Building a Personal Brand and Agency Through Resilient Freelancing with Benas Leonavicius

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Tim Melanson: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. I’m very excited for today’s guest. We have the owner and founder of Avium, and what he does is he helps to build personal brands to distinguish you from everyone else, and to open doors to many opportunities such as jobs and new clients, speaking engagements, et cetera.

So excited to be rocking out today with Benas Leonavicius. Did I get that right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s very good.

Tim Melanson: Perfect. Right on. So are you ready to rock?

Benas Leonavicius: Yes. Yes

Tim Melanson: We always start off here on a good

note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, I suppose my story of success is the one of, um, uh, uh, being very resilient on freelancing. So, uh, I started freelancing when I was sort of, you know, in university. Started doing that for pocket money. Uh, never really thought it’s something serious, [00:01:00] but then eventually decided to go full time and, uh, really stuck with it for a very long time.

I believe a lot of people sort of drop things, but even though I was earning kind of average income for many, many years while being a freelancer, always wanted to find opportunities to improve, and it did take me a, a long while. You know, I’ve been doing freelancing for over 10 years now. But in the last, like, three to four years, that is when things started shifting and I kind of unlocked a new growth path, which then eventually led me to creating the agency and now sort of growing beyond just being, uh, a solopreneur

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons why I’m doing this podcast in the first ti- in the first place is to inspire people to actually do this, to start for, for themselves, right? And I think that, um, a lot of people think that businesses have to always grow, and they always have to end up being, you know, billion-dollar businesses or whatever it is.

But on the other [00:02:00] hand, it doesn’t have to, right? I mean, you can just work a job a- as your own business and just make ends meet for however long you want. And funny thing is that eventually, like you say, things tend to kind of progress, but they don’t have to, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah. That’s, that, that was my personal choice to do that. I could’ve, I, I could’ve easily just went ahead with freelancing for, for many, many years. I now have, you know, established systems. I know how to find clients. So in e- in, in essence, I’m just, you know, a, a, a one-person team that can actually indefinitely sustain myself.

So, you know, going forward is, is, it’s a personal choice. But it doesn’t have to be. You know, I think, uh, uh, it’s always good to have a choice, and in this case, you can build, you know, your own, uh, sort of way of working without the need of, uh, to work for, for anyone else

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. And I, I think that, uh, what you, um, what you notice, I, I think for most, uh, [00:03:00] well, probably for everybody is that you just get better at stuff. You get more efficient, right? You start to, like, do things better because it just makes sense to do that. You start to learn things. And so, uh, at some point, like you say, maybe you unlock this new level and next thing you know your business goes flying.

But then on the other hand, maybe you just get better at what you do and you spend less time doing it, and you have a little bit more time freedom, right? I mean, it’s, there, there, there are just different paths that you can take in business. But after a while you are going to get better at it, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah, exact. And I feel that if you’re doing something on your own, your own project, your own business, your own freelancing opportunity, uh, at least for me, and it seems that it, uh, uh, for, for other people that I talk to, is that, uh, when you’re on your own, it kind of forces you to, uh, learn more and develop yourself compared to if you are working at a company.

At least I’ve seen a lot of examples where c- you can stagnate very easily and still [00:04:00] receive income and still sort of work at that job. Whilst when you’re a freelancer, you’re, you’re kind of forced to develop and, and learn more at least a little bit to basically keep up with all of the new trends and all of the new demands that clients have.

So in that sense of, uh, uh, you know, if you look at it from that perspective, it feels that, you know, this is an advantage, for example, for being a freelancer because you are forced to, uh, to, to kind of, uh, learn and develop yourself, which then, you know, essentially makes you a better expert at the end of the day

Tim Melanson: No, yeah. Yeah, totally. I g- I agree. I mean, if you’re working in a company, one of two things would happen. Either they would push the new thing onto you and say, "You need to learn this," and w- you know, "We’re gonna send you away for training to do whatever it is that’s coming down the pipe," right? They would push you to do that, or they’d just push you out of the company, and y- you know, they’d, uh, hire somebody else.

