S2E16: Untying Your Identity from Business Success - ft. Michael Fritzius, Founder of Podcastify and Exactly Zero

Hello! Today I'm sitting down with Fritz. He is the automation maestro and he is the founder of Podcastify, a podcast marketing company that's aimed at agency owners, as well as he co-founded with his wife Exactly Zero, which is a shop that does body butters and lotions and other skincare care items that are sustainable and not harmful to your body. So Fritz, I'm super excited to chat with you.

And I just want to learn about all of the insights you have that are applicable to people in the SaaS space, because I know you have a really varied background and you've been doing this entrepreneurship thing for a while. Wow. Going for the jugular, it's great to have your Fritz tell us everything you know. It's like, wow, okay.

No, it's really great to be here. It's really great to be here. I've been super, super looking forward to this. I know we had to reschedule at the one time, and I'm like, dang it.

So I'm glad to be on the other side of the mic. It's weird being on this side of the mic. I'm always posting, but I'm rarely on the business end. But yeah, I mean, as far as SaaS companies go, the podcasting company, that is a SaaS company.

And the insights that I've learned about running that company, it really comes down to knowing yourself. I know that's a squishy answer, which I know you'll dig into in a bit, but the ability to figure out, okay, what is my, it's almost like my communication love language. How do I best relate with people? And for me, it is podcasting.

I build amazing relationships with people through podcasting. And then when you realize that, hey, there's something out there, there's a problem that you can solve and you're uniquely equipped and qualified to solve that problem. And it might be a problem that nobody else notices and you spin up a company to help solve that problem Some amazing things happen. I think everybody has got a.

A a unique problem that they're put on this earth to solve there's multiple ones and as you go through life and you're like man it really sucks that x happens well if it's bothering you you're probably the person that's meant to solve that problem and so for me that problem is the the, challenge that a lot of coaches seem to have with marketing themselves they are awesome at what they do they do amazingly transformational stuff if they get their hands and hearts on the right person, they're able to change that person's life for good challenges they just don't know how to market themselves they don't know how to get the word out there so what i set out to do with that company is.

Help them attract the right people to come and talk and share about a problem that they're having trouble with by virtue of that they're able to build rapport with that person and really show them that yeah I know what I'm talking about I'm giving you actionable advice it lowers that bar to having that person decide you know what I need to be this person's client I need to have their tutelage I need them to take me under their wing there's obviously some stuff I don't know and And this person has that solution.

So it's a great way to build business for them. And on the other one, so exactly zero is, it's not a SaaS company, but we use a heck of a lot of SaaS to run it. Some of it I make myself. Myself, you know, taking page out of a book from the previous company I ran, which was an automation focused company, changes a man.

You know, when you automate stuff for 10 years plus, it's irreversible. I automate all kinds of things. And so, you know, helping run that company, there's a lot of one-to-one communication, but it's at scale. There's a lot of automation.

There's a lot of scheduled tasks. There's a lot of how do we turn the work and pattern it and make it so that it's repeatable so that we don't have to think as hard or as much or as often to do a particular thing. And funny enough. That repeatability comes through when we produce.

Like, I didn't realize I was a process guy. Actually, I avoided it for a long time. I didn't realize that it was so useful. And there was a time, it was before you and I met, where if somebody would be like, you need to get some process wrapped around this.

And I'll be like, I don't need process. Don't tell me what to think. I know my way around. And I had to have it drilled into me by a previous client who I love.

This guy, seriously, he drilled it into me. I don't know if I told you the story, but if you ever walk into the director of project management, if you ever walk into somebody's office and they have got Visio diagrams as wallpaper, you're in danger. And it's like, oh my goodness, they're so organized. Like what?

But it rubbed off on me. And I find that now I take that process-oriented mindset and I apply it to producing product. And one of the best examples is bath teas. Like i get our girls and we sit in a circle around a table and like our six-year-old carissa.

She'll open the little bag and then i'll spout in some epsom salt and passes the next person they put in chamomile the next person puts in lavender they do this they did like that and it just it results in like this little assembly line henry ford would be proud he'd be be like yes yes yes you know but it's fun because i love taking the part of my brain that is triggered when i'm doing automation stuff and using those same synapses to do stuff for exactly zero it's like i get to bring my whole brain to work every day this is it's amazing that's not okay so the timeline here if we had to tell it kind of linearly is like you were involved in And like you were running this automation company that you built from the ground up.

