Latest / The Life-First Solopreneur / 100. Our Biggest Solopreneur Takeaways After 100 Episodes!! Plus, A Big Announcement...
Transcript
- Carly Ries (00:00): We want to be talking to people who are just getting started as a solopreneur or maybe even people who are still at their corporate job and want to take that leap. Intro (00:09): Welcome to Solopreneur, the One-Person Business podcast for professionals ready to take charge of their company of one and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts. Get ready to feel empowered to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries. Carly Ries (00:42): Welcome to Solopreneur the One-Person Business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries. Joe Rando (00:47): And I'm Joe Rando. Carly Ries (00:49): And Joe, we have quite the announcement because that may have been the last time you and I are going to do the intro like that. I'm going to save the reason why for later because for now I have to put something on. For those of you listening, not watching, I'm putting a hat on with a hundred stickers on it. It is my daughter's a hundred days of School hat, and she put a hundred stickers. I was going to wear it because it's our hundred episode. Woo Hoo! Turn the cheer on. Joe Rando (01:24): It doesn't feel like a hundred episodes. Carly Ries (01:26): It does and it doesn't. I feel like we've learned so much over the past few years. We took that hiatus too. We've republished a few. We did a lot of our own for the first season. It was a lot of just you and me, so maybe that's why it doesn't really feel like a hundred. We haven't done a hundred interviews, that's true. This is the hundredth thing we have published, which is just crazy. So hats off to you, Joe, literally, because my hat just fell off. This has been such an adventure and such a ride. This is going to be like any other episode we've ever done. We are going to reflect a little bit on the past couple of years. We have our top three most listened to episodes that we're going to revisit. We'll link that in the show notes. We'll tell you what episode number it is so you can go listen to it yourself. Joe and I have also picked our favorite episodes, which we're very excited about, which we'll also tell you which one. Ironically, they've been in the past five recordings we've published. I don't know if it's because they're the most recent in our minds, but regardless, they are amazing. So we'll include those. Joe Rando (02:34): That's what always happens. You've got to admit, that's what happens. When they do these greatest hundred movies of all time, it's always kind of biased toward the more recent ones because people actually know them. There are a few there from 1957 or something, but I think we did the same thing. It was the stuff was top of mind. I think that probably, if we dug deeply, we could have gone back and said, "oh, that was a really good one, back in 2021 or whatever". Carly Ries (03:00): For sure, even some of our solo episodes. I'm excited to dive into those and then be sure to stay for the end because Joe and I have a really big announcement. It is something that we've been brainstorming a lot for the past few months, and now we're actually going to take the leap into what this new thing is. So Joe, I guess the past years were such a learning for us. We've better understood our audience. I've gotten more comfortable in front of the mic. We've started video. What are some behind the scenes things that have gone through your mind? Joe Rando (03:39): The first was when we talked about doing video, it was like, "NOOO". I don't love it, but I've gotten to the point where it's not like, "oh, crap", so it's better. The mic, the talking, that was never so bad for me. But the video is. Carly Ries (04:00): I don't know if you remember the mic and the talking was really bad for me for season one. For listeners who don't know, I had this condition that we didn't know I had. It went undiagnosed most of season one, and I always told guests that I was fine. I was pregnant. Don't worry about it. I was just out of breath. And come to find out I had this actual condition that required surgery. But video made me so nervous because basically what I was doing is I was saying a sentence and then muting myself and then saying a sentence and muting myself. I was gasping for air. So the reason I didn't want to do a video was because I could hide it from an audio standpoint, but I couldn't hide it from a video standpoint. Joe Rando (04:48): The other thing too is I was doing a lot of the editing in those days and I was actually taking out the breathing that I would go in and actually I could spot it in a waveform and go, delete, delete, delete. So I don't know if anybody really knew that you were dealing with that. Carly Ries (05:04): I was trying to hide it. For anybody that's having trouble breathing or coughing a lot and can't figure it out, mine ended up being idiopathic subglottic stenosis. It's like scar tissue in the airways, so just PSA for that. But yeah, I was so nervous that first season because of that, and we didn't know what was going on. So when season two started and I could