Embracing Mistakes in Business | Dylan Bost

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this conversation, Dylan shares insights on the importance of embracing mistakes and continuous learning in the entrepreneurial journey. He reflects on his early business challenges, including operating without a business license for three years, and emphasizes the value of mentorship and learning from experiences that are not typically taught.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
• Continue to find new ways to learn.
• Grab a mentor.
• Early failures can be valuable lessons.
• Operating without a business license can be a challenge.
• Not everything is taught in business.
• Seek guidance from experienced individuals.
• Learning from mistakes is crucial for growth.
• Mentorship can provide insights not found in textbooks.
• Embrace challenges as opportunities for learning.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.294)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Continental, Ohio. I have no idea where that is, but thanks for listening. Joining me today, Dylan Bost of Sunny HQ. Dylan, welcome to the show.

Dylan (00:26.113)
Thanks so much for having me.

Christian Brim (00:28.504)
So we'll start with what is SunnyHQ?

Dylan (00:33.998)
SunnyHQ is a, we say we're a human first WordPress full service business. What does that mean? of the nutshell is I started the business about nine years ago, believed that hosting needed to be more. And meaning a lot of the big hosting companies out there, provide pretty much just the storage unit is the way I see it for hosting. And our service is really soup to nuts. So it's full service. You come to us and

We host the site, take care of literally everything technical that comes up, as well as we provide support on top of that. So it's more your white glove, concierge view of what hosting is. We really wrap in everything that needs to happen with the website. The idea is you focus on your business, we do the rest so that you're not wasting time with all of those kind of pesky WordPress issues.

Christian Brim (01:28.014)
So that includes design as well.

Dylan (01:32.532)
We do some design. It's interesting that companies mostly focused on the support aspect. So I ran an agency before this, which was all design, design, design. So it is something that we do. And what I tell prospects and customers is we only do design work for our existing customers. And the important thing there is that our staff is really focused on the support and making sure that we're available.

so that support tickets and things are done within hours instead of days. And that means we're not out there basically selling our services to build 100 websites a year. We may build 10 websites a year, maybe eight. So we keep that side of it really down and it enables us to the work that we do is for customers that we have a broad awareness of and understanding of what they're trying to do.

Christian Brim (02:13.581)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (02:26.538)
We believe that we're better at it. We're really well suited to help them through that process.

Christian Brim (02:31.745)
Okay, this is going to show my ignorance. I thought WordPress websites were hosted on some servers by WordPress. Is that not accurate?

Dylan (02:43.094)
It's super confusing. and I don't know if I can make it less confusing, but WordPress, yes. WordPress has, well, it gets confusing because WordPress.com is like a hosted environment. So much like a Squarespace or a Shopify, it's basically you go to them, you pay them whatever, $25, and you get WordPress. But it's a very, it's a limited use of WordPress. So it's great for blog sites, it's great for small marketing sites, but.

The real power of WordPress comes into play with the fact that you can, I mean, we have, for instance, we have customers that have three million e-commerce products, so giant websites, right? With big databases, lots of functionality, there's no limit. The nice thing about WordPress is it's a platform, but it enables you to literally plug in other services and things to make it do whatever you want it to do. WordPress.com doesn't let you do that. Then,

Christian Brim (03:24.077)
Okay.

Christian Brim (03:41.227)
Okay.

Dylan (03:41.481)
WordPress.org is essentially the free version of that. You download WordPress and you can build on that platform whatever you would like. So you leverage the technology, but you need then your own hosting to do that and you need your own designer, you need your own people to keep up the site and so on and so forth. So that's where we come in.

Christian Brim (04:01.033)
Okay, and so the my question is you were talking there is well, I got two questions. You can answer them however you want, whatever order. So how did you go from like front of the house to back of the house? Like doing the design part to doing the technical part? Like what? Why? Why did you make that shift? And two,

Who is your ideal customer? Like who is it that would work best with you?

Dylan (04:36.041)
Let me, I'll answer them backwards. our ideal customer, it's interesting. It's not specific to a market or an industry or even a size of customer. And WordPress right now, WordPress websites that I'm talking about run about, I think it's 44 % of the internet. So it's like 80 million websites. It's huge.