So you were doing that for a couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. That got started back in 2015.

So it was like October 2015. And it actually, I shut that down almost a year ago today. I think it was February of last year. Man, time flies.

You're making me feel old. But yeah, I ran that for, I got a math here. Is that seven years ish? I think seven sounds about right.

15 to 2022. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good, that's a good amount of time to run a company.

And I mean, I learned a ton of stuff, but after that podcasting company sort of, evolved from that. Podcasting was actually a service that was stapled onto the automation company. And so it's been around for a little more than a year. I skipped ahead actually.

So exactly zero, we got that started in February of 2021. So it's a little older, but it's not much older and it's not even two years old or already selling quite a bit online. Like we went from selling you know one stick of lip balm or one deodorant stick or one bar of soap on etsy and now we've got wholesale orders coming in for five hundred dollars worth of white label product it's like i think we're on to something here babe so yeah that's awesome so would you say like the main.

Insight you would share with people is bringing your whole self to work because you kind of leveraged this automation experience experience that you already had and then you started bringing it into a company where automation is not typically used as much like you know the whole physical products like family-owned like selling skincare out of an etsy shop kind of thing that's Typically. People aren't scripting complex automations to message people one-on-one at scale. Right. Typically, they're not, which is why it's crazy enough to work.

So I would say that is a big takeaway. And I think most importantly, what took me a long time to learn, a long time to learn, is in addition to bring your whole self to work, it's very, very important. Not to tie your identity to a business. And this is where I struggled.

And I don't have regrets that I hung on to the last company as long as I did. I think there were some really important lessons I needed to learn. And if it was time for me to shelve that, I would have done it sooner. It would have happened sooner.

It just happened after seven years of me thinking, if this company fails, it means I suck as a person. It means there's something fundamentally wrong with me. And the fact is, that's not true. That was a lie that I had somehow convinced myself was true.

And now, I mean, I love Podcastify Me. I love building podcasts for coaches and other agency owners to get their word out there. But I also love Exactly Zero. I love working alongside I love seeing her become an entrepreneur, too, and hear her use terms like loss leader in casual conversation.

Like, where did you pick that up? Like, who have you been hanging around? Oh, me. Okay, so just seeing that we're building a legacy together, that all the girls are involved, they're all good at some aspect of producing product.

One of the girls is actually pretty technical. I have her put business cards into my CRM and she loves doing it. And I'm learning about delegation and I'm teaching them useful marketable skills, but I'm not the company. I represent a company, but the company can succeed or fail.

It doesn't affect me as a person. I still have just as much value. So yeah, it definitely is. Because it's definitely important, and I hope the listeners hear that, you know, bringing your whole self to work, using every tool in the toolbox, everything that you've learned, it's okay.

It might feel like fighting dirty, but that's what makes you uniquely qualified to solve the problem that you're setting out to solve. But don't forget. Don't let that become your identity don't let that become your identity so how did you i mean you've been doing businesses for a while like how how did you feel about business before like you felt like it was your identity and it was hard to separate yourself from that and then like what had to change in your mindset to where you're able to kind of like let that go yeah i mean i so So way back at the beginning, I never planned on being an entrepreneur.

As long as you've known me, I've owned businesses. But my plan was to go to college and get a degree in computer science, which I did. By the grace of God, I made it. Calculus is a pain in the tube.

If you ever had the displeasure of having to take that much math, it's like, got to be with you, right? But I succeeded there. And my plan was to just get a good paying job. Keep getting raises that match inflation and cost of living and grow to be an established person that is really good at whatever the heck I was doing at a company, which was mostly software development and software testing.

And when I became a business owner, the big thing that really put me over the edge, it was, and I just heard this recently, was a breakdown. down. I just, it wasn't like a mental or a nervous breakdown or anything, but I was just at the end of myself. I'm like, this burden is too much to carry.

And when I finally had to set it down, it's like, if you go to the gym and you work your muscles to failure and you're like, I can't pick this thing up anymore. I'm incapable of doing another lift. I can't do it. When you finally take that burden and set it down and you realize what it is that you've been carrying around for years and what it was that made you pick it up in the first place and where the extra weight is coming from because it's just it's just going to keep piling up piling up it's oppressive and i realized that i had made the very very easy mistake to make of how i was branding and marketing myself.

And I think this is something that is likely to happen to solopreneurs, people that are just starting out because it's just you. There is no one else. There is no company. There is no formal team of people.