breathe, I mean you know me, Joe, I'm a talker. I was like, let's do this. And I feel like for me, season two was where I really hit my stride. I think that's where we kind of figured out the magic formula and what works and all of that. I don't know if you agree on that or not. Joe Rando (05:44): I think it's all been great. I felt bad for you when you couldn't breathe while you were talking, but you were a trooper and we got it done. This has been a lot more relaxing, obviously, because of the fact that you're not struggling to breathe. But then we added video to stress me out. Carly Ries (06:00): Yeah, exactly. So, win a few, lose a few. With that, I feel like we should get into our, I guess top five episodes. Three are our actual most listened to episodes and then our favorites and the three are in no particular order. I figure for our top episodes based off of our listeners, number one is episode 81, and it was Storytelling Strategies for Solopreneurs with Jay Acunzo. Joe, I give full credit to you for getting Jay on our podcast. What was it that drew you to him initially? Joe Rando (06:39): I just love what he has to say. Jay is all about authenticity, all about telling your story your way, all about leaving best practices behind for being real and being you and doing it the way that you think makes sense for what you're about. And that speaks to me. Especially in this day of AI where people are just saying, "oh, I'm just going to go and put a prompt in and create a blog post" or whatever. It's like, yeah, any monkey can do that, and you wind up with what he called a waterfall of gray. I'm a big fan of trying to continue to find my own voice, do things my way, say things my way, and try to avoid falling into that trap of doing the best practice. There's some interesting stuff maybe we can dig into in a minute about that. But that's what drew me to Jay. He's this person that wants to help people tell their authentic stories their way. Carly Ries (07:47): I love that he thanked chatGPT and all of the AI out there because he was saying it was making everybody so mediocre. And it's easier to stand out when you're yourself. I think the thing I loved most about this episode, he was great with story. I mean, if you want to learn how to be a good storyteller, don't only listen to Jay's advice, just listen to the way that Jay talks. For an easy listen where you want to kick back and relax, I feel like Jay just speaks in storytelling and the way that he responds to interview questions or explains what he does. He's always storytelling. He has really mastered his craft. A lot of people say they're great with storytelling. I have yet to see anybody reach the level that he has. Joe Rando (08:35): Especially at least in the world of marketing. He is focused on communications and content for marketing. There are probably some people that have won the Nobel Prize for literature that can outdo him, but it's a really refreshing approach that he takes. For me, I think that what you said is one of my big takeaways too, but I also was really interested how he talked about the idea. He did it in the context of podcasting, but I think it applies to almost anything that we do in terms of communications. He said there were three things to think about. The first is process. That is the thing that most people focus on and he says it's the least important. That's like if you're doing a podcast, say, which mic are you using? And what are you doing in terms of software to do the podcast and where you're hosting and all that stuff. And he said that really at the end of the day is the least important thing. He said the next two are more important. And the next one was practice. He said, just keeping at it. He quoted the Mean Girls movies talked about, and I never saw Mean Girls. Carly Ries (09:54): Joe, I'm going to interject here. On Wednesdays we wear pink. Joe Rando (09:58): Okay, that's what it was. Yes. On Wednesdays we wear pink and basically saying for us, we do a newsletter every other Thursday no matter what. It's not that we feel creative. It's not that we feel like, oh, I've got a great thing to say. It's like we do a newsletter. We keep at it. I'm sure some of them are better than others, but it's a practice. My wife is a part-time writer, and she has this thing that the writers say called, "Butt in chair". It means just sit down and do it. Put something out there because it is Thursday or whatever. Just have a plan, have a thing that you do and get it done and put it out there and you'll improve. He made that point very strongly. Then the third one was posture. How do you see yourself, how you see the world? (10:52): He talked about Ann Handley, who's a really great marketer and writer. She sees a magazine in a store and then finds a way to tie that back to what she does and writes about it. I guess this is the other thing that ties back to what I really took away from this. He said, "Chat GPT is an LLM, and people need to be LLMs too or use LLMs for their storytelling. He said, Chat GPT, it's a large language model. And for storytellers, for people, it's little life moments. Find those little things in your life that you can