Episode 116: Top 3 Solopreneur Challenges & Smart Strategies to Overcome Them

Apr 7

Joe Rando

Joe Rando is a seasoned entrepreneur, strategic thinker, and the founder of Lifestar, a platform designed to empower solopreneurs with the tools, structure, and support needed to grow a business of one, without burning out. With over 30 years of experience, Joe blends his analytical background (yes, he holds a degree in physics) with real-world business acumen to help solo entrepreneurs overcome the three biggest hurdles: generating leads, making sales, and managing time.

Joe’s expertise is grounded in data. He conducted an in-depth survey of over 300 solopreneurs to identify their common challenges, and later transformed those findings into the Solopreneur Success Cycle, a practical, proven framework that guides solo business owners from scattered to strategic. His approach emphasizes clarity, intentionality, and community, reminding solopreneurs that going solo doesn’t mean going it alone.

Whether leading virtual workshops, developing operational systems, or creating space for connection inside the Lifestar community, Joe Rando shows up with a rare blend of wisdom, humility, and humor. His mission is simple: to help solopreneurs build businesses that support the life they actually want to live.

Carly Ries

With nearly 20 years of experience in brand communications and growth strategy, Carly has a sharp instinct for what actually moves the needle—and what just sounds good on a webinar. She’s a master at helping solopreneurs sidestep the “shoulds” (like running SEO campaigns or launching podcasts) and focus instead on meaningful outreach, compelling storytelling, and relationship-driven growth.

Carly is also the co-creator of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, a framework designed to help entrepreneurs align their marketing with their values and their bandwidth. She’s not interested in vanity metrics—she’s here for messaging that connects, systems that scale, and a business that supports your life, not swallows it.

Whether leading strategy behind the scenes or guiding solo founders through big decisions, Carly brings clarity, calm, and a laser focus on what works. In a noisy digital world, she’s the rare voice reminding you that you don’t need to do more—you need to do you, better.

Watch the episode here

Flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. That is the biggest takeaway, whether it is just having people to bounce ideas off of or people to hang out with or happy hour because you don't get that like you do in the workspace anymore. Just plan in the community time planning, the accountability groups.

People buy emotionally first and then use logic afterwards. That was a real warping of my brain learning about that.

A big thing solopreneurs miss is that they simply don't tell people what they do.

You're listening to prospecting on purpose. Where we discuss all things prospecting, sales, business, and mindset. I'm your host, Sara Murray, a sales champion who's here to show you that you can be a shark in business and still lead with intentionality and authenticity. Tune in each week as we dive into methods to connect with clients, communicate with confidence, and close the deal.

Good morning, Hi guys. Hello. Welcome to another live episode of Prospecting On Purpose. I am joined today by Joe Rando and Carly Ries, the founder of LifeStarr and the fractional CMO at LifeStarr. LifeStarr is a community, if you're not familiar with it. It's a group of resources that is really built around the solopreneur business, and one of the big things that this team is driving for is to really create a community, basically a whole bundle of resources for anything that you may need in your business of one. They are literally writing the book “Solopreneur Business for Dummies”. So, I am very excited to have these gurus on the show.

Joe, Carly, welcome.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Yeah, I like starting my morning off calling me a guru. Thanks, Sara.

Anytime it's Friday, we're gonna have a fun time. This episode, this show will last about 30 minutes, so let's just dive right in. Joe, I'm gonna start with you. One of the things that I'm curious to learn from you is in your business with life story, you work with all sorts of solopreneurs in different industries, whether it's B2B, B2C, like services or products. How, I mean, there are so many different challenges that really come up and bubble up when you're a business of one. How did you really start to pick out these top three that we're gonna talk about today?

