The Future of Business is Solo—Why This CEO is Hiring Fractional Talent Instead of FTEs w/ Ron Harpaz

Brett Trainor (: 00:04

Hi, Ron. Welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast.

Ran Harpaz (: 00:07

Hey, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Brett Trainor (: 00:10

my pleasure. I'm excited about this. Usually our long time listeners know we do a lot of use cases and, really what we want to show is what's possible. And so when we got connected, I'm like, it's the perfect triple threat, right? Somebody that may not be a true corporate escapee, but you've been a solo consultant, the solo business owner. You actually have built your current company using fractionals, which I want to get into because it's not often we get the buy side. A lot of our folks are fractionals and other solos. So hear it from you.

then now you're building a company lettuce that is focused on solving at least the financial aspect initially of the solo business challenges. And I already pitched you, you can take on insurance next, we'll, we'll, save that for another conversation. So, so I thought, you know, perfect triple threat to come in and add a lot of value to the audience. So I really appreciate you taking some time.

Ran Harpaz (: 01:00

Absolutely, really appreciate the opportunity to be here and as a proud GenXer and ex-cooperative guy, I have a lot of stories to tell about both. Let's dive in.

Brett Trainor (: 01:11

Yeah. So let's start a little bit with the, uh, kind of your escapee journey. Cause I think that, cause I'm, curious, I'm seeing more smaller businesses and started started to leverage, um, the fractional model, right? Cause to me, it just makes perfect sense. And we're to get into that. that business model in a second, but so maybe talk a little bit about your backstory as a solo consultant and how you started to build lettuce with, fractional leadership.

Ran Harpaz (: 01:38

Yeah. So, you know, I started my career very young as an engineer and coder and built a bunch of software. And I spent time in deep tech and cybersecurity and, you know, spent a whole decade really in those areas. was my first chapter of my career. And I learned a lot. But at some point I wanted to be a businessman and see what it looks on the other side, put on a suit and go talk to the big guys. So,

For my second chapter, which is mostly the corporate one, I got a law degree in an MBA, went to work for McKinsey, saw a lot of corporate environments as a consultant. Later on, I had a couple of big jobs at the corporates. I worked at PayPal in corporate strategy. I was involved in acquiring Venmo and Branchree into PayPal, and I saw what it takes to run a corporate at that size.

at a time that we separated from eBay and became a standalone company and overall spent about a decade in corporate, you know, big business. And, you know, it was educational. But I can say that I woke up every morning saying, wow, I'm so glad that I'm pushing this up the hill and waiting for come back down. So for the third chapter in this in this last decade, I'm really into

building startups. I'm based in California Silicon Valley, fortunate enough to work with people who can help build startups. And Lettuce is now my third startup in a row and started it really with a focus that says the future is independent. It's very clear to me working with different kinds of partners and

employees and providers and clients that there is a meaningful trend that is beyond just the media buzz that people want to be able to work for themselves. Choose when and how and who and if, you know, they want to lend their skills. And it's more and more applicable as you gain more skills. So, you know, people of my generation and yours and our audience have a lot to offer.

Ran Harpaz (: 04:02

And they want to choose how they do that, not necessarily that nine to five job. So I'm pretty convinced that the future is independent and I want to be part of the solution, not just admiring the problem, which is what got me to start lettuce.

Brett Trainor (: 04:16

Yeah, that's awesome. And I think I was going to save the conversation on the business model, but now is a good time to get into it because I 100 % agree with you that, you know, the way I looked at the employment, the full-time employee, right? It's super, it's command and control, right? In turn for the salary, I'm going to tell you what to do. And again, that's fine. We did it for decades. Learned a lot, but it doesn't make sense. And then when I started to look at, there was a...

part two of my journey with this, there was an Asana study that came out a few years ago looking at knowledge workers. And they estimated that knowledge workers spent only 27 % of their day doing knowledge work. So what are corporate workers? Knowledge workers. And then I'm like, well, I looked at my old corporate job. Yeah, on a good week, if I was spending 30 % on the job they hired me to do, it was a pretty efficient week. And all of a you look at that model, it's just totally inefficient.