then put out there for people. Carly Ries (11:37): This is just bringing back such good memories from this episode. Listeners, again, this is episode 81, Storytelling Strategies for Solopreneurs with Jay Acunzo. Please check it out. You do not want to miss it. For the next one that we're going to talk about, is episode 61, Why Affiliate Marketing Needs To Be Top of Mind for Solopreneurs? We talked to Matt McWilliams about this, which he's kind of like the affiliate guy. He has his own podcast, website. I subscribe to his newsletter. He's great. The original reason we brought Matt on was because we were interested in affiliate marketing and applying it to our business. We have since done some of it. There's still so much more. I feel like we've literally just scratched the surface on it. Joe Rando (12:21): Yeah, we'll get there. Carly Ries (12:22): But it is just a wealth of knowledge and how it can be so beneficial for your business. In the episode we dive into what affiliate marketing is and how you can actually use it as a company of one. But the thing that caught me off guard is a lot of people do it because they want extra money. If people click the link and then buy the product using your link, you get some of that payment. What I did not think about from the episode is how much it could help you understand your audience. So let's say we had a resources page on our website and everybody was clicking on this Amazon product rather than this Target product, just for an example. We would know, okay, our audience shops more at Amazon than they do at Target, or they like this product based off of the number of clicks. (13:12): You could actually do a lot of audience research on that. I guess I never really thought about it that way. What I really liked about the episode is it talks about the obvious and how solopreneurs can use the obvious, but then he talks about the not so obvious as to why it's beneficial for your business. When I was re-listening to the episode for this show, I was taking notes all over again, even though I knew everything he was saying, it was just such good information. So I personally love that. I think that would've been my top five, even if it wasn't the listener's top five. Joe Rando (13:46): Yeah, it's really powerful stuff in terms of finding ways to monetize that you might not have thought about. I think it's a really great thing to do. And I agree. My takeaway on this is the fact that I didn't realize how much you could come to understand your audience by virtue of using affiliate marketing to test, as you said. You can put up a bunch of different products, whether maybe an Amazon affiliate and put up some books, or you could put up different things and see what people actually click through on. Let's just say you put a bunch of books that you thought were great for your audience, and you put 'em out on your site and people can click through and you get paid a few cents when they buy 'em from Amazon. But you are learning now which topics were really of most of interest to them. It's telling you things, as you pointed out, Carly, that you might not have been easy to find out any other way because this is people putting their money where their mouth is, and that really shows you where they're really at. Carly Ries (14:48): Where to invest your dollars, Joe Rando (14:50): Exactly. What topics, what content, what ideas to focus in on. Again, depending on what you're doing it could be product, other kinds of products besides books, but you can learn lots of things. Carly Ries (15:02): Again, be sure to check out episode 61, Why Affiliate Marketing Needs to Be Top of Mind for Solopreneurs with Matt McWilliams. So Joe, for the next one. It was episode 87, Unleashing Your Inner Ninja, A Journey to Prosperity with Stephen K. Hayes. I'm not going to lie. I had no idea what to expect before this interview. I was like, we might be going out on a limb. This guy seems really cool. I hope we can tie it back into our audience. Let's just see how this works. And oh my gosh! I'm so glad it was such a popular episode because Stephen is just the real deal, and he was able to tie everything back into our audience, even though he's a literal ninja. Joe Rando (15:59): Really, really, really a ninja. Carly Ries (16:02): He was the Dalai Lama's personal escort for 10 years. I mean, who can do that? He had a firsthand view of all the Dalai Lama's teachings as his personal escort. And he in his own right is also a celebrity in his world. It was so interesting. I know nothing about the world of martial arts and he has so much wisdom, and I just thought it was so cool. I'm so glad we took a chance on that because I think anybody trying to find their purpose in their business or purpose in life needs to listen to this episode. Joe Rando (16:51): I think it was the second biggest risk we took in terms of "are we on topic or not"? Carly Ries (16:57): What was the first? Joe Rando (17:03): Seriously, the first one, I think the biggest risk from my perspective, and I was the one that drove, it was the Joep Vermolen podcast where he was a music composer and a basically massive introvert that wound up becoming the star