Christian Brim (04:59.541)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (05:00.018)
The reality is that's across, and so if you've got a cross section of our customer base, it's small mom and pops, yoga studios, dentists, lawyers, but it's on the other end of the scale, it's large multinational corporations. It's large e-commerce sites. And so the interesting thing is WordPress enables customers to build websites for far less than they used to. So it makes it available for so many different things.

Christian Brim (05:13.894)
Right.

Christian Brim (05:24.973)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (05:29.237)
The reality for us is that's one actually a challenge for us is when we talk to our customer, it's so broad. The reality is for the most part, it is businesses that recognize the value of their time. That's the way I normally say it, right? It's businesses that understand, hey, why am I spending five to 10 hours jacking around with these plugins or trying to figure out how that form works or literally anything technical when I need to figure out how to market my business. And that's where we come in.

Christian Brim (05:36.013)
Mm-hmm.

Is there one that you think that you do provide more value for?

Dylan (05:58.836)
It's really, if you look at our customers, it's all over the place.

Dylan (06:08.98)
Probably e-commerce websites. I simply because you know their you know their business is so much more I mean everyone's business is somewhat dependent on the website being live and running but obviously an e-commerce somebody who's selling products You know even selling five products a day if the website's not available or if there's a problem with it They're not selling those products. So I think we probably have the most acute You know different make the most acute difference inside and kind of e-commerce websites

Christian Brim (06:11.309)
Okay.

Dylan (06:37.201)
And then with agencies, we work a lot with agencies as well because we're able to plug into an agency where, and it's interesting, I know this because I ran an agency, most agencies end up hosting websites because they don't have a go-to person and they would rather do it themselves because they don't want to lose that connectivity with their customer. And it's fair, know, the customer goes over here, they get bad service and it shows on them. So where we come in is, you know,

Christian Brim (06:57.044)
Right.

Dylan (07:04.752)
we plug into that environment, we offer the same or even better service than they ever could, and we don't manage any of their design work. In fact, if we get questions that relate even remotely to brand and design, we shoot them directly over to where they came from. So those are good fits as well. Then your second question, how did I get here? I think it's interesting. After you run a business, a marketing branding agency that

Christian Brim (07:19.957)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Dylan (07:33.2)
is subjective for 10 years. Quite honestly, I was looking for something that was not subjective anymore. I had a wonderful experience. We worked with thousands of customers. We got all the awards. We made a lot, you we did some really incredible work for some beautiful customers, had a great staff, but the idea of that round robin, right, of...

I've got a project, now I gotta do the project and I gotta optimize all these people, both design and developers, because we had a fully staffed business of about 25 people that managed every kind of project from TV and radio to web and everything in between. So by the time you do that and then you come back around to I gotta get more business. And I actually got some mentoring from a beautiful.

Christian Brim (08:05.237)
Mm-hmm.

then you come back around, I gotta get more business.

Dylan (08:23.965)
friend of mine who said, Dylan, you've got to look for two things in your business. Something that can provide your business reoccurring revenue so that you can build a business that can last without your, know, it's not just billing for your time. And the other was to start building the processes and things that help to make your business valuable. Someone wants to purchase you. And so when we really spun that company down, it was interesting because I looked up at our service

Christian Brim (08:44.333)
Mm-hmm

Dylan (08:53.45)
I guess all of the services that we provided and it just had grown. We had grown about $200,000 a year or something in just, it wasn't WordPress at the time, but just hosting for websites. But it was the same thing. It was this full service environment, right? customers didn't have to know where the website was or where their domain was. They simply called us and said, something's wrong or I'd like to change this and we did it.

Right at that time WordPress was coming online in a big way and I literally for about a year tested the market and said, what if I started converting these websites over to WordPress? How hard is that to do? And then could I by myself, instead of a staff that I had before of seven or eight people, could I manage the entire hosting environment and keep up the upkeep? And the answer was yes. It proved it really quickly and it was amazing that

I proved a model of a single person on our side can manage about a hundred websites. Because we've built a really solid platform and that's the important part. It's a safe, secure platform so we reduce support tickets hugely because websites run fast and they don't go down. That's not the same case with a lot of larger web companies out there. Unfortunately, most websites go down all the time and the customer doesn't even know about it.

