#863 How One Side Project Built a Ten-Year Business

Speaker A: Yeah, buddy. So this guy saw this workbook I did. It was like a side project. He's like, hey, I want you guys to design my course.

Speaker B: Happy Thursday morning everybody. Welcome back to the Tropical NBA podcast. I'm, um, podcasting from the cell phone today. On the road. Ian's on the road too. He just landed in Barcelona. We've got an event at the end of July which the whole team's working on. We're excited about. So many seven and eight figure founders will be joining us there. So if you're looking to start a business that can take you all around the world, potentially to Barcelona and beyond, today's episode is for you. My guest is Hannah Willnow. She is the co founder of willnow Design, which is a web design and digital marketing agency serving independent financial advisors. It's fully remote and it's been built over 10 years alongside her husband and co founder and Greg, who she'll bring up a lot in the conversation. And yes, many people in the D.C. build businesses with their partners and they love it. And we're going to get an inside look at that here today. So Will now design started as a side project that she almost didn't do. And this side project landed her in a niche that she still serves today. That first project became her first client which became a source of referrals, which has become a 10 year business that has taken Hannah and Greg all around the world. So some things to look out for in today's conversation. The specific savings number that she and Greg used to decide to make that leap from stable employment to full time job. How she thinks about selecting niches and why the right niche should align with the life you want and not just the clients you can get. How she structures her team compensation without trying to traditional salaries. We'll also talk about how she's building toward a potential sale in the next few years and the types of financial considerations that come along with that for founders. So today is an inside look at, uh, what running a location independent digital marketing agency looks like. But one of the big ideas in this conversation is that how important is waiting for the right idea. Maybe you can start with the skills you already have. Maybe your jump into entrepreneurship or your next more profitable business idea is right there in your skill set, right there on the corner of your desk and you're ignoring it. So consider that as we listen to Hannah's story here today. Before we jump into it, I want to give a shout out to our sponsors, Wayfront, the operating system for productized agencies. You can Check them out@wayfront.com TMBA so many of our listeners achieve location independence through building powerful productized services agencies and they use wayfront.com to power that client experience. Very cool. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Hannah Will. Now, do you remember how you had the business idea? Because there's 20% of our audience who's listening that's surfing ideas right now and 80% founders. I'm wondering if you can remember the moment you were like, oh, this could be how we find some lifestyle freedom.

Speaker A: Yeah. There was a moment when I would say I was working at an agency in Orlando, Florida, so doing the typical nine to five, 40, but realistically 50 hour week work life. And at that point my husband already left his job construction and started content marketing business, which was his first online business. While I was paying the bills with my day to day job, we hired a financial coach who I honestly just found online, never knew this person and his name was Todd. And I remember just going through his website and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy's really cool. Oh, he retired at age 35. This is really cool. And so I remember being in my office and I went into Greg's office and, and said, hey, you're looking for a coach. And by this point I remember we were. He was just like, I feel like I need a mentor. He was, he tried a year of college was like, not for me. He would rather put his money towards just one on one mentorship. And that's just kind of how he learns best. And so I was like, I found someone. You got to reach out this guy, right? So he did and they started working together. So this guy helped my husband kind of launched this content marketing business simultaneously. This coach was also building his own online course. And I remember he stumbled across say a couple featured images or like a workbook I did for Greg, it was like a side project. He was like, hey babe, I need this workbook. I need some, um, featured images, you know, uh, I just need to post them on my site. I was like, okay, fine. So I did it. I considered it not my best work. He just needed something. And this guy Todd saw it and he was like, I want you guys to design my course. And from there we designed his course. He was what was called an A lister in the finance space. It wasn't about us being paid. We just realized we just really wanted to do a really good job for him. He then said, hey, I've got another buddy, he wants to redo his Website, which was another a lister. And it was at that moment that we realized we actually could have this business while my husband had this content marketing business. There was like this overlap, but, uh, we felt like this would be the thing that could actually get me out of my job and replace my income. And that's the beginning of when we saw this working and, and then also how we literally landed in the finance niche, which is our target market today.