Well, I did something really crazy and asked people. I ran a survey a few years ago and surveyed 332 one-person businesses, and I'm talking coaches, contractors, consultants, you know, kind of solo entrepreneur types. And we asked them all a series of questions, some of which were, what were your greatest challenges first in getting started in business, and secondly in running the business, and I want to focus today on the running aspect, right? So we found that regardless of what they call themselves, regardless of what they did, their top three challenges really broke down like this. It was all about revenue, meaning lead gen struggles, sales struggles, and then managing their time in the context of like, you know, not having enough of it, burnout, and those kinds of things. So, regardless, it was like 50% struggled with revenue growth. And that was broken down into those two components. So, you know, one of my questions early on in starting this is, does it make any sense to not follow my own advice and not niche down into some specific area?

And I said, you know, these people, not only do they all need similar kinds of help, they can help each other because they're cross pollinating. So it really, it worked out really well, bringing them together well.

And it was really fun, 'cause Joe, we ran that survey, like you said, a few years ago, but it was kind of like a hypothesis that we could test in real life over the past few years, working with all the solopreneurs that we have. And we literally just did an analysis, I think it was yesterday, Joe where we take feedback from some of our attendees from our events, and they talk about what they're struggling with, and the exact same three things keep popping up time and time again. So we had that survey when we were starting everything, but now it's that survey's just coming to life and we see it every day.

Well, it's funny because even though this conversation is tailored on solopreneurs, that impacts any type of role as a profession, it's how are you getting business? How are you moving the business through a sales funnel and then how are you managing your time? So I'm really excited to get into these three topics, and we'll probably do it in that order.

Carly, maybe let's start on the marketing side. What challenges do you see solopreneurs interact with when it comes to marketing their business?

The biggest ones that I see are that they try to apply marketing techniques that can be applied to Fortune 500 companies, or businesses with a bunch of employees, and they think, I need a social media campaign, I need an email campaign, I need to have all of these automations for marketing. The reality is most entrepreneurs only need a handful of clients to live the life that they want to live, and so the one-on-one interactions, are just so much more important than thinking about these big picture things that bigger companies do genuinely have to run.

Like SEO.

Yeah, exactly. We always say SEO as a joke or as our go-to example. But SEO is great, but SEO is also changing in the age of AI, and it's not, nobody really knows what it's gonna be in a few years from now, and you can make your guesses, but does a solopreneur want to spend the next six months really working on SEO and getting a client after a marathon, or do they want to have a cup of coffee with somebody that's a warm lead and close that the next day. And the other funny thing, and we were talking to another gal in one of our podcast episodes that I totally agree with.

A big thing solopreneurs miss is they simply don't tell people what they do. Afraid of sounding salesy. And, let's say you're a person, well, you are a personal contact of mine, but let's say you don't know what I do and literally just send an email and say, Hey, it's been a minute. I haven't talked to you in a couple months. I just wanna tell you what I'm doing. This is really fun.

Don't be pitchy, but just let people know what they do. The story I always go back to is I overheard my parents telling their friends about a decade ago that, I was a creative director for an ad agency, neither of which were true. I have never been a creative director, and at the time I wasn't working for an ad agency, but I realized, oh my gosh. My parents can't even articulate what I do because I haven't told them.

And so thinking about those low-hanging fruits, thinking about those personal contacts, that could be easy referrals. Even if they don't need your business, they might know somebody who does. So it's simply telling people what you do and being proud of it. That is one of the easiest ways. You can generate leads, but so many solopreneurs think they have to be the next expert marketer, when in reality, a lot of them got into a business to coach. They didn't get into the business to be a marketer. They got into business for that passion that they have. So think of the easiest, low-hanging fruits you can use and go with those. You don't have to follow the playbook that the bigger businesses are running.

Okay. I think that's really, so I wanna talk about two of the different things that you said. The first is around the concept of not having to do all the things like digital marketing. And you don't need SEO and you don't need a newsletter, you don't need a podcast, you don't need social media.