Christian Brim (09:58.214)
Right

Dylan (10:19.89)
We reduced that and so by proving that, it was great. I'd solve the revenue model because I'm signing up people for subscriptions and I'm providing a higher end service than was available in the marketplace. And that's, don't know, when I look at the things that I love to do, it always ends up being more along the lines of solving these puzzles and it was a puzzle to me that existed and it seems like we've done a.

pretty good job so far to do that.

Christian Brim (10:51.827)
Yeah, okay. So I'm to ask a question. You don't have to answer it, but are you making more, more money with the new model than the last?

Dylan (11:01.358)
Absolutely, yeah and I guess you could look at it a couple different ways. The time that I spend right now, a big thing for me was as I shifted out of a model where I was around my family a very small amount of time. I was working 60, 70 hour work weeks, so if you just looked at it from that standpoint, I'm probably making triple the amount per hour that I made. Or even more because

Christian Brim (11:27.802)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dylan (11:30.889)
I spend less time working in this business than I ever did in that. It's objective, right? Websites either running or not. And the great thing is if we have a problem, we fix it, it literally fixes it for 100 different sites. So if we want to make a tweak, well, that's going to solve this one need, it's solving it for everyone, not just that one business.

Christian Brim (11:39.329)
Yes.

Christian Brim (11:55.648)
You said something very interesting. You said it twice. and, I, I want to tug on that string. You said that it's, it's objective and it's not, and at the outset you said that it's not subjective. in other words, you, you have solved the, the customer's problem or you haven't. All right. And I think, I think the biggest struggle with creative entrepreneurs

Dylan (12:10.031)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (12:16.366)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:25.177)
is really dialing in on what the problem is that they're fixing. And they're caught in this legacy model of customization work and its project and its hourly, as opposed to doing exactly what you did is finding the one thing that was a problem. You solved a lot of problems before.

Dylan (12:39.225)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (12:53.038)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:53.325)
as an agency, right? But finding that one problem that you could solve repeatedly. And that's how you build a business, right? Now you could have picked any aspect out of that agency to focus on and do the same thing, rather than try to be all things to all people.

Dylan (12:59.92)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:18.925)
Or to and I don't know, you know, you tell me what you think. Is it? Is it that that doesn't scratch the creative itch to do something repeatedly or or, know, like the thrill of, you know, launching, you know, an NBA star's website and like all of the creativity that goes into that. And I mean, like what what what what what is it for you?

Dylan (13:42.019)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (13:49.678)
Yeah, think that, and so I went to design school, my degree was actually in architecture, so it was somewhat akin to the agency world, and I think, and then I've hired probably 100 creatives at this point, and I think that the challenge for a lot of creatives and a lot of young people starting agencies is that they're not taught the business side of it, it is all about the creation of the thing.

Christian Brim (14:13.047)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (14:15.83)
And I get it, they love it, right? One of the things that I heard from a professor of mine that I really appreciated is you have to remember the difference between art and design, right? Art is for you, design is for your customer. And I think that a lot of creatives get caught up in that and not, know, they're creating for their customer, but they're taking a lot of ownership of it.

Christian Brim (14:28.747)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dylan (14:41.133)
and they want it to be this thing that's fantastic and to them they've got this vision in their mind when in reality 80 % of that is probably more than enough and achieves the goal and actually is within budget and doesn't drive all of the things. I think, so that's the problem I think is that, and I see this a lot when we start to work on projects and in fact I just had a recent project where,

Christian Brim (14:51.533)
and achieves the goal and actually is within budget and doesn't drive all of the things. I think that's the problem I think is that, and I see this a lot when we start to work.

Dylan (15:07.119)
know, a customer said, what does it take to build a 10 page website? What's the budget? And it's funny, it's like, I've heard that same question for 20 years, right? It's like, you know, and I use a lot of car and mostly architecture metaphors and analogies. I'm like, let's think about it this way. What would it cost to build a house? Right? I mean, I need to understand more about it. so the job of the creative really has to, you know,

Christian Brim (15:10.663)
Right.

