Inside A One Person Business - An Interview With Sara Loretta
Join Ellen as she sits down with Sara Loretta Chief Digital Architect & Certified Notion Consultant who specialises in helping connecting and educating teams on tech, workflows and all the ways they can optimise their business to scale. Enjoy this raw, unfiltered and open conversation with Sara that spans the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and her guidance for new business owners looking to build better systems.
Sara Loretta has harnessed her powers for design and organisation to create a thriving one person business. She is the 10th US Certified Notion Consultant and 1st Certified Paperform Expert, and is the Founder & Chief Digital Architect at SYSTMS™, an operations agency for agencies and small startups. In this wide-ranging conversation we discover more about Sara’s origin story and how she went from third-sector to business owner, uncovering her identity and talents along the way. We dive into the nitty gritty around the highs and lows of her journey. From axing a core product that caused backlash with clients and working with a business therapist to identify personal blockers after a difficult year, to building an impressive rosta of startup clients and moving deeper into people operations. You’ll hear some hard home truths about business ownership and personal development, alongside strategies to help you grow and automate your businesses.
Listen or watch this episode to learn more about:
How Sara embraced serendipity to start her first freelancing project and secured 40 clients in six months
How sharing her knowledge publicly landed her a remarkable opportunity with a big name brand that shaped her business
The evolution of her services as she tuned into her clients true needs and embraced her natural talents
Sara’s own workflow; how and why she systematises her processes for more efficiency and better results
Why she recommends treating your business like you are replaceable
Her advice on where to start systematising and creating operational processes and automations in a one person business
How to check whether you have a business or a hobby
Read on for the full transcript.
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ED: Sara, nice to see you. Thank you so much for joining the Ask One Person business interview series today. How's it going?
It's great. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat. I mean, we've known each other for, I feel like quite like a year. It's been a hot minute, so I'm excited. We're getting together kind of in more of a public setting and chatting more about business.
ED: Yeah, I mean, I won't give too much away, but you run an amazing community and platform called systems. And it's all about streamlining and helping business owners, one person, business owners being a good majority of your, your people to get more done. And I am on that list and I benefit hugely from the work that you do.
So why don't you give a bit more of an official introduction about yourself and what your one person business does?
SL:
So I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur, I didn't set out to freelance. Honestly, I worked in the nonprofit space for almost a decade and was so in love with doing impact work and helping people just find their place in the world.
Right. And I also was in this weird position where like, I couldn't find another job and I was getting super bullied by senior leadership at this nonprofit. And so at the time I had been doing like branding and media and video, and I had done this massive campaign for the city of Austin about women working in construction and nonprofits that were.
Not competitors, but I guess you could say kind of complementary to what we do, started coming to me and was like, we don't have you on our team. Like, can you do this video, you know, campaign or come do this. And in my first, I guess, six months of freelancing, if that's what you want to call it; I didn't have an LLC, didn't have a business name, didn't have like nothing.
And in my first six months, I landed close to 40 clients and it was just, I guess, downhill, but also uphill at the same time because, you know, I had nothing set up. I mean I was happy working in the nonprofit space and I loved the work that I did. And so when I fell into freelancing, it was kind of this like weird place where it was like, I thought only Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, you know, like, I didn't know people like you and I, like, I'd have a successful business, I just wasn't raised in that kind of mindset.
And so it started freelancing and I owned a design studio for a long time and I kept getting clients who literally could not tell me their pricing, could not tell me their processes, but thought a logo was going to make them loads of money. Honestly, like 75 percent of my clients were, their doors were shut in the first year after working with me. And so for a long time I was like, fuck, like if I had a problem, like what, what did I do wrong?
I kind of tapped back into business development and everything I was doing for this nonprofit and thought man if I can help these clients make it further why not do more operations, and that was kind of the thing that I've struggled with I've looked back on a lot is like man if I would Have known I just could have freelance doing operations like my path would have been so much more easier but I had to get sued and I had to go through all these things to be where I'm at today and it's fine and I've got tough skin from it.
