From $35,000 to Gunning For $1 Million with Mindi Zissman

Mindi Zissman started her specialized B2B content firm so she could work from home and replace her then $35K salary. Today, she’s gunning for the $1 million mark and no one in their right mind would bet against her.

We talk about:

What it takes to leave a comfortable job to start your first business.

Revenue progression: hitting your first $100K and busting through your significant income plateaus.

How to leverage through hiring/contracting “mini me’s” to do client work (and why systems will become your saving grace).

The magic of committing to exactly the right niche (and why it might take a hot minute to get there).

 

LINKS

Mindi Zissman | Website | LinkedIn

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

GUEST BIO

Mindi Zissman is the President of Zissman Media, a B2B content firm specializing in the risk, insurance and compliance industries. Mindi started Zissman Media in 2004 to be the voice of her clients, expressing their industry expertise through thought leadership. Mindi is passionate about doing project research and connecting one-on-one with her clients.

In her spare time, Mindi is an avid runner and fitness enthusiast and teaches 11th grade Writing Workshop at a private high school in Chicago where she lives with her husband and five children.

RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS

Join the Soloist email list: helping thousands of Soloist Consultants smash through their revenue plateau.

Soloist Events: in-person events for Soloists to gather and learn.

The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPTS

00:00 – 00:25
Mindi Zissman: There was definitely a point in my business where I would freak out when new projects would have come in instead of being so happy because I just didn’t have the capacity. I didn’t know how I would do it. I didn’t know who would do it. I didn’t want it to not be perfect or great. I didn’t want it to not be like my A work because I was charging people a lot of money and I did have a reputation to uphold. And so that’s definitely a big piece that I now have kind of that frame of

00:25 – 00:29
Mindi Zissman: mind where I can say, okay, I can hand this off to somebody.

00:34 – 00:55
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to So Louis Women, where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton, and today I’m here with Mindy Zisman. She is president of Zisman Media, which is a B2B content firm specializing in the risk, insurance and compliance industries. Welcome Mindy.

00:55 – 00:59
Mindi Zissman: Hi, Rochelle. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

00:59 – 01:21
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So 1 of the reasons I was so excited to have you on the show is that literally every single time we talk I feel like you figured out another way to grow your business and still lead the life that you want It’s like you have this real zest for your work for your clients and your allies in your craft So I can’t wait to just dive

01:21 – 01:24
Mindi Zissman: in. Okay, let’s do it. I’m excited.

01:24 – 01:40
Rochelle Moulton: Okay, so just so we’re clear, you’re not currently operating as what we might call a peer soloist. You do have a couple of employees, But 1 of the many reasons I wanted you to share your story is that your model could just as easily work for someone who doesn’t want to deal with employees and hires contractors instead.

01:41 – 01:50
Mindi Zissman: Correct and I also do actually hire contractors. I do happen to have like 1 or 2 people working in the business as well, but mostly I hire contractors. So that is true also.

01:50 – 01:57
Rochelle Moulton: Okay. So let’s start with how you found your way into starting your own business. I mean, where did it all begin for you?

01:58 – 02:30
Mindi Zissman: I was a trade magazine editor working at a trade magazine company. We had 150 titles, you know, everything from hotels magazine to hairstyles magazine. I mean, really everything. And I worked at 2 magazines that were for architects and engineers. None of us were architects or engineers. We were all writers who kind of learned the industry and that was really my first job out of college. And I did that for a while and I had a couple kids and I was you know I had 2 little kids at the time and I remember we hired a freelance

02:30 – 02:57
Mindi Zissman: writer or 2 and I would edit their stuff laid out on the page etc and at 1 point I like almost turned myself and said why are you not doing that and this was 2004 there was no gig economy I didn’t know anybody that worked for themselves certainly no women and maybe some men who had their own businesses. I didn’t know any women who worked from home for themselves. Nobody worked from home again. This is like, you know, I’m really dating myself here. But I really just decided to go off on my own. I took a

02:57 – 03:24
Mindi Zissman: crazy plunge. My husband’s an accountant and I remember him turning to me and said, you can’t just do that. And I was like, oh, really? Yeah, let’s try that. Let’s see how that works. You know, he was very worried about that salary, that little salary. I think my first job at, I was an assistant editor at a trade magazine, I think I was making $35, 000. And he was so worried, you know, I had to bring that $35, 000. And we had 2 little kids. And I was like, all right, let’s try it. I don’t know

03:24 – 03:52
Mindi Zissman: if I would have as much gumption today as I did then, but I did. And I went off on my own and I took 1 business owner who was on our editorial board at the magazines. He was an engineering MEP engineering firm downtown. He owned this firm and he was my first client. He said sure I’ll hire you to do some writing for our firm. And again this was like before anybody was looking for a freelance writer. So people would say to me, so what do you do? And I would just say, well, I’m a technical

03:52 – 04:13
Mindi Zissman: writer. And everyone just assumed that meant I wrote the book that came with their earn. Right. And I was like, no, I didn’t. You know, we write articles, we go we ghost write for people, you know experts in the engineering and architecture space and those articles go into magazines, they might go on the company’s website and again this is 2004 so it was like the beginning of even companies having websites.

