Streamlined Solopreneur: Build Systems so Your Business Supports Your Life

One of my favorite Disney+ shows is Loki. It’s a truly fascinating look at time travel, predetermined events, and controlling your own destiny. And now I’m going to give you a major (if not very simplified) spoiler, if you haven’t seen it. In the finale, Loki masters the ability to “time slip,” or transport to any time, any place, in any timeline (for all intents and purposes, a timeline is a para...

It was Christmas Eve, and I was waiting in line for bagels. As someone who grew up in New York now living close to Philly, I’m admittedly a snob about the quality of the bagels I eat. But there’s a bagel shop not 5 minutes from my house that makes the best bagels I’ve ever had outside of NY/NJ. And they offer preorders for Christmas Eve. It’s become a bit of a tradition in our house to get those b...

I sweat bullets over finding the right tools. Some might say I am an Overthinker. And that is an asset to me. But occasionally, it causes crippling analysis paralysis. I’ve spent every day of this very young year, thinking about the implementation for my membership, even though I know the simplest solution is to use Substack. And last week, I would have told you that’s the end of the story. But it...

It was a wild year for social media in 2023. Twitter turned into X. Meta launched Threads. And LinkedIn started off the year as a promising platform for engagement and growth before tweaking the algorithm and tanking all of that.  Matt Clark, founder of The Virtual Edge, host of the Rainmaker Show, and expert in sales argues that we shouldn’t treat LinkedIn like a social media platform because it’...

The word 'Control' evokes various thoughts and emotions, many of which are negative. Control is often associated with an excessive desire to dominate or dictate every aspect of a situation. The bad guys in movies and in real life desire control at almost any cost. Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars said the only way to improve life in the galaxy was for him to seize control. Thanos said the only way t...

Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard from multiple guests about the importance of research – Dappz talking about calculated risks and doing research for the actual calculation. Nikki Rausch talking about speaking your potential customer’s language. Adriana tells us to do research when we’re guesting on a podcast.  But that begs the question: how ? How do we make sure we’re doing the right kind of...

A few weeks ago, I ruffled some feathers on social media. I said, “Telling people you wrote your book with AI is like telling people you ran a marathon with your car.”  Wow. People took umbrage with that statement. And while I stand by what I said, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to an AI expert. So I reached out to Bryan McAnulty of Heights Platform to see me (or everyone else) straight...

Imagine that you’re going to give a talk on a topic you know really well. You spend time on the presentation, rehearse it 100 times, dial in the slides, and you’re feeling great. You get the conference, deliver the talk, and you think you nailed it. But when you ask for questions, one person raises her hand and says, “Nous ne parlons pas anglais.” That’s right. You just delivered your talk in Engl...

Recently, I sat down to dinner with my family when the doorbell rang. It was a door-to-door HelloFresh salesman, who wanted to make dinner easier for us (while ironically preventing me from eating dinner). I immediately got frustrated for two reasons:  It was dinner time and the interruption was unwelcomed I had already told this guy’s partner “no” several hours earlier.  It was a conversation tha...

Social media advice these days reminds me a bit of the parable of the Emperor with no Clothes . See, it's easy for anyone to display how smart and successful they are. They say things like, "Here's your content strategy for 2024: Post three times on X daily, post one thread on X daily. Create three LinkedIn posts per day and one LinkedIn carousel per week."  People read that and think, "That's eas...

How much help is too much help? When do you go from the actual worker to the visionary? And where does AI fit into all of this? Over on LinkedIn, I said using AI to write your book is like using a car to run a marathon.  People took issue with that. So my friend Alastair MeDermott and I decided to have a good old fashioned debate.  You’ll hear a nuanced discussion around: How to think about AI ass...

Imagine making $70,000…from your bedroom…in one night.  That’s exactly what Matt “Dappz” McGuckin did with his online trading cards shop. He got his start “breaking” – that is, buying and opening boxes of cards live online, and selling the contents…all on TikTok.  Sounds risky? It is! But today, Dappz Sports is the Live Shopping Company on TikTok in the U.S., making over $20 Million in gross sales...