And when I started looking at fractional, that's how you can go to small businesses and say, Hey, this is how you can, I'm only charging you for the 27 % of the output. You know, corporate is paying for the inefficiencies. And then the third step and where I'd really love to get your, and you can tell me if I'm crazy for thinking this, but you know, I looked at kind of the future is going to be more of an ecosystem of experts, right? We don't need the hierarchy of those things. And so if you looked at the business model of like Hollywood, right? When they make a, hopefully a blockbuster movie.

They pull in a ton of individual and small companies, 12 to 18 months. They work towards an output. It's done. This group may work together. And then the other analogy I use is the Ocean's 11 movie, right? When Clooney wants to rob the casino, does he hire 10 full-time people? No, he gets 11 or 10 fractionals that have very good, the right skill sets to go do it. So to me, it's just, it's natural. mean, big corporate's going to struggle to turn just because it's so ingrained and, um,

operating budgets, everything else, but I small businesses, right? Things I've heard you talk about solo businesses being a million dollar business. Why not apply the same tactics and strategies? So that's my rant, but that's why I was super excited.

Ran Harpaz (: 06:21

By the way, I love the analogies. I'm going to definitely borrow the Ocean 11 idea. You know, I reflect back on some of my previous jobs, including in corporate jobs and in startups that became unicorn. I loved and still do being able to find an expert for a job, bring them in, get the thing done, thank them.

and move to the next thing. And if the next thing is appropriate for the same person, great. And if the next thing is not appropriate for the next person, let them go on the next heist with Ocean 12. And I think now reflecting back, it's probably my early McKinsey training that got me to appreciate the fact that you can call on an expert, give them a brief. They can immerse their life in a problem, give you a bunch of really, really effective assistance in your problem.

Brett Trainor (: 06:56

Right.

Ran Harpaz (: 07:15

And then eject themselves because they're no longer needed. It was very normal to me to go bring in an expert, say, hey, I don't know this well enough. Can somebody help me? And then, you know, if I need to hire that person full time, great. And if I don't, I don't. And over the year, that became, I think, a habit for me. Definitely when you think of tech companies,

It's more and more common to have specialized talent that come in and solve a problem, whether it's DevOps or AI or cybersecurity, you just bring in the expert. And I think in recent years, you see the same happen in fractional CMO or fractional CFO, even product people, marketers of all sorts. They develop an enormous amount of talent in their area. They can help a company make a huge jump when

there is a need. And then everybody wins because they can lend that talent to multiple companies in parallel, back to back, however they want. The companies can get the exact amount of talent at the exact time that they need it. And it's not a necessarily long term marriage where a lot of things come into consideration. You know, if somebody chooses a job for the next five years, then a lot of other things come into play.

When you say, I'm going to do this for three, four, five, six months. And then we see you make, I think, more problem-specific choices that I certainly prefer.

Brett Trainor (: 08:56

Yeah, no, I think it makes sense. And I'm thinking back to leaving my shorter standard consulting. was that way, right? I was kind of brought in because I knew, you know, I lived through the B2B and the digital transformation and had a skillset that this consulting firm didn't have. Right. And then, yeah, it just, it just makes sense that we, and again, so my audience, I'm, I partner with some strong fractional communities. I partner with some solo communities that they just want to do solo consulting. And so.

I look at it and you paid your dues for 20, 30 years, you've got this experience, now is the time to take advantage of it because there are companies that need it. So now the next question for you is when you built the leadership team, where did you go find the fractional, was it networking? I don't wanna answer for you.

Ran Harpaz (: 09:46

Yeah, so one of the first choices I made when starting Lettuce a year and a half ago was we're going to build for solos. So let's make sure that we have solos as part of the team to eat our own dog food and make sure that we build a product people want to use. And in retrospect, it became a very meaningful design principle for the company. Almost every single person at Lettuce starts as a fractional.

they see that they love it. And they say, okay, let's move to a full time. In the early days, it was a little unique. So I reached out to my network and a bunch of people who worked with me in the past and some of them have already retired and said, you know what, this sounds like a cool idea. I don't know if I'm gonna commit to it, but hey, let's do this for three months and see how it goes. I got a bunch of folks who are, you know,

way above what a startup that just started could afford. And I think that's part of the heck, if you will, of working with fractional talent is that even a smaller business can get access to very high caliber talent because of that exchange model that's there for everybody. So started to my network. Then I got on a few of the platforms. A team was a very effective partner of ours to find fractional talent.

and had a number of others. And then at some point it became a cultural element of lettuce. So the team started bringing their own networks and colleagues and friends to come in and say, Hey, give it a try. You don't have to commit. You don't have to decide that you're doing this a hundred percent. Give it a shot. And, we have now over 40 people in our little startup, that's one and a half years old, who all started fractional.