04:14 – 04:14
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

04:14 – 04:39
Mindi Zissman: So it was that but anyway that was me going off on my own. And what did I do? There was no social media then. How do I let people know that I was going off on my own? I actually, this is so funny, I created, I guess it was in Word, but I made it look like a newspaper and it was a 1 page. I had it printed at Kinkos in Glossy, you know, page. I made it look like a whole newspaper and it was like, Zisman goes off on her own. I wrote a whole article

04:39 – 05:11
Mindi Zissman: and I sent it to all my contacts in the architecture and engineering world in like a manila envelope. And I got a few calls and it was just word of mouth for many years. And people would recommend me clients. I worked really in the architecture and engineering space then. So clients of mine at certain engineering firms would leave and they’d go to another engineering firm and they’d bring me with them. So that was really how the business grew. And my original editor at the time at that engineering magazine, he went off and started an architecture magazine.

05:11 – 05:37
Mindi Zissman: So he brought me with as 1 of his contributing editors. So I had a bunch of gigs and it just kind of grew over time, but I really was home with my kids and doing what I wanted to do and still making money and being connected to something I loved, which was writing and, you know, telling stories. And at the time I loved that architecture and engineering space too. And I did that for a bunch of years and again, it was just word of mouth. And then about 9 or 10 years ago, a client of mine

05:37 – 06:08
Mindi Zissman: who was in healthcare at the time I was doing some healthcare stuff actually right around the time of the Affordable Care Act, I was working for a nursing home education company basically. They did continuing ed for nursing home nurses and administrators, just all their staff. Anyway, I had the Affordable Care Act downloaded on my desktop and I wrote 7 white papers on the Affordable Care Act. I think I was like the only 1 that read the majority of it. Wow. This client of mine, she moved over to commercial insurance and she brought me with as a

06:08 – 06:41
Mindi Zissman: ghostwriter. I was their first writer. And I thought, okay, I know insurance. I have that insurance card in my wallet. We go to the doctor, I got this. And I very quickly realized, and so did she, that commercial insurance is Totally different than health care and having a card from you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield So commercial insurance is the umbrella over businesses So it’s the same thing whether that’s cyber insurance transportation transfer trucking companies, you know property insurance if you have an office General liability if someone slips trips and falls on your rug in your

06:41 – 07:11
Mindi Zissman: lobby, that’s everything. That’s what commercial insurance is. And about 3 years ago, right around the time of the pandemic, I decided I loved commercial insurance and risk so much that I wanted to niche down on it. And I will actually say that Rochelle, you and Jonathan from the Business of Authority really had such a hand in that. I was listening to your podcast, you know, just regularly, I still do. And you guys kept talking about niching down and I’d go to listen to another podcast for business owners and they were talking about niching down and everybody

07:11 – 07:40
Mindi Zissman: was talking about niching down. And I was kind of falling out of love with my engineering and architecture clients because they didn’t like to spend money. Really marketing wasn’t such a big deal for them. It was kind of, you know, back end. Okay, we’ll do that later. And I loved risk and insurance. And so I just said, you know what, I’m going to double down on it. And I really took a risk, really a big risk for myself, as a business owner. And I, I remember hearing so much, let’s say for sure on the business of

07:40 – 08:09
Mindi Zissman: authority, but you know, on other podcasts and just other experts as well, saying things like you feel, And I know Jonathan says this all the time, you know, you think when you’re going to niche down that you are closing in on a smaller pool of potential clients, but really what you’re doing is you’re actually giving everybody an opportunity to only use you if you’re in that market. And that’s really what happened. And so I did that and right around the time of COVID, my youngest went to school full time and I’d always had a thousand ideas

08:09 – 08:19
Mindi Zissman: to grow my business. And so I decided I’m gonna work full time and niche down the business and it just totally exploded. And I think that’s, I think mission down was a big piece of that.

08:19 – 08:36
Rochelle Moulton: Well, it’s funny because you absolutely captured that. You always have a thousand ideas on how to do it, but you focus yourself pretty quickly. So I just have to ask a couple of questions about the journey, because I’m picturing somebody sitting there wondering, how long did it take you to make back your 35, 000 and tell your husband see

08:36 – 08:39
Mindi Zissman: oh that first year I made that money yeah yeah

08:40 – 08:46
Rochelle Moulton: and do you remember when you made your first hundred thousand when you broke that that barrier

08:46 – 09:18
Mindi Zissman: yeah I do remember I can’t remember what year it was, but I do remember that because I remember being like, oh my gosh, I really could do this. And I now I see even today I’ll see on you know, copywriting emails that I get from like just different groups and people say like, oh, who broke that hundred thousand dollar barrier? And I’m grateful, listen, my business and pushing towards that million mark. That’s, that’s where my next I is. And I hope I’m headed there in the next year. That’s my plan. But I remember being like that

09:18 – 09:35
Mindi Zissman: was, and I’ll tell you something, there was also even a threshold. And this really speaks to that whole idea of hiring freelancers or getting more people under you in your business. There was a threshold that I was at, I want to say it was about 120, 130, where I just couldn’t get over it if I didn’t hire somebody.

09:35 – 09:36
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

09:36 – 10:08
Mindi Zissman: And I was there for a long time, because I really was very nervous to hire people. I thought people were hiring me for my expertise. How can I grow that? How do you grow your own expertise, how do you clone yourself, how do you… I had so many thoughts and so many things that held me back. And I wasn’t able to scale over that 130 for a really long time. And only when I opened myself up to using other writers, getting a VA, getting an editor. Each 1 of those was a process, just because this whole

10:08 – 10:17
Mindi Zissman: business has been me forever. And so that was really hard. It’s still very hard. It’s still very hard to delegate, but I’ve gotten better at it over time. And I see that it’s the only way to grow.

10:17 – 10:49
Rochelle Moulton: I kind of put that in the category of leverage, right? Cause a lot of people in this kind of expertise space, we get stuck around the hundred to $150, 000 mark. And you know, you can typically leverage broadly like in 2 ways, right? 1 is to go and clone yourself or hire people. So you leverage through people. Actually, I should make it 3 ways. Another is that you can leverage through pricing. You could say, okay, this thing that used to cost 20, 000, now it’s 40. So you can play with those prices, or you create something

10:49 – 11:06
Rochelle Moulton: where you sell something to many people and you leverage that way like a membership program, for example. But that’s a completely different business model that was not the, you know, let me do this high end really thought leadership pieces for this specific vertical.

11:07 – 11:34
Mindi Zissman: Correct. And the other thing that I’ll say, I’ve never been much of a subscription model. I mean, I definitely have retainer clients, but I feel like that’s different than subscription. I’m not really selling like my thought leadership. And then also, I’ve never been able to like wrap my head around creating a product. I never wanted to create a course. I never wanted to like teach people what I’m doing. But I will say that I am doing something new now, which is a little bit in that realm. And I really had never thought of this, but I

11:34 – 12:09
Mindi Zissman: had a client, 1 of my large commercial insurance brokerage clients, who hired me in June to come and speak at their Women in Sales Summit. And I created a two-hour workshop on leveraging LinkedIn for like insurance sales. And that was just based on my LinkedIn knowledge, not necessarily what our business does. You know, we go straight for these companies. So they’re a client of mine, but I was speaking to their sales team and I love LinkedIn. It’s something I’ve really enjoyed over the last few years. You know, so it’s something that I have a mass knowledge

12:09 – 12:38
Mindi Zissman: on. And again, it’s not something I sell. Like I don’t sell LinkedIn posts. You know, we don’t do social media for our clients. I mean, I will do, I have a few clients that we write some of their posts, but that’s not, that’s not like our bread and butter at all. And it’s only after we’re working with clients on other pieces. But so I created this whole masterclass for insurance producers. That’s what salespeople call themselves. It’s kind of like an internal term Anyway, now I’m going to leverage it and do it here in Chicago for the

12:38 – 13:06
Mindi Zissman: first time early September I’m doing a full morning of LinkedIn for insurance producers and I’m gonna see how it goes. Yeah, so I had created it and so I found a way to add more to it you know once I had done it I met with a few just like you always say to do some of that market research so I met with a few of the people who were at that Women in Sales Summit And now I have it’s not a productized business model because I still have to be there and I’m still doing it

13:06 – 13:32
Mindi Zissman: and it’s still live. But I hope to be able to give it to like between 20 and 50 people every time I do it. And that’s a huge morning for me. You know, that’s a huge, a huge financial and I really love it. I have to tell you, I love teaching it. I love being in front of people and answering their questions and figuring it out on the spot and just talking about the knowledge that I’ve gained from that platform. So I’m really excited about doing that. And it’s really kind of an adjunct to the business.

13:32 – 13:46
Mindi Zissman: Like these, the people who would come to it, these insurance producers, the insurance salespeople, their companies could hire me but they independently wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t be hiring us to write, you know, blogs or annual reports or anything like that for their companies. So.

13:46 – 14:02
Rochelle Moulton: You know what’s so fascinating is you said earlier, yeah, I don’t want to teach people what I do, but I can hear the passion for teaching this. Right? Yeah. It’s like the moral of the story is maybe you just have to find the right thing to morph into being a teacher.

14:03 – 14:29
Mindi Zissman: Yeah, exactly. And I actually teach at the high school level, which I think you know also, that’s more of like a, I actually have an under volunteer in my LinkedIn profile because what I make there at the high school for the whole year is what I make in my business in a day. So it’s a joke. I am so sorry for all the teachers out there who are maybe looking to be solopreneurs. So I enjoy that. I leave my desk job and my day job to go teach twice a week for 40 minutes writing also. But

14:29 – 14:32
Mindi Zissman: it’s more of like a fun and kind of community outlet for me.

14:32 – 14:52
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I want to come back to that. But let me ask you a little bit more about when you think about your story, kind of your trajectory with your business, it’s almost 20 years. Yeah. When did you decide it was time to hire your first employee? I know you said that you got stuck at that 130 mark for a while. What made you decide to do it?

14:53 – 15:19
Mindi Zissman: I think I was frustrated by the amount of time that I was spending working and the ability to not be able to just get over that threshold. And I think I saw the need, you know, people more people were coming to me, my name was getting around in that risk and insurance space. Obviously, I was on LinkedIn. And I really just felt like, Okay, Mindy, do you want to try to scale this or not? You know, What are you going to do here? So I had in the past, you know, when things got busy, reached out

15:19 – 15:47
Mindi Zissman: to somebody who had done some writing for me. Actually my first freelance hire was a woman who used to work with me and she was in-house at 1 of the engineering firms I worked at. And actually that first engineering firm that took a chance on me she was working in-house for them doing some marketing stuff and I had really mentored her as a I don’t know just someone that was older and in the marketing world So when she left that job, you know She gave the next person that she went to my name as a reference

15:47 – 16:12
Mindi Zissman: that type of thing So I had always stayed in touch with her and she’s my first freelancer. She’s still working for us. And then she’s given me some people I’ve found. I’ve actually found a bunch of people who used to work for travelers and now either work for other businesses or are retired and are doing some writing for me. So they have insurance knowledge as well. But I’ve also found that the topic is teachable because I’m an expert in it and I’ve been doing it for so long so I can just point the writers in the

16:12 – 16:40
Mindi Zissman: right direction. And we’ve created a whole process. So I still do almost all, I mean, I still do all of the interviews really with the subject matter experts and I create an outline for the writer. I use Asana, which is our project management software and everything gets uploaded and assigned to a writer. And like I said, I’ve created a whole outline for them. I found sources for them. I do like a major deep dive on exactly where I want the article to go because I know the client, I know what they’re looking for, and I know

16:40 – 17:09
Mindi Zissman: what nuance and topics and ideas should be in the article. And then so I will hand them my notes for my interview and the outline and a bunch of sources and they just basically do what Anne Hanley calls that ugly first draft. That’s what our writers do. And then my first real employee that I hired was an editor and then she kind of takes over. She gets the ugly first draft and downloads it, makes an edit, sends it back to the writer. The writer takes a look at it, sends, you know, adds a version 2 and

17:09 – 17:16
Mindi Zissman: uploads it back to Asana. And then I take it from there and usually hopefully don’t have to do much and send it on to the client. That’s our process.

17:16 – 17:18
Rochelle Moulton: So you’ve got a system really is how

17:18 – 17:44
Mindi Zissman: I know the whole system Yeah, a whole system that again also was not born because you know, somebody told me how to do it It was also something I just had to figure out like how can I? Give over this information to somebody have them have to do the least amount of work on it, but they can just do something meaningful that we need to get done, but I can guide them in a way that will be, the client will be happy, it’ll be in the best possible state, by the time it gets to me, before

17:44 – 17:53
Mindi Zissman: it goes up to the client. And listen, there’s been a ton of bumps in the road, and maybe this isn’t even the best process. Maybe there’s a better 1 too. I have no idea, but we figure it out as we go along here.

17:54 – 18:02
Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah. And the other piece of this is a process that is going to allow you to do your best work so that you leverage in a way that’s manageable for you.

18:03 – 18:30
Mindi Zissman: Correct, yeah. And right now, I’m even working with my editor, who does this very well but doesn’t love to do it, and my new VA, who does have some content experience. But I’m working with both of them to teach them, the thing that I don’t love to do, to teach them actually how to do that piece that I always do, which I consider the strategy, you know, that outline, that deep dive outline that, you know, takes the interview and, you know, makes it into an article.

18:31 – 18:39
Rochelle Moulton: So when you hired these employees, the early ones, how long did it take for you to feel like it was paying off?

18:39 – 19:08
Mindi Zissman: That’s a great question. It took a long time. It took a long time, but I’ll tell you that part of it was my, and I’m sure that there’s some solopreneurs out there can really relate to this, it was really my reluctance to invest time and energy that I really did need to invest in people. You know, when you’ve been working for yourself for so long, I worked for myself for, I don’t know, 15 years before I hired anybody. And I almost wanted to hire people that were fully baked. Yeah. And I didn’t understand why, why weren’t

19:08 – 19:33
Mindi Zissman: people coming in? If you’ve been a writer for 20 years, why don’t you have the same knowledge that I do? You know, it was more of like an entrepreneurial impatience of mine. And you know, if you want to be paid a lot you know why don’t you understand this why don’t you whatever so that’s something that I fight and that’s when I’m still I still fight I’ll be honest with you I’m not so good it’s it’s a lot easier for me to hire people that know the subject matter and are good writers and can kind of

19:33 – 19:59
Mindi Zissman: take, you know, direction. And again, I’m super detailed in my direction, but it’s definitely, it’s only frustrating, you know, when you’ve been working for yourself for so long to, to add people in a different way. Like some people I know who start their businesses, they start and they grow them right away. I really didn’t. I grew it at a really slow pace for a really long time because it fit my lifestyle. And then only in the last couple of years did I really like kind of turn the heat up and say, you know what, let’s grow

19:59 – 20:05
Mindi Zissman: this, we can really do this. But that meant that, you know, I had a lot of years of being stubborn and being alone in the business.

20:06 – 20:38
Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah. And I think we also think about these people that we hire. If you want someone who’s super experienced and really good at this, we probably have to pay more than the 1 who isn’t. And then the other piece, I don’t know if you found this, but I’ve hired contractors and employees. And there are some people who are fabulous contractors would never want to be an employee. And there are some people who make great employees, including part-time employees, but they just don’t have the entrepreneurial fire so that you structure your business around them in a

20:38 – 20:41
Rochelle Moulton: different way than you would if they were all kind of independent entrepreneurs.

20:42 – 21:07
Mindi Zissman: This is such a good point because last year I hired 2 full-time people. I really felt like there was so much work coming in and I thought, oh my gosh, I really need to hire these people. And that wasn’t successful at all. That was a failed experiment. But I will say, and I actually still have a good relation with both of them, thank God. It wasn’t them. It was partly me because I just said I kind of was impatient and I think I didn’t do as good of training as maybe I should but I definitely also

21:07 – 21:33
Mindi Zissman: hired people that were a little bit older than me and had the way that they wanted to do certain things and maybe I wanted my clients to be serviced in this way or I wanted the writing to be a specific way. And they also both, it was interesting when they left, they both went back to their industries that had been at before. So, you know, they just, they didn’t like risk and insurance also, they both said. So, you know, there were a lot of reasons, but I learned a lot from that. And my business today is

21:33 – 21:57
Mindi Zissman: leaner and it just, it works better for me right now. So I’m not sure what the next, the next growth phase will be, but like I said, I don’t know, maybe it’s something like, how I’m gonna do this LinkedIn seminar. So maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s a way to have more leverage, but we’re growing still slowly, slowly and mightily. I’m just trying to kind of keep it as the same model that it is right now, at least, because it works.

21:58 – 22:08
Rochelle Moulton: So from say like a mindset perspective, what’s the difference between having employees and contractors, either 1, and not having any?

22:09 – 22:34
Mindi Zissman: So the good news and the reason that I really did hire people and the reason I still continue to use people is that when a new project comes in, it doesn’t make me nervous anymore because I don’t know how I’ll do it. There was definitely a point in my business where I would freak out when new projects would come in instead of being so happy because I just didn’t have the capacity. I didn’t know how I would do it. I didn’t know who would do it. I didn’t want it to not be perfect or great. I

22:34 – 23:04
Mindi Zissman: didn’t want it to not be like my A work because I was charging people out of money and I did have a reputation to uphold. And so that’s definitely a big piece that I now have kind of that frame of mind where I can say, okay, I can hand this off to somebody. I have a VA that I’ve trained also that knows about content and she does a great job. I’ve showed her, you know, how we like to do certain things and how the clients like to be serviced. So I guess I would say it’s slower

23:04 – 23:34
Mindi Zissman: growth, but it’s more meaningful and it’s more sustainable. We tend to hear these like startups or people go off on their own and then their business grows so, so, so fast. And I’m guilty of that also of saying to myself, oh my gosh, you know, something’s wrong. I’m not doing this right because my business didn’t grow crazy. If you have your name on something, it still has to be great. And you have to be okay with the product that you put out. And so fast growth isn’t always the answer, especially in an expertise business.

23:35 – 24:07
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. But you know, it’s interesting though, is if I remember rightly, you had a tipping point and it was somewhere in the last 3 years when you niche down. And I, cause I Remember we spoke and then it was maybe another year, year and a half we spoke and you doubled your revenue. It was crazy. You just had this huge jump. And so, you know, that’s 1 of the things that’s so interesting to me about expertise businesses. Sometimes Those leaps happen so fast after you’ve sat on a plateau for what seems like forever. And then you

24:07 – 24:09
Rochelle Moulton: do a giant leap.

24:10 – 24:42
Mindi Zissman: Yeah. And I think part of that was coded, right? Like in today’s world, people are looking for content. B2B buyers are making sales decisions before they even talk to a salesperson because they’ve learned all they needed to know about you online. So there’s just a tremendous need for content and the risk and insurance space doesn’t have a lot of people who know it. And so all of those things, plus me, niching down, plus me growing the business, you know? So I think it was like all of those things that kind of happened at once. And that

24:42 – 25:05
Mindi Zissman: led to this hyper growth, which led to me hiring 2 people. Now they don’t work for me anymore. It’s just being an entrepreneur is such a roller coaster and I’m sure all the people listening will really feel like that. There’s so much up and down and there’s so much you could get yourself worked up about. And it’s such a lesson to us to just try to be as even killed as possible. I think that that’s definitely a lesson that I’ve taken away and learned.

25:06 – 25:07
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, for sure. So I

25:07 – 25:07
Mindi Zissman: want to

25:07 – 25:21
Rochelle Moulton: come back to your team. You’ve mentioned that you have a VA. You have some employees and contractors that work with you. What other kinds of people do you have on your team to either keep you or your business, you know, running and productive?

25:22 – 25:51
Mindi Zissman: So I do have this VA. I used to have a different VA. The 1 that I have now, I feel very lucky to have. She’s really fantastic. And the reason, How did I get her? I got her from a company that does VA placement And it ended up being a great idea because my old VA got her a word of mouth and she was really nice but she wasn’t my wish list and This company allowed me they gave me a wish list and I was able to check off exactly what I was looking for and then

25:51 – 26:19
Mindi Zissman: they went to find her and then they came back with Amanda and she’s been really everything I was looking for because I said what I wanted and They did the they did the heavy lifting instead of me just saying, oh, I have a friend and she has a VA and great, I’ll use her. So that was a much better way of doing it. And if I would hire again, I would totally do it through them. They’re fantastic. And they have a whole buyout program that if you end up wanting to hire your VA full time based

26:19 – 26:47
Mindi Zissman: on how many months you’ve worked with them with her, you know, or him, then you can buy them out, basically, quote unquote, and they can be an employee. So it’s very transparent. It’s like such a nice situation. If there was a problem, which there hasn’t been, I could always go to that person that works for that company. You know, they’re kind of half managing my VA also. Right. That’s been great. And I’ll tell you the other thing, I’m not so good at hiring. I’m really not because I wasn’t managed for so many years. You know, I

26:47 – 27:17
Mindi Zissman: worked in-house at a trade publication for a couple of years, but I really didn’t. I’ve really been entrepreneur most of my life. And so I wasn’t managed. I have never had that hiring firing experience. And so when push came to shove and I actually had to do it, I didn’t do it well. And so this was my way of getting a VA that someone else hired and someone else looked for a new, what the best signs were and the things to ask and the answers that they wanted. And I’ve been able to really have a lot

27:17 – 27:49
Mindi Zissman: of success with her because of that. But my editor who does work also in house at Zissou Media, she is 50% time with us and then she’s 50% percent time actually a trade magazine editor also in my old industry. She’s an engineering trade magazine editor. And she is also fantastic. I found her through a friend who is also a trade magazine editor. So kind of hit up my old profession and my old friends in that world. And that’s how I got her. And she’s been great too. And she’s actually local to Chicago, but we both, you

27:49 – 28:12
Mindi Zissman: know, we’ll both work at home. And I have a ton of freelance writers that were, I don’t know, ton, I shouldn’t say that, a few, a good, a very good handful of freelance writers and we’ve gone through a lot of freelance writers over time too. We’ve tried people, articles have come in, they haven’t been good. I’ve stayed up till 2 in the morning fixing them to send them out to the client on the deadline and then we don’t use that writer again. So it just depends. You know, we tried to give writers a few shots and

28:12 – 28:20
Mindi Zissman: then once we think that they’re good, we let them into a sauna, We use them on our project management platform, but that’s also been a challenge and that’s trial and error

28:20 – 28:31
Rochelle Moulton: What I’m fascinated by with the VA experience is you basically said yourself? Well, you know, I’m maybe not the best person at hiring It’s not in my genius zone. I’m sure you could do it, but it’s not my genius zone So I’m gonna find a

28:31 – 28:32
Mindi Zissman: way definitely not. Yeah So

28:32 – 28:56
Rochelle Moulton: I’m gonna find a way which is perfect because the people who figured this out, it is in their genius zone. Presumably your VA is working in her genius zone. So it’s, I mean, I think sometimes we think because we’re solo that we’re supposed to do everything ourselves. Right. Exactly. Yeah, it’s not. Let’s get help. Let’s find ways to do things that we don’t want to do or that somebody else can do better than us.

28:56 – 29:23
Mindi Zissman: Yeah, that’s true. And, you know, even on that whole idea of let’s get help, I have always had like a business coach and a mentor. And that’s another thing that I’m really big on and I recommend other people do. And I mean, even in my life, right in my life, I have someone who I consider a big sister who isn’t really my sister. And I have mentoring just in my business life also. So I’m on in a group for entrepreneurs. I you know have a business coach that I meet with twice a month and if I

29:23 – 29:48
Mindi Zissman: didn’t have these people I also wouldn’t be where I am. They they have all helped all together and they change over time too. My first business coach is not the 1 that I’m working with now. And I think if I didn’t have all these people to who have either been there before me, help advise me, give me ideas, help me, show me a different way of thinking about something. These all add, add to, you know, really helping me grow in the role that I’m in and just helping the business grow.

29:49 – 29:57
Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah, I mean, you’re gunning for a million dollars now. When you were talking about, you know, replacing your 35000 dollars salary, did you ever envision gunning for a million?

29:58 – 30:27
Mindi Zissman: Absolutely not. And I’ll tell you, It’s the same thing with my job. I coach a lot at my alma mater. I went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and I’m probably involved in their political science department where I was a graduate from. And I tell their students all the time, I always wanted to be a writer, but the job I do today did not exist when I graduated college. But I’m still a writer. So that just tells me that the world is constantly changing and your goal is just to make the next best choice that’s in

30:27 – 30:56
Mindi Zissman: front of you. Whether that’s an internship if you’re a student, whether that’s a project, if you’re a solopreneur, whether that’s a client, whatever it is, and then you just kind of get taken away from that. You just kind of move through your life and your business making the next best choice. And Sometimes we learn lessons because we make mistakes. Like I just shared a few of my own mistakes and sometimes we have great wins. And all we really can do is look at the next choice that’s in front of us.

30:56 – 31:11
Rochelle Moulton: Too true. I asked you to put a pin in something that you started talking about before. And I want to come back to it which is you originally created this business so you could have the time to raise your family. What are the other things that you do with your spare time because you are 1 busy woman?

31:13 – 31:40
Mindi Zissman: Try to keep busy that’s what makes life fun. So I’m a fitness person, I’m a big runner and I like to do, you know, core exercises too and take classes. So that’s super important to me. I always say if I don’t run the day, the day runs me. And so that’s my motto for my morning workouts. Like I said, I teach the high school writing workshop. That’s twice a week during the school year. That’s 11th grade girls. I really enjoy that. That’s been something fun. I created the curriculum at the school and now we have so

31:40 – 31:57
Mindi Zissman: many girls that we have another teacher who, like a younger teacher who I co-teach with and she teaches 1 class, I teach the other, but it’s that curriculum that I created a bunch of years ago. So that’s fun. I have 5 kids so they keep me busy enough anyway, right? That could be my other full-time job.

31:57 – 32:03
Rochelle Moulton: We need a mic drop right there. 5 kids. Oh yeah, I just happened to do all this and have 5.

32:03 – 32:30
Mindi Zissman: 0 my gosh, you know what? They’re they’re really wide range. My oldest is 21 and she’s married and my youngest is 8 and he’ll be in third grade this coming year. So I have a big range and They’re all in different places. They’re all over the world. I have 2 kids living abroad in Israel. My daughter is there with her husband and I have a 19-year-old son who lives there also. So they’re there for a couple of years, both of them. And I have a high school son who’s 17, a 12-year-old daughter and like I said,

32:30 – 32:57
Mindi Zissman: an eight-year-old son too. So we’re busy. They keep us busy. We’re busy. We’re very involved in the community here also. Like I said, I teach in the high school, that’s a piece of it, but we started a high school here in Chicago, private high school for boys. And my son will be in 12th grade this year. We started that school for her. We started when he was in ninth grade. So we’re gonna graduate our first class at the end of this coming school year. We have 80 boys in that school this year, which is amazing. My

32:57 – 33:18
Mindi Zissman: husband’s still writing every check and still super involved. They don’t need me to write the emails anymore. We’ve hired an executive director and stuff, but we started like literally writing emails and coming up with policy. I mean, what do I know about school policies? But we created them. But anyway, yeah, we like to keep ourselves busy. It’s not, My husband always says we’ll sleep when we’re dead and I guess that’s my plan.

33:18 – 33:38
Rochelle Moulton: Well, you know the beauty of having this kind of business is that you do create time You don’t have to work 24 7 you create the money the time the flexibility to do the other things that you want And so I just love that when you connect what you do for your money with the ability to do what you do for love.

33:39 – 34:01
Mindi Zissman: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that’s, that is something that I don’t take for granted. And I really appreciate every day. I mean, every time I’m out on a run or I can run to the grocery store or, you know, I have a kid that needs to take to the airport or, you know, someone needs to come home sick from school. I am grateful. I really am grateful. I don’t know if I could be an employee at this point. I don’t think I’m hireable or employable.

34:01 – 34:03
Rochelle Moulton: Employable. Yeah. Welcome to the club.

34:05 – 34:32
Mindi Zissman: But you know what’s funny, what’s really funny about it is today’s world, there are so many people doing that. And I’ll tell you, even the majority of my writers who I just absolutely love, Most of them have full-time jobs and they’re moonlighting for me at night too. And so I have to work around their work schedules too when they’ve got their traveling for work or something. They were like, I need the week off. I can’t do it. And so I just think the gig economy is so pervasive today and so many people are engaged in it.

34:32 – 34:53
Mindi Zissman: And that’s actually what I find fun about telling my story, because people just can’t imagine a world when it wasn’t like that. But it wasn’t like that. And, you know, for a really long time, I was doing something that nobody was doing, and, you know, It was just hard to explain what I did. I was like the buzzkill at the bar. Like nobody wanted to know what I did because it was just like, what? You do what? I can’t understand that, forget you.

34:54 – 35:12
Rochelle Moulton: Well, I think just 1 last question, and this is kind of for those in the audience who are just getting started on their businesses. So if you could go back to who you were when you started your business way back then, what’s the 1 thing you would advise her to do?

35:13 – 35:44
Mindi Zissman: So I’ll tell you it’s actually same advice I sometimes give to myself today, which is don’t take things personally. I have found, and this is something that I work on a lot just in terms of my own personal growth, is that, if a client doesn’t work out, a prospect doesn’t work out, I find, and I actually wrote about this on LinkedIn last week based on your business of authority article but I mean podcast but it’s very often not because they didn’t want to work with me or I did something wrong and they weren’t happy with my

35:44 – 36:12
Mindi Zissman: work or something like that. It’s almost 9 and a half out of 10 times something within their own business or they got sidetracked or they decided not to make a decision. So they’re just doing it themselves. That was what your podcast was about the DIY. Some people are just, I had a prospect that was like, we met 3 different times. This was literally like 2 weeks ago and I just sent them another email. I’d sent them a few follow up emails. They didn’t write back. And I sent them this amazing email that Blair ends, gives out

36:12 – 36:35
Mindi Zissman: in his sales training that is like his be all end all email. And it always comes, you know, someone always comes back with it and they wrote back like, oh no, I’m so sorry, we’ve just been so busy. Like I’ve been out of the office, so and so’s out. We’re going on a sales training next week with our company. Like can we, can we talk at the end of the month? And that’s 9 and a half out of 10 times, always what it is. It is rarely that I lost out to competition. I really don’t have

36:35 – 37:04
Mindi Zissman: a lot of competition in this risk and insurance space. And I will tell you, there’s enough business to go around to, which is another lesson of niching down. But I will say that it’s almost always not personal. And times when I’ve taken things personally, or I felt like, oh my gosh, they had so many edits to this article or whatever. It’s really just not personal. And you think you have a great relationship with your clients, you do. It’s not that you don’t. It’s not that nobody is thinking of not using you because they’d rather use somebody

37:04 – 37:19
Mindi Zissman: else or whatever It’s rarely like that. It’s almost always an issue internally at the business or with that person I mean, I’ve even had some personal things where people have said really mean or rude things to me clients and it’s really about them. It’s just not about me.

37:19 – 37:25
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, and that can be hard to remember in the moment, but it is definitely something to keep in mind.

37:26 – 37:51
Mindi Zissman: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it’s something that I, like I said, it’s not even, it’s a lesson I would tell my original self, you know, many, many years ago when I started this business. And it’s a lesson I try to take with me today too, to just tell myself that, you know, this isn’t really about me. This is about somebody else or another business or their budget or something else. It’s not about we didn’t do good work. But you can feel like that, You know, either people can make you feel like that or you go there, especially

37:51 – 37:55
Mindi Zissman: as a solopreneur, because your business is synonymous with you.

37:55 – 38:09
Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah, and if you’re waiting to hear from somebody or you’re, especially with the kind of work you’re doing because you’re getting edits from clients, you’re getting feedback on your words, right? It can be easy to take those things personally.

38:10 – 38:21
Mindi Zissman: Yeah, exactly. And I just find it never really is. And people don’t realize that people really think like, Well, they decided not to use me or whatever. They probably didn’t even decide not to use you. They just didn’t make a decision.

38:22 – 38:33
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So Mindy, before we sign off, we will put this in the show notes, but where can listeners go to learn more about you and your work? And I know we’re going to put in your LinkedIn profile link.

38:33 – 39:02
Mindi Zissman: Sure. Yeah, that’s really LinkedIn is a great place to reach me, connect with me and love to connect with you and send me a DM. That’s the best way. Also, my website is just the media.com another way to connect with me. But either way, either way, you’ll get to me and LinkedIn is a great place and I try to hang out there so that’s a fun a fun thing maybe I would just leave everybody with a few like LinkedIn tips because I think that’s like a big a big thing in like today’s world of business awesome

39:02 – 39:29
Mindi Zissman: From my LinkedIn master class that I give, I have just a couple of tips that I would say. Number 1, the best thing to do is, and this is just a habit to get yourself into, after you meet with people that day, at the end of the day, or if I have time during the day after a meeting, I will always go on LinkedIn, open up even my calendar and to see who are all the people that I had met with and just link in with them. And if you make that a habit every time you

39:29 – 39:54
Mindi Zissman: meet with people or, you know, at the end of that day every day, you will slowly amass not just a following, because it’s not really about numbers, it’s about meaningful connections, but those are people who know you, who like you, who could trust you, who are currently working with you, who could lead to potential clients in the future. That’s everything. So if you make it that habit of just and then always do a personal note, hey, it was great to connect with you on that call. Let’s connect here. You know, something just like really simple like

39:54 – 40:05
Mindi Zissman: that. And LinkedIn also says that you should aim for like a 25 to 30% acceptance rate on your invites, which really sounds low to somebody.

40:05 – 40:06
Rochelle Moulton: It does.

40:06 – 40:21
Mindi Zissman: But that will be a lot higher if you’re inviting people that you know, and you have connected with, and they’ve connected with you. So that’s a main thing. And that’s a great way to grow your following so that when you do post, it’s more impactful because you have real people in your real audience.

40:22 – 40:39
Rochelle Moulton: Well, that’s, that’s the mic drop Mindy. Listen, I want to thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your story. I mean, I’m rooting for you and you’re gunning for a million dollar quest and I have no doubt you’re going to get there. But thank you.

40:40 – 40:44
Mindi Zissman: Thank you for having me and I look forward to continuing to listen to this podcast and your other.

40:44 – 40:45
Rochelle Moulton: Awesome.

40:45 – 40:46
Mindi Zissman: Thanks, Rochelle.

40:46 – 40:48
Rochelle Moulton: So that’s it for this episode.