of a Dutch television series that got picked up by Netflix to put around the United States. So he was a solopreneur music composer that wound up as a TV star in the Netherlands and then in the United States. That was one where I'm like, "I don't know if that's going to work", but it did. Carly Ries (17:38): Just to tie it back to this one with Stephen K. Hayes, he really sheds light on finding your passion, living your purpose. We talk about the concept, icky guy, I don't even know if we talked about that in the episode, but it really for me, aligns with that concept of icky guy. Just using compassion in your business. The episode just reminded me to get back to your values and to get back to your core and to let that really drive your business. Not the money, not anything like that, but your core values. I just think it's so important to revisit that, especially when you're in the hamster wheel of solopreneurship. Joe Rando (18:19): He took it back to, you need passion to be truly successful. And this is a debate I see going on. There's people that say, well, "no, you don't have to be passionate about your business. You have to be competent and you have to be able to do it." But there are people that really aren't passionate about their business, and that's fine. Then there are people that say, if you're not passionate about your business, it's going to be very hard to be successful and even harder to be happy. I tend to subscribe to that camp. I think that I have been in businesses that I wasn't passionate about. I've worked jobs I wasn't passionate about. It was some of the least happy times of my life. So I believe that. He talked about this idea of finding something you're passionate about. He asked a question that I loved because I've asked this of younger people that have asked me to help them figure out where to go. (19:06): And the question is, "what did you want to be when you were a little kid?" Try to get past the professional baseball player or astronaut or maybe nowadays, influencer. But for a while there it was game designer. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to code, but the idea of what kinds of things got you excited when you were young. A lot of times those are the things that are really about you. If you can find a way to do those things, you can be very, very happy in your work. So yeah, I thought that was a really great perspective that he had, and I just liked that he kind of came down on that passion side. Carly Ries (19:50): Oh, for sure. Joe Rando (19:51): It made me feel a little bit validated. Carly Ries (19:55): Yes. So just as a reminder, this was episode 87, Unleashing Your Inner Ninja, A Journey to Prosperity with Stephen K. Hayes. It was amazing. Now it's time for you and I to share our favorite episodes. Again, these were very recent, but we loved them. For me, it was number 96, the Ultimate Blueprint for Solopreneurs, Building a Community From Scratch. I think I like this for a few reasons. Joe Rando (20:23): It was a weird one. We'd never done anything like it before. Carly Ries (20:27): And that's just it. You and I actually didn't really talk. I think we introduced to them Joe Rando (20:32): That's what was so great about it. Carly Ries (20:33): I think for an episode to be successful, you and I just shouldn't talk. We had two guests on. We had Andy Guttormsen, who is the co-founder of Circle, which is a community platform, and then our very own community manager, Stacy Blette. We had them do a workshop. And Stacy is a solopreneur working on this new product launch. She's had this idea forever, and she's really about to reach the finish line with launching. We will link to in this show notes, but we had them do a workshop together, and Andy literally showed Stacy how to build a community from scratch. I thought this was so great because as Solopreneurs, community is so necessary. One to help understand and build your audience. But two, I have a question. Where do I turn to? I don't have a tech guy downstairs or a financial person. Networking, collaborating, everything just ties back to community. I loved this episode for that reason, just the format as well as the content. Joe Rando (21:42): Yeah, it was really great. The whole idea of doing that workshop and seeing how it's done was very cool. I don't know if you can get any more authority on terms of community building than the guy that Co-founded Circle.so Carly Ries (21:57): Exactly. Kind of a big deal. And Stacey, per usual, for those of you who are not members of our community on Facebook, it's just the solopreneur community. Stacey Blette is our community manager. And shout out to Stacey. She is such a mama bear. She takes care of everybody. We have hundreds of people in this group. Everybody feels like they know Stacy personally. When Joe and I were talking about setting this group up and creating this community, Joe didn't even skip a beat. He was just like, "oh, Stacy's going to do it." He hadn't asked her yet. He just knew she was the one and he was right. It is a wonderful community. So go to Facebook, the Solopreneur Community and meet her. She's awesome. Joe Rando (22:43): Definitely. So in