Maybe some of them. But I think I appreciate you giving us permission to just not have to do it all because that area of the business is quite overwhelming for me. And your other point on Letting people know what you do. I have found that in my business too. People wanna refer you. They wanna help, but if they don't have clarity on what you do, they're not able to do that. And scenario I'm wanting to work on more too. So give us a couple of more tactics, Carly, on like, how do you get that warm coffee? Or lead coffee one-on-one. How do you get the one-on-one interactions?

So think about, like if you, well, that would be for in person. You could also do virtual coffees and everything. But, identify the types of people, this is the easiest way I have found to do this. Again, it takes the marketing, the scary marketing world out of it for people and to just get really involved in your community. And if you surround yourself with people that could be a good fit for you, like let's, I keep going back to coach, but this would apply, like, I'm just using that as an example.

If you're a coach, go join, like, go take Pilates classes. Go join a group, a volunteer group in your area. Get to know people. It's kind of like how a lot of real estate agents I feel like do it. They just become a part of the community, and the people know them. And for people that are afraid of marketing or sales, even for that matter. It takes the strategy of how do I target these people out of it? Because you just get to know these people. Then when they're like, gosh, I'm having some issues with this or that, you'd be like, oh, well I'm a coach and we're already friends, so let's do this. So I think, just taking that big marketing like bulletin and crumbling it down to things that are less scary, makes it a lot easier for people.

So that's one way we, if you wanna do it virtually, if your business isn't just a local business. We've actually had a lot of success with sales on LinkedIn Navigator. As a way to connect with people. The thing you wanna be conscious about on LinkedIn or through other social platforms is you don't wanna be pitchy.

You know, when you get those things where it's like, “Hey, I noticed you're doing this wrong, let's grab a cup of coffee.” It's like, no, you've already insulted me. I don't want to get a cup of coffee with you. But if you're like, Hey Sara, I love your podcast. I love what you're doing. You seem to be awesome at sales. I would love to just like pick your brain for a few minutes, have a virtual cup of coffee. How does that sound? And make it a relationship-building tool rather than a sales pitch tool. You'll see so much difference. I. Your social media efforts if you take that approach.

Yeah, I appreciate that comment too cause I think it's a nice blend between the marketing aspect, like getting the leads aspect, and the sales aspect is one of the big things that I teach in my trainings is always be adding value. Like how can you add value into anything that you do, whether that's a social media post, whether that's a product launch you're doing, whether it's, you know, the yoga class example, Carly, like how can you add value to your friends in yoga? But in that message that example you just gave, I would say there are a lot of free ways to add those emotional bank account deposits before you ask for the coffee. So, hey, maybe before you reach out to someone and say, I love your podcast. Promote one of their posts on LinkedIn. Write a review for their podcast, like get on their radar as someone who's engaging with them, cause it makes it a lot easier to do the ask. You know, you're not pulling from an empty bank.

Yeah, I mean, like Sara, I have no intentions of asking you for anything right now, but our relationship, including Joe, has grown organically over the years, just by like, Hey, we're here for you. Hey, we're here for you. And I know that if I had to make an ask, I would feel a lot more comfortable asking you now because we have a relationship than I would after the first meeting. Because you provide value. I know what you're good at. I know what you can do for others. And I'm confident in your response. You know what I mean?

Totally. And Joe, what are the things you've seen with the lead gen side from the business angle? Like, tell us a little bit of your feedback, 'cause I wanna tailor, I wanna get into the sales conversation more. Because what Charlie's saying is perfect. It's a lot easier to ask when there's a relationship there.

Well, a hundred percent. I mean, a warm lead is always better than a cold lead, and it's pretty easy. I mean, I have people that I just absolutely love that. I have never spoken to because of interacting on LinkedIn. I've also got some that I don't really wanna bump into, but there's, you know, there's just these awesome people and just by, you know, commenting on their posts or them commenting on mine. You can build a relationship. Yes. It's not the same as you know, a face-to-face meeting, handshake, coffee, or beer, but it warms up somebody. And then when you do have wanna make an ask, it's not that uncomfortable to have a conversation.

My take is that, you know, from the perspective of generating sales, if you can warm these people up, you said always be adding value. And I think that's a really, really good advice and you know, there are a lot of ways to do that, but you know, the whole concept of the lead magnet, right? That's this thing that's actually adding value and doing something, either solving a problem or addressing a pain point or, you know, enlightening them, is a powerful way to build trust.

And I mean, the issue here is that nobody's gonna buy from you until you've gone through a process of, you know, building trust, creating some resonance. So they know that not only are you trustworthy, but you're somebody that, they feel, you know, understands them, and you gotta build that resonance.

And then, you know, from there you can kind of take it to the next level of, eventually inspiring action, right? Of getting them to say, Hey, I'm gonna do something. But these lead magnets are a great way to do that. We use free events, free virtual events, and invite people. Add tons of value. We have two that we do one where we have some expert or experts come in and either do a, you know, some kind of a webinar type of thing or a workshop. We love the workshops. And then we have one where we just get people together and they go into breakout rooms and help each other address their biggest current challenge. But either way, we're adding value, we're not asking for anything in return, and that builds trust. And then from there, when you say, Hey, then we say, Hey, join our free tier. We have a free tier in our program and well, why not? You know that, that was good. This will be better.

So, but the main thing I think to think about in terms of building, these kinds of warm leads with these lead magnets says, don't just give. I've soured on the idea of the, here download my PDF because you know what? You download 'em and you never look at 'em. So it needs to have some level of investment, so some level of their time. And that's what I love about events is somebody's putting in an hour to come in and do something. Well, they've invested. Now you know that this is not somebody that just decided to click download. Right?

Right. Well, and it's funny, Joe, because that's how we met. You sent me a LinkedIn message saying, Hey, you look like you're building a business. We have this free event, and so I joined the event. Since then, I presented at your event. I had a producer for the price of the business radio show. Reach out to me. Now I'm a contributing commentator on that radio show. I've had many different guests on my podcast that I met through the LifeStarr community. So you just never know where that like trickle effect is. And to Carly's earlier point, you guys could ask me for anything. And it's an easy yes, and I think that's really where the community aspect comes in, and then it doesn't feel like you're being salesy because it's much more organic and fluid.

Right. And, you know, just to expand on that, I mean this whole idea of building out this community either through social media or, you know, through some, like we have a community, aspect to our offering, but you know, there's lots of them out there for different industries and different kinds of people.

I mean, I watched a couple of events ago, we have like a networking session afterwards, and this one guy's challenge was, he was a world expert on this specific topic, on, you know, computers, security thing. I don't know, I didn't really understand it. But he's like, I can't get any traction. Nobody's listening to me. And, you know, I just don't know how to get people to realize. And this other guy says, well, I've an established business, and he's a solopreneur in a similar field. And I get what you're saying, and I know how valuable it is. And, let me help you introduce you to the people that I know, because, you know, we can probably do something together and really do great. I just love seeing those kinds of things happen, and that's what happens when you put yourself out there.

Yeah, and to that point, Joe, when people offer to help you, they're usually, nobody offers to help. If it they don't mean it, because we people do value their time, which we're gonna talk about. But the other thing is, if somebody offers to help you and you don't say yes and jump on it. You miss a big opportunity. You miss a big window. I've had people that I've met and I'll offer for them to be on my podcast and, you know, they dig dilly dally like, I'm not gonna chase you. I'm busy. Please say yes or no, you know, and just take action and move. But it's almost like that concept of the emotional bank account, that gentleman offering to help, you say yes, you take action, you express gratitude, you give feedback once it's done. And that's how you kind of continue to build that cycle and build out your network. And I think for the solopreneurs, there's a lot of opportunity to add value in the network because the businesses help each other. The cross-pollination comment, you said, Joe, is really important to talk about.

Absolutely. And just on the flip side of that, right here's the guy you don't want to be. So, has somebody reached out to have me on their podcast and then came back and said, well, there's a $2,500 fee to be on our podcast. And then I looked, and their popularity is literally half of what our Aspiring Solopreneur podcast is at. And I'm like, you should pay me $2,500 to be on your podcast, but you know, I'm never gonna talk to that guy again, ever. Because it's, you know, it's like, that's not how it's done. It's, you know, give earnestly and meaningfully, and it will come back to you.

Give earnestly and meaningfully and it'll come back to you. That was a good mic drop.

Put a dash next to that in my name.

Yeah. Joe Rado. Let's talk about sales next. Let's talk a little bit about salesmanship, because I think one of the things that I was really surprised about when I started my business was that I had this idea because I've been in B2B complex sales. Like that would be my client. And that really, you know, ultimately is the core of my business is business-to-business complex sales. But I did have a lot of solopreneurs come up into my orbit. And I think, I know that it's because when you're a business of one, you have to go sell yourself. And that's something that most people have not done in their careers, and it's not something you can outsource 'cause people are buying you. So what strategies have you seen from the people that you work with that have kind of overcome some of those challenges when it comes to the salesmanship side?

Well, I just wanna start by saying that I have never met a solopreneur who likes sales except for sales coaches. So nobody that's not a sales coach is excited about selling, and that's one of the things that is really important is that you have to get people comfortable with the idea. And so the first, the first thing to, to my eye. In talking to people about this is, it starts with this feeling that if I'm gonna sell, I have to be sleazy.

And you know, that's not true. So, the strategies that I've employed to try to help people with this is, start by understanding what pain points you solve for your target market. And if you don't have a particular, very focused target market and a set of pain points that you're going after, you probably aren't ready to start selling. So, but once you have that, if you can really help people with something that's making their life or their business worse than it should be, how do you need to be sleazy to sell that, you know, if somebody needs water and they're thirsty and you come to them in a and with a very reasonably priced you know, bottle of cold water. You know, there's nothing sleazy about that. So you have to view yourself as having an obligation to try to help these people solve their pain points.

And then the next thing is people tend to get into the mode of just talking. Right? And, the best way is to listen and understand people. Right? And if you listen to them and let them tell you what, you know, how the pain points are affecting them, then you can reflect that back. You're not being sleazy. You're telling them what they told you back and just maybe putting it into some perspective or talking through how you might help them solve that. So that's really, I think, one of the biggest hurdles initially is understanding sales as a process of helping people, you know, being consultative and, then, you know, doing good in the world by helping them have less pain. So that mind shift helps a lot.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, I like sales, so I am the exception to the rule, but I do think that sales is a very noble profession because if you have something that's valuable that's gonna help their business move forward, that really does change the game. And one of the things that I work on with my clients is, instead of focusing on like the services and the facts and features of whatever you're selling, think about how it's gonna either impact their business or impact their lives. So if you're selling B2B, it's how does my product or service make my clients money or save them money? And then if you're selling B2C, how does my offering enhance and elevate their life. And just that mindset shift too, Joe, to your point is you're not pushing anyone to buy, you're not convincing anyone to buy your thing. You're basically just inviting them to a partnership so that you can help elevate their life or their business.

Right. The one thing I will say that I learned by studying that surprised the heck out of me, you know, guy with a physics degree, is that people buy emotionally first and then use logic afterwards. That was a real warping of my brain learning about that. Because, you know, my thing, and I always joked at my last startup, we had this very complex enterprise software that we created, and we would walk everybody through every feature of that software until their eyes glazed over and they wanted to run screaming from the room and wait, no, that's not working. And it's like, no, no. Here, you're gonna be the hero of your company when you can do this and this, and oh, oh, okay, now I'm listening. And then you tell 'em how.

Well, you know, one of the things that I talk about in my workshop is just a little language shift. So when you present your pricing, first of all, I always practice in advance how like I will practice to my computer, saying my fee is X before I get on the call with a client. If it's specifically to talk about dollars, like my fee is X, what your speaker budget is, you know, I kind of have some of that scripted in advance, but on the concept of selling emotionally, or excuse me. Buyers are buying emotionally versus logically. I, instead of saying, what do you think about that? Or how does that number sound? I say, how does that feel? And I'll say, how does that feel? And that kind of shifts the conversation to be less logical, ‘cause now I'm talking to their heart versus their brain. How does it feel versus, how do you think about that?

Yeah, that's interesting.

The other day, I asked someone, how does that feel? And she says, it feels expensive. And so I was not ready for that response. So, on overcoming objections, you know, there's all these different little things that are always gonna happen no matter what you're selling. And every time you run into something, you learn something. And I think that's part of the beauty of the entrepreneur journey, is you really are. It's a vehicle for your personal professional growth too. And that's how I like to think of it when I make mistakes, 'cause they happen.

The other thing I wanna piggyback is in terms of overcoming objection, is you are transparent with your price. You're transparent with everything. The more transparent you are at the beginning, the less objections you have to combat through the sales process. Because everything's out there. So I just, I don't think you should hide anything when it comes to going through your sale, 'cause they're gonna figure it out at some point anyway.

I just want to piggyback off of that, 'cause that's a great point, and you know, one of the things that I learned in my last startup was that we were the high price leader in the industry. There was one other company that was similarly priced. They were a billion-dollar company. We were far from that, but we were the highest price, with them being kind of tied.

And we would lead with that. We would lead with, we are the highest price option you will find, and here's why. And there were good reasons. We had very good reasons, but we led with that. So then you didn't get through an hour long presentation or two weeks of negotiations and go, oh, we can't afford that. It's like, put it out there. Yeah, if it's a common objection, just start with it. Then a lot of times, you get past it. We had people that we told, No, you really can't afford us. So they would come begging, no, no, no. We can, we can.

Well, I mean, all of the stuff that we're talking about just comes with experience. But I think the other big takeaway from what I wanna leave our audience with today is that there are so many resources out there in the form of people, podcasts, courses, and consultants. I mean, I think that, if these are areas, the lead gen, the marketing, the sales, there are areas that you struggle with, there are plentiful resources to help you with it. So it might be just carving out the time to commit to it. So let's talk a little bit about time management as our third challenge to overcome. Joe, maybe why don't you start us off with like, where are you seeing people getting stuck?

Oh, look, it's being a solopreneur is by definition gonna be a struggle for time, right? If you're, unless you, you know, one of these lucky people that can do the four-hour work week thing and make 10 grand a month, which, you know, I used to want to be a rock star when I was young. That didn't work out either. So it's, you know, one of those things where you have to understand that, especially initially, you're probably gonna be working a lot. And if you have a goal of, you know, like I do and a lot of people do, I don't wanna work more than 40, 50 hours a week. That might not happen initially.

So, what happens is that people do a couple of things wrong. Number one, they refuse to outsource if they can't afford to, fine. But a lot of times they refuse to outsource things that they could easily outsource. You know, for me, like bookkeeping and accounting, right? I could do it. I went to, I got an MBA, you know, I took a couple of accounting classes, I could figure out QuickBooks, but it would cost me a lot of time. I wouldn't do it that well, and all that time wouldn't be used to grow the business. So that's, you know, a no-brainer for me and a lot of people just find somebody to help you with your books so you can do other things.

Joe, can I piggyback off of that? You said, and maybe you can't afford it. You can trade with other solopreneurs. So, Sara, let's say you hate doing taxes and accounting, trade with a CPA, and coach them on sales, and then nobody has to pay anything. It's mutually beneficial, and you can still outsource what you don't like doing while providing a service and in increasing your odds for referrals in the process.

Yeah, and we've seen a lot of that in the livestock community. It's really cool to watch. But, yeah. So, but beyond that then we're, we're looking at people that sometimes are doing things that don't need to be done, things that aren't moving the business forward either because maybe they did something at work and now they're doing it on their own and they just had a process. And, you know, thinking through, what you might want to eliminate from your workflow is another one.

