Launching on July 1 With The 31 Day Courier MBA Series.
I've been announcing this in our newsletter lately and I'm excited to announce here now that the Deliver On Your Business Podcast will be launching on July 1. We've loaded an introductory episode already just to get it up and get listed with Stitcher, Spotify and Google (which you can now find us on all three). We should be up on iTunes shortly.
As we post episodes, we'll post them as blog posts with either a blog post that will be pretty darn close to a transcript, or extensive show notes so you can follow along. Below you'll find the notes from our intro episode.
Episode 0: Introduction to the Deliver On Your Business Podcast
Thank you for stopping by Episode ZERO of the Deliver on Your Business Podcast. I know, Episode 0 sounds kind of funny, right? This is our introduction, you could call it an ‘about us’ episode, to let you know what it’s all about.
So here it is in a nutshell: This podcast is for the independent contractor doing deliveries for companies like Grubhub, Doordash, Postmates, UberEats, Amazon Flex, Deliv, InstaCart, Shipt, etc. See, when you signed up with them, and if they insisted you do so as an independent contractor, that means you are working for them as a business, not as an employee.
Helping You Think Like a Business Owner
My goal is give you the tools and ideas to help you think and act like the business owner you are, so you can take control of your work AND your life. This podcast, and the EntreCourier.com website, exists to help you understand what that means to be an independent contractor and thus, to be a business owner. I want to help you THINK like the business owner, claim your rights AS a business owner, and to grow as a true Entrepreneur.
Here’s the funny thing: When they made you a business owner, they also made themselves your customer. Think about that one for a moment… That changes the power in the relationship now, doesn’t it? You are a business contracting with a business – which makes it a relationship of equals. That relationship gives you rights, and when you understand and claim those rights, YOU get to be the boss.
I believe that YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES to be a fantastic business owner. You can thrive as a business owner, that’s all you. I’m here to give you tools and ideas and information, but you are the one who will put it together. You are the one who will put it in action. When YOU claim the power of being the owner, when you commit to being running the best damned business you can, that’s when you will take off.
My Story
That’s kind of what happened to me. I had been the business manager of a local nonprofit, but I was passionate about some personal projects that just required greater flexibility than a 9 to 5 job (or too often, a 7 to 7 job) could give. You know, you see the ads for “UP TO” $25 per hour – and of course I knew that the “UP TO” was code for, yeah, that’s rarely going to happen… But even then, it would take care of my needs for the time being, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Things started out great but went downhill
I LOVED that I could set my own schedule. I LOVED not having a boss, controlling my own work, and when one of the first deliveries pays $20 or so for less than a half hour of work? SCORE!!!!
But over several deliveries? That’s a different story. My first and biggest mistake was listening to the competitive side of me that wants to dive in and be the best driver out there. In my mind I was tying it to their measurements – their ratings etc. If I’m the best, they’ll reward me with better, right?
And I’ll tell you what – I knew I wasn’t going to see the $25 per hour, but c’mon guys, is half that too much to ask? I’m driving WAY too many miles for what I’m making. I’m watching the games these companies are playing with dispatching and trying to control us and I start thinking… maybe it’s time to move on, this isn’t cutting it AT ALL. There were days I figured that after vehicle costs I MAYBE broke even.
Dealing with the frustration
I looked up the forums – after all that rare short high pay order kinda hooks you in. Maybe I’d find good information out there. Oh man, go to Facebook and what a mood killer. You come out of some of those forums just feeling glum. What is up with the negativity??? There were a lot of YouTubers giving out information and way too many of those were like, it’s awesome (all because of one delivery) or it’s HORRIBLE (all because of one delivery) or griping about the tips or the restaurant. Now the good thing is I did find a few that had good information and there are a couple that do a fantastic job of building a community of drivers out there – so don’t give up totally on YouTube – and I could put some tips and tricks together and do a little better, but still, it just wasn’t what I expected.
So I don’t know if this sounds like you at all. I struggled, I was ready to give it up. This wasn’t what I thought it would be, I KNEW it wasn’t what it could be, and maybe it’s all luck or what, I don’t know.
Have you ever felt that frustrated? Ready to throw in the towel? That’s where I was.
And then things start to turn around
Everything changed one day in a discussion with someone. I honestly don’t remember where or when or even what it was about, the only thing I remember was thinking in the back of my mind, this guy’s an idiot, he doesn’t understand what an independent contractor is.
And that’s when the truth hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was the idot. Because I KNEW.