So, you know, when you’re working for yourself, I mean, y- you, you’re gonna figure this out because all of a sudden your revenue’s gonna be dropping, and you’re gonna [00:05:00] be like, "What’s going on?" And, you know, you’ll, you’ll be forced, like you say, to go and figure out why that’s happening, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, and I feel that builds, like, more resilience and independence, like, you know, that you are responsible for your own actions, you know? Instead of somebody forcing you to go and learn, you are the one researching, looking up, learning. And, uh, I think at, at, after some years, it builds you up as a person.

It, it, you know, you, you are now the person who actually enjoys learning, who goes out and do, does that stuff instead of being a passive observer. So, I, I do, I do wanna be more active on things that I do

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Agree. So now over the last decade or more, right? You know, sometimes things don’t go as planned, right? There are some bad notes that people hit, and it, I mean, that’s really a lot of the fear of why people don’t start in the first place. They’re just worried that they’re gonna fail, right? And I mean, the bottom line is that we all make mistakes, and it just is what it is, and we can [00:06:00] always recover.

And I’m wondering, can you share with me, you know, something, something big that happened along that journey that you recovered from and, and, and how that worked out for you?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah. Uh, well, one of the things I, I wanna say is that I always for some reason didn’t view failure as failure. I view f- I viewed failure as a, as a project. So we create… You know, I go on Google Drive, I create a, a, a, a project named whatever project that is, and if that project ends, well, I g- I’ll go on the next one.

So, you know, if you view it in that perspective, then it’s a lot easier to go and try a bunch of things and see sort of what works, what doesn’t work. I mean, I, over the years I, you know, besides freelancing, I tried a lot of different things from writing books, creating videos, working on, uh, uh, other marketing a- areas, creating your- my own e-commerce shop.

So, I mean, none of these things are, exist now because, you know, obviously I haven’t sort of, uh, uh, uh, um, haven’t done them to the f- their fullest, uh, uh, [00:07:00] potential. But something else clicked for me, like freel- freelancing and stuff like that. But probably one of the Uh, biggest failures would be, uh, or at least the most impactful for me was when I was fired from a marketing agency.

So, uh, after university, I, uh, I, um, I was still sort of freelancing, but it was, you know, like pocket money. I wasn’t taking it full time. It was something, uh, that I had on the side. And then I knew that I, I kind of need to, um, you know, find a job and I wanna get some experience from working somewhere before I do my own thing.

That was sort of my, the way that I thought, uh, things need to go. And I got a job at a marketing agency, uh, as a manager without any managerial experience. I have no idea how I oversold myself or how people overestimated me. I think it was kind of, uh, on both of us here. But, uh, uh, I was there for only two months.

There were also two other girls that were also hired at the same [00:08:00] time as me, and, uh, they did their job by the book. Everything was sort of went as, as company expected. And I was the, the young one trying to improve everything, change everything, go out of my way, do a lot more. And apparently that was not expected.

That was actually considered very intrusive, you know? And, uh, they were like, "Nah, nah, you know, we, we don’t need somebody that basically breaks the way we do things here. We wanna go and do everything by the book slowly, casually, and keep things simple." And so they fired me. And I remember I was very angry at that time, uh, at, at nine to five jobs in general.

It’s like, why? I’m, I’m trying my best here to make things better, and what I get for is being fired? Um, I– at that time, that… the, it felt like the world kind of has ended for me. I don’t know. It, it really, really stuck deeply with me, uh, whenever, uh, I was let go. I mean, eventually that, uh, [00:09:00] looking back now, it a- it was actually one of the best decisions that, that…

one of the best things that happened to me. But, uh, you know, it didn’t feel that way back then

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I got my hand slapped for trying to make things better at one point too when I was in the corporate world, and that, it is interesting how that works. But you know what? I’m pretty sure that’s like the calling card of an entrepreneur, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah. It seems like, uh, I mean, I didn’t… I mean, I was reading a lot of biographies and stuff like that. I, I hear these stories. Whenever that happens to you, never think that it’s, it’s something that, uh, it, th- this is gonna be your story. But then looking back, damn, it’s, it’s the same old tale, you know?

