Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Busy Business Owners Save Time

I remember touring a Murano Glass factory on my honeymoon to Italy. Basically as soon as we stepped foot into the place, a man giving us the tour had us pegged. So when it came time to sell us something, he didn’t just ask us if we wanted to buy some glass art.

He painted us a picture of a unique conversation piece that we can put in our home, to help us remember this time at the beginning of our marriage. To turn into a family heirloom for when we have kids and grandkids. He wasn’t selling us glass. He was selling us a vision of our future. And it worked like gangbusters.

So how can we do that for our customers? That’s what Georgiana Laudi is here to talk to us about. She is the co-author of Forget the Funnel, a book that had a profound effect on my business – and today, we’re talking all about jobs to be done, research, and capturing the voice of our customers.

Top Takeaways

• Understand the "Jobs to Be Done": Customers aren't buying products themselves, but rather the solutions the products offer. Identify the specific jobs your product or service helps customers accomplish.
• Capture the Voice of the Customer: Conduct customer interviews to capture actual language and patterns from customer conversations.
• Continuous Customer Research: Regularly conduct foundational research every 6-12 months and ensure it's continually validated based on industry shifts.

Show Notes

• Georgiana Laudi
• Georgiana on Forget the Funnel
• What are Jobs to be Done?
• Demand Side Sales
• Forget the Funnel
• How to be a Scrappy Researcher (to Actually Sell Products) with Becky Pierson Davidson
• Copyhackers
• Forget the Funnel Podcast

Sponsors:

• Check out Liquid Web
• Memberful: Get your free trial for atmemberful.com/howibuiltit

My grandfather came to the United States from Italy in 1949 and worked in New York City for much of his life — primarily in construction. For as long as I can remember, he had this big, metal toolbox. And when he passed away, he gave it to me, and I still have and use it to this day.

Pop had that toolbox for decades. When he found something that worked for him, he held on to it and took care of it. There’s a hammer in there that has to be as old as I am.

And when you think about it, the hammer is a pretty good analogy for our digital tools. It’s a basic device, but there are countless variations, purpose-built for specific tasks. Much like a task manager or notes app, you mostly know what you’re getting — but you may want something a little more specialized for your needs.

While you don’t want to change tools all the time, it is good to evaluate your toolset from time to time. So I thought I’d check in and share the tools I’m using.

Show Notes

• Tools Check-in: What am I using so far in 2024?
• Tools for Podcasters (Podcast Workflows)
• When Do You Burn All of Your Processes Down and Start Over?
• My Stream Deck: How I’ve Configured it for Maximum Productivity and Production
• Become a Member
• Tools mentioned:
  • Notion
  • Riverside.fm
  • Descript
  • ScreenFlow
  • iZotope
  • Castmagic
  • Things 3
  • Bear Notes
  • Fantastical
  • Calendly
  • Mimestream
  • Timery
  • Arc
  • ChatGPT
  • Raycast

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I abhor hustle culture. Telling someone to work a full-time job, then go home and work more all for some goal that keeps changing is, in my opinion, how to lead an empty life. I’m worried that, even in 2024, we continue to fetishize making money and hustling. So I decided to take it to Khe Hy.

Khe, if you don’t know, worked hard – as he puts it, he hustled for 10 years of his life. He worked on Wall Street, becoming the equivalent of a junior partner in a law firm, and earning a 7-figure salary. But he left that job, and he’s built a life he enjoys.

But he makes it very clear: sometimes you do need to hustle. Life is full of seasons – and recognizing that seasonality is important. We cover a ton of topics in our short time.

Top Takeaways

• There are seasons to life. It’s important to recognize that and adjust for the season you’re in.
• If you’re working to eventually gain more time, ask yourself if you can cut some costs and gain that time now. Sure, someone could pay you $10,000 for 5 hours of data entry – but do you want to do data entry, or would you rather have those 5 hours free?
• There’s a difference between revenue and profit. Most people share top line revenue, but what are they really taking home?

Show Notes

• Khe Hy
• Revenue Hub's interview with Tiago Araújo
• RadReads
• The magic of doing $10,000 per hour work
• Are you a Post-Achievement Professional?

Sponsors:

• Check out Liquid Web
• Go to http://porkbun.com/HowIBuiltIt24 to get $1 off your next desired domain name at Porkbun!

What do you want your life to look like? Last week I talked about how not being intentional is kind of like driving a car without the GPS. But goal setting without knowing what you want – that’s a bit like driving a car without having a destination in mind.

Well, today, Tanya Alvarez is going to help us figure out the destination – you can think of her as your own GPS. And much like that Google Maps car, she’s well-traveled and has a ton of experience to back up her advice – from funding her first startup with credit cards to completing a Half Ironman and traveling to 42 countries, she’s done it all. And now she wants to help you do it too, by sharing her system for prioritizing your goals.

Top Takeaways

• Take the time to define and rank your personal values. Understand how these values shape your goals and prioritize them to ensure alignment with your desired outcomes.
• View your goals as hypotheses and break them down into manageable time frames. This approach provides flexibility for adjustments while promoting focused and effective work periods.
• When faced with multiple business ideas or tasks, evaluate them based on effort, impact, and activity categories. This can help you understand your capacity and prioritize tasks effectively.

Show Notes

• Tanya Alvarez

Sponsors:

• Check out Liquid Web
• Go to http://porkbun.com/HowIBuiltIt24 to get $1 off your next desired domain name at Porkbun!

Not being intentional in your business is a bit like getting in your car and driving without the GPS. Sure…you generally know where you’re going. But what if a road is closed? What if there’s avoidable traffic? A GPS can help you navigate around those things.

When you’re intentional about your business, you go from wandering aimlessly, taking any work that makes ends meet, to setting and achieving your goals. And today, I’m going to talk about how I’m being more intentional in my business, and why that decision has led me to end my membership.

Top Takeaways

1. Take the time to identify tasks that provide the best returns on your time investment. Focus on work that aligns with your income goals and brings you closer to achieving your business objectives.
2. Take control of your schedule by tracking your time and evaluating the effectiveness of your tasks. Use tools like time tracking apps to make data-driven decisions and maximize your productivity.
3. Reflect on your business goals and values, and make decisions that align with them. Ensure that your business endeavors are in sync with what matters most to you and contribute to your overall happiness and success.

Sponsors:

• Check out Liquid Web
• Go to http://porkbun.com/HowIBuiltIt24 to get $1 off your next desired domain name at Porkbun!

Do you really need social media to build a following? To build expertise? To be successful? It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I think lots of creators are too. The rote advice that you see from the ultra successful people just doesn’t work for most of us. And it doesn’t have to. What if I told you there was a better way.

As it turns out, today’s guest, my friend and Amazon best selling author of the book start a binge-worthy podcast, Krystal Proffitt, agree: starting a podcast is a great way to build your business.

In today’s conversation, we talk about why podcasting is the best way to build expertise and trust, why there aren’t too many podcasts, and how you can start a successful one.

Plus, in the pro show, we talk all about how to do interviews the right way.

Top Takeaways

• Podcasts are a great, intimate way to get your content in the hands of your ideal audience. And, as Seth Godin put it, they are the generous act of showing up.
• You differentiate your podcast by making sure your audience feels seen and heard. This could (and should) be through relatable stories, and by engaging with them through feedback.
• The first thing you should think about, before you every consider which mic to buy, is what’s your message? Without a message, you don’t have a podcast.

Show Notes

• Krystal Proffitt
• My interview with Krystal on Podcast Automation
• Amy Porterfield

Sponsors:

• Check out Liquid Web
• Go to http://porkbun.com/HowIBuiltIt24 to get $1 off your next desired domain name at Porkbun!

During the pandemic, we were told one thing seemingly over and over again: You need to start a membership. You need a community. That’s the only way you can scale your business. And to be honest, I fed into it. I believed that a membership was the key to stop trading for hours for dollars.

But the truth is I was trading more hours for fewer dollars. See, what most solopreneurs don’t realize (what I didn’t realize for a long time) is that you’re always trading hours for dollars. That’s what work is. The key difference is how many hours you're trading for how many dollars. And that’s what Maggie Patterson is here to talk to us about today.

