Episode 7: Achieving Success Now W/ Will Fortanbary

April 19, 2023

My guest on today’s podcast is Will Fortanbary. Will is the owner of Fort Studios, a motion graphics design firm located in Atlanta Georgia creating graphic design projects for folks like the NFL, Chick Fil A, Dude Perfect, and other renowned artists and companies. What’s unique about Will is how early on in his career, when working as an employee, he learned that he could make multiples more income on the same types of projects if he just cut out the middle men and worked as a freelance agent and how that prompted him to build his own reputation in the industry, separate from the companies he worked for. In this episode we talk about how he worked nights and weekends on projects outside of his 9-5 motion graphics job to build his business. Will shares about the concern his wife, Joy expressed at the idea of him going full time and the fear of that becoming an all consuming thing in Will’s life, but how he was actually able to get more done in less than 8 hours a day by going full time on his own. And how it eliminated the need to work nights and weekends while still taking on bigger and more projects. We also talk about Will’s desire to stay a solopreneur, to maintain a lean business, and how that affords him the ability to choose the projects he works on and also foster the life he wants inside and outside of work. And be sure to listen to the end as Will expresses how he defines success and why he has already achieved success in his life. So, with that introduction I hope you enjoy today’s episode of the Self employment success podcast with Will Fortanbary.

TRANSCRIPT

will_fortanbary (00:04.4)

hey thanks for having me man i appreciate you reaching out and asking me to jump on this would be fun

leland_gross_cfp (00:06.632)

yeah i'm excited about it this is a special episode for me to all the listeners because will is actually one of my longest i mean he is my longest friendship in life we've been friends since middle school we've stood in each other yeah yeah which is kind of crazy wow it is twenty years m and so i mean we've just walked through a lot of life together we've we stood in each other's weddings and this is just a dear dear friendship of mine so i'm excited to have him on here and also

will_fortanbary (00:21.96)

was that twenty years now

will_fortanbary (00:26.62)

yeah yeah

leland_gross_cfp (00:36.412)

and my own business will personally was a catalyst for me feeling like all right i can do this because he started a business and is you know yeah if that if that idiot can do it clearly anybody can yeah and that's that's not true but i just felt like okay he took a risk and was doing it and i'm seeing all the benefits of it there was kind of like an up close and personal view of you know the ups and downs and benefits and sick

will_fortanbary (00:48.2)

like if dibozo can do it i can definitely do it yeah yeah it's super easy if we can do it

leland_gross_cfp (01:06.352)

yes that can be achieved by owning your own business by having you kind of on the front lines doing it before me so i'm excited for this conversation and you know all that you have to share because i think you have a lot to share about this topic and have achieved a lot of success and worked really hard for it and are really good way you do so tell us a little bit about you tell us a little bit about your business as it stands today and we'll go from there

will_fortanbary (01:30.8)

thank you

will_fortanbary (01:34.7)

mhm

okay so yeah my name is will i'm married to a wonderful person to enjoy and we have a almost thirteen months old named eastern um so that's about me about my business i do motion graphic motion design which is essentially animation logo animation video animation things like that it's sort of like a very nice section of video editing like you can think of video editing world and i'm kind of like very specialized

version of that specifically focused on animation and events a lot of the clients i work with i do a lot of like corporate events l d wall content so i've got in to work with like home depot chick dude perfect allen jackson lauren day go five the n f l all these different kind of clients doing graphics moving graphics l d wall designs stadium graphic design all those different things so that's

a little bit about my business and kind of what i do

leland_gross_cfp (02:38.892)

and just so there's clarity when you talk about like l d walls give us an example of what that would be because i had to ask you that before i figured it out like what is an l d wall like if you're doing that

will_fortanbary (02:49.46)

yeah

yes so sorry if i yeah yeah if i say anything to inside or just be like he that makes sense so do all basically if you go to a concert or something and the musician or performers on stage it's all the stuff that's happening behind them right they usually have these big screens so a lot of times i'm in charge of creating content for those screens so whether it's a c e o or a performer or talent on stage i work closely with them or their leader

team or their management to create complimentary graphic to whatever is happening on stage so for example i just wrapped up chickplized corporate event called next i was out in san diego and they had this huge l d wallis about two hundred feet long and the co andrew cathy was standing there and he was talking about culture and culture going from like dead to a live culture and like if you drift it will kind of drift towards a dead culture and if you're intentional about what you do and your restaurant culture to go towards alive culture so what we

it as a team is we created a photo realistic forest that overtook the entire screen behind them and it started off super dead so like dead trees dead branches fog you know almost a little like spooky or whatever just kind of like dead and dying and then as he was talking about like hey that's that's the drifting right but then when he started changing his messaging to this is going to be more of like the the live culture you want we basically ramped in leaves growing on the tree

leland_gross_cfp (03:54.312)

leland_gross_cfp (04:01.992)

yeah

will_fortanbary (04:23.68)

is the sunlight coming up like kind of like the fog lifting and basically did a full on transition behind him that matched his cock so a lot of stuff like that you know sometimes it's as simple as just like manipulating music videos for allen jackson that goes behind him while he's playing or whatever