Speaker B: How important do you think niche selection is for people thinking about starting an agency?

Speaker A: I think it's more important now than it really ever has been. I think there's like cycles to where you feel like you want to serve a lot of different people. But I feel like when you work with a niche in today's world, you're almost like in more of a protected space. You have created a lot of trust in that space. And so with that narrow focus, I just feel like there's just more opportunity to really serve that audience to where you can really dive deeper and really learn, you know, what their challenges are. And also too, I will say that this niche also supported what my husband and I also wanted to achieve, whether it's generational wealth, financial independence. So working with a niche also that you're also kind of simultaneously living your own life and building your life, that is I think, really important. Like you have to almost like love also the niche that you are working in. And I feel like we just landed it and it just ended up just to really work out for us.

Speaker B: How did you decide how viable a business needs to be in order to quit your stable job and make the jump in the beginning?

Speaker A: Yes. So I believe everyone has their own number and what they're most comfortable with. Person like me, I would say I'm more of like a mitigate risk kind of person. So usually have plan A, but then I typically have plan B and C and D in the background because I don't like necessarily allow surprises. Whereas my husband's more like all in Plan A has got to work. He has a higher risk tolerance. But together I feel like that actually balances each other out. So we came up with a number of having about six to eight months reserved in our savings. So pretty much what my salary would have been, it cut in half and with that was like our leap number. So, okay, we've got six to eight months to survive. Not going to a job. We got to make this work. If it doesn't work at the end of that, then this is either. I wouldn't say it's not Viable, but maybe it was too. We jumped a little bit too early, but that's my own metric. And we just rolled with it. And fortunately it worked out for us, and we literally never had to go even get a side job. That business alone replaced what we were making in during that time. And it was that push. And during the time, it felt there are parts about it that were uncomfortable. But now looking back, I kind of know what it took then. So let's say if we were in that position again, the future, I know that we could do it because we've done it before, so there's, um, almost no excuse. We would figure it out.

Speaker B: What did that first year feel like? What sorts of things were you guys figuring out about what it takes to make income on your own versus in a job. What were some of those first hurdles?

Speaker A: It was more of a hurdle for me because I remember Greg was like, he made the decision to be an entrepreneur first. And so that first year, I felt like I was getting warmed to the idea and saw myself doing it. But then there was also this other side that I was essentially taught that in order to be successful, you need to still go to college. We've heard it before, get a good job. And I was climbing this ladder of, uh, being a creative director, because in my profession, I do have a bachelor's degree in graphic design. That was kind of like the. That would be, like the top of, um, I guess what success would look like in my track. And that's kind of what I. What I was doing. So there was a bit of a challenge at times, frustration to where, kind of like, I was on board. But then there are parts to where I wasn't on board because I was kind of battling with that idea of what success looked like. And I kind of liked knowing the path to get there. But being an entrepreneur, it's not laid out. You can go so many different directions, but you ultimately have to decide what that direction is and also know when and how quickly to pivot if you have to. So that was scary at first, for one, because he made a decision to go all in. And he was like, you're either with me or you're not, but this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm pursuing. And so that was the first hurdle, was mindset, getting on the same page. And it really took us to go into individual rooms and write down the top 10 things that, uh, we wanted our life to essentially look like the next five, 10 years. And we realized after doing that, there was actually A lot of alignment with

Speaker B: our top five with your spouse is, I think, one of the biggest ambitions in our community. Because I've often talked about, like, you shouldn't do it, or people toss out it. But I actually see in our community, people really want to do that. They want to say, let's both be entrepreneurs, or better yet, let's work on a project together. So I think those references are cool. I'm curious what those five things were for you.