Tim Melanson: You, you try to change things in a corporate world and they don’t like that, and so you start your own thing, right? That’s the way it

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Tim Melanson: Well, that’s awesome. So now let’s talk a little bit about The Jam Room, ’cause I mean, you’ve been working from home for a long time and I’m wondering how do you have your home office structured?

Benas Leonavicius: Oh, yeah. So the thing is I, [00:10:00] uh, um, I only have my home office for how many years now? Like maybe four or five. So half of that time, you know, working from home meant working from university sort of, uh, uh, uh, university dorms and working from cafes and, and didn’t even have money at that time to spend on a proper like, uh, co-working setup and stuff like that.

So it was very messy. But, uh, kind of somehow made it work. But eventually I, I always knew that I wanted a proper home, uh, setup and, uh, uh, when– once we bought this place that, that, that we live now with my wife, I wanted to basically make the home setup to feel as best as it possibly can. I kind of… I’m a kind of person that really cares about how things look, the tidiness, the organization.

I mean, you can probably see by the, the way kind of the, the background looks and stuff like that. So it’s, it’s, it’s important to me to create an atmosph- atmosphere where I kind of feel good, [00:11:00] uh, uh, and, and I can sort of be much more productive this way. So a lot of attention to details. I mean, having some lights, you know, for podcast, having kind of microphones set up, having monitors and standing desks and then sort of there is this couch set up here as well for, for chilling.

So, um, just designed a place where I could feel, uh, uh, I could feel very well and, and, and that I think brings out the best of me in terms of productivity

Tim Melanson: Right on. So now I, I, I’m the same way. I worked from kitchen table for a long time before I got to a situation where I could, you know, have a, a space for my actual office. And I’m wondering, like, coming… ‘Cause we all make it work. I mean, w- well, we’re gonna make it work no matter what, right? But what do you think was different now that you have an actual office?

Like, how do you feel like that has changed the way that you work?

Benas Leonavicius: Mm, one of the things that, uh, um, [00:12:00] one of the things that for sure it made, uh, things better is that now since I have everything set up as I want to, it feels that I’m– I can jump into things straight away. So before, you need to go to a coffee, you need to open the laptop, you need to open all of the tabs, you need to connect things, you need to sh- you know, if you’re g- on a Zoom call with a client, then you need to check if everything is right.

So I think there’s just a lot of these minor things that we don’t think about that we need to do just to get started on the work. Now, l- right now, everything is here. Like, I come in, I unlock the laptop, and I can jump in straight into work, which for me allowed me to be much more fluid on when I can jump in, for example, for a quick 10 minutes.

Like, before I go to bed, I can actually come up to m- my table. It’s, it’s a standing desk. I actually even stand. I can answer quick emails. I can do some quick things. I can check some things. And I think [00:13:00] that allowed me to be more organized and productive in that sense, where I have these little moments of, uh, productiveness that is kind of outside of working hours per se, but it allows me to just be on top of things without me feeling that I’m– that I need to go somewhere, open the laptop, uh, figure things out.

I mean, having, for example, bigger screen attached to my laptop allows me to have several different things all, all at the same time. If I’m working on my laptop, I need to be focused on one thing, so it’s very difficult to switch between. You don’t feel productive. You might go on LinkedIn or social media, and it’s, it’s, uh, uh…

I, I think this way, uh, uh, my work is way more structured

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, and, and I mean,

it’s almost like you had to commute to your to

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, in a sense, in a sense, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which

feels very, very weird, but yeah, that’s true.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and I, I imagine, like, I [00:14:00] mean, it’s, it’s kinda like a, a progression, right? I mean, maybe at one point you just don’t have the space in your house right now to be able to set up that specific office, and that’s fine. You know, it, it is a s- a shorter commute to open your laptop and get, and get started than going to a job.