leland_gross_cfp (04:23.872)

leland_gross_cfp (04:39.932)

yeah okay that makes more sense so the thing i'm thinking about is like at an n f l game those banners that kind of go across like between the two levels or like the big screen up top saying like yeah but more i mean even just but like more intricate in the fact that you're your making detailed imagery of like trees coming back to like from like halloween spooky to like is that kind of

will_fortanbary (04:53.22)

yeah yeah yeah

kind kind of stuff like that

will_fortanbary (05:10.88)

or it could be as simple as like play the power ball you know like play the power ball and like little ribbon boards around the stadium and it's just where it play the power ball right like it's as simple as that all the way to sometimes i just like re exported j peg as a pang for people like it's like kind of runs the whole gammit right so like can you make this into a p d f for me right like i'll do a little bit of everything from the very if it involves computer graphic you know i have the ability to kind of

leland_gross_cfp (05:11.812)

uh uh

leland_gross_cfp (05:24.012)

leland_gross_cfp (05:30.832)

m that's funny

will_fortanbary (05:40.58)

should or do something with it in a whatever the client wants kind of way

leland_gross_cfp (05:42.152)

awesome so how did you get into this field tell us he like how did you find yourself in the motion graphic field and then how did you get started owning your own business doing that and what kind of has been the journey

will_fortanbary (05:58.88)

yeah yeah well as you know when we were in high school we used to make all these stupid little videos and there were times when i was a man these super cool to have this shot of leland i would love to make his head blow up or i would love to pretend he's holding a gun that's actually shooting right even though we had no guns and it was like made of paper or plastic or water gun or something so i started get involved in high school in the after effects which is a motion design program and i went to college

leland_gross_cfp (06:11.252)

sure

will_fortanbary (06:29.undefined)

and i was like okay i could do more of a traditional major at south carolina finance engineering business whatever i was like or i can go into art and basically color my way through college and that's what i chose to do and it was super easy i loved i loved my major i loved my university that's where i met my wife so of my best friends but my major was media arts so south carolina didn't have a specific computer graphic major so focused a lot on film edit

leland_gross_cfp (06:38.912)

uh uh

will_fortanbary (06:58.68)

a video editing camera operating those kind of things i was interested in that but i always got lit up about you know after we shoot something in college taking it into the edit software and doing effects on visual effects or doing graphic or title design or lower thirds or anything like that that i just really gravitated towards that stuff and i realized oh there's this whole like nice little field inside of video editing called motion design that focuses just on that so i kind of just went all in on

started working on that uh i still can't draw i have an art major i can't draw at all like i'm terrible with a pencil i have no idea what i'm doing and terrible handwriting so don't ask me to draw anything let the computer do that for me but graduate in south carolina moved back to atlanta where i'm from and got a job working at crawford media and specialized on working on stuff like the walking at vampire diaries doing dailies for those shows like really like low

grant work right for those shows because i was just a new artist and i remember looking around at all the people all the other artists i was with in this area they called like the hub which was like where they put all of us weird os and so i remember looking all these guys have enlkete're so good like there's so talented cad art institute been doing it for ten years so i asked andrew this guy worked with was like hey like how do i get better how do i get better at this like motion graphic thing this art thing

leland_gross_cfp (08:17.012)

yeah

will_fortanbary (08:28.66)

he's like well he said something that i forget he's like everybody as got good work inside of them you just have to get through a lot of really really crappy wor to get to the good work right and that's different based on talent skill level whatever he goes and a lot of people quit right because they don't want to log through so much of that crappy work to get to the good stuff right and i'm not saying what i do now is good i still have a long long ways to go but i was like okay how can i short cut that how do i do that and he's like you can't short cut it you just got to do a bunch of

leland_gross_cfp (08:35.412)

will_fortanbary (08:58.74)

and i was like that sounds like a shortcut to me so i did something called dailies where i did one art project a day for seven hundred and twenty days straight i did that for two years i did it on my wedding day i did each day on my honeymoon i did it every day and art program or something that i was unfamiliar with or was learning a lot of three d programs after effects illustrator two d programs so i learned a lot about discipline and doing that for two years

leland_gross_cfp (09:07.712)

leland_gross_cfp (09:24.472)

will_fortanbary (09:28.72)

and just doing something consistent for two years straight whether i wanted to do it or not like i just did it like just thinking about it and just making what i called it daily every day so what that did is it got all my a lot of my bad work out of the way early so i was able to do i feel like what probably would have taken me eight to ten years i was able to condense that into about two years of work so which which was great get all that out of the way that helped me get a job at north

leland_gross_cfp (09:51.072)

will_fortanbary (09:58.64)

point which is a big big church in the atlanta area as the lead motion designer on their media team making videos for andy stanley the pastor their conferences that's kind of where i started getting into conference event where l d wall work um i worked at north point as a lead motion designer from twenty fifteen fourteen until the very end of twenty eighteen and then january one twenty nineteen i left north point to go free lance and basically still worked with north point still worked with crawford

with all these people but in my own capacity from my office at my house and that's where i'm at right now just been doing that for four years now

leland_gross_cfp (10:32.072)