Dylan (15:33.305)
Part of the thing I think that they're taught a little bit of but not enough is how to manage that expectation on the front end. How to ask all the questions, listen to all the answers, reformulate, and really push hard to make sure that everything is answered so that they can do their job. That's something that I'm really focused on and when we build sites, I actually won't move forward. We definitely won't move into the development cycle at all.

Christian Brim (15:50.709)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (15:59.159)
until we literally have a design for every single page. I won't do it anymore. I used to do it all the time, right? we'll figure that out when we get into development. It's horrible idea. It costs a lot more to move around a bunch of things once it's in code than it does to sit in Illustrator and move it across the stream. So anyways, I think that's one of the things where I think there's a big failing out there is that they...

Christian Brim (16:14.975)
Right. Right.

Dylan (16:23.555)
get caught up in the wonder of the, and I get it, it's a wonderful process, right, to design, but you have to also ask yourself the question is like, how much am I time worth? And if I'm gonna optimize that as much as possible, then I need to do, I need to ask all the right questions, listen, formulate, build scopes, all those things that aren't necessarily fun, in order to get to the step where we can both agree that this is what we're going to accomplish.

Christian Brim (16:51.735)
So you have some gray hairs like I do. If some young buck came to you that was in the, I don't know, a creative space, they did design, they did agency work, whatever. And they were trying to figure out this thing that we call entrepreneurship, the game of business. What would you tell them were the foundational things

that you know now that you didn't know then. Like, what would your advice be to them?

Dylan (17:29.278)
man. Well, I'd say don't be afraid to make mistakes. And that's a big one. And always, you know, I guess continue to find new ways to learn. Grab a mentor. You know, it was interesting. As an example, here's some early failures of ours. I didn't have a business license for the first three years of our business. Why? I didn't know it existed. Right? So,

Christian Brim (17:43.277)
Hmm

Christian Brim (17:56.171)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dylan (17:57.858)
there are things that are not taught. Is that a big deal? I don't know if it is or isn't. It was a big deal to the guy that told me about it. Our accountant was like, my gosh, you don't have a business license. But at the end of the day, think that you've got to continue. You get a level of education in whatever format to start this business. And I think you've got to continue to seek learning, whether that's from groups that you get involved with, it's events that you go to, that's just...

Christian Brim (18:21.835)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (18:27.714)
talking to people who had done it. Go and find someone who's been out there for 20 years. The earlier person, that example that I gave you that told me about processes and reoccurring revenue, that's exactly what it was. He had been in the business for another, I guess he's about 10, 15 years older than me. And so he had experienced the things. It was interesting, by the time I'd worked with him for a few years, I asked him,

Christian Brim (18:30.188)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (18:55.895)
Do I need to go back and get an MBA because I really think that it would help. And he's like, Dylan, you've been doing this for five years now. You've got the MBA. You don't need that. Just continue to ask questions. So that was at least some level of comfort. But I think the point was I'd never stopped. I never stopped looking for places to learn and understanding that there's probably things you don't know, right? I mean, it's hard to know what you don't know, but just agreeing that, man, I'm pretty sure there's a lot I don't know.

Christian Brim (19:04.385)
Yes.

Dylan (19:25.582)
better go figure things out.

Christian Brim (19:25.663)
Yes Yes, I love that advice I think learning yes it Entrepreneurship is a journey. It's never a destination and and it is a game in the sense that I like to equate it to choose your own adventure

Dylan (19:36.46)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (19:45.804)
You know, I love those books when I was a kid. and entrepreneurship is the ultimate choose your own adventure, right? But it's, it's a lot harder if you try to go through everything by yourself, and not rely on the wisdom of others, because I mean, most, most tenured entrepreneurs are happy.

Dylan (19:46.217)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Dylan (19:54.177)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:14.295)
to share their experience, right? Because they know the pain they went through and they're like, I wish someone would ask me, because I'd be happy to tell you not to do that, right? But I think that's also part of a little bit of the hubris and ego of starting your business is you have to believe enough in yourself to do it. You kind of got to be a little crazy to do it. And that kind of...

Dylan (20:14.454)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dylan (20:21.388)
Right.

Dylan (20:38.219)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:41.597)
leads us to not ask for help as often as we should. I think I would, you know, if someone asked me that question of what did you learn? My first answer is beware the power of self-deception. You know, like what you can tell yourself is true contrary to all of the facts otherwise, right?