Speaker A: Yes. Oh, man. I know I have them written down somewhere in a box because I tend to save those little sentimental notes. Family was a big one. We did not have. It was just him and I at that time. So being a mom, that was paramount. Another was I didn't want to go the reverse. Once I made a decision to leave my job. And I was like, really at the cusp of going to some pretty top agencies in Orlando, going there and literally, like, trying to sell myself. Like, I was right there needing to really prove myself. But I realized that was actually not my top five anymore, this being this creative director. And it was shocking because I was so convinced that was going to be top five, and it wasn't. It was also partnership with my husband and being aligned in whatever. We decided that we would be, like 100% on board, both willing to make it work. And another was travel. At that time, we had a house, beautiful house. It's like 2,000 square feet, brand new. It was great, but super cheap. Definitely can't find that in today's market. What we had was insane. Great area we lived in, but it was just that, man, like, ever since I was a, uh, kid, I always wanted to travel to all seven continents. I just remember, like, looking at it being like, oh, there's only seven. I could do that. So, like, travel was definitely a part of that. I didn't know what that looked like because both my husband and I did a lot of travel, like in Florida. But both we came from families that didn't have a lot of money. So, like, vacations were like, literally like camping. Maybe we drove to Washington, D.C. but that was like a big trip. But we would drive there. We didn't fly there because we both had a lot of siblings. So parents couldn't afford ticket, plane tickets to do that. So we would drive. So I just wanted to see more of the world and have experiences because I would say that my growing up, I would tend to talk a lot about things without the experience to back it. And I, uh, wanted to move in and grow into being a person that people could trust, that people could take my word for it. I wanted to start speaking based off of real experiences, not based off of repeating what other people have experienced. And that's something that I had to grow and work through. And so travel was a big part of that.

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Speaker A: I remember telling my husband, I'm like, we're either gonna love this or we're gonna hate it, but we have to do this to give us kind of like that benchmark. And at the end of that year we realized, you know what, we wanna continue doing this. And so then we started exploring countries that maybe a few were on my bucket list, like New Zealand. And then some other countries just popped in there. Like we went to Turkey, we went to Egypt.

Speaker B: And so you're describing a very flexible, high freedom lifestyle. What does it look like in terms of how you manage time and energy on a weekly or daily basis?

Speaker A: It's seasonal. There are periods of time when you're like, I can work whenever I want to because I can determine my own schedule. So a lot of freedom in that. So yeah, I think just being able to work when you work best is great. Cause you're not like locked into this 9 to 5. I've personally found that I'm constantly thinking about the business to where it's harder to shut it off. Yeah, there are some times in seasons where it was fine, like I didn't mind thinking about my business 24 7. But also it was during periods of like, critical points in the business when it was required more so for. For me to do it, for my husband to do it. It's been a little bit tough because as I kind of stepped a little more into the business to help my husband kind of step further away from certain aspects of it, I have found myself kind of jumping back into that 24 7. And our team is global, so time zones are everywhere. So like I've had to literally train myself at, uh, this time I need to turn off slack. Whereas before it was great and like, you know, oh, I can answer this question. But being a mom to a very spunky, energetic daughter, and they add the traveling to that, definitely no one's going to determine my own schedule. No one's there to tell me, hey, you gotta clock out. It's up to me to decide what those parameters are. Just to protect my space in my mind so that I can continue to serve my business, serve my team, serve my family.

Speaker B: And one of the things you've done is you have a unique compensation plan. And I'm curious, talking about the team, can you talk about how you arrived at that and what are the pros and cons of offering profit sharing to your team versus simply a base salary?

Speaker A: We compensate not on salary. We still embed those bonus and profit shares. But it's for certain members of the team based off of their role. So I like to compensate accordingly to that. But now we have to figure out, because AI in our business, it's not going to replace people. We've already made that decision. It's just we want to. To activate them. We have decided not to hire anyone else. It doesn't make sense. If anything, it'd be more expensive to hire people whether to invest in your current team. Because everyone on our team is the right culture fit, which again, you know, is a part of compensation. If you have the right people, own

Speaker B: the right seats, that's 90% of it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How do you guys solve the lumpy cash flow and capacity risk problem in an agency? So you got a lot of team members that, hey, a lot of their money is going to get paid every month, regardless of what's happening on the sales side. So how do you guys think through this fundamental challenge with running a marketing agency?