leland_gross_cfp (10:36.332)

gosh i love the story of the dailies and just the i mean like the value that comes from something like that just being so disciplined i would love to know joys take on you making videographics on your honeymoon every single day just the picture of that cracks me up a little bit

will_fortanbary (10:59.08)

well i just i would like i brought my laptop and i just wake up before she did and i mean like those were not good dailies it was like light just throw cube on there like throw a little wood texture on it posted up the internet call it done in twenty five minutes right like not thinking too much about it

leland_gross_cfp (11:02.112)

leland_gross_cfp (11:12.772)

but i mean like those are the stories that really like drive success when someone's like yeah i i got super hyper disciplined to really work on my craft to really learn a lot um but you can do motion graphic as an employee you did it for you know six years five years between crawford and north point and so what prompted you to do the entrepreneurial route where like i mean north point was probably

will_fortanbary (11:36.88)

yeah yeah

leland_gross_cfp (11:42.712)

and your salary crawford was paying your salary they had benefits what prompted you to say no i'm going to go out and do this independently

will_fortanbary (11:50.2)

m hm

will_fortanbary (11:55.74)

it's kind of a slow burn that's a really good question because you know i can't speak to other fields of your field right there's your feels a lot more regulated than my field because it's finance i just like to art right so yeah like like i have zero regulations i kind of do whatever i want as long as i'm not embezzling money from a company or something like charge whatever i want capitalism free market itself for me when i was working at crawford and north point i was still

leland_gross_cfp (12:05.072)

significantly

leland_gross_cfp (12:14.952)

sure

will_fortanbary (12:25.74)

in of free lancing a little bit on the side but i was doing at nights and weekends right and so i would i remember joy had a big fear about me going free lance because when i was working at north point you know i worked from nine until four or five p m come home walk the dog and then work again on my free lance gigs my side hustle is what we called it from like seven to like eleven p m most nights and so she was like you're working like eight a m to eleven p

leland_gross_cfp (12:46.172)

wow

will_fortanbary (12:56.04)

almost every day when you go free lance is that just going to completely ramp up right and i did the opposite because i didn't have to spend eight hours of my day in meetings pointless meetings where people were just telling me what they think about things that didn't mean weren't important to me you know i could get like those four hours i was doing which was like not an efficient four hours because it was from seven p m to eleven p m after i had already worked full day and was burnt out like i could put that earlier in the day extend those more

leland_gross_cfp (13:11.172)

will_fortanbary (13:25.78)

i was in six or seven hours and get be like triple as productive as i was before so that was a big thing for me was just kind of like starting slow nights and weekends figuring it out and then when i felt like i had a good enough base of clients to jump into the deep into the pool and just like go on full on

leland_gross_cfp (13:28.672)

leland_gross_cfp (13:45.432)

that's awesome okay so there's a couple of things there that i want to highlight one is you were doing a side hustle like you were working as an employee but then still taking on gigs ten ninety nine as an independent contractor and kind of built your own name while you are working at crawford or north point and then from there kind of made that flip to say well now i'm still going to work with crawford and north point but it's all going to be through this independent contractor self employed bucket on my own

will_fortanbary (14:01.2)

exactly

leland_gross_cfp (14:15.612)

um and i love the idea of like i was working around the clock the fear was when i go full time and it's my gig that's just going to be even more intense but actually yeah i'm able to i'm actually able to do it in less amount of time because the time so much more efficient i think of um friends we have around town and and i'm not about to jump into the politics of home school and public school but or like yeah home school versus

will_fortanbary (14:19.56)

yeah

will_fortanbary (14:31.undefined)

all encompassing

leland_gross_cfp (14:45.412)

schooling but i know people who do home to school their kids and they're like it's just amazing how much you can get done in half the time because you're not going through like line up to go out here and we're going to wait till everyone's quiet like there's just some things when you're like okay i'm self employed it's just me i can do this that you can get things done in twice the time as opposed to having to go to like you said team meetings random meetings and how much of it of a day when someone goes to an office nine to five there's all

will_fortanbary (15:13.56)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (15:15.392)

studies that show like they're not actually working nine to five you know like the productivity is really only a few our window um so there is something to be said about hey i can actually like go faster and do more and a shorter amount of time when i get rid of kind of when i cut the fat of all these other things that i'm doing um so how did you get your name out there for these independent gigs i mean we

will_fortanbary (15:23.28)

no and you have to commute all this stuff yeah yeah it's a lot

will_fortanbary (15:37.98)

totally

will_fortanbary (15:42.02)

hundred percent

leland_gross_cfp (15:45.492)

it i built a relationship through a gig at crawford and then they hired me independently was where crawford and north point upset about that in my industry if you it's just that's just a foreign concept because you legally can't be duly registered i can't be like a financial advisor for one firm and then doing it on the side you have to be registered under either your own business or someone else's business and that's it

will_fortanbary (15:49.16)

yeah

will_fortanbary (16:03.52)

yeah

will_fortanbary (16:10.04)

