From Lone Wolf to Leading the Pack - How EO Transformed a Freelancer into a CEO

Brent Peterson (00:03.006)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Tim Barsness with fjorge. Tim, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.

Tim (00:16.27)
Sure, I'm Tim Barsness as founder and CEO of Fjorge. I've been working in or building Fjorge for almost 20 years now, kind of taking the long path to growth, but I'm very happy with where it's come. Shoot, I've forgotten Brent, what were the other questions you asked?

Brent Peterson (00:36.714)
like your day-to-day role and maybe a passion.

Tim (00:38.546)
Okay, sure. So I'm the CEO visionary in traction terms for fjorge. So day to day that means I guess a lot of things, but primary things that I think about are how do we fit into the market? How do we attract better talent? And how do we deliver better results to our customers?

Brent Peterson (01:04.774)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think talent, talent attraction is such a big thing now, especially in the tech business. It's people can't believe how hard it is to find people and retain people even more importantly, right?

Tim (01:12.162)
For sure.

Tim (01:15.721)
Mm-hmm.

Yep, absolutely. You also asked about my passions in life. I'll name three, if that's all right with you. So first, I'm big into hockey. I started playing hockey after college and have really enjoyed men's league hockey. I'm a golfer, so I spend my summers doing that. And then I have four kids, and I'm into whatever they're into on any given day.

Brent Peterson (01:24.456)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (01:39.13)
Yeah, the kids probably take up 110% of your life and then the rest is left for hockey and golf. Tim, before we get started on our content, we're going to talk a little bit about fjorge, we're going to talk about the Minnesota, EO Minnesota, and maybe the board. We can touch on your role with the board. But I'd like to tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should this joke be free or do you think we should charge for it? It's called the Free Joke Project and I have some really cool AI-driven

Tim (01:42.626)
That's right. There you go, yep.

Brent Peterson (02:07.306)
images to go along with it. I made a seal, a seal for the joke, you know, like the Minnesota State Seal, but it and so it literally gave me a seal in it. So it's really cool. So here we go. What do you call a paper airplane that can't fly? A stationery.

Tim (02:26.098)
I'd give that one away for free.

Brent Peterson (02:27.406)
Yeah, I know. Remember I told you before that the jokes aren't going to be funny?

Tim (02:32.15)
Yeah, well, I like it. I, you know, you got to chuck a lot of me. Can I give it a go? All right, here we go. Knock, knock. Interrupting cow. Moo!

Brent Peterson (02:37.534)
Yeah, go for it.

Who's there?

Interrupting cow who? Kind of saw that one coming that that's a good one. I'd pay for that one. All right, I got I got it I got a return for you. I've never started a new band. Wait Hold on. Hold on. Geez. I already blew it. This is where the editing comes in I started a new band called blanket. It's a cover band

Tim (02:51.341)
Alright, I'll take it.

Tim (03:01.615)
Alright.

Tim (03:05.766)
Oh nice. You're killing it, Brent. I'll pay for that one.

Brent Peterson (03:08.63)
I know. I keep trying to lose weight, but somehow it keeps finding me.

Yeah, we'll stop. We could go all day.

Tim (03:17.045)
Isn't that the truth?

Brent Peterson (03:21.782)
We could, but we're not. I know, you got worried. I could see the worry in your face. All right, Tim. All right, so let's, tell us a little bit, give us some background on fjorge. When did you start it? And then tell us, like, in that journey of starting your business, how did you meet EO and how did that come about?

Tim (03:23.671)
Well.

Tim (03:42.142)
Yeah, sure. So I've officially founded fjorge in 2005. We were kind of two people through my early to mid-20s. So it was the two of us working on custom software projects. That's primarily still what we do today. I joined EO's Accelerator program in 2008.

So I was an accelerator, their accelerator program from 2008 to about 2012. And that's a program that takes, takes businesses from the 250,000 mark to the million mark to help you qualify for EO. Um, so that program was really beneficial for me. Um, I, I met a lot of, you know, like minded people. I think, um, you know, when I initially started, I felt really alone in what I was doing and to know that there are other people kind of in the same boat.

with similar kind of problems with that business size. It's really valuable to me. I stepped away from Accelerator in 12 and then joined EO proper in 2015. So I've been in EO about eight plus years. It's been a huge part of my personal and professional life.

