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The Life-First Business Framework: Pricing, Clients & Freedom · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Most solopreneurs obsess over one thing, getting more clients. But what if that's actually the wrong place to start? In this episode, Joe and I break down why chasing clients before designing your ideal business is a recipe for burnout, and what to ask yourself before you ever think about lead generation. From pricing for value instead of hours, to knowing exactly how many clients you can realistically take on between nine and five, this conversation is a reality check and a roadmap all in one. So if you've ever caught yourself saying you want too much money without knowing what that actually means for your life, then listen up.
• 0:36
  This one is for you. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I spend every episode with solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen. We like to say life first, then business. So let's get right to it.
• 1:03
  Joe, we have worked with hundreds actually thousands of solopreneurs at this point through our events, through our community, on the podcast. What do you think aside from, wanting to run a Life-First Business, what do you think they complain about the most? Not complain, but have the most issues with?
• 1:20
  Joe Rando: It's always about getting clients, lead gen, you know, I need I need to get more customers.
• 1:26
  Carly Ries: Yes. And while I will not argue that customers are necessary to bring in income and run a business, which obviously they are, a lot of times what I have seen is people aren't setting up their businesses efficiently, and aren't figuring out ways to streamline their operations to, one, get clients, but also to live the life that they want to live. And so they don't start with that why in mind. So their brain immediately defaults to, let's get clients, let's get clients, let's get clients, and that turns into their whole business. And then they burn out from their whole business, cause they're running a business that they never wanted to run-in the first place.
• 2:09
  Is that kind of the pattern you've been seeing?
• 2:12
  Joe Rando: Yeah. It's multi pronged whatever has multi prongs. It's a fact that very few solopreneurs niche down as much as they should in order to get attention from the people they actually want to serve, right? So there's that aspect of it.
• 2:30
  There's the fact that they don't necessarily define the product around the life they wanna live, So they want weekends off, but then they create a product that involves them working lots of hours to get it done and they're charging by the hour. So now they're in a position where if they don't work the hours, they don't make the money. And so there are a lot of mistakes like that that go into this problem, which is really a function of, as you said, thinking through the kind of business that you need to run-in order to support what you want for your life.
• 3:13
  Carly Ries: Yeah. I think before you ask yourself, how do I get the next client? You need to be asking, these are some questions that I think are important. What do I want my days to look like, genuinely? what do I actually need to earn to fund the life that I want to live?
• 3:29
  You may not need as much as you think you do to run the life you want to live. And maybe you need more. But you need to think of what that life looks like. You need to think of the kind of work that energizes you versus what drains you, and when to do that work. Like you were saying, if you don't wanna work on the weekends, don't run a business where you need to work on the weekends.
• 3:48
  Maybe don't start a wedding photography business. Who do I want to work with? I mean, that is so huge. The people you work with, there's in the show, It's the like satirical vampire show.
• 4:07
  What We Do in the Shadows, there's a character , he's just an energy vampire. And he's not a regular vampire. He just sucks your energy. And it's like, if these clients are your energy vampires,
• 4:21
  Joe Rando: He's real.
• 4:21
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Exactly. And in the show he is. And if these clients are your energy vampires, get rid of them. They're not gonna lead to the life you wanna live anyway.
• 4:32
  So think about questions like that, and then think, okay, if I only wanna work Mondays through Friday, if I know I wanna stop at 5PM, like, think backwards and think realistically how many clients can I take on between nine to five if I'm running it solo? And if you need x amount, and you don't think you can get it done to make the income you want, then you consider outsourcing. You consider automation. You consider AI. Or you think, okay, I can take these amount of clients and maybe I raise my prices so that I don't need as many clients.
• 5:09
  Joe Rando: Or change your pricing strategy . maybe instead of charging hourly, you're charging based on a project. And especially charging based on the value you're creating, not on some arbitrary hourly rates that people seem willing to pay for your services. Because somebody might say, well, I can only pay $90 an hour for that. But when you look at the work you do I was talking to somebody the other day and you know, they made I don't know.