yeah

yeah so it started for me when i started working at crawford i remember i was working on a job for home depot and the producer so it's like home depot at agency crawford and then i'm the artist working at crawford so i'm like four people removed right so any time there's a change from the client home depot there like i'm basically just getting an email thread of forwards and i have to kind of hunt through and find the change well you know how sometimes people forget to delete the rest of the forward message underneath it

leland_gross_cfp (16:36.172)

will_fortanbary (16:42.88)

right i got a forward from the producer asking about a change but i saw the rest of the email threat underneath it and i saw how much they were paying that home dep was paying bvido and b video was paying crawford and so i saw that this video was forty thousand dollar video that's how much i was making in a year at crawford and i like i saw there was forty grant that they were paying bvdo b video was basically paying crawford like fifteen thousand dollars to do this video and i was getting paid as

like fifteen dollars an hour to make it and it was not like a big time video it was like a very like low key corporate training thing and so at that point i realized i was like wow if i can work direct to client like cut out this person cut out this agency cut out all these people i could charge some depot twenty grant to do this video they're getting a fifty percent discount the same persons doing the work and i'm making a hundred more right than i was making before so what that did is that kind of like

leland_gross_cfp (17:34.992)

yeah

will_fortanbary (17:43.38)

shifted my mind set very early in my career of how i wanted to slowly start positioning myself for a life of free lance because i knew i wanted to be my own boss i knew i wanted to do those things i just knew i wasn't quite ready yet so i went to my boss at crawford and said hey i never signed a non compete here that i wouldn't work for other places i'm going to start taking on clients i was very up front with this like in my you know out of work hours i was like what kind of

structure you have around that and they're basically like as long as you're not working for direct competitors or you're not working for the clients we have on our books right now you're free to do whatever you want and i was like great so i signed that then when i worked at north point i kind of took it a step further and was like hey i i'm not signing a non compete at all and and they're church so it was like a little more chill but they were like okay so i basically in my initial signed up with north point i told them i was like hey i'm

ing to be freelancing nights and weekends and if that's going to be a problem for you it like i'm not working here essentially and they were like no that's not a problem for us and in fact what i loved about north point is in a lot of ways they encouraged the people to go out and do stuff nights and weekends as long as it wasn't affecting your nine to five job or your sunday responsibilities they're like yeah go work for chick full go work for the good to whatever because that makes you a better artist and we get a better artist for the same

to pay because you're learning and cutting your teeth on all these other jobs right and you're learning new techniques and new systems and being around different people just the diversity of that is really important so for me a lot of it was that is like how i was positioning myself and then the other aspect of it is a kind of call myself a professional coat tail writer right like one person hires me at an like agency a producer agency hires me i do a good job for them i do good work

that relationship lasts for a year couple of years whatever and then producer gets hired by agency so they go over there right but now agency a still is hiring me because i've made good relationships not just what that one producer but all the people in that studio but now you know producer a working for agency b still is like oh we trust will so then now i have two studios i'm working for right and it kind of just metriculates out like that so as my clients grow and move up in their careers you know as long as i continue to ha

leland_gross_cfp (19:52.872)

will_fortanbary (20:12.98)

like solid relationship with them built on trust communication you know speed all the things that are important in my industry i kind of just keep growing in that way as well

leland_gross_cfp (20:20.372)

gosh that's so that's that makes so much sense and also would never work like forty years ago when like people stay people the other dog like they like moved up within a company but now you're you're literally actually profiting off the fact that people get paid more to change companies and to kind of say you know i'm going to go take a job but this firm and then this firm and you're kind of just riding along with them but then just adding not only new clients black new firms

will_fortanbary (20:32.78)

no because people stay that yeh stay at the same job yeah

leland_gross_cfp (20:50.352)

your bucket of pa that's awesome that also just makes so much

will_fortanbary (20:56.04)

yeah

it's been fun because i just love working with cool interesting people and like the more i've been doing this i've only been on free lance for four years now right like yeah four years the more interesting people i get to meet that i would never have met otherwise and it's usually a connection of a connection of a connection or it's like hey you did an event with this guy who was the audio guy and you guys like got dinner together while you were at on tour for this event and then like his wife runs this company and so now he really liked you and it's like oh i know will can do

this cool stuff telling this question that his wife irons you and like ull get to meet all these fun people that like you otherwise would have no way of meeting and that's what i love about my job

leland_gross_cfp (21:34.912)

yeah that gosh that's so awesome um okay so you have worked up the ranks where you're now doing you know gigs for the likes of chick flat at their leadership conferences you know major musicians at their concerts n f l but it's just you you are a soloprenor you do it's not like someone can walk into fort studios building and had like that's my word for it is like you're a solo entrepreneur

will_fortanbary (22:03.04)

is that what it's called a solo prenour

leland_gross_cfp (22:05.912)

i didn't come up with it someone else did but it was catchy and so i'm just going with it um but it's not like i can walk into your office and be greeted by your whole team and you've got a whole army of people kind of like crawford did crawford gets brought in and they've got a team of people doing it that they're paying but i know you and i also know you don't want to have the big team like you're not trying to bring on an assistant and employees so speak to that a little bit about why you you're like i'm not trying

will_fortanbary (22:08.04)

i love it

the words together

leland_gross_cfp (22:34.672)