It's just you and a dream. And so I looked back and I said, you know, I was branding myself as the test automation guy. I've got business card that still say it. Box of Vistaprint business cards from that old company.

I'm the test automation guy. I had it on my LinkedIn profile. I'm the test automation guy. I had it in my email signature.

Michael Fritz Fritchie is the test automation guy. It was like everything. It was just the warp and woof of myself was filled with threads of, I'm the test automation guy. It's me.

I'm the guy. And when that arm of business started to go south, then I was like, well, I have to expand and do different things. I have to keep the company going because now I got to find other things that are relevant. And then what happened was I started to get my brand message really diluted.

I had people numerous times and it was super frustrating because I got it. I can understand, but I've been eat, sleeping and breathing automation for a decade, but I would have people that would say, so like, what do we come to you about again? Like you do, you do like computer stuff, right? Yeah.

yeah, well, okay, so do you do like rack and stack? No, we do the automation piece. We do DevOps. We do continuous integration, and their eyes would just go, it's like I lost them, you know?

And the reason why I did that was because I felt like, oh my goodness, it's like when you see a tree and it's stressed out and it starts growing branches all over the place, it's like that's actually not healthy for the tree. It takes resources from like the main part of the tree, right? And I was doing that. I was more worried about, I got to stay relevant.

Oh my goodness. And instead I could have just pivoted. I could have just pivoted because I didn't realize the skills that I had picked up along the way. I had gotten really good at communication.

I had gotten really good at teaching and coaching people. I could teach people how to automate the stuff and teach them to be like me. I didn't think of that. And I didn't think, well, maybe I can take two or three of these different skills and combine them and go a different direction.

Maybe I can make a new company. Maybe I can make five new companies. And I mean, I got here as fast as I could, but that was the big breakthrough was just realizing, okay, why do I think this way about myself? And now that I see it, it's externalized.

I can say, okay, I need to quit thinking like that. And I need to think like this instead, because this is not healthy. And I'm not picking that up again. Okay.

Okay so yeah that's very interesting so it was kind of like you just kind of got to, a breaking point well that's that's a really interesting way of looking at it where if you're like a founder especially if you're like a solo founder then you try to like create this whole brand message so people remember who you are but then maybe you forget who you are to get really deep with it because then you get so like wrapped up in like if everything if you're just introducing yourself as like you know mike fritz the automation guy then like if you have to switch your service offerings or close down that business then like it's it it has become psychologically part of your identity not just something that you tell people it's what i do yep it is and it seems like a good idea at the start to kind of shortcut it and brand yourself as that person.

Like, I want to be known as the expert that people come to. But the thing is, is as your business grows, I mean, eventually you're going to want to get to the point where you hire people, right? And if you're at the helm doing everything. Then at some point you're not going to want to be the person that everybody comes to.

You're going to want them to come to your team. You're going to want them to talk with an engineering manager. You're going to want them to talk with legal representation or whatever it is, right? You don't want everybody coming to you.

So that was another thing that I didn't realize until later on that I was like, oops, I painted myself into a corner. But I'm a young and silly entrepreneur. I didn't go to business school. Remember, I got a degree in computer science.

I took zero business classes in college. What am I doing being an entrepreneur, Kira? And I've asked myself that But it's like You know Going back to what I said before It's like Hey there's A unique problem out there That I feel like I'm equipped to solve, Multiple problems out there That I'm equipped to solve Or me and my family together We're gonna do some cool stuff But. Just learning stuff along the way, and it's been an exciting journey.

It has been good, and it has been fun, even though it has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And I say this as a father of four girls, all girls. This is harder than girls, okay? You heard it here first.

You can quote me. Don't edit that out. I know it's like, well, you're saying incriminating stuff, Rich. You can't say that on the show.

No, I'm serious. I mean, we're making something out of nothing here. The businesses didn't exist until we made them. yeah scary yeah yeah okay yeah that makes sense so it's like you want to be able to divorce your identity a little bit from like what you do for work and not have it so tied up that you're you're like you have some kind of anxious attachment to this business has to work or like I have to be in this type of job because this is what I do but at the same time like when you show up to, to work.

You want to bring in those skills that you've acquired in different places and not just like conform to like, this is the role that I'm supposed to be in. Like, oh, I'm running this type of business. Now I'm running this type of shop. I have this type of role at this type of company.