And about half of them decided that they wanted to do this full time and migrated to full time. Some of them want to still do other things. So they may have a retainer with us for three days a week and have another side project. We are very flexible. And I think it's now a property of what it means to be part of Lettuce. And the reason this is so meaningful is this is our audience. This is who we serve. Many of the folks who work at Lettuce actually have their own

Ran Harpaz (: 12:10

business, they set up an escort, they run it through lettuce. So we have a full circle of understanding the audience need, being a customer, using their own product and making it better so that that cycle keeps adding value to everybody involved.

Brett Trainor (: 12:28

Yeah, so good. And so true. It's so refreshing, right? We talked about the culture of being fractional and hey, come tested, come start when the big corpse dealing with returned office mandates for five days a week and, you know, forced layoffs and all these other things. So I'm like, they can have that this, this is the culture, right? That I think is you're starting. don't even think can be a trend. I just did just too much value doing it this way. And you're probably getting the best people because only the good people are referring good people. And all of sudden you got a team of 40 of

rock stars that you probably if you were out recruiting and trying to get full time never would have had probably yeah it's super interesting.

Ran Harpaz (: 13:05

Yeah, that would be extremely like, I'm not going to read you out all the resumes of everybody, but the talent density is so high. And at the same time, as you alluded to the culture value of I'm going to work wherever I want in the time that good for me. And if I want to take my dog for a walk or my kids for a concert, or if some weeks I want to work really hard and get something amazing out and some weeks I want to go down in my hour capacity, you just.

turn on a flag on Slack and say, hey, this is an intense week for me. You know, please ping me. Or this is a non intense week for me. You know, don't ping me after 4pm. that allows really talented people to kind of focus on doing amazing work with the motivation that is fully internal. And it's not driven by the turn to office or the threat of, you know, I'm going to put you on a performance review.

all of that stuff that creates all of the wrong behaviors. I even had an interesting discussion the other day. Somebody asked me about commitment and said, when you work at a company and you have a contract with that company, then you are fully committed. And they told me, hey, Atlantis, how do you people are committed to you and they're not going to drop tomorrow? And it took me a second to realize, but reflecting on how people work,

Brett Trainor (: 14:05

Yeah.

Ran Harpaz (: 14:31

I almost see it as the other way around. The people who work at Lettuce as fractionals have a number of clients and number of projects, and they can choose if they want to spend 10 hours or 20 hours or 30 hours on Lettuce work this week. And the fact that they show up every morning and say, this is what I want to do, and I'm going to spend my day building an amazing capability at Lettuce, so I'm going to build a partnership, and I'm going to go to market. They actively choose to put the extra hour

into Letters and not elsewhere is a much higher level of commitment than, I have to collect a paycheck and I don't have anywhere else to be, so hey, I'm going to clock in and clock out. I actually believe that this level of commitment far supersedes the commitment of I have to be here.

Brett Trainor (: 15:19

I that's so true. I never thought of it that way, but even in my fractional deals, it was that way. liked, I was energized by the company. I liked what I was doing. you think in the early days of your corporate job, when you get, when you are energized and you're excited by things, but eventually it, that wears off and it is just becomes the more going through the motions, especially as we got older in our career. The other thing I really love and I'm going to borrow and I will quote you on it is the talent density of organizations can be so much higher with.

talents density. That's so true and so important, especially as you're thinking of small businesses that if they wanted to hire somebody with that 20 years experience, they couldn't, right? They just can't have access to it. So they've got to take a chance on a junior level person or which again is good. You may get some up and comer that you, you guessed right on, but man, it's not worth it. If you can get somebody that's been through it. I love that.

Ran Harpaz (: 16:11

And I'm seeing that by the way, through all the ranks, like definitely the talent density at the high level of the experience people is the highest ROI on every dollar we spend. But I'm having getting people in who are recent grads and are like, I'm not sure what I want to be when I grew up. This looks like a cool place to work. Let's do this for six months or 20 hours a week and let's see how it goes. And they don't have yet those biases of I have to show off.