build a whole big firm into how you scale and handle the quantity of the work there

will_fortanbary (22:46.24)

yeah so there kind of two sides of the same coin the reason i don't want to bring on a whole big team and hire employers and do all this stuff is it was a real big ttemption for me and i talked to you about this like early on in my freelance career was like i grow do i say this kind of solopreneur kind of guy like how do i do this and what i realized i was like you know what like i'm making plenty of money doing just my thing right now right and i saw from

the failures of some other companies in atlanta a lot of the reason these motion design companies that places fail is is they get too big too quick right and they over staff and there's way too much overhead it's like my overhead is like and the sub subscription to adobe like which is fifty dollars a month and like why fie like that's literally my overhead i can i can probably my entire overhead for the year is probably less than tam grant so to be able to stay really lean and mean

leland_gross_cfp (23:31.412)

will_fortanbary (23:46.02)

allows me to pivot and work on things a lot more quickly which is one of the reasons my clients hire me so often as they know i can get stuff done really really fast the other part of that is if i am doing bigger jobs or bigger things i can sub contract out ten ninety nine employees whoever i want right and i have relationships with other motion designers graphic designers video editors d p film guys like v effects guys all these different types people color artists and

leland_gross_cfp (23:53.172)

will_fortanbary (24:16.08)

and just like be like hey come on and join me in this project how much would you charge me for this i built that into my estimate send it to the client then i'm just paying them out of the big lumps i'm getting from the client i'm paying out these ten ninety nine employed so if i need to flex up for a big job i can just bring in a few artists like i did that for a two or a few years ago i brought in a graphic designer and another motion designer kind o help me out and then i focused on just creative directing like getting the vision right working with the client and i pay

them ten ninety nine and i'm not responsible for them as employes and not responsible for their families there their own responsibility for that and i can kind of you know reflex to grow as big or as small as i need which is not on a per project basis which is cool

leland_gross_cfp (25:02.132)

yeah and i mean again that makes sense but the interesting thing to me is so you're at crawford you see this email where like company a is being paid forty five grand they're hiring crawford for fifteen grand of that and then crwford's paying you and you were like i just could cut out these middle men and so you did and now you're the company getting paid forty five grand and saying all right well also contract the quote quote crawford if it could be a company could be an independent person

will_fortanbary (25:19.undefined)

m yeah

will_fortanbary (25:28.14)

leland_gross_cfp (25:32.032)

to do some of that work is that kind of what you're saying is like is supposed to having employes i'm just going to sub contract out pieces of the project that i need done in a timely fashion in order to be able to have the labor to scale and more projects okay

will_fortanbary (25:36.68)

yeah

will_fortanbary (25:46.4)

yeah that's exactly right

yeah i would say thou i mean so i i only i only do about like i probably only hire about thirty to forty thousand dollars of work a year and sub contractors so not a ton i try to do it all myself the only time i'll typically hire a sub contractor is if i am super super booked and just need help or if they have a skill set that i don't have like they're really good at this one

leland_gross_cfp (26:02.972)

will_fortanbary (26:19.68)

like i said i can't draw right so if someone hires me to do a project that requires a lot of illustration i'm like okay let me bring in my friend charmian she's an unbelievable illustrator so and i've worked with her a bunch so it's like let's you know i can pitch the vision to her she just gets it she draws some stuff gives it to me i can animate it and i can kind of stay in my lane

leland_gross_cfp (26:20.672)

leland_gross_cfp (26:40.092)

that's awesome in my industry we it's very different a different industry but there is the piece of like are you a solo practitioner where you just come and the only adviser on the team is leland and leland is the adman and the planner and the account opener and trader and all that and then there's the enterprise on the opposite side which would be like the you know edward jones of the world that you know there's thousands of advisors you're not going to get much detailed like individual stuff they kind of have

will_fortanbary (27:07.96)

leland_gross_cfp (27:11.032)

a lot of notnecsarilly one size fits all but it's just you know huge and they've scaled a ton because they have all the advisors able to do that and so there's the law of large numbers and then there's the middle ground of like the boutique firm where it's like there's you know two or three advisors a small team and there've been more and more studies coming out about like what which one actually ends up paying the advisor the owner the most and which one actually creates the best quality of life and it's amazing how the solo

will_fortanbary (27:25.54)

leland_gross_cfp (27:40.292)

just blows that out of the water and so a lot of the like business consultants of my industry have been saying you know if you want to do if you grow your team if you're going to scale and you're going to add people you have to make sure that's exactly how you want to do it like that's you have to be passionate about having a team or creating this big enterprise because you will probably actually take home as the owner a little bit less money and have more responsibility along the way because of what you're saying to your point of like i'm able to keep my you know overhead

will_fortanbary (27:46.9)

really

will_fortanbary (28:09.1)

mhm

leland_gross_cfp (28:10.012)

super low i'm able to be very flexible about how i operate um and so even though i only have so much capacity for so many clients i'm taking home a lot more of each clients fee then if i have a team where i've got to pay pay role and i've got you know all these extra compliant things i need to pay for in all all these things so that it's just very interesting to me that that i feel like that is not how it's always been in the entreprenorial world right i feel like