And I can't bring in any of these other like people skills or like process skills or other things that I've picked up in different places, like in businesses or like in life. So if I were to kind of coagulate that all together and like, let's say you were to give me like an action plan, like step-by-step, like let's say I'm like a marketing executive or I'm a founder at a SaaS company and I want to start bringing my full set of skills and my full. All of the things that make me interested and excited about a project.

I want to start bringing that to my work to make me unique. Step-by-step, what would you have me do in order to start implementing that in real life? So first step is to start by not referring to yourself as a SaaS founder or a marketing exec. Yes, that is a function you do, but that is not what you are.

Are and and i caught you i caught you because you said it let's say i am a marketing exec hey so talking to you kara and everybody else is listening too but start by just realizing that you're a human being and you have intrinsic worth and you have value well outside of what you do for work if god forbid you were to lose your job would you be any less you right and the answer is no you're still you i know it sucks to have a source of revenue evaporate but you're still you you're going to be fine you'll always have what you need what you have currently is a set of skills skills.

Self-assess and find out what those skills are. And you've got some things that you love doing and that you're really, really awesome at. You've also got some things that you're pretty good at doing, but eh, I mean, take it or leave it, right? I mean, if I had to hand this off to somebody, I would.

I can do it. I like it. It passes the time. You've got things also that maybe you don't like doing and you're not really good at it.

They're not skills per se. They're just busy work or whatever. They've got things that you hate that you absolutely are not good at, right? I don't know if you've ever heard of EOS, but they have, and I'm not an EOS implementer or practitioner or anything like that, but they do have a system where they give you four quadrants and you write down what tasks and things that you like doing, the activities, and put them into those four quadrants and focus on the stuff that you either love or at least like, and then try to avoid doing the other stuff.

Find a way to either drop it if it's not necessary or hand it off to somebody. If your role is an executive, you're an executive at a company, there's more than just you. There's probably people there that can do that, same as if you're a founder as well. Well, and the more that you realize, hey, I can be brave and I can come at work every day playing to my strengths and none of my weaknesses.

You don't need to improve your weaknesses. You only need to improve your strengths and do some amazing stuff. It'll give you energy. It'll revitalize you.

It'll give you a new love for work that maybe you didn't realize you had. And the result of that is you're probably going to be at least five or ten times more effective at what you're doing and the people that are the top performers they're the ones that have played to their strengths and they understand i am really good at x i do x better than probably anybody else here and i'd be okay if i'm only doing x because joe over there does y and nancy does z and you You know, Lillian does W, and we all together do some amazing stuff.

But you have to do that self-assessment first and figure out what your skills are. Okay, that's the first step. That's like taking and making individual Lego blocks. Okay, so now that you've got your individual Lego blocks, What configurations can you combine them in order to solve unique problems?

That's one thing to have, and we have a lot of Legos in this house. I'm not even kidding. Side note, I had a really good deal I could not pass up on a previous client. Girl, I bought 40 pounds of Legos, and I got them home, and after I picked through all the G.

I. Joe and Barbie heads and pieces of chewed gum and hairballs, I'm like, I don't even know what the heck to build with this. There's so many kinds of lego blocks i don't even know how to relate right but once you figure out, what you have well like you can combine them in different ways and solve particular problems and and you'll notice the problems nobody else might notice those problems except you you might be the only person you might have a hard time convincing other people there is a problem but you can see it and you have the skills and the abilities to solve it but it starts with doing that deep deep self-assessment what do you love doing what's your favorite part about your job what's the part you hate what makes you sit there and watch the clock and be like oh goodness is a 5 p.

m already and isolate what you're really good at and what you're really not good at focus on the stuff that you're are really, really good at that you love doing and go from there. Yeah, I love those. So summarize, don't refer to yourself as a SaaS marketing exec, which side note, now I have to change the entire description of my show. So thanks for that.

I'm sorry. Thanks, Fritz. Great. A disruptor.

What can I say? Yeah, that's the key entrepreneurial trait. You got to disrupt everything that you come across. Step two, self-assess and figure out what your skills are.

And then step three is to figure out how to combine them in a unique way to solve the problems that you notice, like regardless of whether else other people notice it. So yeah, I like that. And I, I wanted to ask a little bit about like. How do you feel like you have implemented step three when it comes to your exactly zero company, the body butter and and shea lotion kind of company?

Sounds yummy when you say it like that. I actually just as a side note here, I presented there's a networking group that I'm in and I'm like, our stuff is so pure. And they know that the other day I ate a little bit of body butter. I mean, it tastes like beeswax.