But yeah, I you know, becoming a certified consultant, I literally put out a YouTube video and I was like, this is how I use Notion to run my design agency. I was kind of the first. Designer to publicly say I use notion that took off like a wildfire and and notion came to me and what I think November of 2021, give or take, and was like, Hey, we have this program we would love for you to go through it. Like, what do I have to lose? It's free, right? Like I, I'm so stingy spending money. And so I was like, okay, like, I don't have to pay for it. That's fine. And so at that point, March of 2022, I became the 10th certified consultant in the U. S. And I was 40th in the world, and there's about 60 of us now.
And so I shut my whole design agency down, and I actually do more than just Notion, and I think that that's something, from like a marketing perspective, I do not do well at talking about, I don't think. But I only do about 40 percent of my projects are notion. And so I come in really as like this fractional COO and we look at entire tech stacks, entire workflows.
But then the majority of my clients are kind of agencies or startups. A lot of them have teams of 50 plus, and we spend a lot of time on internal culture. So we look at what are the expectations of these tools? What are the communication? Requirements for our teams and how are we interacting?
Because the majority of these teams either got started during COVID so they never had office culture. They were office culture and then thrown into a remote environment. And you have the majority of the team who, you know, are, are I wouldn't say boomer, but like older millennials who never had a remote experience, right?
And so I'm doing a lot of like, how do we grow a culture outside of a slack bubble? What does that look like? And how do we also at the same time maximize our processes and our systems in order to make the client experience the best that it can absolutely be? And so that's really where I sit and what I do.
And then outside of that, you know, I've got a YouTube channel and a newsletter and I sell some digital products and I hang out. I'm not in this place where it's like, I want to make a million dollars every year. And I want to have this massive team. And I just, I wanted that for a while. And then I'm like, No, I just want to like make dope stuff and then be left alone and like go watch a show or like go cook or hang out with my dogs every day like that's it like I don't, I don't want to have this like massive massive business.
But I also want to leave room for that opportunity like if something were to come from that, you know I'm not saying no but I'm also not actively goal setting to get there.
ED: Make dope stuff. That could be the marketing slogan for you. Because it does feel like you're really passion enthused in the work that you put out there.
You can really tell that you're like, 'Hey, this sucked I made it better'. Or like, I find this I don't know, you do like these YouTube videos that are like cribs, but for a digital home, right? Like, it's just infusing your, your style and what you think is cool and interesting into the work. And that, in turn, attracts, like, minded clients and so on.
So, what, what else is there about you, do you think, that has led you to this? That you have, be it, I know you like super organized and that's why you run an operational type business. Like what about your personality, strengths, interests, skills have you managed to bring into your business today?
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SL: Yeah. I am, I, it's so funny because my grandmother, who is basically my mom, we talk like four times a day, I love this woman with all of my heart. She's always like, you know, you should start an organizing business. Like you should go into people's homes and like clean out their closets. Cause I am a very, I'm not like OCD, but I like things to be in their place. And I like organization, but personally, like. I don't have this like insane routine where I document every task and I document every note and thought and feeling like that's just not my personality.
But I will say, looking at coming from the design space and being a designer and doing websites and logos and video and all of the stuff, that I prefer operations specifically because I am not an emotional person.
It takes a lot for me to break down, have a good cry, feel the feels, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not who I am. So in design, I feel like people are much more emotionally connected to the response of what that work is going to be. And then in operations, it's literally the most black and white that you could ever imagine. Either the process works or it doesn't, right?
There's none of this like, Ooh, I feel, you know?
And, and I think that's a big reason why I'm so good at what I do is because I don't have to have that emotion attached and even like, I talked about this recently, I was on the lemon squeezy podcast and we were talking about this too.
I'm not even emotionally attached to my business.