will_fortanbary (28:31.3)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (28:39.952)

we've kind of for years and decades and decades it was like build a corporation build get employes scale get really big and now we're kind of seeing this weird switched where in the virtual world you can be a sole open where you can subcontract you can keep your overhead really low run lean and still get enough business to pay yourself and create the quality of life you want becase you're like i'm not managing people more people more problems in many ways um you go ahead

will_fortanbary (28:48.74)

will_fortanbary (29:07.68)

and well yeah what i love about that is it allows me to to yeah it just it allows me to be really selective and what projects and clients i take on right like if if i had a full team i would feel like i had to say yes to a lot more stuff so we can stay booked right but if it's just me i know like i'm looking over here at my board like i'm pretty full for the rest of february march and april right and that's because i can be really selective about the clients and projects i

leland_gross_cfp (29:23.272)

will_fortanbary (29:37.68)

with so i work with people who i already have a good relationship with i know exactly how the project is going to go or maybe i don't know this client there new client but they're coming at me with a huge budget that i would love to kind of like play with or figure out and start trying to see if we can establish a really solid relationship you know a new solid relationship so it allows me to be really selective so when some kid on platter ms me and says can you design my youtube banner for thirty dollars i can say now

leland_gross_cfp (29:57.572)

leland_gross_cfp (30:05.012)

yeah thank you

will_fortanbary (30:08.22)

because i don't need to do that so yeah it just allows a lows like exactly what you said kind of the flexibility

leland_gross_cfp (30:13.552)

which and and i feel like that is the key to preventing burn out to right where like if you are taking on every project for every single person in each project is different in some are just tedious and annoying and just taking up unnecessary time you're just going to get in to burn out whereas if you're in a place where you're like i can be selective i can't choose the type of project or type of person i want to work with it allows you to actually provide more value to that person and then your business is providing you more value because you're actually enjoying

out of bed every day and go in to work and not just spinning your wheels where i think a lot of self employed entrepreneurs especially in the early days are just trying to you know get food on the table and so they're taking on anything and if they don't find systems out of that they're just going to spend theirwhels and burn themselves out really quickly and be like why is this business not getting me where i want to go but you've done a really good job of like i think you go ahead

will_fortanbary (31:11.1)

that's something that's

will_fortanbary (31:15.64)

oh sorry about that i must be a little delay like that's something that you mentioned i kind of want to talk about a little bit that goes kind of like towards community some is like i see so many free lancers in my industry get very like i have to say yes to everything i have to say yes to everything and when you feel like you have to say yes to everything it's because you're operating from like almost like a scarcity mind set like there'll never be enough there'll never be enough for me so i just have to say yes to anything that comes across my desk and something that's been great for joining

leland_gross_cfp (31:36.672)

will_fortanbary (31:45.7)

as i kind of did this and she started her own thing and therapy too it's like like because we ave such a solid community around us i don't have the fear like you and lindy are our community like a friend's family are our community like i don't have the fear that like i don't have to say yes to everything and we won't eat because i know my community will make sure i eat like no jobs come in right so like having that community around us right in that biblical community that group of

leland_gross_cfp (32:04.112)

will_fortanbary (32:15.36)

ends that all like like kind of operate in the same mind set and we're all like hey we're just going to share what we have and be together and if you need something like i'm here for you like let me fly down and see you or let me fly up or hey like you haven't made any money and like eight weeks just because the world something crazy happened with the economy or something like let me send you like a two hundred dollar door dash like stuff like that right like a lot of people don't have that and because i do have that it gives me so much more peace

leland_gross_cfp (32:23.112)

leland_gross_cfp (32:39.472)

will_fortanbary (32:45.5)

about saying no right which then makes me a better artist than a better dad and a better family member because i'm not burnt out all the time and i totally attribute that to the safety net i feel like i have because of my friends and family

leland_gross_cfp (32:56.832)

well i mean that yeah that is so powerful and i could not agree more i feel so humbled and like there's such a beauty to that and i like you said not everyone has that it is such a a unique and powerful thing i mean for linda and i in the last year we had a son who we love but had a lot of medical complexities and i mean i feel like we that was within six months of quitting my very stable job and starting a business and just having that safety net of people who like

o us and care for us and show up for us i mean was so honouring and i mean literally kept us afloat it made me feel like i can be present with my family and not be so stressed about work because we have this we're just you so fortunate to have that and i know you do too and so that's i mean yeah just that what you just said really hit a heart string for me because we were the benefactors of that in a very changeable way over the last twelve months

um so what surprised what surprised you most about your journey through self employment because you you know studied this in college graduated got a job as an employee kind of saw hey i'm getting paid fifteen dollars an hour i can do this you know i can cut out these middle men so did that but did it on the side kind of built your side hustle and then launched and have kind of soared from there what has surprised you most about that journey

will_fortanbary (33:57.44)

yeah

will_fortanbary (34:17.06)

will_fortanbary (34:27.32)