But, uh, but it is good to kinda, like, kinda have that as an end goal to have eventually I’m gonna have an office with a, with a setup. ‘Cause like you say, it is so much more productive to be able to come in, you know, five minutes, boom, you’re, you’re, you’re into work, right? Uh, or even less, right? Yeah. That’s

Benas Leonavicius: I do. And I, and I feel like, uh, at least for me, uh, having worked so many years, like, uh, I think it was, what, six years, something like that, having worked from all of the different places, d- not having an office, I now really value all the little details, like the, the, the, the carpet. The, for example, I have these, uh, these things right here on, on this wall basically are soundproof.

So the sound in here is much, much better. It’s [00:15:00] much, much nicer. So it just… it creates this, a much more, uh, calm and relaxing feeling, which for me at least really helps, uh, I think to, to do a lot more work compared to when I was, you know, working from cafes, from loud environments, from just anywhere and everywhere

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right on. So now let’s talk a little bit about the practice. Like, uh, I know that, uh, when, when you work for yourself, um, there’s, I, I guess there’s a lot more self-care that has to go into place, right? ‘Cause you have to bring the energy every single day. And I’m wondering, like h- how do you do that in, in your business?

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, honestly, a lot of things, uh, uh, that are not related to work. So I do care a lot about my health and nutrition. I’ve been going to the gym for the past also 10 years, like, ever since I started, really fell in love with it. I mean, [00:16:00] everything that I’m talking right now, it was a slow progression. It wasn’t like that, you know, 10 years ago I was this fit or this well, um, uh, sort of, uh, this well-rounded as I am, as I feel I am right now.

It was a very long journey of finding things little by little. But right now, I think, you know, having a good sleep schedule, uh, working out at least four to f- uh, three to four times per week really helps me as well. You know, having like meal prepping for me was also like allowed me to eat the same meals, uh, at the same time, uh, in the same, same time of day, uh, quite regularly, which just allows me to feel much better.

And everything, I think, basically compounds into me being then, uh, able to do a lot better quality work whenever I need to, because everything else outside of the work is kind of settled. And I do, um, pay a lot of attention to all of these things, uh, [00:17:00] to, to even have things where I can, uh, relax, where I can go for walks, where I can sort of clear my head.

Because if I’m g- because one, uh, one ba- disadvantage of having an o- uh, like, um, home office is that you are technically… I can stay in this room for like 12 hours straight, but I, and I, and I used to, but what I found is that you, you, you kind of burn down, burn out very, very quickly. So like, you know, in, in just a week’s time, you, you still sit those like 10 hours per day, but you barely do anything.

So, uh, you know, I, I found that it, it’s not the way that I need to work. It’s more about the quality of work rather than the actual hours. So, uh, I do try to take care of myself so that then I’m able to do the best work possible.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. This is the topic that just blows my mind the most. Like, it, ’cause, uh, you know, with all the people that I’ve interviewed, everybody seems to have this in [00:18:00] common, and I don’t think it’s super common amongst, you know, the people who are employed to, to, like, really focus on what they’re eating and whether ex- they’re exercising and all that.

It just seems to be a skewed kind of like more people focus on that when they work for themselves than they do when they work in an office. It, it just seems odd to me, but

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, I feel, yeah, I feel– you know what? I feel that, uh, a lot of the, um, uh, skills and traits are very transferable. So let’s say if you are in, uh, like… And it goes, I think, both, both ways. But if you’re inclined to work for yourself, it means you, you’re probably a little more organized, a little more disciplined, a little more into taking things, um, uh, into your own hands type of person, you know?

And then I think all of those same skills and traits, but all– they really well apply to, you know, fitness and gym and, uh, taking care [00:19:00] of yourself and stuff like that. So I think that is why that, that correlation exists. I also fi-find it very interesting sort of that it seems people seem to like– they, they seems to correlate very well.