I’ve managed businsses, I’ve owned my own business. Way back in another life I was an independent contractor for a cab company. But the part that made me really feel stupid was realizing my own experience at the nonprofit. When I came in, we had some people doing work as independent contractors, but we were setting their schedule, pretty much treating them as employees. I already knew enough to know that was wrong – I had to pull out all the information about the laws, I had to show all the areas where both the contractors and our organization were vulnerable… I KNEW the whole thing about how independent contractors work…
So why the heck am I thinking like an employee???
Dude, I’m running a business here. It’s time to start thinking like a business owner.
Changing my mindset
And that’s what I did. I changed my mindset. I looked at these companies as my customers, not my bosses. THAT alone made a night and day difference. Look, I can’t walk into a store and demand that they sell me an item for way below cost? I know that store has to mark up those items a certain amount to stay in business…
Well, I AM a business. I get to set my price. I can’t name the fees, but I CAN determine if the orders they send me meet my price. And I started thinking like a business owner.
I took it further. I started analyzing the sales, tracking what I was doing. I learned where it was profitable, where it wasn’t. I paid attention to my business operations. I started thinking in terms of making business decisions.
The moment I changed my mindset, and started thinking like a business owner and not an employee, THAT is when things turned around. My earnings went up, my expenses went down. I got to where the stuff they promise – it’s not a pipe dream folks. I’m making that regularly. Not all the time but sometimes more. And that has more to do with how I’m thinking, how I see myself, and how I treat this as a business, not as a job. I learned that I’m not going to make that money working on their terms, but when I start working on my own terms, that’s a whole different story.
Using My Experience to Help Others
And that’s where I want to help you out. I was lucky in a way because I already had some of that experience. I understood the whole independent contractor thing, I already had owned businesses and all so I had a lot I could fall back on.
It’s not that there’s anything better about me because of that, in fact maybe it’s worse – because I should have known better to start with. I mean I DID know better, I just didn’t put it into action.
Gig companies creating accidental business owners
I think this is the part that is insidious about how Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats, Postmates, all the others, even all the rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, how they do things: They sign people up who are thinking of earning like an employee but they sign them up as independent contractors. They do that because they don’t have the obligations and responsibilities that way – no overtime, no minimum wage. You could sink or swim, they don’t care. They don’t care if you understand what it is to be a business owner and in fact, THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND.
Because then you will think like an employee. They want it both ways. They want to dodge responsibilities by making you a business owner, but they the benefit of having you as a slave… I mean employee… They want the best of both worlds and want to give you the best of none.
So they create all these what I call Accidental Business Owners. And maybe that’s you – and that’s what I want to do is help the Accidental Businss owner become the Intentional Business Owner. To help you develop the mindset – to help you THINK like a business owner and to give you tools and information to BE a business owner.
Take control by becoming an INTENTIONAL business owner
When you THINK like a business owner, you take control. You take control over your work, your own business, and your life. How you think about what you do makes all the difference in the world. And when you take control, you can thrive.
That’s why I started the EntreCourier – to start providing information from a business perspective. There’s a lot of great stuff out there and some fantastic creators already, but I don’t see them as competition and I don’t want to be competition to them. I just want to take my own little twist on it all, focusing on the business of being a business owner, of an independent contractor.
And then one day I’m listening to yet another podcast. I mean, spending 40 hours a week in the car, I’ve become a podcast junkie. And it dawns on me… the audience I’m trying to reach spends a lot of time in their car as well. Maybe a podcast can help even more than a blog?
And so here we are.
So thank you for tuning in.
COMING SOON: THE 31 DAY COURIER MBA
I want to focus on making this a weekly podcast, though we’ll be launching our true LAUNCH Episode on July 1, kicking off a special 31 day series to get things off the ground. I’m calling it the 31 day Courier MBA series. No, this isn’t a Masters of Business Administration, there’s no degree, not even a fake certificate, sorry about that. MBA in this case stands for Mastering Business Attitude. We’ll spend 31 days looking at business concepts, how they apply to your delivery work, but more important how you can put them to work in YOUR business.
So I Hope you’ll join me July 1 for the launch of our Courier MBA. I’ll also post information that relates to the episodes over at EntreCourier.com. You can find the podcast at EntreCourier.com/Podcasts or DeliverOnYourBusiness.com will take you right to the podcast page. You can find us in iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, any of those and obviously I invite you to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.
In closing, can I ask a favor? I’m only asking if you found anything in the site or podcast to be helpful, but if this did help you, can you spread the word to others who could benefit. If you have family, friends or other drivers you know could learn from this, let them know. Share us on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, anywhere you can share. Leaving a review on iTunes helps us get found by people who could use this information.
Thank you for checking us out. Now, it’s time for you to go take control of YOUR Business. Go, and be the boss!