Dylan (20:46.465)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (21:03.081)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (21:09.612)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (21:11.329)
But the second right after that would be, it's so easy to get caught on our side of the fence and think about what we do, how we do it, making it more efficient, all of those things that we do in business and forget the customer. the most important thing you can do

Dylan (21:35.551)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:40.852)
is think from your customer's perspective. And that's not just from a customer service or hospitality standpoint, you know, that's true as well, but it's also putting yourself in their shoes and trying to understand what the problems that they're encountering are. And the beauty of the solution that you provided, you found and provide is that

Dylan (22:01.802)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (22:10.805)
You found a problem that a lot of people have, right? And so you don't have to reinvent the wheel with a new scope of work and a new storyboard with every engagement. You've got a product, if you will, and productization of what you offer is really key to building a business. Like you need to be uber dialed in on like, is the problem I solve, and this is the solution.

Dylan (22:14.058)
Yeah.

Dylan (22:21.897)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (22:33.835)
Yeah.

Dylan (22:39.177)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. No, I agree.

Christian Brim (22:44.939)
So how did you come up with the name Sunny HQ?

Dylan (22:48.926)
Well, you know, I tell you, it's really hard these days, right? I mean, you gotta, if you're trying to work backwards from a dot com, and a dot com is less important now, and of course we don't have a dot com, but when we originally started down that path and mining through, I don't know, probably 40 or 50 names, we started with Tango and Tango HQ.

And we like that, but it was interesting. I went through a branding exercise with the company that I was working for at the time. And it was beautiful to go through that. It's the first time I'd actually gone through that exercise being the client. And so it was actually a lot of fun to see that kind of just unfurl itself. to be honest, of the things that Sunny came out in the beginning and

Christian Brim (23:26.167)
Hmm.

Dylan (23:39.466)
the lead brand person said that his feeling that because I was the spokesperson of the company and the founder of the company that it should really reflect who I am and his feeling was that I was a very sunny person, sunny disposition, I have a very positive outlook on life and so that's where it came from and of course the HQ for headquarters and then was born Sunny HQ.

Christian Brim (23:43.55)
I love that.

I love that. You said that you went to school for architecture. How did you end up in marketing?

Dylan (24:09.609)
Yeah.

Dylan (24:16.831)
Yeah, so that's what my wife would say. She always says, my husband's an architect, but he never practiced. And so I was exposed to that world when I was younger. My dad was in building, and I love architecture. It was interesting, though, when I actually have a graduate degree in architecture from North Carolina State. And going through that program and working at the same time became really evident at the time that

Christian Brim (24:29.345)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (24:46.686)
The cool part of architecture, really the people that got to practice that is like 2%, right? To design and architecture, and I'll be honest, I looked at my classmates and I was like, I'm good, but I'm not like that. Like I don't look at it with the same eye, I don't have the same level of investigation, but what I was really good at and loved, so in the...

Christian Brim (24:53.834)
Hmm.

Dylan (25:14.559)
kind of late 90s, early 2000s, I got heavily into visualization. So where they were building hand models, I was heavy into very photorealistic models at the time in architecture. That took me to Walt Disney Imagineering. So I was an Imagineer for a year. And the exposure to that, I was in the planning department, so I did visualization. But the bulk of what we did was to help

Christian Brim (25:29.793)
me to Walt Disney Imagineering. So I was an Imagineer for a year. And the exposure to that, I was in the planning department, I did visualization. But the bulk of what we did was to help. is, anyone listening to this for that department say that's not what we do. But the way that I saw it, what we did is we really helped to, we helped any department visualize and actually mark.

Dylan (25:43.848)
This is anyone listening to this from that department saying that's not what we do. But the way that I saw it, what we did is we really helped to, we helped any department visualize and actually we marketed to them, here's an idea for this. And we actually did all of the marketing for that. So it's not to the public, but it's like if they wanted to build a hotel, right? We would visualize the hotel, we would build a package, present it to them. And so.

Christian Brim (26:00.589)
Okay.

Dylan (26:12.692)
there's a big marketing aspect to it. So that ended up kind of taking me because of the technology spin. That's what drove me into web design at the time and I partnered with a good friend of mine and we started a web design business. And then that grew into branding and marketing.

