We were lucky to catch up with Zach Hoerth recently and have shared our conversation below.

Zach, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

I think the general consensus is that family businesses are tough and I can certainly see why but at the same time, who’s got your back or an interest in your success, like your family?!

I’m a huge believer in family business and when I say family that doesn’t limit you to only those who are blood related… in fact, they don’t have to be related at all for you to accept them into your family and treat them as such.

I always tell people to stay away from those who say “don’t take it personally, it’s just business.”… Those people are a$$holes! What is more personal than the job I do to provide for my family?

I welcome my biological family into my business, I welcome any other good person who’s looking for a family into my family and business.

My business is actually what gave birth to what I would call my current family which is comprised of people from all walks of life.

Family business is the absolute only way to go and if you want to achieve maximum success you need to be surrounded with people that have one another’s back and look our for the whole groups best interest.

Zach, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Zach. I got into web design and digital marketing out of necessity. Through running various different businesses and not having a ton of working capital, I had no choice but to learn digital marketing so my endeavors even had a chance at success. It certainly wasn’t easy but as time went on, I started to figure things out and began gaining customers.

As I continued to build momentum, I was able to duplicate what I was doing across multiple businesses and industry’s and before I knew it had multiple endeavors going at any given time.

As my network or projects grew so did my community and people who had small businesses or an idea for one would come to me for ideas. At that point, my focus shifted into using the marketing strategies I had been deploying to help others and before I knew it, I was working full time helping people build their businesses.

I’ve been building websites since 2006 which sounds crazy looking back but it’s been an amazing journing.

We’ve worked on websites and projects for huge companies, famous people and tons of amazing small businesses.

Werkaholix has grown into your laid back but ultra informative, capable and result generating marketing team.

It’s been an awesome journey and with as fast as tech is moving, it feels like we’re just getting started!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had a martial arts business at one point that by all accounts was doing amazing. We were attracting top fighters in professional MMA including many from the UFC and professional boxing. Our coaching lineup was one of the top their was comprised of some of the most respected names in the sport from all over the world. And we were winning!

At one point, we expanded to have a full athlete management business and even a weekly ESPN radio show. It was incredible!… for a period of time…

I learned some incredibly important lessons on that journey. None of which were more important than creating a grateful mindset and culture.

As time went on, many began taking our success for granted and spent more time enjoying the fruits of our labor than continuing the labor that created them.

I learned so may things about mindset and discipline and being consistent in the face of distractions.

After riding what could have only been described as an absolute epic wave, it was decided to take the lessons learned and apply them to a completely different industry which I successfully did.

It was one of the most emotional decisions I had ever made because so much of myself was invested in that brand. I couldn’t possible sell it to someone else and see them with my baby. I actually ended up closing it at the end of my lease and since it’s reminder and the lessons derived from it has blessed many countless times.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I’ve borrowed money both publicly and privately. I used equipment, account receivables, personal assets and more as collateral on loans. I’ve sold percentages of companies. I’ve given people dividend rights. I’m pretty sure I’ve done everything under the sun at some point with experience in dozens of different companies and the most important lesson, I knew the whole time…

Be conservative. I know everything has to happen yesterday but the reality is most often, it doesn’t and if you really want your business to survive it need to be able to breath. Being able to breath is possible be reducing pressure aka obligations.

I always tell people… Let’s figure out how we can get this thing making some money and then we’ll use it’s money to finance the expansion.

To this day, I still have a super high risk tolerance but being conservative with money and not spending what I don’t have is an absolute pillar of any what some might call “success” I’ve achieved.

Contact Info:

• Website: werkaholix.com
• Instagram: @werkaholix