Brett Trainor (: 16:39

Yeah.

Ran Harpaz (: 16:41

and have a big title and they want to learn and you get somebody like that in and they know after a couple of months if that's a great fit for them or not. And I'm very open with that with all of my team members. And I say, you need to love it here. You need to love what you're doing because that's how you're going to get that big impact. And if you don't love it, it's also okay to say out loud, you know what, I gave it a try. I want to go work at a corporate. Good for you. I'm going to be supportive.

Over the years, I built this capability in my organizations and my teams to band and disband teams based on projects. Again, I'm going back to like best practice in consulting world. You would put together a team that's very good at solving a problem. And then when that problem is done and solved, you would disband the team and let the talent walk on something else. You wouldn't keep that team going forever.

just because at some point you had that specific need. And I think what that allows people to do is also to refresh what they work on. So now the combination of work from anywhere, choose your hours, abandon this band team, work on stuff that you care about, I think gets so much more out of people. I would offer everyone to be part of that. And even if you have a corporate job, figure out if you can get a day a week.

Brett Trainor (: 18:01

Yeah

Ran Harpaz (: 18:06

of doing something else and start practicing how it feels like. I've known people at corporate who went down to like 80 % capacity at their job and then they had a regular day a week to do stuff and they extend it into the evenings and do stuff on the weekend depending on their personal life. You get to feel what it's like to do something that you love at a pace that you own and control. It's phenomenal.

Brett Trainor (: 18:33

Yeah. And you take it, you take the, politics out of it, right? Cause that's one of the biggest things that I have to explain to folks that, when you work with other escapees or become part of the community, it's, it's more cooperative. Everybody is working and helping each other. Cause there's so much opportunity for folks. We're in corporate, you're competing for the same position and or budget dollars and these types of things. If you take that out, people are going to naturally work better. And the other thing that I love is that.

with the community, we've got: 1700

some really, really, really good ideas in this.

Ran Harpaz (: 19:31

And I want to say something because you mentioned that to me, these subgroups typically have something in common. We call it at Lettuce their zone of genius, right? So you have people who are really, really good at marketing their services. You have people who are really, good at delivery. You have people who are extremely efficient with their time. And then if you let people really play into their zone of genius, they can get a lot more done in way fewer hours.

Typically, when you have a corporate job, you spend your time on a bunch of stuff that's not in your zone of genius. Now, because I mentioned that, I'll make a shameless plug to another thing that we do at Lettuce, and that really helps you if you already decided to be a solo and work for yourself. Maximize the time that you spend on your zone of genius, because the fear that I hear from many people is, well, who's going to run the business for me? What about all of that back office?

Brett Trainor (: 20:04

Great.

Ran Harpaz (: 20:27

finance and accounting and taxes and payroll and paying the government and compliance, all of these bad words that typically most people, that's not their zone of genius. That's not what they love doing. No disrespect to any CPAs who love accounting. Most human beings, that's not what they are born to do. And I think what we're trying to say is let us is, hey, find the things that you do really well, go focus on that and let us worry.

about running your back office in a way that's efficient and compliant and puts more money in your pocket. So again, you could go back and do what you do great. That virtuous cycle of you do what you enjoy, you do it well, you do it with people you like, you delegate everything else is what generates greatness.

Brett Trainor (: 21:19

Yeah, no, it makes sense. I don't know if you've ever read the book, Who Not How? Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, think wrote it. Are you familiar with that book? Yeah, that's exactly right. We spent so much time worrying about how, when we go find those who's in this case, we're going to see more more automation with AI and things. We can just take those non-value added tasks out of it. You don't need to worry about the back office when there's, you it's like that you're doing this. I, again, I'm

Ran Harpaz (: 21:27

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 21:48

100 % bought in. The one thing that I don't, I want to do, I made a note to, cause I talk about it a little bit, but I probably should talk about it more is the escapees and solos training it as a solo business. do say it, but I need to reinforce it because as it, even if you're a corporate employee, treat that as a business and your corporate is your only customer, would you do things differently? A hundred percent you would be right. And so

I know you had mentioned, and I heard you mention outside of this, the thought of ownership. So I'd love to get your perspective on how do we get that mind shift, right? 20 years in corporate, 30 years in corporate. we're going to be, people think freelancers, which is the old day of Fiverr where you compete for the $20 design product. No, this is high value, high dollar, right? So I'd love your perspective on the solo business owner.

