when I parted ways with that organization and decided I needed to that time and that energy to focus exclusively on my own business in 2024 so the full business year that followed after I parted ways with all of those agencies, I was able to not only make up that lost income, but then some and more. Like my 2024 revenue was about 15 Percent higher than 2023

Anna Schardt Baker 20:02

so with all your own clients, with all my own clients, I still do occasionally partner with other people, other small agencies, but it's more of a one on one, true partnership and peer relationships. We're just helping each other out and like leveraging our own strengths. It's it's not a subservient relationship, and I'm still able to keep my own identity. I'm not white labeling anymore under anybody else's name,

Leah Neaderthal 20:29

yeah, oh my god. Anna, this is amazing. So saying goodbye to a relationship that comprised that much of your income, I mean, on a scale of one to, you know, holy shit. Where were you on that?

Anna Schardt Baker 20:44

It kind of fluctuated by the day. There were definitely some holy shit days. But I'm someone who, once, I've decided to do something, and I really feel like it's the right decision for me, I get a sense of sin that comes over me, and I just am really confident, and I move forward, and eventually I got to that place with this decision. That's how I felt when I left full time work and started my own consulting company. That's how I felt when my husband and I finally decided to have a third child after five years of indecision. So it's like I can think of many points in my life, personal and professional, when I decided to finally go for it and just just decided to be very confident in my own decision making. And if it didn't work out, I It's not like I didn't have any options, right? Like I try to always remember, and I advise other people this too, that few decisions are permanent. So if, for some reason, it did not go as well as planned, I could always go back to those agencies, I suppose, if I absolutely had to find some other way to make up that revenue. But that turned out to not be necessary, because it went even better than I expected it to be, both by finding new clients and by being able to raise my rates, that's really how I made up that 40% and then some. But that combination of strategies, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, what you were, what you were saying about, you know, this Zen, right?

Leah Neaderthal 22:13

This, it reminds me of a phrase that one of my friends says, she's also a business owner, said, the universe cooperates with a made up mind. Which I really right I know, which I really love. It's like, if you'reequivocating or reading something, it's like to what to whatever, whatever degree you believe in, like the universe and and you know, a spiritualness or whatever. I do believe that even if you know external thing doesn't just grant you something, you you do make moves towards that thing, right? You do, sort of consciously or unconsciously make moves toward that thing. So I love this, like this Zen that you get having made the decision, and what follows after that is, you know, ideally, I mean, you would expect to be in alignment with that.

Anna Schardt Baker 23:07

Yeah, I love that saying. I feel that very much captures my situation. And it's also a version of make it so, which is something you're telling us in the academy all the time, all the time, I made this decision, and so I was pretty committed to making it so and making it work out. Yeah. So after, you know, several years of being 50% your own clients and 50% subcontracting, within seven months, you had gotten all your own client, let's talk about some of the things that helped you get there. What would you say have been a few of the biggest game changers that you, that you learned or implemented through the work that that helped you get to that point? I would say probably the biggest game changer is finally putting myself out there on LinkedIn. I had always been too shy to do that for reasons that I know you are very familiar with because you find it's so common among women consultants. I was just afraid that I didn't have anything to say, which is stupid, because I am a professional communicator and content strategist,

Anna Schardt Baker 24:13

but I just didn't want to put myself out there. But I forced myself to your systems and your templates definitely made it easier to map it out, and it gets easier every time if you really look for inspiration is everywhere, and now I have a multi page long Google document full of ideas for things I can write about on LinkedIn. But that's not I'm not doing that for its own sake. It also has reminded people that I exist, I took for granted that the people who know me, or even they've known me for 10 years or have met me once, that they would always remember and know what I do and who I am. And that's not the reality you have to constantly remind people of that that's actually a principle of marketing. So by putting myself out there consistently, i.

Anna Schardt Baker 25:00

I not only was front of mind for the people who knew me well or knew me somewhat, but I also was exposed to new audiences, and I got to the point, after several months of consistently posting that people were coming to me and wanting to do business with me, they may not even know what the project is yet. In the case of one client that I'm thinking about now, but she's like, I just have to work with you, because I love everything that you're saying, and I want that for my own organization. So I did start getting leads through LinkedIn thanks to really strategic posting strategy, yeah, well, and also, I think it's so hilarious. I mean, not haha, hilarious. It's more like sad hilarious that marketers like us are the ones sitting there being like, I don't have anything to say. I can say everything for everybody else, right? What did it feel like to start posting for the first time? You know, those first few posts