But there's nothing wrong in there. There's nothing bad in there. But I'm like, I can't believe I did that. I did that.

Had a couple of girls with me too. They laughed at me. Anyway, the ways that I combine different things, I mean, at a high level, I love podcasting and I love clean living. I love them so much, I started businesses about them.

And what I do is start up a podcast about clean living. You know, with the end goal being, I'd love to talk to people about natural health, functional medicine, essential oils, real crunchy stuff, right? And there's just something cool about that demographic, you know? And the deeper you go, it's like, man, I'm learning all kinds of neat stuff.

There's things about nutrition that we probably knew a thousand years ago, but we just forgot about it. And everybody's relearning, you know? But the reason why I like podcasting Is because it's a great way to communicate with people And I've had folks share things with me on my shows Where I'm like, Why are you telling me this? I even had a guy tell me something one time.

He's like, I've never shared that with anybody before, Fritz. I don't even know why I'm saying it to you. And I'm like, guess I got an honest face. I don't know what to tell you.

But people just open up and you build amazing rapport. And it's like, okay, I love to communicate. I love to network. I love to podcast.

I love the technical aspect of podcasting. I love making stuff with my family. So if I can just put it all together. Yeah.

What's that look like? like, now I've got this gabagoo, build a podcast for exactly zero, right? And apply the same principles that you do for Podcastify Me and for the customers of Podcastify Me and apply it to exactly zero. So it's not live yet, but I'm excited to see how that goes.

I've got everything all stubbed out. I just got to hit the button and do the thing. But my calendar is full. It's full of awesome interviews like this.

I got to move some stuff around so I can have some gaps and be like, okay, 2.30 p.m. Central, be there.

Boom, you know, and get in. But it's exciting. It's exciting. Yeah, I'm really excited to listen to that podcast.

You got to share that with me as soon as it's ready. I will. I will. No, I've been having a lot of fun sending people your way.

I mean, there is scads of people out there. There's 8 billion people on the planet, close to it anyway. I know some of them would love to be on your show. So, you know, leveraging my network, using a lot of automation, being systematic about like, hmm, who can I send to Kira today?

And identifying that person and saying, hey, you got to be on this podcast. Or maybe if you know somebody, super helpful. So that's how I give back. That's my philanthropic, you know, how do you use automation to change the world?

Well, it's that. It's connecting people. Yeah, that makes so much sense. Fortunately, we have to wrap up now, but...

I knew this would happen. You warned me about this. You're like, it's going to get good, Fritz. And then we're going to have to stop.

And I'm like, okay. Yeah, we might have to reschedule and do a part two to this because I want to dig into more of your social impact side of your business. But for now... Talk about that, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, as we're wrapping up for this particular session, I just want to shine a spotlight on you. Is there any projects you're working on or anything you'd like people to know or anywhere you'd like people to get in touch with you? Yeah, I mean, they can go to the websites, both of them respectively. There's podcastified.

me. And then if you go to, like, that's the name of the company and it's the website. It's kind of cool how that works. I didn't mean for that to happen, but it's nice.

And then exactlyzero.com, all one word, you can see what kinds of things we concoct at the house. And new project that I'm working on is actually something that's kind of in its infancy. It's farther along than it was a couple weeks ago, so I'm comfy talking about it.

But there's an aspect of podcasting that we do for all of our clients where we make micro content to share on social media. We're taking that and we're going to apply it toward authors because there's a lot of books out there. And there's a lot of people out there that are like I mean I read books why should I read this book in particular well if you've got a quick 30 to 60. Second clip of an excerpt of the book a very interesting spot where it's read and heard and seen, and there's music and there's video and there's a social media post to go with it and when you're done reading watching this come to the site and buy the book and if you see that enough times people are going to come to the site and buy the book Like we're using 85, 90% of what we're already doing with podcasting and we're just applying it to a different demographic.

So I'm really excited. I don't have anything to show off just yet, but it's coming. I've had, I've had a few people that are like, oh my goodness, do you have a mailing list? Like, and I'm like, no, I just like, I'll tell you, send you an automatic email with my system and just say it's ready.

Go do it. But yeah, it's exciting. There's a lot of cool stuff about it. Yeah, i'm excited for all of that.

I gotta see how this book thing is gonna work out because when I write a book I'm gonna need that Well, thank you so much again fritz for this conversation. It's always lovely to speak with you and i'll see you next time All right. Well, take care of my dear. Thanks for having me.