Christian Brim (26:21.004)
Mm-hmm

Christian Brim (26:32.983)
So you said you wound that down. Was there some trigger that said like, I need to pivot. I need to do something different. Like this isn't working for me anymore.

Dylan (26:45.255)
Yeah, was a 2008 pivot from, you know, there was a, you know, just a market correction overall that we had been immune to until that time. We had built organically and done a really good job at having a diverse set of clients, but unfortunately we had a lot, we had still had too much in the real estate and development world and they got hit really hard. So we were left with a lot of debt.

Christian Brim (26:49.751)
Yeah

Dylan (27:15.114)
On top of that, I had an existential crisis. So I mean, I literally at one point before 2008, I started asking myself the question like, what is this for? I had some addiction problems at the time, drank too much, ignored my family and really blew up the company. It was not a recommended way of exiting the company. I think about that a lot when people ask me,

Christian Brim (27:26.537)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (27:35.137)
Hmm.

Dylan (27:43.721)
People ask me, are the two things you'd like to do different? And I said, well, one of the main things in the beginning was people would always ask me when I started that agency, what's your exit strategy? And I scratched my head and I was like, I just started it. Why am I thinking about the exit? And it wasn't until I started the second company that I fully realized the importance of that question and that you really decide what you want from it.

Christian Brim (28:07.117)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (28:11.105)
And this is kind of a catch-22, right? Because it's that type of thing, not thinking about it from the beginning, that helped me get into the position that I did at the end. Because I basically, at one point, eight, nine years into that agency life, we were doing great. There were obviously personal things that were happening that disabled me from even understanding that. And...

And then two coupled with the fact that I started to ask like, what is this even for? No one's going to care about this marketing in 10 years. No one's going to care about this logo. No one's going to care about this website. And there was a lot of truth to that. So it was really out of alignment with who I was as an individual. so really that was the, you know, the impetus was unfortunate. But, you know, I look back on it now and I wouldn't change a thing.

Christian Brim (28:48.988)
Mm-hmm So was really out of alignment with who I was as an individual. really that was the, you know, the impetus was unfortunate, but you know.

Dylan (29:05.736)
It's something that I had to go through to be where I am now and to be running SunnyHQ, a more thoughtful version of that company that's in alignment with who I am.

Christian Brim (29:16.635)
Thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable because a lot of people don't want to talk about the dark parts of entrepreneurship, but you hit on two things that I think are crucial. the first is designing the business the way you want it to be.

Dylan (29:38.097)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:38.606)
not letting the business become the tail that wags the dog, you know, because it's real easy to get on that and go someplace you don't want to go. And the second thing is, you know, the whole exit thing. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about exit when I started the business, but that kind of dovetails with the first part is like, if you're going to build a business that you want,

Dylan (29:43.239)
Yeah.

Dylan (29:50.342)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (30:06.987)
that serves your needs. Part of that has to be like, what does, what is the exit of it look like and the value that you're creating? Because you mentioned recurring revenue. You can, you can sell an agency that is project work, but it's not nearly as valuable as something that has recurring revenue and,

Dylan (30:19.195)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (30:36.127)
sticky customers, right? So, you know, understanding that option upfront and building the business that you want, I think is, is something that most entrepreneurs neglect, not until it's too late, but it's like you, you, cover a lot of ground that you, you probably didn't have to, before you start over.

Dylan (30:37.799)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (30:59.129)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I think you're onto something, I think, with the tail wagging the dog, right? The reality is, when I started that business, you know, we were excited, and it's great. We had all the feelings. We were starting to work for people. We were doing the work we wanted to do. But, you know, if you think about, we're also all humans, so, you know, asking yourself, what do you want out of this business?

Christian Brim (31:25.025)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (31:25.155)
And what I realized is real quickly, my business became a giant distraction. And especially when you run the business, because anybody that's run a business of any size understands it's so vastly different from having a job because there's literally, have to decide, you talk about boundaries, you have to build those for yourself, right? You have to decide how much time am I going to spend today or next week?

Christian Brim (31:30.657)
Mm.

Christian Brim (31:39.043)
Mm-hmm

Christian Brim (31:46.829)
Mmm.