Brent Peterson (05:00.41)
Yeah. And I got my same introduction into Accelerator. I think I started in 2014 in Accelerator and it was one meeting. Like we did a, it was a quarterly day and, um, one thing was like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I need. And I think just, I want to just dig in on what you said about, like you felt alone, like there wasn't anyone to talk to. And for me, I just did whatever I was going to do and half the time, more than half the time I was wrong. Um, and nobody.

Tim (05:08.268)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (05:28.662)
Yep.

Brent Peterson (05:29.598)
kind of bounce ideas off of.

Tim (05:31.838)
Right. I agree with that. I think for me, you know, it's not like I had this vision to build this grand thing. I was really in a position where I was almost a glorified freelancer, had one employee, right? And if our basic market positioning was if somebody had a technical problem that they wanted solved, we would solve it for them. But, you know, it's kind of hard to explain to people what that means and find them at the right time. So.

I guess I would say I didn't really have a vision. I maybe didn't even know what vision was. And it's something that finding other people and understanding how they think about things really helped me there.

Brent Peterson (06:10.486)
Do you think there's a hurdle, because I was also a freelancer with one employee way back in the day, do you think there's a hurdle with how do I manage a person and how do I get those tasks out of my head into that person so we can scale this?

Tim (06:27.698)
I mean, there's definitely a hurdle for that. And I think, you know, there's another term scaling that I had no idea what that meant or why it mattered. Um, but you know, I made the assumption, um, early on in my work that because it came pretty naturally to me, um, that it was easy and that anyone could do it. Um, and I found out kind of the hard way that, you know, it's, there's a lot more to it than that. There's, you know, the things that come naturally to me on my inside to be able to.

put those into other people and help them have similar or the same passion as me was a real challenge for sure.

Brent Peterson (07:03.89)
Yeah, and I think we did, we'll talk maybe a little about EOS later, but there's some tools that you can employ if you're using some of the tools out of the toolbox, which is an open source toolbox that anybody can use. That would be a, there's a people finder and there's a, there's a, there's all kinds of different things that you can employ now that as you get more educated to help you understand is this the right person for the right seat.

Tim (07:15.359)
Yep. Right.

Tim (07:28.062)
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, both right person and right seat are critical, obviously. You know, I always, well, I worked at a couple organizations when I was in high school where they had they had values, but they were values in the sense that they had words on the wall. And if you asked anyone about them, they wouldn't be able to say how they relate to them. And I think when we implemented traction or implementer

help teach me what it meant to have values that matter and instill them in our people.

Brent Peterson (08:01.906)
Yeah, and I love that idea about values because one of the things that you should be doing, I should never say should because we shouldn't should on people, right? One thing that we always try to do is hire people for values and it's easier said than done, right? You have these core values and you hire people that match those core values and if they don't match the core values, A, don't hire them, but B, figure out at some point they're going to have to go, right? There's not...

Tim (08:10.472)
You can shoot on me if you want.

Tim (08:16.673)
Yep.

Tim (08:23.148)
Right.

Brent Peterson (08:27.862)
There's not an easy way to say, hey, you don't meet any of our core values. Maybe there's a different job for you in our organization. No, there's no job for you.

Tim (08:34.346)
Yep. Yeah, it was really interesting. When we created our values, we were a team of six. And we basically based the values off me and one other person who I saw as the successful people of the company at that point. And we, over the six months that followed, we turned over the other four people. So it was, I remember my implementer telling me to expect that to happen. And it was.

I kind of thought, well, we'll see. And that's exactly what happened.

Brent Peterson (09:07.454)
Yeah, I think that our transition into, well, number one, just going in from, from nothing into accelerator and then to EO, but then we also implemented EOS. Uh, our implementer had our leadership team come and we met at their, their office and we all sat around a big table and spent two days. And at the end of that, he said, well, Brent, I think there's these two people that shouldn't be on the leadership team. There's no reason for them. So, you know, we had spent a couple of years with people on the leadership team.

