Gig Based Startup Eco System

I’ve been a solopreneur for the last 7 years of Cheeky Food – that’s every single day of running my business.

Do I have a team ? Yes
Do I have employees? No

One of the resounding messages I hear from a lot of successful founders is to build a strong team behind a business.

Today I want to share my personal and business reasons for running Cheeky without employees.

Lifestyle Choice

When I started 7 years ago, my reason was purely personal and lifestyle based – I ran Cheeky out of my kitchen table/spare room (still do) and worked largely around the schedule of my children. This often meant, working at school hours, working on term time and very often sneaking an early morning or late evening hour when all was quiet on the western front.

Of course I love the flexibility of running my business to weave more seamlessly into my family day schedule. But it was not a work schedule that would allow me to hire an employee in any responsible sense of word(k).

Running Solo

Running solo doesn’t mean you’re running alone –

Certainly not in the modern tech enabled business sense.

Right from the beginning like any bootstrapped business, I wore many hats in the day – sales, business development, logistics, production, admin. However some hats were always just too large, too specialised or too demanding for me to ever don – design, branding, NPD. In the latter scenario I heavily relied on the help of field experts or specialists right from the start of Cheeky.

As Cheeky grew and continues to grow, I find taking off more and more hats and passing them on to the services of specialists – technical, manufacturing, logistics are some of the recent examples.

These are specialists who are experts in their field, working under their own business and taking accountability for their own services.

Overall in my business, I see myself as the biggest generalist managing the services of many specialist. 

The more I think about this, the more Cheeky feels like a mini gig based eco system. One central brand, using the services or products of many other self registered businesses. A mini eco system where everything except the central body is interchangeable.

Specialists vs Employees

First of all I am not dissing employees – I know there is a time and place for bringing people directly under the business, so all my views below, simply pertain to my experience of running Cheeky as a solopreneur using the services of specialists as opposed to employees.

1) Accountability – This is a big one for me. When people work under their own name, they take better accountability for their work. If my designer does not deliver to the best of my brief, he/she runs a risk of losing my business.

2) Interchangeability – Easier to switch from one specialist to another by having short-term (gig based) contracts. This could be because of better value of work or money.

3)  Less admin - I am not a people's manager and I hate adminning. So fewer/no employees frees me from a task I do not enjoy anyway.

4) Frugal Model – This is the only model that I find that works well with my intention of running Cheeky food as a lean business. If I lose a customer, my gig based contracts ensure that both parties can come out of them easily, amicably and happily.
I strongly believe that in this post Covid/recession era this will be key to ensure longevity of businesses.

5) Flexibility – Gig based or even short term rolling contracts mean that my business is in a better chance to respond to the fast changing landscape of the current economic environment.

Example

As always my effort with this newsletter is to give actionable examples based on real life challenges that small busineeses face.

Gig based contract - Design work.
I use Arobase Creative for all branding and design work. Tom is a genius at what he does (designing) and understands my brand really well. However running a foodservice brand means there are not MANY calls to his work, but whenever I do - he is quick to pick up brief, has a understanding of the brand and is swift to deliver great results everytime.

I create the gig - he picks, executes and completes it - both parties happy.

Short Term Rolling contract – Technical team.
Recently Cheeky has grown beyond my own capacity to handle the technical side of the business. As such I have hired a really great technical team who work on a rolling contract within the business.
Clear contract and KPIs are set to ensure clarity of work. And both parties have a one month notice period of termination.
Once again they continue to deliver at best standard because they want my business. And Cheeky continues to provide them as a regular paying customer.

There are many scenarios in which the gig based eco system might not work as described above.
For example, a company managing it’s own production would need employees. A retail brand managing many national accounts would need a sales team.

So while many businesses cannot operate as a solopreneur, they can still find functions that can be and must be outsourced to specialists as they grow.

My own method is to always outsource first what I enjoy the least.

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Next Week -

I breakdown one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite business gurus - Naval Ravikanth

“Become the best in the world at what you do, keep redefining what you do until this is true”

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Motivation and Discipline