Speaker A: So I would say the team members that are compensated a little bit more are based off of revenue, so reoccurring revenue. So if we were to lose a client, their comp would also adjust.

Speaker B: Interesting.

Speaker A: We have two, two sides of the business. We have the top of funnel which then supports the reoccurring revenue which that top of funnel, I mean it looks great for cash flow. You know, we sell a pretty, pretty pricey website. You know, cash flow looks great but then that's only for a certain amount of time, you know and then that becomes reoccurring revenue which is a smaller number but that's where the gold is. And so there's a point to where the business now that reoccurring number has superseded the top of funnel number.

Speaker B: So basically if we're to visualize you guys do a bunch of marketing, I'm curious about how you bring people in, you charge them a big upfront fee and then you pitch them on maintenance and marketing ongoing on the back end. So how do you determine pricing for those and the dynamic of all that? And then you're essentially saying your team members are compensated based on whether they can keep people on those programs or not.

Speaker A: Mhm. The ones on the fixed. Yeah. Mounts.

Speaker B: So how do you decide where to get to these prices and how do you get the clients to come through this funnel and everything? I'm curious as to how that goes down.

Speaker A: So price is who is willing to pay the price and sometimes you have to do a little bit of a beta test. So essentially you're like, I know I'm going to over deliver on this but if you're testing a new service you're going to price a little bit lower. Right. Because you also have to prove the results that you're promising. But now what we're moving into is it's about getting more leads in the funnel. We're figuring out like what's a qualified lead look like and it's not necessarily what it used to be. We are looking for more volume. So essentially like our qualified leads may not be qualified for our top tier website, which in the beginning we had three website packages and then eventually we moved in just the top tier and we only worked with clients that could prove that they did have some traction on their website.

Speaker B: One of the things I'm curious about is you deal with so many financial professionals and if you could have a back season this last 10 years running your own company, what sort of financial mistakes have you made that you would advise yourself against and what are the concepts that really resonate with you on the other side, the positive side that have uh, allowed you to be so sustainable as an entrepreneur?

Speaker A: Definitely knowing that you probably shouldn't take that trip but you're like, ah, but we gotta live our life essentially. So we're gonna go ahead and do this when we probably should be saving a little bit more for, you know, the down payment on our house build which we're currently, you know, working on. That's tough because you've got this habit. But then I was like, I don't know if that suits us anymore. And I would rather say, okay, if we made this X amount every year. And I grabbed the average based off of kind of like what our average has been the past three to five years. And looking at, okay, well, how is our life? How much did we travel, where do we go, how much were we home, what we were buying? And we determined what that number was. And so if we can live off of that number for the rest of our life, that would actually make us pretty happy. So could we have saved more? Yeah, but we're doing just fine. And so yeah, I'm banking a little bit on the sale of this business and it probably won't be like this life changing number, but it would essentially like, we would love to it to be a number that would not just give us that 6 to 8 month window of time, but could it give us 5, 10, 15 years or actually starting cash flow to start another business?

Speaker B: One of the things that we were hanging out in Mexico recently, I'm just curious about what is it about conferences and masterminds and things like that. What do you guys get out of it? What's the point for you going to places like Bangkok or Mexico and other events? What is the value in it for you guys as founders?

Speaker A: Value in it is it's a camaraderie. It is the one thing just being around other people that I don't have those conversations. Like I have close friends, I'm very close to my family. But you're talking about, you can talk about different challenges with them. Um, but when it comes to business, talking about those types of challenges or successes, you know, and then you just look at someone, there's, oh yeah, yeah, I get it. You don't have to over explain yourself even like to this day, even a couple weeks ago, my dad was like, I really don't know what you do. I was like, are you kidding me? I was like, ah, I love my dad so much. We work close, but he just didn't get it. I was like, we have an online marketing agency, you know, we build websites. And he was like, oh, uh, but it just didn't get it. So going to a conference where there's so many like minded people but also people also aren't there to strut their feathers. Like I've been to conferences before to where everyone's like in this suit, everyone's got like this ego or this thing to where like don't know how to describe it but it's just very coming to these events particularly it's just very comfortable. But then there's so many smart people. Almost the point where you're oh my gosh, they are so much smarter than me. But then you wouldn't know it. It's like there's like so it's that, it's the camaraderie, just that I get it, I get you and you don't have to over explain. But then also just the amount of people are willing just to give more than just hey, what am I going to get from this event? Just was so willing to share really insightful stuff that I just feel like it would be not say you couldn't get it online or through other channels, but in person is super important. And if anything I feel like it's even more important right now in society. I mean technology is going to continue to, you know, to continue to grow. I mean yes, we're leveraging AI. I use AI probably more than my husband at times, but it's back to that human connection. I feel like it's going to make a comeback where people are going to really crave it.

Speaker B: Well, you mentioned the way you're traveling, like the kind of experiential travel. I feel like that's something as more and more people live this kind of freedom lifestyle. I think that those sorts of businesses are going to do really well because I just think we're all surfing around for. I just don't just want to go to Rome, I want to go do it this way or whatever. A few final questions here. I am curious what has been the biggest breakthrough or bottleneck in implementing AI in the agency thus far? If you could walk me through like the, a moment that you've had with AI that was like before and after

Speaker A: so far the breakthrough was knowing that we could essentially unlock capacity which in an agency it's everything to know that now there's an uh, as an alternative to not just hire more people because we really don't want a big headcount. Like I'm totally fine managing a team this size. For Greg it's a little, it's like Cap, he's uh, ah, this is just too many people. So we, we like the size and we felt like this is a good number. So, yeah, to have another option knowing that. Okay, the older way, I guess you could say is you've got X amount, uh, of clients because, like right now we could, you know, capacity is, we can handle one without quality going down. Like one new client every three to four weeks. This is top of funnel. So brand new client comes in through the funnel. That's like, at our current capacity, the goal is one a week. So for a month. So with AI now we know that headcount doesn't necessarily have to increase. Then it leads you to the other side of the. Oh, crap. How am I going to unlock this? And my team is now essentially like, I felt like they were relying on me or Greg for the direction. Here's AI. But there are, which I'm sure most are experimenting with is there are not so good ways to use AI. Can't at this time, can't trust it 100%. You gotta proof it. You just have to right now. So I felt immense pressure to provide the answers to a team that's like waiting for direction. So how am I going to train designers? A developer, copywriter, content writer, pm. How am I. How am I going to give them all the tools and the direction to then say, go learn and expand your role? Essentially, um, continue to be faster or efficient because you can. But then it still needs direction. And to make sure that our team, which is which, I love our team, they're all a players, but with AI, or can they. Are they not going to be a players anymore? Are they going to rely too heavily on AI and then quality is going to suffer? Like, how do I QC that? Right? So I felt like there was a point, I would say like the beginning of Q2 this year, so that we typically fall at the whole, like, EOS structure, traction the rocks, planning. Like, we. We've been doing it for years now. We have a good rhythm. And I literally had to make the decision. I was like, I feel like it was right when these models really started to come out. And I'm not gonna pretend to know exactly which one it was, but I was just literally just. I don't know what to do. I looked at Greg, he was like, I don't know what to do because, like, we felt like if we mapped out our rocks but it wasn't in the direction of incorporating or training our team on AI, then it would be like 90 days goes by and what the heck did we just spend all our time on accomplishing? It accomplished nothing. So it was actually the first time in a while that we actually did not have a clear direction. And as business owners of, uh, saying, okay, team, here's what we're going to focus on for the quarter. Because AI just disrupted that cadence.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we literally. I just had to be very upfront and honest with, um, we have a few members on our team who are part of those level tens. And I was like, hey, guys, we're just going to take a pause. We're not going to do the rocks planning. I explained kind of why that I was just like, I. We just need Greg and I just need some space to give you guys direction because there's that pressure, right? As business owners, the team is everyone, our team. They, yes, they have their roles, they do their job, but they're also here for something more. They're also here to grow and learn and contribute and be a part of something that's just, oh, I'm just clocking in. I'm just doing my work and then, peace out, I'm out. They want something to work on, to grow the business. And then here we are at this point where. Or like, we don't know what to do. Um, if we pick a lane, is it gonna be obsolete in 90 days? It was hard. And I'm not gonna pretend to know, like, now that we have all the answers. But we decided to bring on someone to train our team when the whole concept, the whole topic at DC Mix was all about Claude Code and all this stuff. And I know some people are totally. What they're building is insane, but I'm kind of like, I just can't. I can't do this for every one of my team members. Like, I can't guide them right now. So we decided to bring on someone to help alleviate that pressure. Someone who is already in that space. And essentially he is. He's come in and we're spend the next few months and training the team, but meeting with them one, um, on one, helping them navigate this kind of saying, hey, it's not like we're replacing your job with AI. I think there's like, this. They haven't quite said it to us, but I feel like there's pressure on their end because, yeah, I still have a copywriter, I still have content writers. Like, I don't let AI write everything for me. Like, they, they still have a lot of value to bring. So, yeah, uh, that's probably a long answer to your question, but that's the bottleneck now is training your team to adopt AI but then also to Being open to where if some don't make it, this is the direction that we're going. And um, it would just break my heart if we lose a team member if they just can't take their role to that next level. And that's kind of where we are right now. And I hope that everyone on our team takes the challenge also with us and grows and evolves to continue to have a very relevant business that continues to serve our niche.