And at least this is, I think, the reason why it is. Because people that tend to go into working, like freelancing or working for themselves, have these traits and then once they build some kind of income, some kind of business, they, I think get to a point, um, at least I, I got to a point where, oh, okay, now that I have this freelancing thing, now that I have my own income, I– how do I make this even better?

And then I found that by doing things not related to working. Sleep, fitness, nutrition makes my work better. So I think a lot of people arrive to the same conclusion where they then start to take care of themselves and then their business grows, uh, you know, as a side bonus because of that. And then, yeah, and then from there everything kind of grows.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, [00:20:00] and, and the cost is bigger too. I mean, if, if I get sick and, and now I’m off for a couple weeks, uh, I mean, the cost there is way bigger than just calling in sick at your office. And I mean, most offices are, like, you still get paid, right? But I mean, if I’m sick, sick, and I can’t do work for a couple weeks or for even for a few days, that, that impacts things a, quite a bit more than it would if I had a job, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Oh, yeah, I’ve been in many situations like that myself where I got seriously ill for, for, for a week or for a two and, you know, at, at some points, you know, your income basically cuts in half, uh, for that month. You know, nobody is taking care of you. So yeah, yeah, I’ve, I’ve been in this situa- … I mean, that’s also one of the reasons why now I, um, s- started building a team, like a very lean team, started building an agency because I knew that I don’t wanna be the only one that, uh, you know, uh, that clients rely on the work being delivered.

So I’m not planning to do like a big company or anything like that. But just [00:21:00] having a few people, a very lean team, does help with this specific aspect when if you are sick, the work doesn’t stop

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and that’s, uh, that’s a big thing too, especially if you’re thinking about transitioning at some point to maybe eventually stop working, like retiring or whatever it is, which, uh, I mean, how, how does that work, right? If you’ve built this team and now you have all these clients that rely on you, and now you’re saying, "Okay, well I’m done."

Now what, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah. I th… And, you know, I, honestly, I f- I believe that the, in the future, I think we will see an explosion, like, in the next, like, 10 years or something, uh, a lot of these mini teams, like three to 10 people, businesses, teams, service things that, you know, it can be a, a, a YouTuber with a YouTube channel.

It can be an agency with, you know, five to six to, uh, people team. So I think we’ll see a lot of people moving into these structures [00:22:00] because they then allow, uh, uh, basically for, uh, especially for the founders to then step back if they need to while the business is still running

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right on. So how do we, uh, I mean, the world has changed quite a bit in the last even 10 years, right, since you started. So, so w- how do you now get fans? ‘Cause I mean, the audience is everywhere. Everybody can go on social media. There’s people everywhere. H- how do you get them to look at you, right, and, and to follow you and to, and to hire you?

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, yes. You know, you know, one of the things that I n- now strongly b- okay, so interesting thing. So I run a personal branding agency, but the reason I run that, because I, I strongly believe that personal branding and having a pers- strong personal brand is gonna become one of the most important things in the next five years.

Like, uh, especially, uh, since AI is kind of taking over, there’s a lot of AI content. People don’t know who’s who. It f- it seems that, [00:23:00] uh, whoever has a strong personal brand can get all of the opportunities come their way, whatever that sponsorship lead clients, you know. And it’s, and it’s personal, meaning that, you know, if you just suddenly decide to change what you do and from agency become, uh, a creator, that also works because it’s your pers- personal brand.

So the way I, uh… And I mean, I, I am preaching what I’m doing for others. I’m also now actively building my own personal brand because I believe that’s gonna be very, very valuable in the future. So, um, how to get fans? Well, having a strong personal brand is one way to go about that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and what does that mean? So that means, like, to, like, brand yourself as your own name rather than a company? Is that what you’re saying, or-

Benas Leonavicius: Yes, exactly. So I’m talking about, so if you, uh, Tim, for example, if you have your own Instagram, if you have your own LinkedIn, it means you [00:24:00] basically brand yourself as, as a person first, and then you attach yourself to projects. A project can be an agency, a project can be a podcast. It can be many different things.