Tim (09:17.708)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (09:23.446)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (09:32.194)
Yup.

Brent Peterson (09:35.902)
that we had modeled off of EOS without an implementer, only to find out that they were sort of redundant.

Tim (09:42.37)
So yeah, I think, I mean, it's interesting to, one mistake that we made at one point was building an org chart around the people that we had, rather than around what the business needed and really thinking critically about what are the seats that we need, do we have someone in that role full-time, in that role part-time, or otherwise? I'm gonna go turn that light back up.

Brent Peterson (10:09.126)
Yeah, that, no, it's all right. That idea of the org chart and having the right seat is so important.

Tim (10:09.506)
Sorry Brent.

Tim (10:20.279)
Yeah, for sure.

Brent Peterson (10:28.894)
We'll talk really fast. And I've seen other companies make that mistake where, hey, I have all these people, I'm going to fit them into seats. Instead of thinking about here, here's my business needs. Let's see if we have the right person for the right seat, rather than the person that can fit in a seat. That's a, that's a hard concept to get over.

Tim (10:30.41)
Okay, let's go.

Tim (10:49.63)
Yeah, exactly. And you know, another thing that really helped us was being explicit about what the seats are, even if we don't have someone in them, so that we, everyone is on the same page, but we know we need this. We're planning to do it at some point. We're not doing it now. We're doing that purposefully. Um, you know, now we can stop talking about issues of if we had this or if we had that, it's like, we've all decided, we've already decided this is not what we're doing right now and we acknowledge that we do need it in the future.

Brent Peterson (11:16.614)
Yeah, what sort of challenges have you seen then with getting your team to adopt that sort of model of having a leadership and having these L10 meetings and things like that?

Tim (11:29.478)
Um, you know, challenge wise, I think there were a bunch along the way, you know, at first it was, we had a leadership level 10 and then as you were kind of saying, um, everybody at, when we were six people, everybody thought they should be on the leadership team and you know, it turns out like, what does the business need is what matters, right? Um, so we had a leadership L10 that had me and one other person. And then we had it, uh, you know, call it a delivery or

for lack of a better term, level 10 with the rest of the people. And it's just, the reason they're separated is because you're talking about different things. You're talking about things that don't relate to delivery in the leadership L10, and you're talking about things that don't relate to leadership in the delivery L10. So separating was, I would say, not well received, but necessary and fruitful.

Brent Peterson (12:21.086)
Yeah, I think my former business partner would always say there's certain things that don't need to be heard out of Brent's head because I might have a, I'm the visionary and I'm, I'm an idea person and most of them are bad, but I like to talk about them and it gets everybody very nervous, especially as your team grows. And you start talking about, here's all the vision. Here's the vision that I have. And if you don't, if you don't filter that pretty soon, like, Oh man, like

Tim (12:44.22)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (12:49.854)
You know, we talked about that last quarter and it's still not done. Like, why did they even tell us about this?

Tim (12:54.494)
Right, yep, exactly. I remember very vividly when we were about 25 people, I'd go ask someone a question like, hey, I have this idea to try this thing. And I'd check in a week later to find out they'd spent the whole week working on it. It's like, oh, that was not what I meant by asking that question. And I understand why you might think that's impressive or you maybe took that step, but that's not where we need to go right now. We need to focus on our priorities.

Brent Peterson (13:11.444)
Right. Yeah.

Tim (13:22.358)
come back to it at the appropriate time. So I'll put it on the issues list and we'll get to it.

Brent Peterson (13:25.95)
Did you say, yeah, we'll still use a DAC remaker in the lunch room though?

Tim (13:30.575)
For sure. Yep, yep, yeah, it was a really good idea. Yeah, there you go.

Brent Peterson (13:31.906)
Because it was a great idea, right? You just don't want it at the lunchroom, but hey, we'll just use it on weekends So tell us When so tell it you're on the board There's a path to leadership in EO. Tell us about why you joined the board, you know Then when how many times you've been on the board and right now you're the finance chair. Tell us a little bit about that

Tim (13:46.53)
Yeah.