Leah Neaderthal 25:53

after all this time of being like, I don't have anything to say, I was very nerve wracking. I was worried that I would have, like, a glaring typo, or that it would be stupid, or nobody would like it or comment it. But people were doing all of those things and sharing it, and people were starting to follow me, and every one of those little hits of dopamine made me that much more excited to be doing it, and now it's just part of my system. It's part of my weekly routine. I'm always writing and posting at least once, hopefully twice per week, on LinkedIn, yeah, yeah. And what did it do for you? I mean, again, having you know, as marketers, we do for everybody else, right? And we're often in the backgrounds, and what do we have to say? I mean, can you think about what sort of changes you might have seen in yourself? It's definitely made me more confident. It made me more acutely aware of all the expertise that I have to share and the perspective that I've become known for in my work. It's also, I'm sure, in other less tangible ways, crossed over into my interpersonal, you know, interactions with my clients, like helping me even articulate the things that I need to advise them of. If that makes sense,

Leah Neaderthal 27:14

absolutely, I honestly, I think that when you start showing up in one area, it there's absolutely like a, you know, a ripple effect with with other people in your world, whether it's like people, whether it's your clients or, you know, just other people you interact with. Yeah, and that would be another outcome that I would mention from the academy, is that I am just so much more confident and more able to peer myself with clients and prospective clients, I would always one down myself previous, whether it was a brand new person that I was meeting for the first time or work a long time client, I just always felt subservient to them. Yeah, just for the just for the I was gonna say, just for the readers, for the listeners. Can you explain what you're what you're talking about with, like peering yourself and one down. You know, I'd love to hear it from how you think about it, because this is something that we this is something it's a big part of, you know, our approach, and everybody sort of brings it into their world in a different way,

Anna Schardt Baker 28:14

sure. So I think about pairing yourself is, I mean, yes, ultimately, this organization is hiring you, and they are going to pay you money to do something that is of value to them, so that may feel like they are in charge and they hold all the cards and that you are subservient to them. If you believe that and you act in that way, then that is one down in yourself. But when you pair yourself, you put yourself on equal footing with the person on the other end. Let's say it's prospective client, and you realize that you have a business and you have goals and you have needs that are just as important, and so what you're doing is not negotiating necessarily a way for you to work for them, but you're negotiating an agreement at a scope of work and an engagement that works equally well for both of you. One of the most powerful lines that I learned that I use now if I need to push back on a client or a prospective client, is to say that just doesn't make sense for my business, and that helps them remember, and helps you remember that you are a business owner and you have your own needs that need to be met as part of this mutual agreement. And it also just helps to remember that these are just people, you know. These are people who tie their own shoes and put their pants one leg on, you know, at a time, like everybody else. And when you remember that and that, the you know, scoping and discovery calls that, they're dating, not marriage, when you kind of put all that together, it really just helps lower the temperature, and for me, helped me become just a lot more calm during those interactions. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I also can't help but recognize the the shift from sub contracting to having your own clients in the in the context of this, you know, I.

Leah Neaderthal 30:00

This interpersonal relationship with between being a peer and one down. Because I can't help but notice that, like when you are subcontracting your you are like, two steps, you know, below air quotes, right? Or you could say away, but two steps below the client, right? So you're you're answering to the agency and to the client, right? When you're running your own business, you are answering to the client, right? And so it's just interesting to observe where your confidence and ability to peer yourself when you're purposely putting yourself next to or, you know, in the in the relationship with your own clients, not two steps away. That makes sense. Yeah, I had not connected those dots, but I think you're absolutely right. When you're working in an agency or working for a full time employer, they make the rules. You've got to follow their policies. You've got to follow their rules, you've got to use their templates. You've got to, you know, like all the things, and that does give you some loss of control, which could then feel like, you know, you're one or two steps down, you're not in charge, not to mention they're also taking a cut of the money, yeah, like,

Anna Schardt Baker 31:14

yeah, and it's almost all hourly work, too, which I know we have feelings about, we Do we have lots of feelings about,

Leah Neaderthal 31:22

are there other parts of the you know, the system or the tools that you've learned, the strategies that you learned, that you think make the biggest difference in this shift? Yes. So I mentioned putting myself out there on LinkedIn. I mentioned pairing myself. I think the third thing would be just recognizing that there is a jungle you have to navigate, and that your point of contact has to navigate. And so you can help yourself, and you can help that point of contact who you may call your client, but they also have a client who could be their boss or their CEO or their board or whoever. You can help them sell you in I learned from you that, like 90% of the sales process, process happens when you're not in the room. And so I now, you know, in giving a proposal or putting a proposal in an email, or even sometimes even drafting emails for my point of contact to pass along to the next level up, that all helps you get sold in and helps you get to yes, that much faster, which still may not be that fast, I also realized and acknowledged that you need to be patient.