But people, first of all, people like to follow people rather than companies. So they will follow you first before they, you know, have a very strong relationship to an, to an actual company. So it’s, it’s much dif- more difficult to build, um, a relationship with a brand for, for people than, than to build for, uh, with a, with a person.

Also, I mean, we’re talking like millions of doll- of, of dollars spent, you know, on, you know. Look at how Coca Cola or N- or Nike spends much on building their brand and people attaching themselves to a brand. It’s, it’s a very expensive and difficult thing to do. But having just, you know, a few thousand followers on Instagram, a few thousand followers on LinkedIn, people that actually follow you, it’s, it, it, they, having that kind of, of a strong personal brand [00:25:00] allows you to open a lot more opportunities for whatever that you do

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Okay. And so what does that mean, uh, building a brand? Does it mean, you know, posting content or doing website? Like, what, what does it mean to do that?

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, so I mean, nowadays there are so many ways of doing it. Like personally, I work with keynote speakers, book authors, uh, executives and, and company founders. And for them we have the few key specific areas that are most important ones. So first of all, it’s their website, uh, which we do SEO and AI search.

Nowadays since a lot of people are looking up for people and experts on AI, we want them to be found. Best way of finding them is having a strong website. Then LinkedIn is also a very important, uh, aspect for those people. This is where event planners, uh, all of the, uh, um, eh, important people that they want to be found are actually finding them there.

And then we also have, uh, podcasts and YouTube, so videos are also very [00:26:00] important, uh, strategy of this short form and long form. And then podcasting is, uh, another way to also build, uh, y- a strong personal brand. And the good thing is why specifically these channels is because w- in this day and age, uh, it’s very difficult to build something, um, on their own, uh, channel.

Uh, I mean technically you can just be an Instagram influencer and creator and stuff like that and have nothing else. But for, uh, people that want their personal brand to be everywhere, it, it makes sense to, to have different, uh, platforms work for each other. So for example, if you have a strong YouTube channel, that helps your website.

If it helps your website, it helps you rank on AI search. If it helps you rank on AI search, then people probably are finding you on LinkedIn. So you need to have a strong LinkedIn presence. So it’s, uh, like everything nowadays are, is very interconnected, so having these key platforms work together as [00:27:00] one, like basically gets you the best results possible

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, and nowadays, I mean, it’s, it’s, uh, especially with podcasting now, right? I mean, there’s a lot of people that consume podcasts, right? And so you can get your personality out there pretty easily and inexpensively now just by appearing on podcasts or even starting your own, right?

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah. I, I, I love podc- I love listening to podcasts. That, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I started doing them myself is I had a thought, "Hey, it would be fun to also jump and, and be on, you know, uh, be on some podcasts, tell my own story." And I mean, I didn’t know how far that would go. It just started as a sort of a, a, a fun thing that I would try out as many of my other experiments were.

But this one worked very well, and I’m still, you know, continuing, uh, to, to do that. But, uh, uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s one of the, one of the things

Tim Melanson: Well, we’ve already gotten a little bit into your guest solo, but, uh, we’ll, we’ll go a little bit deeper. So what is exciting in your business right now?[00:28:00]

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, most exciting part for me is, is building agency. Like, I’ve only started… Like, my first team hire was end of last year. Uh, then I hired two more people just in the last couple of months. So for me, building systems, uh, building organizational stuff, communicational stuff, actually extracting everything that was in my brain into some kind of a system, into some kind of, um, a, a document that now everything is much more streamlined than it was before.

I’m, I am organized. I do have my own things of, ways of working, but the way I worked was not set up in a way where, uh, somebody else could come in and help me. So it’s very, like, personal to me in the way I do things. So I’m basically transferring everything and making sure that I’m building something much more sustainable than just, uh, myself.