Tim (13:53.346)
Sure, yeah. So I am, yeah, I've been on the board, I think this is my third year, and I just signed up for year four, all as the finance chair. Along the way, I added a governance chair as well, as a necessary role, so I'm doing that one as well. So I joined primarily to get involved and get connected to people outside of my forum. So a lot of times when you talk to people about

about EO. The thing that they mentioned first is their forum and how valuable their forum is. And I agree, it is extremely valuable. I love them. We've been on an amazing run and I see that going for quite some time. But I think the other thing that's maybe a little bit more lost is you get out of EO what you put into it. So, you know, getting outside the forum, building connections, learning from people.

It was an effort to really kind of understand that. I get to know people best when I work side by side with them. So it's been really nice to, you know, especially have a seat that really like touches every aspect of, of EO or of the chapter in a way to get to know other members better.

Brent Peterson (15:11.55)
Yeah, and I think too there's a little bit of a bridge between what your forum does and what the board does. There's a communication path and it's always important to have that, right?

Tim (15:19.774)
Right, exactly. Yeah, that's, you know, having people in your forum who know what's going on in the chapter and getting, you know, getting the coolest events for me are the ones where my forum is at the event. You really get a lot out of it. You see who people are connected to how they're connected, you learn you grow all together.

Brent Peterson (15:38.538)
In our green room before we started, I told you about that I've been interviewing some newer people who are just joining you. And now you're a seasoned member, 10 years. Did you have certain expectations that you had prior? And can you reflect on those? I know I didn't even set you up for this question, but it's in

Tim (15:58.878)
Yeah, that's all right. Here's what I can tell you. So because I was an accelerator, I had a pretty good understanding of what EO was all about. So I know a lot of people when they join, they're surprised at, you know, it sounds like a business group, but what it is from my perspective is really a life group, you know, and your business is a big part of your life, but balanced life includes your family, your community, and yourself. And to grow in all aspects has been...

Something that I kind of knew was coming, but compared to Accelerator, it's actually even more in EO. It's more balanced than the Accelerator program, which really seemed to focus mostly on.

Brent Peterson (16:40.998)
Yeah, I think maybe the accelerator too is driven by the accountability leader, you know, where it's not self-managed and you do have, my experience was that every six months I had a different experience in accelerator because every single leader was so different. Whereas in, you know, your forum, it's pretty consistent. We have a constitution that we should live by and certain rules that we work on as a forum. So it is a little bit more consistent.

Tim (16:47.47)
true.

Tim (16:55.711)
Yeah. Yep.

Tim (17:05.804)
Yep.

Tim (17:09.279)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (17:10.314)
From that expectation standpoint then, we did talk a little bit about, it's not all about business and some of these groups out there really are only about business. But I also wanted to kind of tie back when I said we shouldn't should on people. What does that mean? And how does that reflect in how we help others, right?

Tim (17:32.374)
Yeah. Okay. Sure. So it shouldn't should. I'm going to say that to me, that means you're, you're not really shooting. Like you, you make it sound like you're sharing an idea, but what you're really doing is casting an expectation, right? Um, and, but it's an expectation where you don't get agreement, you know, so the other party receives it. They know that you've said should, but they're by you saying should, are they making a commitment? You know, they're not. Um,

So like, you might as well say you must do this and then just not let them respond at all. And it's, to me, you know, it's not collaborative. It's kind of a top-down approach to speaking.

Brent Peterson (18:17.618)
Yeah, my experience has been when sharing with people, because I definitely took on the Gestalt approach, which is another fancy German word for just share your experience and don't, I think it's German. Anyways, I find that a lot of other people don't understand what I'm trying to get at. And sometimes you just have to tell them, here's what I'm gonna tell it in my own experience. This is the way I did it. And you can take it, sometimes you have to.

Tim (18:27.969)
Yeah.

Tim (18:31.916)
Hahaha

Tim (18:44.077)
Right.

Brent Peterson (18:45.586)
be a little bit more, have a little more explanation on it. But some people just want advice, right?

