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199. How Solopreneurs Can Scale Their Businesses Without Burning Out · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Can you scale a business without hiring employees? Yeah, you can. In this episode, we spill the secrets on how to grow as a solopreneur without giving up your freedom or bringing on a team. We cover the magic trio, outsourcing, automation, and AI, plus a few bonus strategies you might not have thought of. From set it and forget it systems to trading services with other solopreneurs, this conversation is full of, oh, I can totally do that moments.
• 0:26
  So if you're ready to grow your business on your terms, keep listening. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work.
• 1:05
  And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. So Joe, we work with solopreneurs day in and day out. And a lot of times, people ask the question, want to grow my business, I wanna scale my business, but I don't wanna hire employees.
• 1:36
  Because for whatever reason, there's the connotation that comes with running a one person business that the only way you can get larger and larger is by hiring people. And that simply isn't the case. I wanted to address a few of the ways you can do that today. The first one, and I said it two episodes ago and I say it all the time, flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Outsource to other people so that you can focus on building more products, focus your time on taking on other clients, whatever you need to do.
• 2:07
  But you don't need to take on all those tasks. Figure out what you're not good at or what you don't like doing, and outsource those so that you can focus what you enjoy and what you're good at to grow the business further. So just getting rid of some tasks and getting some things off your plate is a way that you can scale and grow because you're not bogged down by things that you don't need to be focusing on.
• 2:27
  Joe Rando: I totally agree. I love seeing solopreneurs getting other solopreneurs to work with them, to help them with things, maybe swapping back and forth. We've seen a lot of that, and you know, getting somebody to help you with your books, you help them with their marketing, or whatever it is. And it's really really powerful. One of the things that I always say is, being a solopreneur means that you're not trying to scale at all costs because there is no more powerful tool for scaling than employees. Right? Contractors are a different animal. You have less say, less control.
• 3:02
  If you try to treat them like employees, the IRS can step in, and it hurts when they do that because they basically make you pay all those, employment taxes. So when you're dealing with contractors or other people like that, you're limiting your ability to control them, which is fine because you're also giving yourself some freedom. But the bottom line is, you're not going to be able to scale easily without some level of outsourcing and also obviously automating, right? You need to automate. So that idea of outsourcing really can make a huge difference in terms of helping you to scale, regardless of the fact that it's not gonna let you scale at the rates of an employee based business.
• 3:46
  It's still worth doing.
• 3:48
  Carly Ries: Well, you just said automate. Can you elaborate on that? Because I think that's huge thing.
• 3:56
  Joe Rando: let's give a simple example. So right now, we are working on building out paid tiers of LifeStarr.
• 4:04
  And one of the things that we're doing in that process is we're letting people sign up on a waiting list to get into that paid tier. And when they do that, we want to basically send them information that kinda keeps them engaged, you know, emails that say, hey, you're on the list. Here's what's happening, we'll let you know when we've got room to let you into this plan that you've signed up for. And we don't have to send those emails ourselves, we basically use a marketing tool called HubSpot to automatically once those people sign up, fill that form out online, it knows, send this email, then wait a few days and send this email, then wait a few and so we don't have to worry about doing that for everybody. So we build out the emails, build out the experience, and then the system does it for us, and it takes so much brainpower away from us having to think about doing that, because it just happens automatically.
• 4:58
  Carly Ries: And it's so crazy, sometimes you even forget that you said it because it's so efficient. I got a few email responses last week from an automated email that went out that we kinda set and forget, and I was getting responses on it. I was like, oh yeah, I emailed these people yesterday. it just can work so well for you behind the scenes. But hand in hand with automation so we used to say automate, delegate.
• 5:22
  Automate, delegate. And now automate, delegate AI, is the third thing. Right? I mean, AI, the whole agent AI thing isn't quite there yet. You know, you can actually, have AI do the work for you. At least, I wouldn't trust it yet to, really be taking actions for me, but boy, does it save time. I mean, it can save a ton of time. I haven't been doing a lot of social media lately because of the book and just heads down.
• 5:54
  Joe Rando: But when I was doing social media posts all the time, and I'll be getting back to that, I developed kind of a formula that I like to use, kind of a recipe for the way I wanted my post to look. And I taught that to ChatGPT, and then we go in and I would just put in an idea, and I'd say format this, and it would format it into a LinkedIn post that I could then edit and post in LinkedIn, and it saved me tons of time from having to implement my own formula manually. So it really saved a bunch of time doing that.
• 6:26
  Carly Ries: It's amazing what you can train, like we'll use ChatGPT just as that's the most commonly known one. But Joe, you created a you're wrong ChatGPT that as solopreneurs, you work in a silo a lot, so you need somebody to kinda tell you when you're wrong about something, and you trained it to tell you when you're wrong, which can save so much time.
