Hey everybody! Welcome to "You Not Ted." One of the reasons I started this channel is because I mentor a lot of new business owners, but I wanted to do it at scale. So today, I'm going to dip into my mentee mailbag and answer some of the top questions I've been asked over the last 6 months. The last one answers how I've been able to thrive through three recessions, so be sure to watch until the end to see what I have to say about that. Before we begin, remember to like, subscribe, and share this video. It really helps me build better content for you in the future.

Here we go, Mentee Mail:

Question Number One: Hiring In-House vs. Contractors When to make the switch and how to ensure in-house will be as good as contractors. So, in-house staff means W2 in the United States, and contractors are 1099. First, I'll talk about what we used to do versus what we do now. In the past, we actually always used in-house staff because it was, quite frankly, cheaper than contractors. There was more control that we had over the schedule, we could shape and mold them as we saw fit, and they were, quite frankly, a little bit more reliable because contractors could do kind of whatever they wanted. The cons were that cash flow can be impacted, we have to pay them even if there is no work, there are more costs associated with like income taxes, benefits versus contractors. Typically, yes, they're a bit more costly, we control a little bit less of their time, they come as is meaning their expertise is such they're not looking to train, you're not paying for the training, and it's a little bit less reliable because if they want to go off and travel and not work for the month, well, you're kind of stuck. The pros, however, are that you only pay when you need them, they have to pay their taxes and benefits, and if they don't work out after a project, well, we're not tied to them.

Now, since COVID, it's been a bit more of a mixed bag. People we found out wanted more freedom, so we became a little bit more relaxed. For us, it was so long as you could bring the results, we were good with it, and it opened us up actually to have a fully distributed team, and everyone kind of works remote now. In-house or full-time has been more for the core parts of our business that has recurring revenue. At the end of the day, I would say figure out your financials first and see what you can afford. Make sure your margins work for either scenario. Key people for us, we still keep them all in-house, but we treat contractors just like we do in-house. We'll bring them in Christmas parties, all that kind of stuff, and we're now really okay with the flexibility and learning to roll with it.

Mentee Mailbag Question Number Two: Shiny Object Syndrome How do you deal with shiny object syndrome? That is a great question because as entrepreneurs, we're all very creative but we're kind of lazy and a little distracted, not even a little, a lot distracted. So, shiny object syndrome can be good and bad. The good, it gives you creative ideas to tackle a problem, but the bad is that it can be an excuse to never get anything done. So, first thing I do is I go back to the goals I've set out either in my vision board or what's in my VTO, the Vision Traction Organizer, that's from a book called "Traction" by Gino Wickman. The system is called EOS, or Entrepreneurs Operating System. I'll put the link below for you so you can check it out. But basically, it's my goals. So then I kind of weigh the shiny object and ask, is this helping me get closer to reaching my goal or farther away from it? If it's closer, we do it; if it's not, obviously, we don't do it. However, there's a lot of the times where it's the "I don't really know," then we park it for a bit and see down the line if it might help and ultimately get back to what we're doing. The most important thing for me is to make sure I check myself when this happens. Sometimes I don't know if I've gone down that path, and I need someone on my team to call me out on it. I've had mentors and coaches who've also done that, so having a third party validate and actually give you the right feedback is very, very important.

Mentee Mailbag Question Number Three: Surviving and Thriving Through a Recession Have you experienced a recession or slowdown in your business? How did you pivot and manage the changes? I started this business in the room above my parents' garage in 2002, right after 9/11. Then I went through the Great Recession and excelled over COVID, so I've gone through three of these, and each time's a little bit different but also kind of the same.

So, I'm going to start with what happened in '02. We were new kids on the block, 9/11 had just happened, so budgets were tight, meaning it was easy for us to pick off clients who worked for more established and thus more expensive competitors. We did basically whatever anyone asked of us, and we did it faster and cheaper than anyone else.