Like I could shut it down tomorrow and go get a new job and like, not really care. And I think that that's like a negative and a positive, but I think that's the piece of, of it where I am so not in it. Right? Like I constantly look at data, I'm improving, I'm moving, I'm grinding. And like, I don't get attached if something fails.
It's like, cool. How do we make it better? Let's do that. Right? And so that's, that's a big piece of it. And I think with operations and with data and processes, success is very clear and very linear, whereas like design, it's like, well, people can celebrate that, but if it's not translating to sales, you got nothing.
ED: I like how, when I asked you the question, it was actually, here's what I'm not. Because so often we're trying to, go who am I, who am I, what am I good at, what am I great at?
And it's kind of like another way of saying, The same question is what do I not want to be spending my time or energy thinking about doing acting, feeling a few is design is an emotional process. I have been there. I don't really connect to it in the same way, but with ops, it can be there. It can be, it says no, like this trigger on Zapier, whatever it doesn't work.
It's a no. And so yeah, by defining what you are, and I think this is advice for people listening as well. It's like that can create interesting answers as well.
SL: 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there's nothing wrong with, you know, being so proud of what you built. I mean, I am right. But I think at the end of the day, like I talk about this often, especially when I like host workshops and you know, I am asked to speak at different places and I'm like, Okay.
Everybody's replaceable. You need to treat your business like you are replaceable because if you don't, you are going to literally be stuck. And when something goes wrong, you are going to feel so connected to that and feel ostracized and you know, all of this stuff when literally it's, Just business at the end of the day.
And so that's a big piece of, of, you know, what I do too, is getting a lot of CEOs and a lot of founders to realize, like, you don't need an exit plan. I don't, I'm not asking you to sell your business, but like, if you want to go on vacation or you want to have a kid or whatever, right, whatever those goals look like for you, you need to build a business that you can step away from and it still works and it's still making money.
And that is. That is a much larger uphill battle in my business that I am thoroughly enjoying problem solving with people and I didn't think that that was something that would be easy to do, but it's nice kind of being the mean older sister and going into these businesses being like, this sucks, but we're going to make it 10 times better.
ED: So, yeah, well, they're lucky to have that energy and that hardball, right? Because otherwise these decisions don't get made. So curious if you could bring some of that energy to people watching, right? Imagining that they have a small business, it depends on them as a founder to get the work done and have their bills paid.
Where could somebody start on the journey of systemizing, automating, like what would be the kind of early stages of the intervention that you might bring?
SL: Yeah. So I think that the easiest thing to do is to do an audit. So there's kind of two ways that I explain to people or kind of processes that are easy to follow.
The first is going to be a client review. So I have a freebie. I'm happy to share it with everybody. It's a good notion doc. But it basically allows you to, after every single project, look at The red flags, the green flags, what skills did you learn? What was challenging for you? Did you charge the right amount?
Right? Like after the fact, like we all think we're charging the right thing. And then all of a sudden you get 12 different deliverables and you're like, Ooh, I feel weird sending another invoice. Right? Okay. Well maybe it's time to up your rates. Right? So a review is really great as a starting place because you have tangible data that you can look at and actually see, okay, here are the trends and here's what I'm doing.
But then on the other side of that. I think doing an overall process audit is so, so important. And so literally like sitting and saying, you know, I look at like three phases for a service based business. You've got sales, creative juice, and then off boarding, right? Okay. Well in your sales and onboarding, how many times are you handwriting a contract?
How many times are you manually creating an invoice? Right. And how much time is that taking away from that second piece, which is that creative juice, right. I talked to a client not too long ago who had spent collectively, I think it was like 46 hours per client for their, their offer. And 30 of those hours were literal manual repetitive tasks that we could be automating.
Right. So it's like, okay, let's. Add all of your products and your offers into Stripe. Let's create payment links. You're doing the same price for everybody. Maybe people just have a different payment plan, right? Let's do a universal contract. You don't need to be writing everything under the sun, under your contract, right?