Ran Harpaz (: 22:38

Yeah, that's a very big thought in my mind. And it means that you really think of yourself and your talent as a business that needs to be cultivated and improved and marketed and optimized. And whether you're still in the corporate, whether you are practicing getting out of it or whether you're already making the steps to be your own sort of business, you want to get a full appreciation of what

are the key core talents that you have for the world and really hone in how you deliver those. And I gave a couple of examples that I showed in the past. Let's say you're going to be a fractional product person. You had a successful career at the big brands and you did a bunch of product work and now you want to be

a fractional product leader, fractional CPO, whatever it is. What you want to make sure is that there are things you do really well, and you're starting to build them as the intellectual property of you. So that people who work with you are not buying two hours of bread and four hours of run. They're actually buying a service, a value of, I can build a roadmap.

I know how to manage dependencies. I am an innovator in AI or I do UX better than anybody else. And then the fact that it's delivered, delivered, you know, via a few hours or via a document that's secondary because the thing you are is an expert in your profession. And then at some point when you do this really well, your actual solo business that you built has more value.

than just the hours you sell. Some people start writing books, managing forums, and training others, and creating a community around them. You could imagine, and people have been speaking about it, multi-million dollar business based on what a single person can do. And then there is a whole discussion about the next billion dollar business is going to be a solo business because AI enabled so much leverage. It all starts with you as the expert

Ran Harpaz (: 25:06

owning what you do as a delivery vehicle of greatness, not just selling hours and start thinking about when you still have the corporate and then definitely take it with you when you're building your own solo business because that's the real asset.

Brett Trainor (: 25:23

Yeah. And then that's a mental hurdle for a lot of folks. I mean, I didn't have, it took me a few years to start to figure out how to put all this together and still figuring out, right? It's not, but I think that that's that's a great point because I think when the one thing I coach anybody that'll listen when they're coming out is you, because of your corporate career, there's probably a hundred things you can do. You got to pick one to get started. You can be opportunistic. If somebody comes to you with some other project, yes, take it. But if you're having a conversation,

And Ron's talking to you, you got to be clear of where your focus, that zona genius, I'm going to use that as well as to get the, can pivot, you can go over time and say, know what I'm done with? I'm just, I'm wanting to focus on something else. And I think that's the hard part. So maybe tie this back to when you were starting to bring some of the fractionals in and talking to folks, what are some, so these are the folks you're talking to are the newbies, maybe still in corporate thinking, I want to go fractional or the company of one. How do you.

What resonates with you as an owner of a company when you're having the conversations? Is it a very specific skill set? What are you looking for when you're having those conversations?

Ran Harpaz (: 26:29

Yeah, I have a certain preference that is mine. I'm not, I'm not saying everybody has to have it, but mine is a combination of very clear value prop that the person knows to deliver and some mental agility to be able to move, you know, right and left from there. so when I think of talent density in my mind, it should be very evident when you walk into the room that she's a marketer and he's an engineer.

And, you know, they are a UX person. their core skill is very evident. But then that mental agility, I think is really important to say, okay, we're going to collaborate and solve a pretty complicated problem together now. So how do I identify the overlap area between my marketer skill and that person's, you know, user experience skill so that we can work together efficiently.

and go address what needs to be addressed. If we're building a new product, bringing a new brand to market, because these are fractionals, you're not going to have the whole corporate infrastructure where you have a lot of that, like supporting capabilities, also known as overhead, doing work for you. If you are a marketer, you need to also understand that there is a product aspect and there is an engineering aspect and there is a

Brett Trainor (: 27:47

Sorry.

Ran Harpaz (: 27:55

Financial aspect, I think when I interview people for those roles at companies that want to be great and move fast, that agility together with that deep expertise together is a winning formula. And I ask a bunch of questions to figure it out, but you know it when you see it.