And for me, that’s actually quite exciting. I mean, I’ve never done that before, so there are challenges. There are things that come [00:29:00] up. But, uh, uh, as I have worked so many years kind of by myself, it’s actually quite cool to have a team. Like, it’s, it’s, not gonna lie, it’s, it’s actually quite refreshing to be able to share some ideas, communicate with people, have some meetings just to discuss things.

So, uh, for me, it’s very new, but, uh, very, very cool

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah, and as you start to, like, set things up for someone else to take over, you learn a lot about your own processes and how things are going, and you probably found some better ways to do things, didn’t you?

Benas Leonavicius: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We, uh… I mean, I… The, the way I was doing things was it, it worked, it brought results, but it was not, not the most efficient way of doing this. So one, one thing is that efficiency is just increasing through the roof. But now that I’m working with people, I’m finding, like, people are bringing ideas and things that I never even thought of.

So [00:30:00] this is actually expanding how we do things or what we do beyond of my own capabilities. So, uh, uh, you know, going forward, I wanna actually hire people that are smarter and more better in, in, in stuff that I am in the specific things, uh, because I want, you know, the best possible outcome in this area.

I, you know, I’m not that kind of person that I wanna be on, on top of things in… Well, in the sense where I should be the smartest in my company. No, I should hire people that are way better at me at what they do. My job is, is, is basically to bring the team together and make sure everything works and, and, uh, uh, and, and, and keep this agency running

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree with that for sure. You don’t… Uh, what was it, Henry Ford saying that he wanted to be in a room with everybody, or if, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, I think is what he said.

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I’m now finding that, that, you know, uh, it’s, it’s so valuable to, to work with other people. There are so much synergies happening [00:31:00] where one plus one doesn’t equal two. You know, usually with, especially with the small teams, it, it feels that we’re way more efficient than just, you know, four people working on this

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right on. So now tell me a little bit more about the, you know, how people find you and, and what that process looks like if they wanna work with you

Benas Leonavicius: Uh, so avm.vip, that is basically the, the website for the agency, video testimonials. Everything is explained there, case studies, all that stuff. All of that jazz, all the usual things are, are on the website. But if you wanna get more personal, I do share a lot on LinkedIn. So if my name, first name, surname on LinkedIn, I share a lot of behind the scenes.

Uh, and if you really wanna dig in deeper, I also have a YouTube channel where I actually document… Well, first I documented my freelancing journey, now I’m actually documenting behind the scenes of how I’m building the agency and what’s working, what’s not working, and how our things are running

Tim Melanson: Love that. Okay, well, before we end here, I got one more question for you. This [00:32:00] might be the hard one though. So let’s talk a little bit about music. Tell me, who is your favorite rock star or band?

Benas Leonavicius: Rock? Oh, man, I’m not that… I mean, I do enjoy listening to music, and I, I think I have such a big variety that I listen to from, like, rock star to even, like, classical music. But I’m so bad at following artists. I’m so bad at remembering names of the artists. So I, I don’t think I have one, to be honest.

Like, if I had to need to select… Okay, maybe, I mean, Linkin Park was the one that really stuck with me since, you know, the early days, and also with the new artist that, uh, you know, the, the lead singer passed away, and the new female, uh, artist came, came along. And I think they released a couple of songs, and I was really, really impressed with the songs and, and the way she, uh, really, really enjoyed that one.

I think that, that maybe’s… That’s the fir- well, first thing that popped into my head, actually. Yeah

Tim Melanson: Nice. Right on. Had, do you ever see him in concert?

Benas Leonavicius: No, no, no. No, I haven’t. [00:33:00] But I’ve, I used to listen to them, so I mean, I still actually listen to their music to this day. It’s, it’s, uh, for some reason very comforting

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right on. Well, awesome. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun

Benas Leonavicius: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Tim, for having me

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you go, you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information, and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast