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171. How We Built LifeStarr (Without Breaking the Solopreneur Rules!) - Sound Bite Episode · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Ever wonder how we operate LifeStarr without a traditional team? In this episode, we peel back the curtain to reveal how we structure our business, manage contractors, and keep everything running smoothly without breaking the solopreneur model. Plus, we dive into the challenges and advantages of working with contractors, share insights on making money as solopreneurs, and drop some huge announcements, including a game changing resource for solopreneurs and a major book deal. So be sure to tune in. 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.
• 0:37
  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. 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.
• 1:17
  We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. So, Joe, we have so much going on at LifeStarr right now. I feel like we're moving a mile a minute, and I thought it'd be fun to take a step back. A lot of people do this around the new year. We did not.
• 1:35
  But to kinda peel back the curtain on what happens in LifeStarr, we've gotten a lot of questions on how the business runs, how we're set up, how we make money, our wins, our all that stuff. And so I figure we can address some of those questions today. So one of the questions we get is, well, you guys are all working, on this LifeStarr product, LifeStarr Central, LifeStarr Intro, all these things. but your a team. so isn't that kind of, against what you talk about when it comes to solopreneurship? To which we say, Joe, do you wanna answer that?
• 2:12
  Joe Rando: I say nay nay. It's what we really recommend finding people to work with. Carly, a fractional, CMO. You are your own boss. You make your own schedule, and you basically, charge us by the hour for what you do.
• 2:37
  And I have other people like George B Thomas with the same kind of relationship. And, I lease employees from other companies when I need them. So it's really a function of saying, do have employees? Because, it seems like it's not really a big distinction, contractor and employee, but, really, it is. Because number one, when you have an employee, you have a lot of responsibilities for that employee.
• 3:03
  There are a lot of government regulations about, how you treat them what you give them. You have to give them the opportunity to get health insurance typically and lots of other things. And when you have a contractor, that doesn't fall on you. That falls on the contractor to themselves. If you have a contractor, you can't tell them I want you working from 9AM to 5PM.
• 3:25
  Because if you do that, they can then say, well, no, I was employee. They can basically sue you and I've seen this happen, sue you and and win back some of the money they paid because they were paying self employment tax. So you can really lose big time if you try to use contractors and treat them like employees. So it's a distinction and it changes how you run the business. It changes. in some ways that make it easier.
• 3:47
  In some ways, it makes it harder. But it's just a distinction that needs to be respected.
• 3:52
  Carly Ries: And in terms of peeling back the curtain and, Joe, you practice what you preach. You are so so good about respecting people as contractors because I have fallen into a situation before where it wasn't the case. But we wanted to prove that you can run a business like this, and we're all independent. And so I wanted to clear up clarify that, but some of the downsides with that that I feel like we should talk about like, we have a huge launch coming up soon, that we'll cheese very shortly, but we've had vacations for contractors to work with. I've had things come up that we've had to work with. can't say you need to be in the office by 08:30 blah blah and all that. There are some downsides that I would say Businesses with employees have from a control standpoint. Would you agree with that?
• 4:43
  Joe Rando: You're saying downsides that companies have
• 4:46
  Carly Ries: Running a business like this. Like, we would have loved to launch, everything maybe a little bit earlier, maybe not. But we have to deal with other people's schedules because you can't control our schedules. So things get pushed out.
• 4:58
  Joe Rando: Right. Yeah. So, I mean, are at somewhat of a disadvantage in that respect. Yeah. You don't have as much control. just as an example, a few years ago, we've been working together for a while now. You had a baby, and you're like, well, I'm taking this amount of time off. There was no company policy about about what, maternity leave looked like. And there was no company policy about how much you get paid on maternity leave.
• 5:23
  It was, a different kind of relationship, and I wasn't gonna sit here and tell you, oh, no, I need you back in three weeks. It's like you made your rules. Which is cool. But it's, again, from the perspective of running a business, it can be more challenging, less predictable because, one person says, I need to take two weeks off or something.
• 5:44
  Another one says, I need a month and a half, and you wind up, not really being able to predict exactly how things are gonna affect you. So I've been on both sides of it. I've had the company with employees and, the company policies and the employee handbook and all that stuff. I mean, they're both great. They're both great, and they can both be really challenging.
• 6:02
  But, solopreneurship is an exciting way to go because of that freedom that it gives you to design the business around your life instead of kind of designing the business around the business, you know, and what it needs.
• 6:18
  Carly Ries: so all this to say, if you are trying to plan a business, we cannot stress enough or run a business to work with others. Like, there's no harm in that. You'll have a few downsides, but in the long run, it all works out for the best.
• 6:32
  Joe Rando: And just a teaser, we're building very soon, you're listening to this early February, which you probably aren't, by the time it gets produced. But, it will be able to find those other people to work with really easily with with LifeStarr. So kind of one of the things we've been doing. So go ahead. And next question.
• 6:54
  Carly Ries: Tune in to future episodes to see what that is. So, another question we get, and this goes hand in hand with the whole contractor thing too, is how do you get paid? How is LifeStarr currently making money?
• 7:07
  Joe Rando: Oh, I knew there was something I forgot. Okay. Well, let me give a little backstory. So I started as a solopreneur developing, retail real estate to basically creating shopping centers. And the process there was to find land and then to get permits to put a shopping center on that particular piece of land and then find tenants or retailers that wanted to be on that piece of land in that shopping center.
• 7:39
  And one of the really interesting things was I went through that process. It was long and a challenging thing to do. And then we started construction, and I remember thinking nothing's happening. Right? You said there are pieces of equipment moving around, and day after day, there was nothing but dirt.
• 7:57
  And I said, well, this is weird. And then all of a sudden, boom, everything went up. And it seemed like it very quickly went from being dirt, a sandlot type of thing to being, a shopping center. And what I took from that is that you have to get the foundations in place. If you don't get the foundations for the buildings, they collapse.
• 8:19
  If you don't get the foundations built for the parking lots, you get sinkholes. You gotta get the drainage system in. You gotta do all this stuff that you don't really see, but you benefit from in the end. And with LifeStarr, it's been a combination of building out the foundation. I mean, hundreds 60 plus episodes of this podcast, blogs, many, many events and talking to experts and bringing people together and listening to solopreneurs to really, really understand what's needed.
• 8:55
  Ability to have that foundation to say, this is what we need to build. Now I will say there was also a false start. I don't know what's a false start, but detour. We were originally building an app for task management, and we pivoted over to this, building basically what we call a Lifestarr Central, which is a place for people to come together. And there's a free tier.
• 9:17
  So, we're not making money there either, but we have a few paid tiers. The hope is that the people will see the value in the free tier, but also some of them, not all, but some of them will see the value in that paid tier and the additional things that you get and then want to step up and pay. And that's to me, a really great model because you can figure out how to bring enough value for the right price, then you should have a successful business. And we have been doing that and we think we've at least got the beginnings of that ready to go in the next months.
• 9:54
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Woo. Joe, just looking back this year, we've had I would say our biggest win is, really Developing relationships with that audience that you're talking about that foundational audience. I feel like we really know Who our people are through and through and know how to address them.
• 10:12
  I feel like our messaging has been buttoned up I mean like you said we've gone up and down, left and right to figure it out, and now it's clear, and you need to do some trial and error for that. We know what we're pitching. We know who we're selling to. And it's just kind of like, a nice weight. Like not a weight lifted off our shoulders because we still have some pretty heavy lifting to do, but just the clarity
• 10:40
  Joe Rando: You feel like you see the path forward.
• 10:41
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
• 10:43
  So I just wanted to have this episode to peel the curtain back, like I said earlier, kinda let you know, we practiced what we preach. We know it's not a linear journey. There are ups and downs. And just let you know that we're all in this together.
• 10:57
  Joe Rando: Well, there's one other thing we should mention about kind of figuring out the path, for the solopreneurs, that we think are really doing it for the right reason. And that is that we decided, you and I signed a deal with Wiley to write Solopreneur Business for Dummies, which I just today I don't know if you saw it. Got the final cover.
• 11:19
  Carly Ries: Yes.
• 11:20
  Joe Rando: so exciting. that on LinkedIn. That was my LinkedIn post for today was the cover. So that's exciting stuff.
• 11:27
  But, process of figuring that out wasn't gonna happen overnight because, you know, there are a lot of people out there, the world is changing, and you really need to figure out how to serve your customers, the people you wanna serve. And, we took longer than a typical solopreneur would have been. I had sold a business, I had some time to figure it out, and I'm trying to do something a little bigger than a typical solopreneur. And I'll be honest, Carly, I don't know that LifeStarr is gonna be a solopreneur business forever. I hope that if we get enough people that we're helping that I will need to bring on employees because that's the only way.
• 12:05
  If there are, thousands of people that we're helping, I'm probably not gonna do that from just, my spare bedroom working with contractors. path that some solopreneurs take, but, driving force is figuring out how to help people build businesses that serve their lives, and I'll take any twist or turn it takes to get there.
• 12:25
  Carly Ries: Love it. Well, like Joe said, we have a book coming out, later this year.
• 12:32
  Joe Rando: September.
• 12:32
  September.
• 12:33
  Carly Ries: We'll have links to presales soon.
• 12:35
  We'll have links to our wait list for LifeStarr Central that we've been talking about. So be sure to continue tuning into this podcast, And we just so appreciate you tuning in today. As always, leave that five star review, subscribe on your favorite platform, 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.
• 13:02
  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.