Brett Trainor (: 28:20

Yeah, no, I agreed. And sometimes it just takes, that's where you're trying to get these folks to peel back and say, all right, again, because I think the other thing we've been conditioned in corporate and you were in management, I mean, everything's features and benefits, right? As a consulting firm, here's all the services that we do. These are the things we do. Business owners don't care what that is, right? What is the problem that you're solving and back into that zone of genius? And, you know, I know there's some fractional

gurus that'll say the fractional is well, they're C suite, right? CMO, CRO. I say it's any, any leadership position in the company, right? If you need a CRM developed, you have, don't have that capability in house, go get a fractional CRM guru that's going to come in and be able to help you set that up and establish and build. So I think it's wide range. If you didn't get to the C level, it's okay. You've paid your dues and these, these small business needs a lot of foundational help. So I think.

Ran Harpaz (: 29:14

It's definitely wide range. And I think you make an excellent point because some people, because of their conditioning in corporate, I was still focused on leveling. Like I'm a C level person. I'm a VP, I'm director. I encourage people to actually play up and down on that scale and say, Hey, I've been a, you know, operational leader for 20 years, went all the way up to director, VP and C level, but

If this problem needs me to both write a Gantt chart and make five phone calls and put a list in in a tracking sheet and make a strategic recommendation, I'll do them all because I'm not bound by the fallacy of a C level person doesn't touch a Gantt chart or, you know, I'm a VP. I'm not going to make phone calls. I'm like, hey, everybody, if this helps the business, let's go do it.

And what I've seen is as soon as you shed off some of that old school leveling thing, first there are fun. Like you can't just be a C level person all day long and actually do nothing. You want to do some stuff and check something off a box and, you know, pick up a phone to an old colleague who'd say, yes, I'd love to work with you and bring them in. And, you know, you're not an SDR, you're not working the phones, but hey, you made a quick sales call. So.

Brett Trainor (: 30:28

I'm sorry.

Ran Harpaz (: 30:43

giving up on some of that, like, mystique of leveling is so liberating.

Brett Trainor (: 30:49

Yeah, it is. Again, that's what I tell people when they're the first transitioning out, even if they're looking for another corporate job. like, the one thing, you you hear the Gen Xers with the job search, right? Six, eight, 12 months. You know, I had a guy said he's 300 resumes sent out for interviews, no final interviews, no job. I'm like, just think if you put that much effort into networking with your zone of genius into these small businesses, you'd have more customers than you know what to do with because.

Ran Harpaz (: 31:08

out.

Brett Trainor (: 31:18

you're just putting the effort into the right. So it's just a full mind-ship. We've been conditioned to do something and it's just how do we break out of that and the sooner the better.

Ran Harpaz (: 31:25

100%. And you know, the numbers support it, right? I saw statistics from Upwork Research and NBO partners that says there's like 64 million Americans who freelance. That means they have a full-time job, but they do something else. And like off them, 25 million Americans are freelancing full-time. So they realized, hey, that's a destination. I want to follow that.

They're still not all corporate escapees and they're not at that high level, but there's more than 5 million Americans who decided they want to do full-time freelance and are making six figure income. So you're not talking about people who figure out their zone of genius. They're able to monetize it in a way that is meaningful. Like these are now salaries that you could leave off and

Brett Trainor (: 32:08

Right.

Ran Harpaz (: 32:22

That is a trend that only grows. Like all of the numbers are talking about double digit growth year over year of those numbers. And it's very clear to me, I said it before, that the future is independent, meaning this is going to accelerate. And it's going to get easier and easier to have the supporting capabilities to go on your own adventure and find clients and, know, sell your services.

in a way that's scalable. So you're not talking about millions of people doing this and then at some point tens of millions. It's happening.

Brett Trainor (: 32:57

Yeah, you might as well be out in front of the curve. I said, eventually, eventually corporates going to figure out that and they're in the right. Cause that right now I talk all the time that corporates, you what now I'm drawing my blank. I'll come back. It's more, profit over people, right. And I've been in corporate long time and it's always been that way, but at least they pretended to like the people sometimes and layoffs were a last ditch effort. Now it's a quarterly business strategy. I'm taking people out. You know what, eventually they're going to figure out that.

Ran Harpaz (: 33:14

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 33:26

These full-time employees are only productive or efficient 30 % of the time. They're going to be saying, why am I paying? So eventually they're going to figure that math out and then it's going to really flood the market. Why not get out in front of this? Because one, your life is, you painted a much better picture than I have articulating what the solo world looks like. And it's there. have the skills. Everything's there for you to do this, right? Everything you've learned in corporate still applies and it's now just focusing on what you like to do. So.

