 About four months ago, I quit my job in the food industry. And now I'm standing up here talking to a group of aspiring entrepreneurs, web developers, designers, marketers. And for anyone that's confused, no, I'm not lost. There isn't, in fact, a restaurant expo somewhere else in this massive building, and I'm at the wrong talk right now. That's not what's happening. The truth is, my presence here is actually very deliberate. It's taken about two years of planning and work to get to where I'm standing right now. And like anything worthwhile, some sacrifice along the way. So what I'd like to talk to you about today is not just how to start a business, but to start a business in a completely different industry and the steps that we took to achieve that. But before we die then, I'd like to actually introduce myself. So my name is Chris Hines. I'm the COO and co-owner of a digital agency that I own with my wife and business partner, Amber Hines. That's me. That's her. And unlike me, Amber's actually been helping businesses promote themselves online since 2010. And she grew from a superwoman freelancer working by herself to a small team over a number of years. And at this point in 2016, we have actually rebranded the former freelance business as Road Warrior Creative. So we now have a distributed team. Our graphic designer lives in Austin, Texas. Our general content writer, she lives out in Pittsburgh. And we have another content writer that specializes in social media. She lives in Colorado. Amber and I are based out of Fort Collins and we are in the process of hiring a developer based out of Colorado. And you might say that Road Warrior Creative is the poster child for a digital agency that has a distributed team and we're growing. In fact, in the last year, our geographic presence has doubled and currently we have clients in eight states coast to coast. And today I'd like to talk about not only the logistics but frankly the financial gymnastics that it took to get to this point over a period of just four years. But to get to that, we need to rewind about six years and talk about the backstory. So let me set the stage for you. We're on Nantucket Island and at the time I was the chef to cuisine for a seafood restaurant that served about a thousand meals a day. Imagine anything from fancy seafood entrees down to burgers and lobster rolls and I was loving every second of it. And my wife Amber, she was at home with our oldest daughter just to try to visualize play dates on the beach, trips to story time at the library in the winter, a pretty idyllic life and she was also a well-established lifestyle blogger on the island. And she happened to use this thing called WordPress for a blog, you might have heard of it. And I'm not sure if you know this, but the food industry is not known for its high salaries. And where we were living is actually one of the most expensive places in this hemisphere. So when one of Amber's blog followers came up to her and said, hey I really like the way your website looks and I want you to build one just like it and by the way I'll pay 300 bucks, let's just say it didn't take much convincing. And that is really how it started. And after that first website Amber built, new website projects would sort of materialize every month or two and we just kind of viewed it as a side project. I continued to focus on my career, cooking was and to some extent still is my passion and we had recently invested substantial time and money in a culinary degree and at the time there was a lot of positive momentum in my career. I was moving up and just to further illustrate the point that this was viewed as sort of a back burner item or not a priority. Amber wanted to use the money she was making freelancing to fund a retail maternity store on Nantucket Island. And that leads me to the first nugget of advice that I would offer those that are thinking about starting a viable business. Folks, when opportunity knocks, don't wait four years to answer the door. Don't. So for four years we kept websites on the back burner and I was hitting that pivotal point in my career at the time when I woke up one day and I realized I'm the one calling the shots. I'm the one in charge. My decisions matter and I love being that guy. But while I was living the dream being the executive chef of this multi-million dollar steakhouse and cooking meals for state senators and co-executives and both a sitting and a former vice president, there was another life I wasn't living and it's painful to say it but that little one on the right over there I missed the entire first year of her life. And finally I woke up and saw the reality of what these 80 and 90 hour work weeks were doing to me and to my family. And during that transitory period when I realized I needed an exit strategy those four years took us from Nantucket Island to Wyoming and eventually to Fort Collins, Colorado in 2014 where we finally recognized the potential that lay before us. The opportunity. We realized that Amber's freelance business wasn't just a means to some distant end. It was the means and the end. And for us WordPress really represented the ability to live anywhere and work everywhere. WordPress represented for us having a positive long-term impact on others by helping them promote themselves and their businesses online. And frankly it was time for me to find an exit strategy. And so I started gradually getting involved at nights after the kids were in bed. You know when traditional married couples might light a couple candles and do something romantic or Netflix and chill. Well we were both clicking away on our laptops and that was very much a nightly ritual. There was just one teeny tiny problem. I had no idea what I was doing. None. Not even a little bit. And I was going into an industry or coming from an industry I should say where I was used to being the expert. I was used to being the guy that people came to for the answers to their questions. And my thought process at this time was well I do have this business degree that I've used only about half of and I've been in charge of really really big restaurant budgets. And I know how to work really really really hard until it hurts. And I'm sure for that first year when I was helping you're seeing the air quotes at work Ember probably wanted to pull her hair out. In fact if I'm being honest he probably still wants to pull her hair out sometimes. But this led me through trial and error to one of the big pieces of advice I want to give you today. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are. And listen to them. Listen to what they're telling you. And in restaurants like I said I was used to being the expert. And as I went through this process I was doing things like what you're doing right now. I was attending conferences. I was going to online lectures. I was reading blogs and books and trying to better myself and become an integral part of this industry. And I'll admit it. The whole effectively run a digital agency learning curve looked a bit like this from the ground level. So I'd read a lot. And I'd write and rewrite and rewrite blog posts until they didn't suck. And Ember would give me the most mind-numbing soul-crushing work you can possibly imagine. But it was great. It really was. And this was our version of the status quo for about a year and a half. I was like this really lame version of Batman dining account director by day WordPress super user by night. That sounded better in my head. But what I want to talk about is the strategy we developed that enabled me to actually quit my day job. But first we need to talk about some barriers to entry. There are some things that you need to have in place in order to make this work. So first you need to know who you want to work with. And knowing who you want to work with just makes everything else exponentially easier. It really does. If you don't know who you want to work with the rest of it just becomes that much more of an uphill battle. Next, you need a brand. You need more than just a logo and a color scheme. And any of us who have even dabbled remotely in marketing understand this fact. You need to be able to readily call up answers to questions like who are you as a professional? Why do you do what you do? What values do you represent? You need to be able to answer those readily on the spot. Next, you need to be confident in your process. You should have an established set of procedures for everything that you do. And not only that, you should be able to tell people why your process is better or at the very least why your process gets great results. And next, you need to have a few good clients. And we're all going to have our definition of what a good client is. But to me, a good client is someone who values your time and enthusiastically pays for your services. They are generally pleased with the results you've given them so far and they're going to come back to you at least two to three times a year for additional work. To me, that's a good client. And while I would love to stand up here and tell you that if you just believe in yourself, all your dreams are going to come true, I'm sorry, but that's only going to get you about halfway there. It's important, but it's only going to get you halfway there. You need someone who believes in you at least as much as you believe in yourself. And I'm not talking about your drinking buddy who thought you should try jumping off the roof at that one-house party. That person's called an enabler, not a believer. There's a big difference. The person I'm talking about is the individual that wants you to realize your full potential to be the best possible version of yourself. So let's say you have all of this stuff lined up. Let's talk about how you can go into business for yourself and not end up having a complete stress meltdown within the first six months wanting to pull your hair out. Step one, you need to compare your average monthly revenue to your average monthly spend. So our metric was monthly revenue needs to cover 75% of monthly spend. And you're saying to yourself, well, wait a minute, Chris, why on earth are you going into business only making three-quarters of the money you need to make? You're an idiot. Well, let's go into step two. You need to build up the cash cushion. So for us, the cash cushion that made sense was having 50% of annual spend put into savings. Now think about that for a second. That enabled us to go for a two-year period making just three-quarters of the money we needed to make, or a one-year period making only half the money we needed to make. And as an entrepreneur that's starting a business, that is the position you want to be in. You are going to be more readily interested in making investments and making changes in your business if you are in a position of comfort, if you're not always checking or chasing that next client, that next paycheck. So critical. Next, hire an accountant. They can help you navigate a lot of really complicated, messy, downright, unpleasant stuff, and mistakes here can be among the most costly. Plan for growth, but also know how you're going to grow. Set a budget with conservative estimates for revenue growth. Now, in our case, we targeted, or we thought it was reasonable to have a 5% month-over-month revenue growth in year one with me joining the business full-time. Now, we actually, in reality, increased our business by 30% in the first 60 days. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying that to brag. What I'm saying is, as business owners, we are far better off exceeding conservative expectations than we would ever be falling short of optimistic expectations. Finally, generate as much recurring revenue as you can. If I had to name the single biggest contributor to my ability to leave my day job and join this business full-time, it would be recurring revenue. And I suppose if I were to give you a bottom line, before you take the lead, prepare for the worst, but expect the best. It's important for your own sanity to be able to call up answers to those big what-ifs, those big questions, questions like, what if my biggest client bails on me? Or what if I have to hire a really expensive, salaried position in order to stay competitive? Or if I need to, or I'm sorry, what if I need to start paying for ads to grow fast enough? Without proper planning, any number of things could completely derail a new business. And even with all the planning in the world, there aren't any guarantees. Which leads me to a quote by Truman Capote that I think you'll know why it really resonated with me. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. Entrepreneurs, we tend to thrive on failure. I know for me it pushes a primal button where I need to jump up and fix it, no matter what it is. And more often, I find it's the fear that we might fail that holds us back. We're all going to fail at something someday. And in fact, I'm going to be so bold as to suggest that I hope most of you in this room have already failed at a couple of things because that means you're out there. That means you're doing something. That means you're trying something. You're not just static. You're not just sitting there waiting for something to happen to you. You have to be the one that goes out and makes it happen. And we should all reflect on this question. Would we rather be the person that tried and failed or the person that never tried in the first place? I hope that you have something from our experience that you can take with you and build your own success story. So thank you for listening and thank you to WordCamp US for letting me do this talk.