It needs to be as simple as possible. When you start looking at those pieces, that's when you can start putting in those templates, putting in those automations, putting in Zapier…It took me a while to understand that if I'm automating and templatizing, my value is going down. And that is a hundred percent not true.
Really what it is, is it's giving you more time to actually be the expert, grow your skills and put yourself in this creative box and not have to worry about the bullshit outside of it.
Who cares? Who cares where your payment link comes from? Automate it. Why are we breaking our backs over these things? I don't understand, and I don't know where this education is coming from. But that's what I would say is start with a client review, see what you're continually doing over and over again that you don't want to do or you don't like, and then look at your entire process and document it out and see where things can get streamlined a little bit.
ED: Yeah, that's really helpful. And I think hearing you speak, the thoughts I'm having are like, maybe the part of that reason is, well, not enough time working on the business, more working in it and just going with the motions until someone like you comes along and it's like, hang on a minute, this sucks. And also maybe as a piece of that, like mindset and self belief when it comes to, Oh, who am I to work with this client? I better make sure I've delivered absolutely every, you know, cross every T dot every I without leveraging the value that they're really being paid for. Like you say, which is their expertise. So I'm going to turn that question on its head and ask you how you've automated your work.
Like, how do you think about productizing, scaling your expertise with your clients?
SL: Yeah, I will say. I am very adamant that I only ever do something once and then it becomes automated or templatized. There are certain instances where you can't do that, right? Like I have a client right now that they they flip cabins and then rent them on Airbnb, right?
Probably never going to have a client like that again. So there's certain things in that project where I can't really templatize this out for future work, but I can reference it if that ever comes back. But, so my, my onboarding process, I don't touch, it's 100 percent automated. When clients after a sales call, they get, everybody gets the same exact form from me that triggers their onboarding.
It asks, you know, do you want to pay up front? Do you want a 50 50 payment plan? All the like legal stuff. Once they submit that, that auto fills in a contract and send them their contract. Once they sign that it triggers a strike payment link, adds a minute, like, I don't touch anything because it's like, I don't have time.
I say this a lot. I've real thick thighs and real thin patients and doing repetitive work is not something I want to do. Even like when it comes to notion, you know, I have. I have kind of finessed what I consider to be the best foundational template bundle for every client, right?
Everyone's going to need meeting notes. Everyone's going to need tasks. Everyone needs a wiki, right? Everyone needs a content calendar. I would rather chew hot glass, then manually create a content calendar every single time a client wants or needs one, and so I have all of these templates that I start as a foundation and then we add on from there.
That process alone saves me like five, six hours, a client project. And so we're in this place where everything is so streamlined and automated, even the way I do my strategy calls, it's the exact same for every client. And so I'm able to knock out for, let's say like one offer, I'm able to knock out redoing their entire tech stack, entire workflow, building out notion, setting up automations in Zapier for literally, it takes me like four days.
And that's because I've, I, the only thing I don't template out, I will say is training materials. And that's just because I tried it at one point and clients kept watching the templatized version. They're like, well, why am I not seeing my account? And so that was something where I was like, okay, let me take a step back.
And that is the one piece that I will not templatize just to make it feel custom and personal. But yeah, that's, that's my process. I don't custom proposals anymore. Everybody goes through the same process. The only difference is what offer they're coming to me for.
ED: And that's why having a really clear set of offers and services that you stick to pays dividends for you down the line. So I think we can add to your like, what am I not? We can say patient.
SL: Yeah, I am. Oh my god Yes, I am a people call me the queen of the pivots and for a little while I used to kind of take offense to it because i'm like am I really pivoting that much? But then it's like i'm not I mean, I think people see it as a pivot, but really it's like You No, if something's not working, we cut that cord real fast and call it a day. I'm not going to sit here and harp on something that's just not working. Great example. I decided to shut down all of my freelancer education not too long ago because one, it was not challenging me anymore. I was not sitting here going, man, I want to learn more about how to, how freelancers can charge more.