Ran Harpaz (: 33:34

100%.

Brett Trainor (: 33:56

Uh, just makes I'm, I'm super energized coming off of this and I talk about it every day. Um, so, but I, time's flying by and I do want to be respectful, but I barely got to what you guys are doing with lettuce. Cause that's the other thing when, you know, building a platform for the future and that's what it is. And that's right now we do still a lot of piecemeal, right? I said, people know, what do you use right for taxes, finance, you know, most accountants these days are.

Ran Harpaz (: 34:01

Thank you.

Brett Trainor (: 34:25

not used to the solo work, right? S Corp, when I met, was it Gabrielle or Lisa? I can't remember who I had the first conversation with. I had heard of S Corp, but I had no idea there was a tax advantage. I've been doing this for four years, right? So how many else have been doing it longer? Didn't realize. So I think somebody finally putting some energy and talent behind this process makes sense. So, know, kind of maybe share what are you doing today with Lettuce? I know a number of my audiences.

high level know what you're doing, where are you taking it? What's the goal for the company?

Ran Harpaz (: 34:58

Yeah, absolutely. So we saw the exact same description that you mentioned, that people who are doing this professionally for a number of years successfully are still not in control of their finances. And we really want to create this enabling capability, technology powered, that let them focus on their zone of genius. So we came up with the concept of lettuce. That is a solution for

All of your back off, it's like a CFO in a box for a business of one. So think about your business banking separate from your personal one, making sure that you have bookkeeping, accounting, running payroll, managing the compliance of your scope, calculating your taxes, paying your taxes, and all of that automatically. And the idea is, you know, people talk about the reason to buy and the reason to own when they're customer of lettuce. The reason to buy is typically we show people that

by setting up the correct escorp, they can save 10 to $15,000 on their taxes every year, which is pure profit to put in the pocket. That's a great hook to get in. But actually, when we talk to customers who use that as the reason to own over time is because we dismiss all of that overhead and time wasted and anxiety and mistakes that come with doing stuff that you're not good at.

Brett Trainor (: 36:09

Yeah.

Ran Harpaz (: 36:28

And it's beautiful to talk to customers who like, this is so relaxing to just not worry about it. So the technology of letters, it really has all of it connected so that every time you get paid by one of your clients, let's say an invoice get paid, you know, $10,000 coming to your account, the system would automatically identify that as income, classify it in your books, make sure that everything is corrected and

automatically recalculate your tax position every day, every dollar, put aside the right amount to pay the IRS, the state government, et cetera, and then pay that out automatically for you, like it's a utility bill on auto pay. So you have all the benefits of not thinking about it like you used to when you were a W2 employee at the corporate with all the benefits of running your own business and controlling your clients and who you work for and when, cetera.

with the additional benefit of an S-Cope, which is what the IRS invented for the benefit of business of one. Like somebody sat down at the government and said, we want to have more corporations. We want to advantage sole owners of corporations to run their business properly. Let's come up with a way that incentivized them to do that. They invaded the S-Cope. It's out there. The prescription is known in the IRS website. You just have to do it.

The thing that holds most people back, that if you have to do it yourself, you go to your accountant, they give you half an advice because they don't wanna do this and they can't charge you for their time. And then you go cobble together, fresh books and QuickBooks and TurboTox and this and that and the other and like, my God, can I go back to do what I'm good at? So we came out of that saying, hey guys, it's not a do it yourself, it's not a Lego store, you don't have to make up all the pieces, here is a solution.

sign up, monthly subscription, you're done, go do what you created. So that's the Let Us Promise. And we've seen an enormous amount of people who resonate with this and say, yes, let's go do this.

Brett Trainor (: 38:42

Yeah, no, and it makes sense. And you mentioned, I wasn't going to mention some like QuickBooks, but a lot of those other solutions were built for, you know, small business, but kind of carved and try to squeeze into a solo. And it just didn't make sense. And again, right. As I, the early days, I had like Zoho, had QuickBooks, I've got this going here, I've got PayPal. And you're right, this, that's not my zone of genius. makes me incredibly nervous. And like the who, how not, who not how book. If it's not me, then

I don't like to do it. so, yeah, and I think that's that that and the insurance thing are the two things that make people so I appreciate the fact that it means it's a long, actually, it's a long time coming. We haven't been doing that long, but it makes sense that somebody's finally prioritizing what's going to be 50 % of the job force in, you know, a few years. So that's cool.