And then obviously automation. If there's a way to automate, we're big fans of HubSpot because it's one of those things wh ere you can, you know, if somebody fills out a form on your site, you could have a whole series of emails get sent. And there are just lots of great things that you can do using that kind of automation. There are tons of other automations depending on what you're doing, but that's a place that you have to invest some time to figure out what to automate, how to automate it. So they don't do that.

And lastly, from my perspective, a lot of people, including me, I was probably the worst in the world at this. It has a work process, right? Having a way of working that doesn't waste time. And I discovered something way back called “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. It's a book, and he just has a process. The whole book just describes the process for dealing with all the stuff that's coming into your inboxes and how to think about those things and how to keep track of them and not have anything fall through the cracks. And I went from being the guy that woke up at three o'clock in the morning, going, oh my God, I forgot to do this. Or, oh my God, I forgot to do that, to, you know, I know what I have to do. I have it, it's there. I can work through it. Not saying I don't mess up sometimes, but it's a huge difference and that's one of the things that I like to push people to review, is finding some kind of working process that is very systematic.

So in the outsourcing, automating, and then having a system for you.

Yeah. And lastly, around that system, standard operating procedures, you know, not reinventing the wheel every time you go to do whatever, you know, write it down. You know, we have a whole bunch of standard operating procedures that we've built out. Just basically in Google Sheets that everybody can see. And if somebody finds something wrong with it, they can go in and fix it. But having those standard operating procedures makes a big difference in terms of how much time it takes to get something done.

Well, and if you do decide to outsource, you have those SOPs right there and waiting for the contractors. So you don't have to spend hours training. You can even record videos and include them in the, why can't I think of the word?

The processes?

Yeah. And so they could watch the video. So if they learn better through a video standpoint, you can do a Loom video and show, this is how I do this, this is how I do this, so that you're not just constantly training and retraining. And so yeah, that is key. And it takes time on the front end, but obviously on the back end. It saves countless hours.

Well, and I think for the time it takes to get automations in place for the time it takes to write an SOP, that might just be, I call them big rocks, and every quarter I'll look at my big rocks. But that just might need to be, this is something that's constantly dragging you down, and you need to get it off your back. You need to build out the time. And so whatever that works in your system, if it's time blocking, if it's like blocking a day and just getting it done, like you just have to help hold yourself accountable. Because what we lose when we leave a corporate environment is that you have to create your own working structures. And I think for me, building an external accountability, like we're going live 9:00 AM on April 4th, like that's a hard deadline, right? So you have to get things done before that deadline. Like that's something that really works for me is setting external accountability for myself.

I use something called the Eisenhower Matrix, which is, you know, important. Not important. Urgent. Not urgent. Like a quadrant. And that's really cool, 'cause there's this, you know, we work mostly in the important and urgent, I hope, right? But that place, I think your big rocks are in the important but not urgent, right? And that's where you have those things like, Hey, I'm gonna automate something that's taking me three hours a week, and then it's gonna take me five minutes a week. You know, awesome. So investing that time, working on the business instead of having in the business.

I also think something that's unique to solopreneurs from a time receiving standpoint is you don't have to be in the office at 8.30 and stay until five. You get to work the hours that you work best. So if you tell me to do anything productive after 5:30 PM, forget it. It's not going to be a good product.

5:00 AM Yes. I'm like that, that Bruce Almighty meme where he's typing away at the computer, or gif, whatever it's called. I'm so productive. So I try to focus my productive hour, my work hours on my actual productive time. That's just innate to me. And then don't work on the hours that I know I'm just gonna be producing poor quality work. And that's not something that employees can’t always say, but solopreneurs can absolutely say that. So use that to your favor. When you're trying to save time on things, there's no point in working the hours that you're not productive.