See, when the pandemic ended, we both noticed something: many of those people who were preaching the importance of basing your business off a community or membership were going back to one thing: services. Because when you do services right, you can make a lot of money.

Today, Maggie, who has over 15 years of experience successfully selling client services, tells us the key to unlocking more income: selling strategy.

Top Takeaways

• It’s important to understand what kind of business you want to run. 1-to-1 business is a lot different from a 1-to-many business. And they require different strategies.
• The key is in pricing. Don’t just price on gut feeling. Tether it to some reality (like how much money you need to make to pay yourself, and run the business), and then listen for feedback. The market will tell you if you’re priced correctly.
• Too many solopreneurs give the strategy away for free in their proposal. They say exactly what they’re going to do. Instead, hold paid strategy sessions (sometimes called Discovery projects) where you get paid to truly understand the scope, and give the client something tangible.

Show Notes

• Maggie Patterson
• Reverse Salary Calculator
• The Best Advice I Never Took

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Choosing the right platform can feel like an impossible task sometimes. There are so many options, from services to creating your own website and owning everything – how do you choose? Well, Nathalie Lussier and I have both been around the block. She owns a popular WordPress-based LMS called AccessAlly, and I’ve tried dozens of platforms for memberships, including ones I’ve built myself.

So it was interesting timing when we both decided to start publishing on Substack in late November/early December. Today, we’re going to trade notes, going over why we decided to move there, what migration was like, and what we like and dislike about the platform. For members, we’ll discuss our timing to move within the context of a bigger controversy surrounding Substack.

Top Takeaways

• Social Media for promoting and growing your work has been going downhill for a while now. But Substack has built in a number of features, like Notes and Recommendations, to incentivize sharing while also staying on the platform.
• One of Substack's best features is its interoperability. You can easily import email lists, content, and even paying subscribers through Stripe. And moving is easy too. Everything you can import, you can also export.
• The best way to leverage Substack’s network effect is to find your tribe – people who you can work with to restack, recommend, and follow on Notes. Just like any social network, don’t discount the “social” part.

Show Notes

• The Momentum Memo
• AccessAlly
• How Knowing Your Customers Lets You Charge More with Nathalie Lussier

Sponsored by Liquid Web

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One of my favorite Disney+ shows is Loki. It’s a truly fascinating look at time travel, predetermined events, and controlling your own destiny.

And now I’m going to give you a major (if not very simplified) spoiler, if you haven’t seen it.

In the finale, Loki masters the ability to “time slip,” or transport to any time, any place, in any timeline (for all intents and purposes, a timeline is a parallel universe). This also allows him to relive events over and over again.

So as all of existence faces eradication, he can take as much “time” as he wants to learn how to save everything and everyone, on every timeline.

He continuously, over thousands of years, learns everything he needs to learn, and practices, through trial and error, to improve his process, and his odds of saving everything and everyone.

And while we don’t have thousands of years, or the ability to time travel, we do have the ability to take a step back and consider the question, “What’s missing?”

Read the full article here

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It was Christmas Eve, and I was waiting in line for bagels.
As someone who grew up in New York now living close to Philly, I’m admittedly a snob about the quality of the bagels I eat. But there’s a bagel shop not 5 minutes from my house that makes the best bagels I’ve ever had outside of NY/NJ.
And they offer preorders for Christmas Eve. It’s become a bit of a tradition in our house to get those bagels and do a Christmas Eve brunch.
They also have a select stock for people on a first come first serve basis. People who preorder can buy from this stock. The many preorders combined with the select stock creates a long line. After-all, these bagels are superb.
So we waited.
And during that wait, there were some people who complained about the wait1.
But no one left the line or cancelled their order. After all, if all they wanted was bagels, they could have gone to the grocery store a few doors down and buy bagels immediately.
But those are not even good bagels. And we wanted great bagels.
See, there’s a dirty little secret that no one wants to hear these days:
Great things require time. And they’re worth the wait.

Read the full article here

In the PRO show, I explain how I plan for conferences, and how I measure direct ROI from events. Join here.

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