The Business of Helping Build Businesses

The Business Of Helping Build Businesses by Mason Pelt was first published in HackerNoon on January 12, 2020. While This article was published first on HackerNoon, the website’s editorial team deleted it following a copyright dispute. This article is updated with more context and published in MasonPelt.com on May 3, 2023.

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This goes out to freelancers and those who run professional service companies. Are you building a business or helping others build theirs? It can be both. But that requires awareness, caution, and focus.

Every company I’ve founded has been a B2B service firm, meaning we make money providing services to other companies. Sometimes those services are tightly connected to the business with whom we work — for example, working as a fractional marketing team member for a startup yet to hire anyone to fill the role.

Working as a service provider (for example, offering PPC management), especially when tied tightly to a fledgling company, makes it easy to think you function like a founder. In some cases, I’ve even been told my role was that of a temporary founder. To serve as a generalist hand on deck, with the goal of growing the company.

At issue is that a contracted firm is not a founder or even an employee. If the…