terms of my takeaway from that one though, I thought it was really interesting that he said that the real biggest thing you needed to do is have a signature gathering in your community. He said it's almost like a product that you're offering. If you don't have those, I mean we're doing that at Lifestarr, but I never tied it back to the fact that that was what a crucial component of building an online community. I thought of it as events. We've got events, we got community, but he's basically saying, these things tie together, which I just hadn't thought of. I really liked that insight. Carly Ries (23:21): Agreed. Again, that was episode number 96, the Ultimate Blueprint for Solopreneurs, Building a Community from Scratch. However, episode 97 is Joe's favorite. It's funny because before we actually decided what our favorites were, I assumed this was going to be yours. It's probably my top one as well, but I was like, you have this one. So I'm going to let you introduce this. This is episode 97, Answers to the Top Email Marketing Questions Asked by Solopreneurs. Joe Rando (23:53): This is a great topic, but what made it really great was that we had Jay Schwedelson answering the questions. And Jay, if you don't know him, is just awesome. He is a combination of a knowledgeable guru about all things kind of email, at least as much as anybody can be. Keeping up with the changes and that kind of thing. But he's just a fun person. He's witty and funny and self-effacing. He's got a podcast called Do This, Not That. He's just very funny and such a pleasure to talk to. It was just a lot of fun. We talked in detail about things like, does everybody need email marketing as a solopreneur? The fact is, YES! You can get the biggest LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter following, X following that you want, but you can wake up one day and it's gone. (25:03): So email is critical to having a business that you can know that you can sustain. We talked about mistakes that people make. We talked about common myths. One of the cool things he does is he figures out, I don't know how he does it, it's probably some magic, but he figures out what kinds of things in subject lines increase open rates. Then he is got this thing called subjectline.com. It's very cool because you put in your subject line and it gives it a score. I can't remember whether it's doing any rewriting of it yet in terms of ai. Maybe it is, but I can't remember. How do you focus your email efforts? What do you do? How to grow your email list? Spoiler alert, lead magnets give something away in exchange. He gave some predictions about 2024 for email marketing and bottom line, it's going to be a little tougher for some things that are going on. I won't give away all the details in there. Carly, what was your biggest takeaway from this one? Carly Ries (26:13): Kind of everything you said. I don't want to give it away, but some of his answers really did surprise me. I'm in marketing. I assumed I would already know the answers to everything just with a little Jay pizazz on it. But he really did say things that took me by surprise and made me think about some of our strategy. So even if you think you know what you're doing with your email marketing, I still think this is a very worthwhile episode to listen to because Jay is kind of the authority in the world of email marketing. But again, we were talking about Jay Acunzo just being an easy to listen podcast. It just flowed so well. Jay is the same way. He's probably going to get sick of me saying this, but I just refer to him as a cup of coffee. You feel energized after talking to him. You're ready to rock. His positive attitude is just so contagious. So even if you're not interested in email marketing and you're just having an off day and need a jolt to get you going, just listen to him. I think that those are my biggest takeaways. I agree with everything you said, Joe Rando (27:20): For me, and this probably goes beyond just the podcast, I do listen to his stuff and I interact with him on LinkedIn and everything, but really what it comes down to is that there's a lot of little things that can make a difference in how successful an email campaign is. These little things might not make a big difference in and of themselves, but if you do them all together, it can actually add up to a big difference. It's important to understand what things work, what don't. There are also some really dumb things that you can do that are going to destroy your results in terms of an email campaign. So these are the kinds of things that you really want to take into account as you're doing email because you're taking the trouble to send out the email. You might as well do what you can to make sure that it's going to get opened and hopefully get responded to in some way. Carly Ries (28:13): Yes So just a reminder, this is episode 97 Answers to the Top Email Marketing Questions Asked by Solopreneurs with Jay Schwedelson. Joe, before we get into our drum rule, big announcement, I also just really wanted to give a shout out to Tricia and Cian. These are the people behind the scenes of this podcast. They do dome of the admin, Cian does our editing. They're kind of like the unsung heroes of this show, and I wanted to bring them up before, but they're so great. They make this a well-oiled machine. So I just wanted to make sure that we gave those two a shout out before our big announcement. Do you want to say it or do you want me to say it? Joe, Joe Rando (29:03): You say it. It was your idea. You should get to say it. Carly Ries (29:08): We are rebranding from Solopreneur the One-Person Business podcast to the Aspiring Solopreneur. Over the past a hundred episodes, we've looked to see what's worked, what hasn't worked, who listens to us, who doesn't listen to us, who listens to the whole thing, who doesn't. And really, we want to be talking to people who are just getting started as a solopreneur or maybe even people who are still at their corporate job and want to take that leap. Established solopreneurs, you may still get something out of this, but we just really want to hit people where they're starting and really help guide you along this crazy journey of becoming a company of one. So we are rebranding to the Aspiring Solopreneur. You'll see a new logo, you'll hear a new intro that we're working on, and we would just love your feedback on that. But that is our big thing. So if you subscribe to us and you see the Aspiring Solopreneur that is us, we're keeping the same artwork so that you don't get super confused. We're just changing the name of it and wanted you to be aware. It's something we are just really excited about. Our content will start getting tailored to the audience, and I think this will be a really great change. We are really happy about it. Joe Rando (30:24): I still believe we're going to have some stuff that's useful for people that have been in business for a while, but we are going to try to focus on helping people get started, because there's a lot of people doing that now. To be perfectly honest, there's some great advice out there to help them and there's some really bad advice out there. There are people that are saying and representing things that I don't think are typically true. You think you can go out and work four hours a week and make $10,000 a month. God bless you if you can, but for most of us humans, it's not how it's going to work. We're trying to help those people build businesses that serve their life, that let them do the things that they decided to go into business for themselves in order to be able to do. That includes obviously having enough revenue, but also being able to run the business in a way that doesn't eat them up. So we'll be working on that, and I'm excited about it. We're doing lots of stuff for established solopreneurs as well, not in this podcast, but over at Lifestarr.com. Carly Ries (31:26): Joe, good segue. I was actually just going to talk about that. We don't really talk about Lifestarr a ton on the podcast. We really just try to keep it focused to the show. We have our community promos, but our company is called Lifestarr, and we are literally here to help solopreneurs navigate this solopreneur journey. We have products and resources for established and new solopreneurs. We just launched our first paid products, which is awesome. We have a ton of free information for people, ton of free resources, but our new paid products are really, really awesome. So we definitely recommend that you check out lifestarr.com. If you are watching this on YouTube, look at Joe's shirt and put a .com after that. That's how you get there. We're really excited about where the podcast is going, where the company is going, and we just want to give a major heartfelt thanks to all of you listeners. You keep us going, you keep us energized. We love what we do. We love helping you, and our inboxes are always open as well. I don't know if that's the right way to say that, but carly@lifestarr.com, joe@lifestarr.com. We love talking to our audience. It is actually us who respond, so we would love to hear from you and just make this show the best that we possibly can. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, thank you, thank you. Joe Rando (32:53): I'll add two more thank yous. If you'll give us a five star review, Carly Ries (32:56): And a subscribe and a like, and a share. Just yell it in the grocery store. "We love this show." Joe Rando (33:06): This is Carly's passion project, and I love that I'm able to help. We hit top 5% global rank. We're like, "yeah, yeah". I know she's saying, "okay, I want to get to top three." Carly Ries (33:19): Oh Yes! Joe Rando (33:19): Yes, we've got to do that. So help Carly get this to top 3%. And then of course, eventually we'll be pushing for one, but right now, that's our next goal. Carly Ries (33:31): And remember, if you yell it in the grocery store, yell the Aspiring Solopreneur, not Solopreneur, the One-Person Business podcast. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. We're excited to share our first episode of the rebrand next week, and we will see you during the episode. Have a great week. Joe Rando (33:51): Take care. Closing (33:54): 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? 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