Anna Schardt Baker 32:26

It's not personal. Clients are busy, and when you have enough in the pipeline, you can afford to be more patient, because you have that greater sense of security. So I think I'm a lot more realistic now and much savvier now about what it takes to sell in new business, particularly new organizations where you don't have that warm lead, where you don't have that automatic in, yeah, you know one thing I say all the time is like when, when you're selling into people who know you, you know those relationships that you've had, people that worked with you for 10 years, it can feel like, you know, There's no sales process at all. But when you are going into sort of that outer ring of people who know that you're smart, and maybe they've, you know, been following along with the sort of genius that you're saying, but you didn't work with them 10 years ago, it's a little bit more of a sales process, right? And so knowing how to, what we call navigate the jungle, you can, as you said, be more savvy. You can not freak out when things take a long time, and they do. They always take a long time, right? But really, you can. You have more control there. I think that's what we're you know, one major benefit of knowing how to navigate the jungle is knowing that you can influence this process. It's not some sort of black box that your proposal goes into. I mean,

Leah Neaderthal 33:45

I just had two new clients where the contract process alone took three, four months. So it, it's a journey, you know, it's a journey. You know, I'm always curious to ask this, because, you know, as you mentioned, you're busy, and everybody is what, no matter what's in their life, right? Like, whether it's they're busy with their own stuff or their family or what have, you fill in the blank for me, I almost didn't work with you because I almost didn't do it because I've long prided myself on being, you know, I'm a smart girl. I can figure it out. I'm just going to figure my way out of this. And for a while, that's what I thought I was going to do. But then I realized, well, maybe I do need help, or maybe I do need to try something different.

Anna Schardt Baker 34:35

And this feels like a pretty not safe bet or sure bet. But this feels like a very, you know, good, good use of my money and and something that I think it is really going to help. I'm also not typically a joiner or an early adopter, so for me to like hear this podcast and like sign up a month later, that was really out. A character for me.

Speaker 1 35:02

How

Leah Neaderthal 35:02

How did you know, you know, besides just thinking it was the right time, I mean, how did you How did you know work out, whenever I invest in anything, I'm committed to getting the most out of it right.

Anna Schardt Baker 35:14

So as soon as I signed up, I was going to be a good student. I was going to attend all the meetings that I possibly could. I was going to be active in your Slack channel. I was going to give and receive feedback. I was going to use the templates like I really I was all in. I was committed. And it's amazing what you can make time for when something is really a priority, when you've decided that it's a priority, people spend their time in the way that reflects their priorities. So this was my priority. My goal was to sunset all of these agency relationships, and so I was related, willing to do whatever it took to get there. And I even told my husband, like, one, I'm spending this money on this just so you know, I'm not asking your permission, I'm just telling you, but also, like, I might be working a little bit more because I'm making time to be a student in this academy. And he was like, Okay, so that's what it meant for me, and I was just confident that it worked. What did I have to lose? Right? Like, at the very least, I was going to walk away with a community and tools and having learned something, even if the financial results of it took longer than a year to see themselves, which they didn't. They started showing themselves much sooner than that, I figured I would walk away with some value and and I did well. And I do have to say, just for everybody, I want it known that you were

Leah Neaderthal 36:36

Thank you, a plus, and it's paid off. I want to ask you, what would you say to Obama in the position that you were in back then, right? Like having doing a lot of work with subcontractors and wanting to really step out and compliance? I mean, what advice would you give her?

Anna Schardt Baker 36:59

I would tell her you are a business owner, whether you realize it or not, and so you really should start acting like one. People would call me an entrepreneur all the time, like, from the moment I set up my own shop, people were calling me an entrepreneur, and I would just kind of cringe at that, or feel uncomfortable. I'm like, Oh no, that's not me. I'm just doing the same thing. I'm just earning the money in a different way now, but it with that mindset. It was a way to feel like working, work was happening to me, instead of me driving me my own business and being in charge of the work and seeking out specific work and niching down in the way that I wanted to, you know, to the clients that I've enjoyed working with the most, or the projects that I found most meaningful. So I decided to be a business owner, and the way that I think about my work and the way that I think about my business is completely different now that I've been through the academy. So you're in charge, you're you're in charge. You gotta make it so

Leah Neaderthal 38:03

love it. Oh, I love that. One of the biggest changes that I've made in my business since we first met is that I banished the word Freelancer from my personal vocabulary.

Anna Schardt Baker 38:15

I Yeah, I do not call myself a freelancer anymore. I'm a consultant, even when I am just writing something and I'm using air quotes when I say that I'm a consultant, because I'm bringing two decades of experience and expertise and strategic thinking to that work, and that's something my clients tell me over and over and over again. So I will never call myself a freelancer ever again. I'm a consultant? Yes, oh my gosh, please, everybody, just make that mental shift. Now, there's a major difference in calling yourself a freelancer and calling yourself a consultant. There are differences in how you think about the work, right, and how you think about your time. There are differences in how you know, if we're always teaching the client how to think about us, there are differences in how you teach the client to think about you. So if there's one thing I want everybody to take away from this, banish the word freelancer. I mean, my business is predicated on the idea that words are powerful, and that is a great example of the power of words and the tone and meeting difference between the two. They're not interchangeable.