Then, during the Great Recession, though we became more established, we were more expensive, I'm sure, but we survived and thrived for a few reasons. One, but if you look back at a couple of my other videos, I talk about the strength of relationships and the importance of nurturing relationships. Second, is that we had a few niches; we didn't really have all our eggs in one basket, which was really helpful. Another reason is we actually ended up learning from it and grew over the next 8 to 10 years by sitting down and kind of planning out what our industry targets were going to be. I sat down, I remember sitting down in my boardroom office and thinking, "Oh man, what am I going to do? How am I going to plan for this?" Because inevitably, recessions happen; it's just part of the business world. So what could I do to set up my company so that the next one wasn't going to be so rough? And I created a matrix where I asked myself, what industries do we like working with, which industries are we most profitable in, which of these industries are less prone to recession, and then the last one I picked was a wild card, can we get one that might go to the moon and ride that. So, the three that we ended up coming up with after the recession were professional services, healthcare, and real estate development. In Vancouver, where we started the company, these were things that were definitely solid. Professional services, lawyers, and accountants, doesn't matter if you are going bankrupt or if you're doing well, you're going to need a lawyer, you're going to need an accountant. Healthcare, everyone gets sick regardless of the temperament of the economy, and then with real estate being in Vancouver, for those of you who haven't visited our beautiful city, I welcome you to come. We have gorgeous towers, we have a great cityscape, and we've just built since the Olympics. So we basically rode that wave, and so we had professional services and healthcare kind of be our steady Eddie, and then real estate kind of just took off.

Now, during COVID, there was a little bit of luck that played into it. We were a creative company for over 17 years by then. I had just split with my partner in 2019, so basically a year before the lockdowns. But because I broke up with my partner, I was looking for a new direction of where to go, so I took out a lot of my clients for drinks and kind of just asked them, "Hey, if I started a new division, what would you want out of Ballistic Arts?" And a lot of them said, "Ted, I want you to go into social media." And I was like, "Oh God, why social media? I freaking hate it." I know, the irony of that, given I'm doing a content channel right now, but I really didn't see the value, and I was like, "Why do you want me to do that? I really don't like it." And they said, "You know what, Ballistic Arts has been a great company from a storytelling standpoint, you really understand brand, you've won us awards. When we're sending that stuff to our digital marketing folks, it kind of feels like it's going into a black hole. I don't really know what's going on, and I don't really see the value, and we're paying thousands of dollars a month." And then I'm thinking, "Ping! Oh my goodness, you're paying thousands of dollars a month and you're getting what? I'm getting likes, I'm getting impressions, but I can't eat that." And I remember thinking, if I am paying somebody thousands of dollars a month, being a small business owner, I darn well better get a return. So having a few beers with these clients, I was like, "Oh, I don't know, what if I got you leads?" They're like, "What do you mean?" "I know, what if I got you sales leads?" So one of them actually said, "Ted, if you did that, I will never leave you," half jokingly, but I took that as, "Okay, we're going to go do that." So I ended up going down to a place called BrainStation (I'll give you a link, 'cause shout out to them, because that's how I learned how to do digital marketing really) as an advertising agency. I had half a body, started building a small roster of clients 6 months before lockdown, and then at the beginning of 2020, we put out a newsletter. Sure, it was a little clickbaity, but it said "Ballistic Arts is Dead" or something like that in long. "Live Ballistic Arts." It was basically saying that the way that we did business before is no longer, and we are going to help companies get sales leads, and man, it was insane, the response that we got. Because people that I've known for years who we kind of outgrew as a creative agency because our fees were going up, came to us and go, "You know what? I don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a new website, but I got, you know, a few grand here and there that I'll spend and pay you monthly to actually help us get leads," and that really opened the door.

And when the lockdowns happened and then government monies came in, and people were like, "I don't know what to do, but I got this check from the government, can you help me?" That really worked out. So having that pivot really helped.

Now, I understand that those three scenarios were slightly different, but there were patterns that came about from it.

We survived and thrived for a few reasons: one, change to what the market wants, being nimble; number two is diving deep both with my clients and myself to see how I can position the company best based on the market conditions of the day; number three was asking people what they wanted—it's kind of funny, right? But asking people, "Do you want this?" sometimes can actually work; and number four, yes, there is a little luck, but some of my mentors would say, "Ted, we make our own luck."

So, take it for what you will, and there you have it, three questions I've answered from my mailbag. Let me know in the comment section if you thought this was helpful. And remember, please like, share, and subscribe. Thanks for watching. I'm Ted LA, and this has been "You Know Ted." Bye.