Dylan (31:52.31)
or what jobs am I going to do? What jobs am I going to hire out? Literally though, there's something, if you're not comfortable with, put it this way, if you're not comfortable with a part of your life or for me, I didn't have an awareness of the part of me that was uncomfortable. There's a steady stream of distraction to fill that void, right? From customers to vendors to receivables to buying equipment to lease. mean, this is never ending.

Christian Brim (32:12.032)
Yes.

Dylan (32:19.846)
And there's always something for you to spend your time on doing. So I think it's important that you do back up. We didn't start to ask those questions till late and say, what is the future of this? And by that time, not that it was too late, it's never too late, but by that time, I was experiencing a lot of personal things that really disabled me to even comprehend that question at all. So it's important, though, I think that...

Christian Brim (32:33.164)
Yeah.

Dylan (32:49.232)
to me, decide what you want to do, but also decide what does the outlook look like? Maybe it starts with that question of what is five years from now, or what is 10 years from now, but be really meaningful about that. What does that look like? Yeah, yeah.

Christian Brim (32:59.018)
intentional yeah intentional. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, that's, I talk about that in the book, profit first for creatives, like profit, you know, how to have a profitable business is to be intentional about having a profit, right? Like it's not something that is accidental that happens if you're lucky. Like that's, that's the wrong way to do it. And going back to my choose your own adventure analogy is, is that

Dylan (33:20.697)
Mm-hmm, that's right.

Dylan (33:29.475)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (33:35.534)
You know, I think, I think a lot of people, and I was there many times myself, but you get, in this mindset of it's an either or right. And, and there's this, I can do this or I can do that. But, but the reality of options is usually much broader than that. There's usually option C and D and E and F and right. And it's.

Dylan (33:48.365)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (33:57.891)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (34:02.639)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:04.325)
That's the beauty of it is you may not have more than one or two options right now, but the possibility of what you want to create is, yours. It's, it's completely endless, unique. can create whatever it is that you want to do. And to, and to me, it's, it's about kind of repurposing that creative energy from, from the actual work product, right. Into the, the business.

Dylan (34:10.084)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (34:20.494)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (34:27.407)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (34:33.654)
the game of business use your creativity in the game of business which you did brilliantly.

Dylan (34:35.065)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan (34:38.531)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it's interesting. I think a lot I love the movie industry and I listen to a lot of podcasts and listen to actors and It's this they have the same thing right they talk about so as young creatives We're just so excited to get any work just like actors. They you know, they talk about this all the time It's like I just can't wait to get that job. I've got next to no money I'm living on somebody's sofa and then I get this sitcom and and before I know it like

Christian Brim (34:53.995)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Dylan (35:06.765)
I'm in a completely different place. Same thing happens for us as creatives, whether we're working for someone or we're starting a business, the reality is the importance, think, of, like you said, and I think that's a great way to put it, right, using those design skills to design your future, to design your business. And that's something that, you know, it's the irony, I think, of what we did. The company was called Ulaan Guzi.

Christian Brim (35:26.274)
Yes.

Dylan (35:35.993)
what we did at Ullenguzy and that agency for other businesses, we were so late to the game to do it for ourselves. It was comical, right? And it's the Cobbler's shoe and all the things, but it's important. It's really, really important to take a look at that and design that for yourself. Like you said, that intent is beautiful. To decide that this is what I want for me and for my employees and for my family is really a hugely important part of that.

Christian Brim (35:44.481)
Yes.

Yes?

Christian Brim (36:06.335)
Absolutely. Dylan, where do I learn more about Sunny HQ if I want to see your work?

Dylan (36:13.332)
Go to sunnyhq.io and for anybody interested on the WordPress side, we've actually got a sunnyhq.io slash podcast. There's a nice free download of a PDF that will help you kind of take a look at your website and maybe understand some things about it that you're not aware

Christian Brim (36:31.339)
Yes, because we all need to know more because, you know, absolutely. Listeners, if you will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message. Tell us what you'd like to hear and we'll get rid of Dylan until next time. Ta ta for now.

Dylan (36:33.764)
That's right.

Dylan (36:52.1)
Thanks a lot. Bye bye.