Yeah, that's a great point. And I think to the comment of outsourcing too, and like getting external support, I know when you're ramping up, like money is a resource, of course, right? And, so I love the idea of bartering. I've definitely bartered, still bartered sometimes. One thing that has helped me, too, and I think this would be good advice for this group, is, if you have an opportunity, but maybe the dollars aren't there. One of the things that you can trade is a testimonial, LinkedIn reference, or marketing assets, like other forms of currency. And I only learned this from conversations like this, and so I really appreciate, you know, your guys' candor, sharing what's working, being very vulnerable in this. As we start to wrap up, I wanna ask you both if there's like one big takeaway you want a listener to leave with today, what would that be? And Joe, I'll start with you.

Well, I won't steal your thunder, Carly, 'cause I know what you're gonna say.

Like, don't do it.

Yeah. I guess since I can't use Carly's, which I would, would've used, I would just say to when you start your business or if you're not happy with your business, your solopreneur business, one of the things to think about is that you're not doing this to become a unicorn, right? You're not giving up employees, the most powerful scaling tool that exists in order to become a multi-billionaire. So you're doing it for some other reason. And that reason probably has something to do with the life you want, right? It might have to do with getting into your kids' games or being able to go golfing when the weather's nice, or whatever it is, or whatever they are.

Put those on paper. Then look at your business and see if your business is designed to meet those goals, and I think people miss that a lot, that I call it step zero. We've created something called the solopreneur success cycle, and there are eight steps to it, but we call step zero. Define your goals because people skip it.

And it's one of those things where if you don't do that, it's very difficult to end up with a business that actually serves those goals. You just have to be really lucky, and it's unlikely. So I'll do that one.

That's a great one, 'cause I think your comment, Joe, on like goals. I think when people think of goals, it's a lot of business goals. I mean, I know I default there, but you're talking about lifestyle goals, and how does your business support your lifestyle goals, and that's a great takeaway. I don't think I've ever spent the time to put pen to paper on that

And then Carly, how about you?

Flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. That is the biggest takeaway, whether it is just having people to bounce ideas off of, or people to hang out with for happy hour because you don't get that like you do in the workspace anymore. Just plan in the community time plan in the accountability groups. It can get lonely unless you really focus on it. And yet plan on ways to work with others, do the bartering, and build that community. It's awesome.

I think right when I had started it, you know, it was a weird transition time to start something like this, but somebody made a comment to me saying, I'm not running this business by myself. And that was something that was like, she was like, I have my family, I have my friends. Like I'm not running anything alone. And that was a big shift for me too. So I appreciate that takeaway too, Carly. And if people wanna learn more or check out the LifeStarrr Professional Suite or the LifeStarrr, the free package that you offer, how can people find LifeStarrr, and how can they join?

Go for it, Joe.

Okay. Well for just go to LifeStarrr.com/intro and we have basically a free community and tools, and content for solopreneurs. LifeStarr, Starr has two Rs 'cause we didn't wanna be confused with the medevac helicopter company, but LifeStarr.com/intro. If you want to get ahold of me, I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm Joe R on LinkedIn. My email is joe@LifeStarr.com if you wanna reach out that way.

And I'll second that. LinkedIn is just Carly Ries, RIES. And it's carly@LifeStarr.com.

And when does Solopreneur Business for Dummies come out?

Late September 25.

This year!

Okay, awesome. Yeah, so we'll keep an eye out for that. We'll link everything in the show notes. I wanna thank all the viewers who were able to attend live. If you missed it, you could catch the replay wherever you stream podcasts, and of course on LinkedIn and YouTube. Thanks so much for being here, you guys.

Thank you. This is great.

Thanks. Take care.

All right.

Thank you so much for listening to the Prospecting on Purpose podcast. If you loved what you heard today, subscribe to the podcast and please rate and leave a review. For more info on me or if you'd like to work together, feel free to go to my website, saramurray.com. On social media, I usually hang out at saramurraysales. Thanks again for joining me, and I'll see you next time.
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