Tim (18:52.286)
Yeah, that is, excuse me, that is true. You know, people a lot of times want advice, but I think when you're, when you're seeking advice, you're, you're effectively removing your own accountability. Um, I think the, uh, the Gestalt mindset is, you know, is healthy in a, in a group because you own your own outcome. You know, somebody shares their experience.

might or might not relate to your situation, but you take from it what you want to take from it and that's on you. So it's really about maintaining a healthy relationship by not having somebody who gave you advice without really having full context where now you don't own the outcome, they own the outcome, even though it's your business.

Brent Peterson (19:40.314)
Yeah, and I guess too it helps to understand that we're all in that same little circle and this is the way we're going to communicate that. We're maybe in a coaching relationship and I know we talked about like maybe there's people with life coaches. Coaches are more about you have to do it this way or here's some instructions on the way to do it and see how it comes back. Our experience sharing would be more like in my business I...

Tim (19:57.314)
Right.

Brent Peterson (20:07.482)
I reviewed our payroll on a bi-weekly basis and found, you know, whatever we need to audit of something or another and this is our outcome of the way we did it. And then you just leave it.

Tim (20:17.75)
Right. And I take from that, Brent, I take from that, oh, buy weekly. That's something I never thought of. You know, we pay weekly, but that would really help my cash flow.

Brent Peterson (20:27.614)
Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's also about the listener, right? That however you're however you're explaining it, if the other person is listening, listening in a way with I'm going to listen to see how they did it. Because I could glean something that's important about it, right? That's that's really the thing that sets it apart from a lot of the other ones. The last part I wanted to touch on was that EO is not a

Tim (20:30.861)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (20:40.599)
Yep.

Right, exactly.

Tim (20:50.156)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (20:54.238)
networking group that you're trying to get business talk a little bit about like, hey, you know, Tim, I want you to buy my product because you're on my around the board and we should be doing business together, right? Or we're in the same forum, Tim, you should be doing all your business with me. Why wouldn't you? You're in my forum. Come on.

Tim (20:57.667)
Right.

Tim (21:09.866)
Right. Yeah. I think, you know, you know, has a very strict non solicitation policy. So while people do business with each other in EO, it's, it's not something where I could come to Brent and say, Hey, Brent, you know, I know that you probably have some custom software needs in your in your content business here. And I really think that fjorge is the right thing for you. I think that just can create a bit of a

toxic environment that I'm really glad is not a part of EO. But it is appropriate of course to work with the EOers when it's relevant and it comes together naturally, let's say. I think the other thing I'll say about that is, well, I understand my target market and most of the companies that are in my target market are not EO companies. So I don't need...

EO to find business. I find business because I clearly understand the customer that I'm trying to serve.

Brent Peterson (22:11.474)
Yeah, and I didn't mean to say we can't do business with each other. We just can't be, I can't be selling to you. Like, you know, if it's something that you need, you could come to me and you could say, Hey, I need this, but I'm not going to just overtly come and say, I'm not going to go to a, I'm certainly not going to my forum, but I'm not going to even go to one of our networking meetings or groups, not our monthly group meeting and say, Hey, here's my offering. I want everybody to, here's a coupon code. Can you just buy it?

Tim (22:17.959)
Right, exactly.

Yep.

Tim (22:31.201)
Yep.

Tim (22:40.83)
Yep, exactly. And as the governance chair, I see complaints about messaging or conversations where somebody feels that another member is crossing the line of soliciting business from them. And we work to resolution, we work to help offenders understand what the policy is, why it's important, and what the ramifications are if they can't follow up.

Brent Peterson (23:04.518)
Yeah, good point. So, you know, as we close out, what, you know, we can't give advice, but if somebody's interested in joining EO here in the Twin City or anywhere in the world, right, because there's what 17,000 people across the world now in an EO and what, what would you say to them? And I'll tell you the first thing when I was membership chair, they said to me, I don't have enough time.

Tim (23:22.049)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (23:31.07)
Yeah, or enough money, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean...

Brent Peterson (23:33.311)
Yeah.

Tim (23:38.934)
But there is a time commitment, but I don't see this as substantial. I think if you're in a position where, you know, you're not able to step out of your business one day or half a day a month to really work on yourself, your family and your business, I think maybe that's something that needs to be revisited and that might be the exact reason why you need to join EEO. It really is something that, you know, I believe

not being tied to every second of your business is a key part of life and it's definitely a key part of my life. And I think I learned how to do that through EO and through some urging from my wife.

Brent Peterson (24:20.014)
Exactly. Yeah, the wife, our wives always help us there. Or significant life partners, I should say. I do want to just go back, touch on the idea that this is a balance between family personal and business. And if you are engrossed in only one of them, and I can think of some big tech people, you know, that, that sometimes

Tim (24:24.607)
Yeah, she's been incredible.

Yep.

Brent Peterson (24:46.078)
portray themselves as you have to work 120 hours a week, you have to be engrossed in your business all for those 120 hours a week, and who cares about my family and my personal life, right? That's no way to live it, because at the end of the day, you're gonna retire and hopefully you have a personal life.

Tim (24:59.021)
Yep.

Tim (25:03.434)
Yeah, I heard someone, it was actually an EO speaker, I think, who said, you know, what do you want people to write in your obituary? And think about what, what you wanted to say and then how you live your life to like make those things true. Um, I don't want my obituary to be empty or, you know, not have teeth in reality. So, um, I want to work toward being around a well rounded person.

Brent Peterson (25:17.842)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (25:26.09)
Well, who knows if you're gonna have teeth. I mean, nobody cares about that, right? Well, yeah, Tim wore dentures. Yeah, that was a bad joke. Sorry about that. So Tim, as I close out, we'll give you a chance to do a shameless plug. I didn't tell you this either, but you're gonna do a shameless plug about anything you wanna plug. What would you like to plug today?

Tim (25:32.943)
Right? One day. I hope to do that too.

Tim (25:44.371)
streamers plug.

Tim (25:50.27)
Oh boy. I mean the obvious thing to plug would be EO.

Tim (25:57.482)
I gotta think here.

Tim (26:05.518)
of Larkinburg.

Brent Peterson (26:06.678)
How about fjord? You could plug fjord. There you go.

Tim (26:08.758)
I'll plug fjorge, why not? fjorge does amazing custom web and mobile solutions for businesses of all sizes. And we're really working hard. We built an office in Ghana a couple of years ago, and we're really working hard to make a difference in Africa as well. So that's one of the passions of my life, and I will plug fjorge.

Brent Peterson (26:34.214)
That's awesome. And we should have a follow up because, you know, we both, I ran a pre my previous business we ran with teams over the overseas and it, you know, we have, we were very successful in our communications and growing our teams and pods, right. And I'm, I was, I never really got to dig in with how your experience with in Ghana, but I would like to have a follow up on that. I think it's, it's really, I think that's, that's number one, it's a great thing that you're doing because you're helping a community grow. But it's also a challenge, right. And especially

Tim (26:46.729)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (27:04.326)
You know, we did Bolivia, which don't try that. But, you know, I think that it would be interested to hear about that. There's a movie about a marathon. There's a judge in LA that does the marathon in Ghana with his little running group, Skid Row Marathon, it's called. And they run the Ghana Marathon as one of their out.

Tim (27:07.02)
Yep.

Tim (27:27.488)
Okay.

Brent Peterson (27:31.718)
whatever their goals as a group. So anyways, that's what I've seen of it. So, all right, Tim, now I'm rambling. I apologize, I normally don't ramble at the end, but we did get to talk about running really quick. So that got that part in. Tim, how would people get ahold of you?

Tim (27:34.446)
Got it.

Tim (27:46.05)
There you go.

Tim (27:50.287)
Probably the best way is either fjorge.com, that's f-j-o-r-g-e dot com, or you can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Brent Peterson (27:57.286)
Alright, and I will put those, I'll put the links in the show notes. Tim Barsness with Fjörge. I'm just going to bang that out a little bit. Maybe put it in the furnace a couple times to see how well it comes out. Alright, thanks a lot.

Tim (28:01.206)
Alright.

Hahaha.

Tim (28:09.886)
That sounds good. I like it. All right. Thanks, Brent.