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222. Why Nobody Notices Your Solo Business (and How to Fix It) · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Ever feel like your business is for everyone, only to realize that that means no one is really paying attention? In this short episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, Joe and I continue our series on the solopreneur success cycle and break down the critical step of positioning your business so that it actually gets noticed. From avoiding the generalist trapped to zeroing in on the people you most want to serve, we share why niching down is the secret to standing out, charging more, and making marketing easier. If you've ever said, my product is good for anybody, this one's especially for you. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.
• 0:47
  I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.
• 1:23
  No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Joe, because of our book coming out in October 2025, or if you're listening to this after, it is already out. We are covering this entrepreneur success cycle. We're having a series of these because that's more or less what our book is about. We've had this idea since what?
• 1:44
  2022 is when we came up with the success cycle?
• 1:48
  Joe Rando: I think late twenty two or middle '22. Yeah.
• 1:51
  Carly Ries: Because I was out for maternity when you're this, brainchild of yours came to be.
• 1:55
  Joe Rando: Both gave birth.
• 1:57
  Carly Ries: We did. We did. Just different ways. You didn't get to take the time off that I did. But we've been going through, I think, gosh, this is maybe our seventh episode in this series.
• 2:07
  And I think today, we're still in the planning phase of the success cycle. So listeners, if you haven't listened to the other six episodes before this, we definitely recommend checking those out so you can hear all these sequentially. But this will still be a good episode regardless.
• 2:21
  Joe Rando: And they're short.
• 2:22
  Carly Ries: They're short. Yes
• 2:23
  Joe Rando: Yeah. They're not the long ones with the interviews. They're like seven, eight minutes, I think, usually.
• 2:28
  Carly Ries: Yeah. And that's what we're gonna do here as well. In this episode, we'll try. We're gonna talk about positioning your business and product in the market. So, Joe, when people are thinking about this, where should they start?
• 2:42
  I feel like this might even be something that people don't think through that much when they're developing their business. They just have a one track mind to get it out there. But position positioning is huge.
• 2:53
  Joe Rando: I mean, it's always been important, but in recent times, it's really, really huge. It can make the difference between failure and success. And what we mean by positioning is simply put, it's really niching down in certain dimensions. It's really focusing your offer, focusing what you do and who you do it for, to the point where a relatively small number of people are going to feel like you made it just for them. And the reason to do that is because otherwise, nobody notices you. And it's worse now than it was. You know, I've been starting businesses for decades, and it's never been harder to get noticed than it is now. I mean, just you come out and you say, hey.
• 3:38
  I do this, and nobody cares. So you really need to resonate with a small group of people. You know, you're a solopreneur. You don't usually need a 100,000 customers. I mean, maybe somebody has a low cost product that they wanna sell to a 100,000 people.
• 3:53
  Great. But you still want a niche style. You wanna be able to go in there and focus your offering in a way that will resonate.
• 3:59
  Carly Ries: And Joe, we talk about niching down from a marketing standpoint. How is this different? Like, we're actually talking about positioning and, what you offer as opposed to the messaging that you get out there from a niching down standpoint.
• 4:13
  Joe Rando: I think they're completely related. I don't think there's any real difference other than what you're doing. And it kinda starts with the business, and that informs the marketing. But, the issue comes down to the fact that people are afraid to limit their offering because they feel like they'll lose business, and it's obviously the opposite.
• 4:33
  Because if you're a generalist, let's say, you're a life coach or you're a web developer, you know, you develop websites for people. If you're just a life coach or a website developer, you're a generalist. Right? And basically, it's hard to stand out. You're not gonna get premium rates because you're just, like everybody else that does websites or coaches people in their life. you don't have anything special, so your rates are gonna be kinda industry standard right down the middle. And so if you're a specialist, if you come in with something, unique, an offering for a small group of people that's really unique to them, you stand out. You can charge more because you're solving specific problems for specific people that are gonna want you versus all the other people out there being generalists. And you don't have to market everywhere either.
• 5:27
  You usually can figure out where you wanna show up. So it can help your marketing be easier and less expensive. So those kinds of things are a reason to focus down. But again, the business positioning informs all the communications. So to answer your question, I think that's the relationship here. that's my take on it at least.
• 5:50
  Carly Ries: Yeah. I mean, nothing makes me hit my head against the table harder than when people say, well, my product and service are good for anybody.
• 5:56
  Joe Rando: Right. And like, they might be.
• 5:58
  Carly Ries: They might be. But that doesn't mean you should create it to be.
• 6:02
  Joe Rando: Right. You can always expand, You niche down, and over time, it grows. I mean, think about, one of my favorite companies, HubSpot.
• 6:11
  When they first started, they were just about inbound marketing. That's all they were talking about. Inbound marketing, it was all about marketing. It was all about creating content, blogs, and getting people to subscribe and, collecting email addresses and landing pages, but it was all about inbound marketing. Well, if you look at HubSpot today, you wouldn't even recognize it. I mean, the only inbound I hear about most of the time is the name of the conference. Right? They have the inbound conference, but everything's about, service and sales and other kinds of marketing and video and AI. And so they expanded over time, and I think solopreneurs can do the same thing. But starting with a niche is the difference between getting ignored and getting noticed.
• 6:55
  Carly Ries: Any other helpful tips you think for this episode?
• 6:59
  Joe Rando: I have a bunch. So first, I think where do I start? Where I'm gonna niche down a bit. Where do I start? Well, start with who do you like to work with?
• 7:09
  You know, what kind of people do you like to work with? And then think about, what kinds of problems that you can solve for them. You know, think about specific pain points. And then where do you have credibility? So if you can find something that you like to do and a problem that you can solve really well for people to have that problem and that you're credible in, it gets a lot easier. So that's one way to think about it. It's not the only way to niche down, but it's really a good way to think about it to start at least. But, in general terms, I mean, you can niche down in a lot of different ways. You can niche down by industry. you can say, I'm an HR consultant, but I only work for the hospitality industry. Right? So now anybody in hospitality looking for an HR consultant goes, oh, they get what I'm doing. and it helps if you used to be an HR person in a hospitality company. So those kinds of things are great. You can focus on the audience. You know, we talk about personas.
• 8:07
  And that's something we've talked about in the show a lot in the past. And finding, you know, the people that you serve and coming with a persona. So if you have that persona, you can make sure that you focus what you're doing and what you're offering on that persona's needs. And, speaking to them and going back to the marketing side of this niching down, speaking their language, speaking to them, talking about their problems, and what they need, and what they want. the pain point, I mentioned already, if you can focus in on a pain point that people have, that can be a really great way. you might say, I'm a life coach for, men over 50. Well, that's good. But if I'm a life coach for men over 50 that have sold their business and now don't wanna spend the rest of their life golfing, you know, looking for some next act, that's better. Right?
• 8:59
  So somebody that sold their business and they're 57 years old and they're like, ugh, I just can't think about not doing something else. Wow. you're speaking their language. They're gonna reach out. Some people focus on things like platforms or tools or ecosystems. you can become a HubSpot expert, or Kajabi or Mailch whatever. You know, you can focus in using platforms, and you can help other businesses by focusing on the stage. You know, if you help startups or you help, certain kinds of, businesses that are struggling and using multiple dimensions that I've just walked through can be really powerful. So you could say, I work for hospitality companies as an HR consultant when those companies have just made an acquisition. So that you've got the industry, you've got the stage of business. So combining two and three of these are really great ways to focus your offer such that whoever whenever you get that person or company that really, needs what you're talking about, they listen instead of just clicking to the next thing.
• 10:11
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Joe, you're just skimming the surface of everything that we talk about in our book. The one thing I wanna say is whether it's in our podcast, whether it's in community, whether it's in our book, we talk about pain points over and over again. And we know we're not inventing that idea. Everybody, marketers, successful business owners, it's not so secret that we all know that pain points are key to a successful business.
• 10:36
  We have to say it over and over and over again because no matter how many times we say it, no matter how many times we write it, it doesn't always stick. So if you've heard us talk about this before, you will hear us talk about this again and again and again and again to get it in your minds as a solo business owner. But yeah, Joe, this is kind of the carrot. If you wanted to know more about this, more about running a business, and iterating, and everything, check out our book, Solopreneur Business for Dummies. It is releasing on 10/06/2025, and we're so excited about that.
• 11:13
  But for now, don't forget to leave that five star review, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite 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. 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.
• 11:44
  Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.