Leah Neaderthal 39:22

No, they're definitely not interchangeable. No, why do you feel like this conversation is so important?

Anna Schardt Baker 39:29

Because agency work is such a common model. I think a lot of people out there, myself included, will just start work and agree to work and bind themselves to work under that arrangement without really thinking about the alternatives or what they are giving up by working for someone else. Still, you're still working for someone else. You know whether it's full time work or whether you're subcontracting to what agency or half a dozen agencies, you're still working for some. One else. And for some people, that could be the right fit, but for others it might not be. So I think you just need to fully evaluate what that means for your financial profitability, among other forms of profitability, and what it just means for the future of your business.

Leah Neaderthal 40:15

I want to go back to something you said also, you know, we're talking about these different models, right? One model versus another model and showing people like, there's an there's an alternative, right? There's an alternative model. So what's on the other side of that? I mean, talk to me about like, you know, what is? What is life like when you go from one model to another model?

Leah Neaderthal 40:35

Oh,

Anna Schardt Baker 40:35

Oh, that's a really good question. When you go to the model, toward the model where all of your clients are your own clients directly, and there's no middleman. You're just fully in charge, and that in every sense, the word, the scopes of work, the timelines, the compensation structure, who you work with, who you don't work with, that's all up to you, and it becomes that much easier. I mean, we're all juggling multiple clients and multiple times, and that can be stressful, right? But it definitely alleviates that stress, because you're in charge. And so I've become, you know, a lot better over time, and like staggering my work and saying yes to certain things or negotiating to just, you know, smooth out the workload over time, because it is primarily, mostly just me most of the time.

Anna Schardt Baker 41:24

But it also leads to greater financial profitability too, because you don't have someone taking a cut of what the client is paying, and the agency model can be sometimes half or more. So there's definitely a lot of advantages, and you're not playing under someone else's rules. You're only playing under your own rules.

Leah Neaderthal 41:49

I love that. That's great. Anna, where can people find you?

Anna Schardt Baker 41:53

Sure people can find me really business wise, in two places. My company website is three story strategies.com,and on LinkedIn, you will find me at linkedin.com/anna,s Baker, with the name Ana shard. Baker,

Leah Neaderthal 42:07

awesome. Anna, thank you so much for being here. This has been so awesome. What a full circle, what a full circle moment.

Anna Schardt Baker 42:14

I know it really does feel that way. Thank you so much for having me. Leah,

Leah Neaderthal 42:20

that was such a great conversation with Anna. And if Anna said anything that spoke to you, please reach out to her and let her know and say thanks. So I want to sort of zoom out here and share some things that you can apply to your business. And there are two themes that really jumped out at me. The first is something I talked about back in episode 108 which is the difference between having a business and having a job, and the situation that a lot of women consultants find themselves in where you know you have an LLC, maybe you have a website, but because someone else controls your time, like maybe an agency, then you don't really have a business, you have a job. And if you haven't listened to that episode, episode 108, go check it out, because at the end, you'll hear me talk about that. And the other thing that really stood out to me in this conversation is this idea that I talk to my clients about that not all money is the same, and some money is expensive. And when I say expensive, I don't mean just in terms of how much you're getting paid. I mean, it's expensive in terms of what it actually costs you beyond the paycheck and when you're subcontracting, sure. I mean, you might be making money, but you're also paying in a few expensive ways. You're paying for it in terms of your control, in terms of your client relationships, and you're paying for it in terms of, you know, future revenue from longer term relationships with those clients you're doing the work for. I mean, you're doing the work, but somebody else is owning the client relationship and setting the rates and and really positioning themselves as the expert. That means that the money that you earn in that model is expensive because it costs you the opportunity to build something bigger for yourself. Now, as we talked about in the episode, there's nothing wrong with subcontracting, and that model might be right for you or right for you in the season that you're in right now, but it is a trade off, and some money is expensive, and that money is expensive. So the question I want to leave you with is, where in your business are you making expensive money? Like, maybe it's a client who pays well, but really is just a total energy vampire, like, drains your energy. Maybe it's a project that brings in good money but it doesn't support where you ultimately want to go. Maybe it's dealing with a terrible client who doesn't treat you with respect or doesn't respect your boundaries, and maybe it's subcontracting where you're earning but not owning the work in a way that really creates.

Leah Neaderthal 45:00

Long term value for you, it's easy to focus on what's right in front of you that you know, check the steady income, but I want to invite you to zoom out for a second. Are you building a business that serves you, or are you in a cycle where you're making money at the cost of your future growth? Because some money is expensive, so it's worth asking, Is this money serving you or is it keeping you small? You?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai