Building your business from the ground up (part 2)

Ever wondered how to harness your team's superpowers for business success or the secret sauce to partnerships that flourish? That's what Zeke and I, Oscar, are unpacking in the latest Finance Bible Podcast episode. We're getting real about the nitty-gritty of recognising your crew's standout skills—because let's face it, not everyone's cut out to be a website whiz—and the savvy of strategic budgeting when you need to rope in some external expertise. Plus, we're stirring in a hefty dose of passion, showing you how it's not just a buzzword but a critical ingredient in turning what you love, like dog washing, into a profitable enterprise.

Then, join us as we recount the tales from Zeke's bedroom, the birthplace of our now-iconic company 'Asset Road'. We chuckle through the memory lane of names that nearly saw the light of day (close call with 'Kilimanjaro Finance', anyone?) and peel back the curtain on how a company name and logo can deeply influence your brand's first impression. As we navigated the legalities of setting up shop and crafted a brand identity that spoke volumes, we'll share the blueprint that every upstart business needs to etch in stone.

Closing the episode, we don't shy away from the reality of juggling your passion project with a nine-to-five. Zeke and I share our personal playbook for transitioning from side hustlers to full-time entrepreneurs without dropping the ball at our day jobs. We'll even touch on the extra gigs that can keep you afloat (looking at you, Uber Eats) and the art of conjuring content that truly connects. So pull up a chair and let's explore the entrepreneurial journey, where strategy meets authenticity and a pinch of creativity can lead to a feast of success.

For any enquiries or to connect with Oscar, Zeke, or their company, Asset Road, listeners can visit the following links:

• Finance Bible Podcast Instagram
• Asset Road Instagram
• Asset Road Website

The advice shared on The Finance Bible is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. The Finance Bible exists purely for educational / entertainment purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs

Transcript

Zeke Guenthroth: 0:10

Welcome back to another episode of the Finance Bible Podcast. Zeke here and your co-host, oscar. But before we get into it, please note that nothing in this podcast should ever be considered as personal financial advice. Of course, if that is what you are seeking, reach out. We'll get you in touch with the correct professionals. Get the job done properly, sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Let's get into it.

Zeke Guenthroth: 0:38

There's also the point to make as well, like in terms of actual skill. Like you know, if you a in a business where you're either a client facing and you need to make a sale with a client, or b you're doing business to business and you actually need to go like you're, you sell alcohol, you make alcohol and you've got to get it distributed in different um shops like dan murphy's, coals or bws, whatever, then you know who in the company can actually go and have those conversations with the client and figure out a deal and get it all put together. Is one of you good at it or both of you good at it? Is no one, which is the next point, and I hope this doesn't happen to anyone out there but what if there's something that you're both actually not that great at, for example, oscar and I, I don't think we could sit down and make a website no way. Even if we could, the time that we'd spend on it would be much better spent elsewhere, which is another point too, knowing where to put your time but we'll come back to that. So if you're both not good at something or three of you, or four of you, or you alone however many of you are in this venture together then you need to figure out all right, who externally can we actually bring into the company to do this for us, and do we add them, or is it something that we can just pay a one-time contract to do and figure that out? That comes back to the financing and the budgets, as we mentioned earlier, because that's an important, important point, especially with the sales, like heaps of sales training companies out there. So is it appropriate for you to actually sign up and get trained by a sales guru for six months or however long you want?

Zeke Guenthroth: 2:19

But figuring out your skills is a massive, massive point and, additionally, with that passion, something we haven't really talked about Passion what are you actually passionate about? Like, that might be a reason that you're starting a business or something, but is there something that you are passionate about, or one of your business partners are passionate about that, you're not so much or they're not so much, and can you use that to your advantage? Like, if there's someone that you know really, really loves to, um, go out and wash dogs and you want to make a dog washing business, very good, one of you might want to sit there and you know, do the numbers and everything, and the other one's like, oh, I really want to go wash the dogs, wash the dog, you go wash the dogs. No, mate, if that was you and I I'd be like oh, wash the dogs, I don't, I don't want a bar of it. Um, but I do love dogs. I can confirm, the man does love dog, love animals. Um, but yeah, if there's something that they're really passionate about and they really enjoy doing, can you use that to your advantage.

Zeke Guenthroth: 3:22

On to the next point. Next one's probably. I think it was my favorite part of the journey, like I still remember it in our place in sydney. I can remember it. Yeah, so we'll get into it, but it's business name and branding. So we were sitting on the floor in zig's bedroom, living together at the time in his bedroom for probably five or six hours At least, we said, all right, we're going to go in your room and we're going to figure out what name we're going to call the business and the logo.

Zeke Guenthroth: 3:57

Once we figure the name, oh, it was chaos. We were sitting there and we had the rough idea of we're helping people purchase investment properties and set themselves up, so something along the lines of finance or property or money or wealth, so along that line. But we probably went through 40 different names and at least at least in half the names we were like yep, done, that is perfect. We're on One of them Kilimanjaro Finance. Believe it or not? Yes, definitely not, which I'm glad we didn't go down that path, not it?

Zeke Guenthroth: 4:32

Imagine trying to like send an email. Oh, what's the email address? Oh, it's Zeke. Oh, how do you spell that Z-E-K-E at Kil? Oh, mate, my name, and that put together. Oh goodness, I don't think I'd be here today. No, um, it's. It's ridiculous how long it takes because you've got all these ideas and then you're so excited. Then you tell your parents, you tell your family, you tell your partners, your friends, and they come back. I hate it, yeah. Or even after 10 minutes you go. Actually, that's really shit.

Zeke Guenthroth: 5:02

Yeah, we had heaps of those, um, and then, literally probably hour six, hour seven, we thought what about wealth street, wealth road? Like, yes, wealth road, bang, we're on love it. Checkn, look up, no other businesses have the name Happy days. And then we're sitting on that for probably a week or probably a couple of days. It was a couple of days, yeah, and then we locked it in. We got a logo done on Canva. Yeah, we had the logo done and we were just kind of sitting there going just looking at it for a minute. Something's not right and the colors weren't right. All of a sudden it was like wealth road that stinks. Wealth, property, money, assets. Then we're like asset road. Yeah, literally that was it. That's actually good.

Zeke Guenthroth: 5:54

The moment you said that or whoever said it, I don't even remember that part it was like asset road and we're like, yes, and we Googled it. Yeah, no, asset roads, take it. And we googled it. Yeah, no, asset roads take it. But we didn't take it at the time. We sent it around and then we got good feedback. People were happy with it. So then I jump on logo creator. I whip up this logo very rough logo and that logo everything that was created that night is the logo we use today. Apart from the yeah, the little fine details in the oh, there's a minor, like a slight design change, but a very, very. That logo is the logo we actually created on that night, which is pretty cool. We fit around like we actually didn't need anyone to do that for us.

Zeke Guenthroth: 6:36

But the, the moment you know, is when you wake up a week later and you're still going hmm, asset road, okay, yeah, if you wake up and you're like, oh, wealth road, I don't know, don't do it. No, no, when you know and you want to have a, it is like love. And when you know, you know, yes, and with your, with your business name, you wanted to have, well, there's heaps of businesses out there, so you got, um, let's just. For example, apple has nothing to do with actual phones and computers, but a lot of companies in some industries. You want your name to kind of say what you do like to portray. Yes, we help people get assets and a road can be your road to wealth or wherever it may be, but you want it to reflect your offerings and also make it a memorable name, something easy to say. Yes, if you're giving out your email.

Zeke Guenthroth: 7:31

Kilimanjaro would have been horrible. It's not easy to say for most people and I'd guarantee 98% of people would ask how to spell it, even now giving out my email. Sometimes I do get hit with the question like, oh, how do I spell that? I'm like the word acid, yeah, the A-S-S-E-T and then the word acid, a double s, a double s? E t and then the word road. Like you know, you walk across a road and they're like oh, yeah, I can spell that. Yeah, bloody hope so. But yeah, you want it to be easy to spell, um, and extremely relevant.

Zeke Guenthroth: 8:03

So you, I think we were writing it down actually quite a bit, yeah, to look at it visually, like, yeah, that looks great, that's easy to understand. The email would be nice. Austrade, asset Road that looks fine, that's easy. Not too long, not too short, but yeah, writing it out and looking at it, visualizing it, getting the logo, saying it, asking a friend's family, that was the big one. Yeah, and the coloring and the branding of that was because we got heaps of feedback from your family, my family, in terms of the, the actual names and the logos as well. I think I actually sent that one through to my group chat of mates too and just said guys, what do you think? And yeah, no negative feedback on that, no circumstance, and if it is negative, like it's good, it's constructive. Constructive criticism yeah, that's exactly right, which you need for these types of things, because you don't want everyone to be like, yeah, that looks great, and then they're talking shit behind your back. Oh, did you see how bad Zeg's logo was? How shit was that? We might have to insert a little there, but that's all right.

Zeke Guenthroth: 9:03

And yeah, then we went on to registering the company once we figured that out. So you know we had to. We could either A do it ourselves we have a bit of background in setting up, like self-managed funds and companies for property custodians or corporate trustees and stuff like that. But we were kind of at the point where, like, hey, we actually do this for a job. I couldn't be bothered doing it for myself. We'll just pay someone. So get a good accountant, help them figure out the actual structure of the business.

Zeke Guenthroth: 9:34

If you want to do a company, a sole trader or whatever you're doing, figure out the tax incentives and all of that. You might want to make a trust. They'll help you as well. If you have no idea, which. A lot of business owners, like I, had a rough idea, but not that much so they'll explain it to you, like literally from start to finish, of what everything is and walk you through it. Yeah, and you need to figure out at that point if there is other people involved. You know what are you doing for share splits and you know shareholder agreements and all of that kind of thing, because that's quite intense and I've seen a few people get burnt there too. Oh, definitely A lot of people don't.

Zeke Guenthroth: 10:13

Actually, they say, yeah, we're co-owners, co-founders, like 50-50, but there's actually no legal documentation. Yeah, it's actually not in writing, or you know there's documents about it. So then all of a sudden it turns to. I won't swear, I would say it turns to crap. Yeah, that's a good choice, I like that. And then all of a sudden, someone is trying to pay you out or just take the money and run, yeah, whatever. There's actually so many horrors.

Zeke Guenthroth: 10:43

Yeah, say, mate, I put in an extra 20K, then you owe me this. Someone stops, I just turned American. Someone stops, stops for 20k than you. You owe me this. Someone stops, stop, I just turned american. Someone stops, stop, um, stops pulling their weight, or you know one person picking up all the extra slack and, yeah, um, you know you need to reshuffle, but, um, that's a one of the more boring parts of it. I will say, yeah, I think, outsource that, leave it to the professionals to to sort it all out. Um, that that kind of takes us back.

Zeke Guenthroth: 11:12

Once that's all done, and especially for us, is balancing. If you are currently working, like as as you said earlier, if you've got a lot of savings in your, you know you're just living off your savings whilst you build this company up, this probably won't really impact you a lot, but the balancing act between working your nine to five job, whatever you're doing right now, your current role, and developing your business and your business plan in the background. So for us, it was mainly. We got to work at 8 am, so we were getting up at around 4 35 each morning going to the gym, walking to the gym together, talking about the business, and the gym sessions are probably one of the most productive parts of well, not the actual sessions the walk, the walk. We're lucky, we're living together. So we were walking to the gym every single morning during the week and talking about the business literally from the moment we left our rooms to the moment we got back and then we have a shower, do a bit of work on the business before you go to work and then when we came back home, straight back at it again. So we during that time we we really like worked 5 to 12, like easily, because we do days where we're inclined meetings until 9, 10 and we come back and I'd be out in Mount Druitt at bloody 9.30 at night driving back to the east, get there at midnight, sit down, cook up dinner and go. Well, I just have an idea. Let's work on it, exactly right.

Zeke Guenthroth: 12:38

So balancing it probably doesn't sound like we're really good at balancing there because, looking back, we probably weren't. We were really like over the top. I remember my girlfriend Zoe used to call me up or text me, like the early days of Asset Road, and it was like 11 o'clock at night. What are you up to? I'm like, oh, just doing sales, training or doing something, doing role play or working on this, like every single night. But it had to be done, it has to be done. But you've got to figure out your balancing so you don't want to burn yourself out because then you won't have a business. But how do you balance? It might be when you get home you might work 5.30 to 6.30 and then maybe early in the morning for half an hour or prioritize your Saturdays. So four hours on Saturday you might pump it out, or whenever you're free. But figuring that out and developing a business plan on the side is actually vital.

Zeke Guenthroth: 13:32

And there also does get to a point where a lot of people will be working their current role while working that one, and that makes complete sense too. You know you don't want to entirely go out on your own. You might be like oh, I want to still have the income over here while I build this up. Like you know, you're actually registered. You're doing a little bit of business, but not much, because you're primarily doing your other job. You're like 80-20 at this point in time. So you need a balance there as well. Like, okay, although I'm only 20% in my new role, while I'm trying to build it up, I can't have a client call me or something happen there and not actually tend to it straight away, because then you're starting off on a bad foot, you're getting a bad reputation, you're getting a name for yourself, you want to have everything go smoothly. So it's balancing that to like okay, how do I keep my current boss impressed and not get in trouble there while I'm trying to do this? And I'm so much more focused on this and the longer that goes on, the worse it gets it does. You've got to really think about how to get through it. Yeah, you couldn't see my hands there. It was like my left hand's at 80, my right hand's at 20, and it's slowly moving up, the old weight shift and then my right hand becomes a 99, my left hand becomes a 1, and I'm barely involved in my previous job. My left hand becomes the one and I'm barely involved in my previous job.

Zeke Guenthroth: 14:50

We're saying that you got our first client with us at Rogue when we were working with our old employer. Yes, but at the same time you were still doing what you needed to do at an 8 to 5 or 9 to 5 work, 8 to 8. 8 to 8. 8 to 12. It was pretty ridiculous actually. Yeah, 24-7. Anyway, but it's not like you just jump ship, like you actually did work for us at Rogue and then also doing what you had to do to keep ticking over. Yeah, yeah, that was kind of important to do. You have to do it.

Zeke Guenthroth: 15:19

I'm not in the piece of advice to everyone out there don't screw anyone over while you're doing it. A lot of people do that and a lot of industries are actually really small. Yeah, you don't want to burn bridges. You do the right thing by everyone you can. And when you get to that point where you're like, all right, I am starting to fade a little bit in my old job, at that point in time you should go. Okay, it's time to actually leave or do reduced hours or something, because you need to be fair to everyone involved, otherwise you're um, it's not a good bloke or no good. Actually thinking about that. If you're actually fully over your current job and you're like I actually hate coming here every day and I'm so over it, but I need the money, you could actually just get a casual gig, go to a cafe or whatever. A lot of people do it after school, like go wait at a restaurant or be a barista, uber, uber. Yeah, I'll talk about that in a moment, but just doing something to pay the bills.

Zeke Guenthroth: 16:19

So when Zeke and I moved back home, so I moved back to Melbourne and Zeke moved up to Newcastle while we were getting the business sorted and we didn't have any income coming in. We were both just literally doing Uber Eats, yeah, mostly For like the mornings still working, like taking phone calls and doing meetings and everything but to try, and you know, there's a good four, six-month period there of no income. So you've got to make money somehow, was gonna make money somehow, that I had a thick chunk of savings myself, but yeah, it was just perfect timing for you after, probably, so, um, but for me I didn't have a, didn't have probably. I just so I had to work for it, unfortunately. But you come out on the other side on On the balancing act as well.

Zeke Guenthroth: 17:06

Time I was saying it before and I said I'd talk about it a bit later is you've really got to think about what time you're putting into certain things. As we said, if we put all that time into the website, it might have been 40 hours, 50 hours, 60 hours, and I don't mean like three days, I mean actually that amount of hours sitting there at a computer doing it, just doing the copy alone. It took. Yeah, true, it's like a week you got. I fully forgot about the copy of the website. The copy of the website took us because you want to be in charge of the copy.

Zeke Guenthroth: 17:39

The website developers can also always, you know, ask and look and say to you that they're happy to do it. But you know your product, you know your service, you know what your customers and your client base yeah, and you know how you want to come across. Yeah, they don't. So for a website developer like great, they might make a really beautiful website. Like I love our website oh, that's amazing.

Zeke Guenthroth: 18:00

If anyone hasn't looked at it assetbrocomau if we've let the the people do our, I don't think it would have came across how we wanted it to. It wouldn't have been, as I don't want to say, the word organic, authentic yeah, authentic, natural, friendly, but professional. You know what you're trying to do and they don't. You also really understand your industry, what you can say, what you can't say, what you should, what you shouldn't, whereas they might do it for a finance company one day and then a candle company the next day and then a fitness like f45 the day after. And a lot of companies are different. Like you might have one finance company who's young, kind of like us, even though we're not a finance company, and you might have another company who they have individuals who are in their 60s. They're not really used to nothing against 60-year-olds. They're like I don't even want a website. Yeah, literally, they're not used to like the online marketing and website pages, so they're just happy with the old school word of mouth, referrals, et cetera. Like we've met many people in our industry who actually don't really have websites and in this day and age age, it's vital to have a good website. So everyone's different. That's why I think it's important to have your own say and word it as you're speaking, because your clients will know what you're like.

Zeke Guenthroth: 19:21

Another one that's sort of completely random and it's in its own segment. Like we don't actually have like a specific segment for it. But still with to do with your actual product or your service or whatever it is that you do or you offer, you want to actually test it yourself. Um, if you're in the circumstance where you're like, oh, I can't test it, like it's not a product, so to say, you know it's not a shampoo or whatever something consumable or imperishable or whatever an actual service, how do you test it? You can get someone you know and put them through it for free, like you're not paying for it. I just want to do it and actually see what the process is like, check that you know what's going on and you can give me feedback on it. So that's really important to do.

Zeke Guenthroth: 20:07

We were lucky enough that we had been doing it for a long amount of time. We knew the ins and outs of exactly what we were doing, so we didn't necessarily need to test it. It was like, okay, we know what works, we know what doesn't. Let's just change it a little bit and make it better. We hope you enjoyed the episode, as always. Always. You know exactly what to do. Hit that follow button, subscribe whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. Also share it to friends, families, co-workers, whoever you think may benefit from it. But unfortunately it's the end and we'll see you next week.