• 5:36
  I think it was something like $500 and realized that the work they had done had saved the company $400,000 on lost investments. there were no details given, but the person said, gee, I probably could have charged 5,000 and They would have been thrilled. You know, and thinking through that value add, instead of just, oh, what's a fair rate for what I do, is really a powerful way to raise prices.
• 6:05
  And, let's face it. You can't have a life first business if you're not making enough money to survive. So we gotta put that on the table and you gotta do that, but that doesn't necessarily mean more customers and more hours worked.
• 6:19
  Carly Ries: No. Exactly. And I mean, we'd be lying if I said there wasn't some trial and error. Sometimes you really do have to go through that trial and error to see what works with your schedule. You are now a solopreneur or you've been a lifelong solopreneur.
• 6:31
  Joe, you are unemployable. You've been an entrepreneur for decades.
• 6:40
  Joe Rando: 1990.
• 6:40
  Carly Ries: Yeah. So some people have that background too.
• 6:42
  But if you're listening to this show and you're like, this is resonating with me, just take a look inward, not to get like too foo foo. But you do need to look inside and be like, what do I actually want? If somebody asks you, how much money do you wanna make? And you're like, oh, I mean, a lot of money. I mean, can you make a lot of money while also making it to your kid's soccer games?
• 7:05
  And what is a lot of money? And like, you need to have that holistic view to run a life first business.
• 7:13
  Joe Rando: When my nephew was very, very little, I was with him and he wanted raisins. I said, how many raisins do you want? He said, too much. And I think some people do that with income. How much do you want?
• 7:27
  I want too much. If you want to make as much money as you can possibly make, don't be a solopreneur. You need employees. I know people talk about it's gonna be the billion dollar solopreneur company and it'll probably happen, but there are a lot of things that can happen once. If you wanna make a lot of money and you wanna increase your odds, hire employees, build an employee based business.
• 7:54
  Don't be a solopreneur. You wanna build a life around what you want, a solopreneur is a great path.
• 8:01
  Carly Ries: And that doesn't mean you can't make a living. we're just saying probablay not the next billionaire.
• 8:06
  Joe Rando: Yeah. You won't necessarily be a billionaire, but no. People make 6 and sometimes even seven figures as solopreneurs. And you know, 7 figures, there's a lot to that. And there's some luck and there's some, you know, amazing skill involved and the right thing at the right time.
• 8:23
  But making well into 6 figures a solopreneur is not at all unreasonable. And, most people can live on that pretty comfortably.
• 8:32
  Carly Ries: Yeah. And again, it's a matter of where your priorities are. I just think if you want one where you can go get out, grab a cup of coffee with your friends or do a workout class at 9AM and then work for a few hours and then do this and then do that. Like, think of how many hours you actually wanna work and then up those prices. You can only have to work those hours and you can still live the life you want.
• 8:56
  There are a lot of ways to approach that, which is what we are going to be talking about in The Aspiring Solopreneur, and all of our episodes moving forward, how you can achieve that, as well as LifeStarr in general. So Joe, anything else for today?
• 9:10
  Joe Rando: Not really. I think you're a great example of somebody that's done this. You know, you said you talked about how you were working so many hours when you first started as a solopreneur, but, you've balanced it out. You have time for your kids. You have time for other things, and you put the time that you need to in to do the job that you've agreed to do here.
• 9:30
  Carly Ries: Mhmm.
• 9:30
  Joe Rando: So Well, you've done a good job of that.
• 9:33
  Carly Ries: So everybody just refer to me if you have any questions. Just kidding. But we do have a lot to teach from all of the solopreneurs that we've talked to who've been able to do this, and we're excited to continue to provide that information to you. But as always, leave a five star review if you found this episode helpful or motivating or anything, or you're just like, I wanna do a good deed today. Let me give that five star review.
• 9:57
  It helps us spread the word to other solopreneurs looking to build a life first business. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend. And we'll 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.
• 10:20
  So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? 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.