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

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

We talk about:

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

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

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

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

LINKS

Mindi Zissman | Website | LinkedIn 

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

GUEST BIO

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

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:25

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

00:25 - 00:29

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

00:34 - 00:55

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

00:55 - 00:59

Mindi Zissman: Hi, Rochelle. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

00:59 - 01:21

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

01:21 - 01:24

Mindi Zissman: in. Okay, let's do it. I'm excited.

01:24 - 01:40

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

01:41 - 01:50

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

01:50 - 01:57

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

01:58 - 02:30

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

02:30 - 02:57

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

02:57 - 03:24

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

03:24 - 03:52

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

03:52 - 04:13

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

04:14 - 04:14

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

04:14 - 04:39

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

04:39 - 05:11

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

05:11 - 05:37

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

05:37 - 06:08

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

06:08 - 06:41

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

06:41 - 07:11

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

07:11 - 07:40

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

07:40 - 08:09

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

08:09 - 08:19

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

08:19 - 08:36

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

08:36 - 08:39

Mindi Zissman: oh that first year I made that money yeah yeah

08:40 - 08:46

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

08:46 - 09:18

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

09:18 - 09:35

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

09:35 - 09:36

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

09:36 - 10:08

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

10:08 - 10:17

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

10:17 - 10:49

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

10:49 - 11:06

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

11:07 - 11:34

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

11:34 - 12:09

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

12:09 - 12:38

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

12:38 - 13:06

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

13:06 - 13:32

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

13:32 - 13:46

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

13:46 - 14:02

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

14:03 - 14:29

Mindi Zissman: Yeah, exactly. And I actually teach at the high school level, which I think you know also, that's more of like a, I actually have an under...