Speaker B: It's fascinating time for agencies because yeah, if you can get your team members on board and ramp the capacity, we're seeing a lot of people improve their margins because you're essentially selling the same value. But like, for example, like we can ship a new landing page in one minute now and it can be written based on like the total data that you put. It's like you could like this kind of like stuff that blows your mind. Here's my last 15 sales calls. Uh, make me a landing page and deploy it live. And that can happen but like your clients are still buying the core value for a while until this becomes a consumer product. So that's like the envelope we're in. And I think as early adopters we're all terrified of that consumer level. Like what happens when our clients just show up to work and all of a sudden they have a high converting website. Maybe that future never actually exists. There's always going to be these, these implementation gaps that we can position our agencies in looking on the outside. It's one of the most remarkable things about your business is the amount of travel you've done. What advice do you have for folks that are listening to this and are like geez, wow. Hannah traveled the world. She was able to have a family on her own terms, do all this max freedom or enjoys uh, a great deal of freedom because Hannah took on this challenge sitting right in front of her in terms of value creation. What advice do you have for those that thinking about starting an agency this weekend?

Speaker A: Pick one thing that you know you do pretty well at. Some people have a bucket of skills and they can just pull from. Pick that one low hanging fruit skill, um, that you're like, you know what, I can make this work and to where there's going to cause there's going to be things that you're going to have to learn that are not going to come natural, especially when you're starting out. Be willing to then start chipping away at those skill sets that don't serve you anymore or serve for your audience. So pick that one skill that low hanging fruit that would help you with that leap because that leap is already scary. But if you made the decision, it's way less scary.

Speaker B: It sounds to me like you guys chose the right person to sell to as well. Like somebody that was established, that had a name, like you were willing to solve a notable person's challenges. And if you start your service business that way, then even if you were to have to do it for free and a small thing, then that is your calling card. That's your college degree, is I solved X problem for Y person. Now I can solve it for you for a price. And you're often running with the business. It's just that simple. Simple isn't easy, but that's how you start a service business, as far as I know.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it starts with your very first client. Never give them a reason to leave.

Speaker B: There you go. Hannah Wilnow, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker A: All right, thanks so much, Dan. Appreciate time here.

Speaker B: Become a tropical MBA insider today at, uh, tropicalmba.com it's 100% free. You'll get access to some of our best business building resources, templates on everything from quarterly plans to budgets. We even have monthly giveaways. And you'll get a free copy of our book outlining exactly how you can build a multimillion dollar exit. All that plus a weekly email from yours truly. Join the fun over@tropicalmba.com.