• 6:45
  Joe Rando: I did it as a joke. I was trying to make, something funny I was gonna share with all of you. And I, basically told it, you know, disagree. Tell me why I'm wrong, but be diligent. Don't just make stuff up. Do your research and and be smart about it. And you know, generally be polite, but occasionally throw a little zinger in. And it does, but it's surprisingly useful. One of the problems with ChatGPT out of the box is it's a little too nice.
• 7:13
  It's a little too, hey, that's a great idea. And that doesn't always help because it's not always a great idea. And this one just basically says, yeah, that sounds good on paper, but, and it'll give me all these reasons why it really isn't complete, or it isn't right, or I'm missing a point, And it's shockingly helpful, and it just really helps me adjust my thinking.
• 7:33
  Carly Ries: Yeah, and just tie it back to how this helps with scaling and everything, is it saves you time. And you have a new product and service, you wanna feel like, is this a good idea? And ChatGPT will be like, nope. And here's why.
• 7:47
  Joe Rando: ChatGPT will be like, oh, great idea, you know. But if you tell it to be a little critical, then all of a sudden it gets a little more real and a lot more helpful.
• 7:57
  Carly Ries: But another time saving thing that we've done from an AI stand point that is going to help us scale because we're using it as a way to do paid tiers, is you trained it on all five of our personas. At LifeStarr, we have five personas, three primary ones that we're targeting right now, and you put those personas into ChatGPT, you trained it, and so now we could say one of our personas is, for example, is called experienced Erica. And you can now say, tweak this email so that it relates to experienced Erica. Because of what you put in there, we now have that email with her voice, with the type of messaging that we want, and you can apply it across the board to any kind of project or service you wanna put out there, which is crazy.
• 8:41
  Joe Rando: Yeah. Because you can basically be talking about the same thing. You know, say, for example, the solopreneur problem solvers event, and describing that to Erica is different than describing it to somebody that's struggling. So Erica has established it. We have somebody that's persona that's struggling, not that things aren't going the way they want them to.
• 9:04
  You wanna talk about that a little differently for them. So, not having to re craft the email for every persona, it really saves some time, you know. And it's more effective because what happens is you get busy, you get crazy, and I'll just send that same email to everybody. But it doesn't have the same effect as when you're speaking their language.
• 9:23
  Carly Ries: Absolutely. So just in terms of scaling there, there are three other ones that I wanted to point out. One is productizing your services and figuring out ways to do that because you don't always wanna be trading your time for money if you're let's say you're a coach, do a coaching course. Instead of doing one on one with one person, put a course together that many people can get. Or another example is instead of one to one, one to many.
• 9:50
  And instead of doing one on one coaching, coach 10 people at one time, get that income all in the same hour that you would be doing one on one coaching, just as an example.
• 10:00
  Joe Rando: Right. You can make a lot more money doing that. When you do the math, you charge 25% of your one on one coaching rate, but you do, you know, eight, ten people, that's a lot more per hour.
• 10:12
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Absolutely. And then we started this episode by talking about outsourcing and working with others. But also I don't wanna forget in terms of working with people, that partnerships and collaborations are also a great way to expose each other to your each other's audiences, to gain exposure in a new area you may not have otherwise. And you could do this on trade and not spend a dime and say, hey, I'm a designer, you're a writer, let's combine our services, I'll show you to my audience, you show me to yours, I'll recommend you if you recommend me.
• 10:44
  Bada bing bada boom, then you have a new audience and you didn't Do anything.
• 10:48
  Joe Rando: Right.
• 10:49
  Carly Ries: So I think I covered all my things.
• 10:52
  Joe Rando: We talked about digital products and courses. That's important. And repurposing content is another way that can help you to scale if you find that you need to be in multiple, you know, social media platforms or something in order to effectively scale, not creating stuff from scratch, but repurposing can be a powerful way to kind of, get the content, scaled up enough without having to do all the extra work of creating new content for a second platform. If that makes sense.
• 11:29
  Carly Ries: So there you have it. If you like these ideas and you wanna learn from other solopreneurs, and not just Joe and I, be sure to visit lifestarr.com/intro and that is our free and free forever platform where you can get access to monthly educational and networking events, resources to help you as a solopreneur, as well as an awesome engaging community that will welcome you with open arms. It's so great. I love the people in our community, so be sure to join that. The link is in the show notes, but again, lifestarr.com/intro
• 12:04
  And don't forget to leave us a five star review, share this episode with a friend, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube. And we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures?
• 12:30
  At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.