it's a great question i think what surprised me most is i mean maybe this is counter intuitive to what i just said but there's just this fear when you go free lance who like are people kind of call me like are people going to mail me do people want me to work on their projects and it's a little bit of impostor syndrum mixed with a little bit of just uncertainty that i've never done this before full time and so the thing that surprised me the most is like that people actually email me

leland_gross_cfp (34:37.372)

leland_gross_cfp (34:57.172)

will_fortanbary (34:57.36)

and like want me to work on stuff right like i still get shocked that people just like email meat and i think another thing that surprised me that kind of goes hand in hand with that is i thought i'd have to be doing a lot more like cold emailing door knocking like cold calling people like hi i'm well i'm gonna emotional designer can i like help you on your spot for like your new a b c show and like that is not really had to been the case i've reached out to studio as an artist in atlanta that i think you're super talented just to let him know hey

you're super down fit i'd love to like grab a beer with you and talk about this stuff right or like how how did you do that like i have no idea how you made that can i like buy you dinner and you tell me how you made that right like i thought i'd be having to do a lot of cold emailing cold calling and that really hasn't been the case i've been super fortunate and lucky that people for some reason even during covid and crazy economic up and downs and stuff like you still email me

leland_gross_cfp (35:30.472)

leland_gross_cfp (35:57.272)

will_fortanbary (35:57.42)

it's kind of amazing don't know why they do it but i'm glad they do

leland_gross_cfp (35:59.912)

i love the like you know i feel so confident in my community and also i don't think it's a but i don't think it's contradictory i think it's an and like there's so much peace in knowing that i've got a safety out of community around me and are we going to end up homeless under the bridge if i do this on my own because no one will call me which is like the funny thing that every entrepreneur has the fear of when they first launch is like you know well will this work i mean that the like total

will_fortanbary (36:21.06)

yes yeah

leland_gross_cfp (36:29.792)

head trash that we tell ourselves you know like i'm an impostor they'll find me out no one will call you know if i raise my fees no one will hire me all all the things that we tell ourselves that just limit limit ourselves is totally there it's head trash but i love that that's what surprise you the most is like this actually works and i want other entrepreneurs to hear that is like you can do this people will call there's a lot of people in the world who need a lot of services you

will_fortanbary (36:44.04)

leland_gross_cfp (36:59.932)

make it happen if you are good at way you do and you're faithful in it what was what was the go ahead

will_fortanbary (37:08.28)

something

yes something one of my buddies stephen told me when i was in college he and his kind of stuck with me and it helps give me a little bit of like clarity in thinking about that is like if you know one more thing in a subject than somebody else to that person you're the expert so like to me you're the expert in finance because you know not just one more thing about finance i mean you know a billion more things in finance to me right like but to you i may be the expert in motion design because

leland_gross_cfp (37:24.972)

will_fortanbary (37:40.44)

ut even like if i was talking to another emotion designer that was maybe a year or two behind me in their career of their journey they might view me as an expert or a client that does a lot of video editing but doesn't do a lot of motion design if you know just one more thing in a subject than somebody else you're the expert to that person and like re framing your brain to think like okay i'm the expert how would i do this i would do it this way and you just tell them that and they're like oh that's great you're the expert you must know you're like i have no idea what i'm doing right

leland_gross_cfp (37:54.112)

leland_gross_cfp (38:06.732)

yeah you're like i'm still a child i don't know what i want to do when i grow up but i'm thirty two of the successful ness but i think to that point there's that there's that old saying you know in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king it's like you only have one eye you have no depth perception but you can see better than blind person is kind of this you know idea of like like you said always continuing to grow but realizing like you have something to give when you know more than the next person even if it's just a little

will_fortanbary (38:14.5)

yeah

yes

will_fortanbary (38:29.48)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (38:34.752)

more than the next person um what was the low point for you in the journey

will_fortanbary (38:39.7)

will_fortanbary (38:45.88)

yeah low point was was probably covid umthit's probably a lot of entrepreneers low point because like that was starting the very beginning of my second year free lance was like okay i got this like your one is in the books i'm ready to increase my income and i had like at that time i was really focusing in life of network right like doing shows doing tours with artists corporate events and i had a bunch of gigs like that maybe a hundred

leland_gross_cfp (39:06.312)

will_fortanbary (39:15.66)

i was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in gigs that i was going to do and then march hit and they you know they started just dropping because nobody was meeting in person and so there was definitely that that uncertainty and fear really crept in again right and had to i had to pivot my business a little bit to be like okay if i'm not doing live event work maybe i need to start focusing on a different market to start pitching myself to so i actually started doing medical animation

leland_gross_cfp (39:24.272)

leland_gross_cfp (39:45.572)

interesting

will_fortanbary (39:45.62)

a little bit during that time working on medical animation videosfarmasutical videos all these things and so being able to do that helped a ton with my buddy daniel who's very talented sound designer here in town he has some medical clients that i worked with so that was super helpful and then i think when people realized like oh the world is not just going to open back up after a month right like my clients like chicks and all that are like we're going to just really dive into virtual so all the events

leland_gross_cfp (40:07.212)

m hm

will_fortanbary (40:15.66)