Ran Harpaz (: 39:31

Totally. And I think one thing that people don't realize until they come and try with us is that having somebody like Lettuce be opinionated and informed about the right answer and say, you you don't have to go into QuickBooks or TurboTax and answer 75 questions and make your own decision about what's right. Like, that's not what you do. So our system basically is fully informed with all of the rules and regulations, state by state, definitely to the federal level.

We have an AI pocket accountant that you can literally ask questions 24 hours a day and get the answers and the system takes those decisions for you so that you don't have to worry about, hold on, how do I classify this meal with a client? And how do I classify this travel and how do I classify this laptop that I bought? Like it's all taken care of so that again, every dollar every day, your tax position is recalculated, paid and you're done.

The reason I keep repeating how important it is to automate is that once you automated something like a habit that you built, then you have to think about it. And you can take the extra hour and go serve a client, go educate yourself, go do something that you love. Everything else just runs on autopilot. It's a big difference in your life.

Brett Trainor (: 40:51

Yeah, no, hundred percent. all in on the automate, right? And what is automate delegate or I forget what the the tribe that the acronym is but And lastly, I know this is gonna come out you guys are hosting your first summit solo summit, right? Did I get them? I hope I didn't push that right It'll be this will be out the week before so next week. It's coming out So maybe just share, you know plug it a little bit. What what can people expect who should go? What are they gonna learn?

Ran Harpaz (: 41:20

Yeah, absolutely. So we're having the lettuce first annual solo summit, February 26, 27. The idea would be to bring together a lot of solos. We're talking about thousands of people gathering for this. It's a virtual conference. You don't have to fly anywhere. You can plug in from your safety of your home. And we have 20 plus sessions that go from starting your business

growing your business, accelerating your business. We have speakers who are experts in marketing what you do, speakers who are experts in AI, speakers experts in finance, speakers who are great at building a community. We have panels who are going to go deeper into specific topics. It's a phenomenal way to get together with other solos in the space around you and all across the country.

and get a ton of curated content in a very collapsed time horizon. it's two afternoons, 26, 27 of February. If anybody's interested, go to solosummit.lettuce.co. There is a full agenda with all the speakers. You see some really phenomenal people who give a lot of advice. Highly recommended for everybody who is either in it or planning to be in it soon.

Brett Trainor (: 42:47

Awesome, yeah, and we'll put the links in the show notes for sure. Yeah, take advantage of it. And by the way, I'll plug that maybe not next year, but a couple of years. I'm okay if you want to do an on-site session somewhere in the warm weather in the winter. I think we're ready for some conferences again. I know at least in the escapees, right, we've been talking about how do we get at least smaller groups together. So I think there's, especially as a solo, it would be good to get some of the human contact again. So.

I'll save that for you when you come on next year and I'll keep pushing you to see if we can't get a warm weather conference somewhere before in the next couple of years.

Ran Harpaz (: 43:16

That was the lead.

Ran Harpaz (: 43:22

Sounds like a plan.

Brett Trainor (: 43:23

Awesome. Well, Ron, anything else we didn't cover that you want to add, I really appreciate your time today and we'll have to have you come back. This was super entertaining.

Ran Harpaz (: 43:31

I really enjoyed it. think the conversation was phenomenal for me to, you know, share some of the learning, but also get some guidance on how you think and your audience thinks. And I would really encourage everybody who's on the verge to take a leap, give it a try. There's a lot out there.

Brett Trainor (: 43:52

You can always go back if it's not for you, right? That's what I tell you. It's exactly I'll close on this because I used to tell people, people think they're, walking on a tightrope between, you know, skyscraper is I'm saying, no, the tightrope is literally six inches off the ground. You fall off, you can either get back on or you can go back. It's no harm, no foul. And like I said, corporate is going to be there for you. If this turns out it's not for you. So Ron, I really enjoyed it. Appreciate your time and we'll catch up with you here in the not too distant future.

Ran Harpaz (: 43:54

Corporate is going to be there forever. Don't worry about them.

Ran Harpaz (: 44:14

Definitely true.

Ran Harpaz (: 44:21

Thank you very much, we appreciate it.