Like I've talked about it for six years, you know? And so that was a, that was a decision. I got a lot of pushback for, to be honest, I think that was the one pivot people were really angry about. Which is, Fine. That's their right. You know, I'm not wiping everything from the internet. I actually made all my shit cheaper, put it into one massive blog basically.
But you know, I think when it comes to like actual business pivots and looking at your pricing and your processes and your offers, you need to be doing client reviews. Because for me, like, Every three clients, something changes for me, their prices or timelines or this because I'm so ingrained in that data and I know a lot of creatives aren't and that's okay, but you have to again, remove yourself from the business and start implementing pieces.
If you're not a data person. Hire somebody who is right. Hire a project manager. There's nothing wrong with that. And let them do the dirty work and let you stay as a visionary. And I think when I realized that I am an operator, not just a visionary, I started feeling a lot better about decisions I was making.
And there was so much less guilt that I had about public opinion and the like, it doesn't matter.
You're not paying my bills. I don't give a shit what your opinion is. Like I really don't. I think at the end of the day, like you just really have to be honest with yourself and remember that you have a business, not a hobby. And I think if freelancers started thinking that way, you would see the percentage of people quitting in their first five years so much smaller then it is right now. I really do. So that's my spiky point of view of the day.
ED: Oh, yeah. What should be like a question that people interrogate themselves with on that note? Like how can they check in with themselves if they're running it like a business or a hobby?
SL: I would say, you know, if you are continually having issues in your business, I think it's time to have larger conversations.
So, and I'm going to, I'll leave with this, I had a really rough Like year period and it was constant, ike I was getting rid of clients more than I was launching them. Like clients were letting me go. It just like, there were things not working and I just couldn't put my finger on why. Fixing a niche, upping the rates. They always say 5k clients are better than 500 clients. That is such bullshit. It is not true at all. You just need to be looking at different data points. But in that I started actually seeing a business therapist and I was like, what is the problem? And so her and I, my therapist, we went through actually those client reviews and we sat down and looked at every single thing.
And what we realized is based on like personal trauma and personality that I don't work really well with certain groups of people. So full transparency is like, if you've never hired a contractor before. We are not going to work well together. I don't handhold, I don't want to have to remind you of what that line is. Another thing is like, I have a ton of mommy issues and I don't work well with women who have children, but their personality is mothering people. I don't know how to explain it, but there are certain mothers in the world that speak to everybody, like they are a mother rather than an equal and those personalities that don't work well. So like 40, 50 year old women are not by clientele and that is a hundred percent okay.
And so I think if you're continually having issues or you're not happy, you need to start doing reviews on yourself and looking at your processes and your conversations and who you're signing on to really figure out what the root of the problem is.
And I think that'll, that'll drastically change things for real.
ED: What are kind of like note to end on, right? Because we started off saying, Hey I built this business out of the fact that I don't really want this like super emotional side of things. However, what came down to a point of pivot for you was a slightly emotional component to, to how you're experiencing clients and not a process thing. So I think we can see how that both play a role and we just need to figure out the right balance of like, how am I going into this result or lack of result? How are the processes? And so anyone who is struggling with their processes, I think you should check out your stuff, right?
Like how, how should people find you, connect with you, reach out to you if they think they can benefit from your support in their business?
SL: Yeah, so I am actually the Sara Loretta on everything. I really luck out that my name is rolled off the tongue and it's very customized so to speak. But yeah, YouTube, Twitter Instagram, I honestly spend the majority of my time on Twitter and I like it. I know a lot of people feel different ways.
But yeah, you can find me literally everywhere just under the Sara Loretta. So.
ED: Thank you, Sara. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, I can't wait to keep learning from you and supporting each other. So yeah, catch you, catch you soon.
SL: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. This was great. See you soon. Thanks again.