you like fifteen events a year all went to zoom calls and they're like well we don't want just regular zoom calls so they wanted like lat we call virtual events right where it's not as good as an in person event but you're here and so i was making zoom background i was making you know pits which was like picture and picture stuff to like here's the c but there's like a nice background behind them and then here's the president in the o and they're all having this like zoom talk that we're recording live but it's like graphic is all over it a little more polished than like a regular

leland_gross_cfp (40:22.972)

will_fortanbary (40:45.7)

and call stuff it was weird man like to kind of flex and go into like virtual events and medical animation just things i wasn't super comfortable with but what was great as i built up those tools during that time so now i do virtual events can still do my life event work just pitched another medical nimation video the other day so i kind of forced me to work on different skill sets and tool sets

leland_gross_cfp (41:07.412)

yeah it kind of made you have to be resilient and find new avenues and now you have the old avenues back to so you're like great i could do the live event the virtual ante medical the you know also medical animation talk about a field there's just so many jobs in the world i like talk about a field that i would not even think about is that medical field have animation needs

will_fortanbary (41:18.48)

yeah yeah

yeah

will_fortanbary (41:32.98)

especially with covid especially with ovid like people needed to figure out like show smart people need to figure out how to show you know not smart people like me how covid works and so they use videos to show how god like you know the little virus looks like this and it goes around and attaches here in here n these little neutral fills and i seven teams whatever just like it is pretty cool

leland_gross_cfp (41:43.172)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (41:53.472)

yeah it's like i'm a consumer of that stuff and also like never think about the fact that someone actually had to create that so that's awesome um okay so this is a podcast about success but if you pulled anybody on the street they would and ask them what is success how do you define it you get a different answer for every single person so for you how would you define success and how will you know and when you've achieved it

will_fortanbary (42:03.88)

yeah

will_fortanbary (42:24.76)

yeah so for me defining success and i'm sure other people you've had on the show probably say something similar is like not necessarily a dollar amount although if i made like twenty million dollars doing this thing i'd be like yeah that's success i'm retiring and going to go like live in the keys or something but so maybe it is a little financial but for me really the fact that i i feel successful now honestly not to like to my own horn or anything but the fact that i can like i get to do a job

leland_gross_cfp (42:36.832)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (42:47.772)

will_fortanbary (42:54.54)

that i enjoy i get to work with people i enjoy i get to do it on my time line and time frame from my office in my basement with my dog my son like those are all winds and the fact that i can have such a flexible time so like if he's sick or something i can just like kind of punch some projects and work on them at night or do it the next day like the flexibility the ability to do something i love and enjoy the ability to do something creative like i'm kind of just like man i feel like

leland_gross_cfp (43:03.712)

leland_gross_cfp (43:24.112)

will_fortanbary (43:24.56)

i sort of living the dream right now which what i don't want to hire employ is like why rock the boat right like i kind of got it got it good right now i might as well keep this thing going as long as the good lord will let it go

leland_gross_cfp (43:35.852)

i'm struck by that and just in the fact that you were talking about earlier you enjoy having a scarcity mind like the differenebtween scarcity mindsetelike we'll never have enough when you take on everything versus in abundance mind set and i think in abundance mind set says i'm already successful like i've got a great job i've got a great family i've got a great life style and what more could i want whereas i just think that's so counter cultural of everyone a lot of entrepreneur s even saying like just a little bit more if i can just have

will_fortanbary (43:55.04)

yeah

leland_gross_cfp (44:04.812)

a little bit more if i can of whatever it is time you know money clients or you know freedom i just feel like we we all just are pining after the next best thing and so i love to hear you as a successful entrenor saying like i am successful and it's not because of the money it's you know because there's so much other beauty going on in my life from the quality of my work like the quality of my life is

already successful that's awesome oh man well

will_fortanbary (44:40.94)

well and the money is part of it my money is part of it too right because like because you make enough you can afford to do other things right so it's it's sort of like a yes and kind of thing right it's not it's not about the money but like the money share is helpful

leland_gross_cfp (44:47.212)

m hm

leland_gross_cfp (44:55.952)

totally and and when i work with my clients i tell people like when they're thinking about hiring me if if more money is your goal if that's the goal itself we're not going to be a good fit because you're goin to hire me becase yo're goin a hire any financial advisor because you'll never have enough if more money is the goal but if more time with my family if you know the ability to have more freedom or you know live in the area or the type of home i want if that's the goal then we can to do a lot with your money and you're going to need money to do it and let's like

figure that out like money is a tool more than the goal itself and i think that's wha you're speaking to is like yeah obviously money is important and a huge help when building the life you want but that alone what i'm hearing you say is like that alone is not the key to success it's a tool to achieve the success the success being like i can be with my son and my dog during the day i can be flexible i can work from anywhere i can you know make the money do it how i want kind of thing

will_fortanbary (45:46.98)

agreed

will_fortanbary (46:00.74)

exactly thanks for having me on man this is great

leland_gross_cfp (46:01.632)

oh man well you know i love you and it's so fun to get to hang out on a friday morning but thank you so much for giving us your time and being on the self employment success podcast

will_fortanbary (46:15.66)

let's go give my best to levi and lindy love you guys

leland_gross_cfp (46:16.132)

all right