Over the years, I’ve published a great many gift guides on my blog. From freelancers, to podcasters, to working from home, and even my hobbies — like pens and cigars. And this year is no different. But given my relatively new focus on helping solopreneurs (and the fact that the “Work from Home” guide is starting to feel a little stale), I’ve decided to change things up in 2023. That's why this yea...

Do you remember the most awkward moments of your life? One for me was definitely the day I was defending my master’s thesis. I was explaining a complex algorithm, when my advisor interrupted me and said, “Well…that’s not really how it works.”  In front of my classmates, other faculty, and a number of friends who showed up out of support. As you can imagine, I was mortified – until recovered, finis...

A family walks into a talent agency, and says, “Have we got the act for you…” If you’re familiar with this opening to a joke, you may have had a visceral reaction to it — either you think it’s hysterically funny, shamefully disgusting, or both. It’s the opening to the joke, The Aristocrats , and if you have a weak stomach, I don’t suggest you look it up. See, the point of this joke isn’t actually...

In a way, the chaotic start to our interview, followed by a calm, cool conversation, is a metaphor for Jordan’s business journey this year.  See, this isn’t just a story about how to hire good people for your business. It’s a cautionary tale, and proof that running a business is about always learning and adjusting.  Jordan runs an agency of high-level remote assistants.  Today, she’s telling us he...

It's podcast swap time! Except I'm telling you about another podcast of mine: Podcast Workflows. It's a daily podcast that focuses on how to help podcasters improve their processes. Every Wednesday, I do a deep dive into someone's process, and that's what I'm bringing you today. Learn more at https://show.podcastworkflows.com/ Arielle Nissenblatt eats, sleeps, and breathes podcasts. Her main job i...

If I wanted to cater to the current algorithm gods, I’d probably talk about how this interview is all about what AI can and cannot do for us. But it’s so much more than that.  Much like the problem with leveraging AI to do all of the heavy lifting, me positioning this episode as “about AI,” would be inauthentic. And authenticity…well that’s really what this episode is about.  Tom Schwab is someone...

Did you know that Netflix is also a gaming platform now? That Apple make TV shows? That Disney own a number of YouTube channels without the Disney branding? It’s because they know what Steve Woodruff knows.  If you’re a podcaster, you might think the competition is other podcasters. If you make movies, you might think the competition is another movie. You’d be wrong.  See, what Netflix, Apple, Dis...

Imagine running a high 7-figure business with over 300,000 followers on social media, then launching a podcast. How many downloads would you expect? 100,000? 150,000? What about…10?  We’ve all been there: we spend a TON of time pouring blood, sweat, and tears into a project just to have it launch to crickets. That’s exactly what happened to Yong-Soo Chung with his podcast. Despite the social follo...

Cohort-based courses are on the decline if the tastemakers are to be believed. And it makes sense. Now that people aren’t stuck at home, they probably don’t want to spend time interacting online when they can interact IRL. But that doesn’t mean that CBCs have no utility.  In fact, I think that there’s a great way we can make CBCs even better, by employing a tactic that has been explored in the K12...

I love Hibachi. I love the food. I love the experience. That seems a lot like building in public, right? After all, the chef is literally cooking in front of us, building our meal. But according to Kevon Cheung – a guy who’s built his entire community by building in public – Hibachi is entertainment.  In order to build in public, you need to take your audience on a journey with you. That’s why he...

You need to tell a good story, no matter what kind of content you create. This is obvious in fiction, but it’s just as important in non-fiction. Don’t believe me? Take it from Emmy Award-winning producer, Cody Sheehy. He creates documentaries, and today he tells us why storytelling has been crucial to his work, and is crucial to yours too. In the PRO show, I couldn’t resist: I asked what it was li...

If you think about social networks as people, LinkedIn is TikTok’s dorky older, more professional sister…that the younger, more hip sister needs to borrow money from. That’s how Kathleen Celmins sees it, and she’s very effective at selling on LinkedIn. In fact, she says that if you’re just trying to grow your follower count on LinkedIn, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, it’s all about the connection...

I used to think that promoting my podcast was a matter of tweeting it (Xeeting it?) and hoping for the best. And while I’ve learned a TON over the years about what to do, and what not to do, Deirdre Tshien still blew my mind as we talked about her traffic pyramid. As the co-founder and CEO of Capsho (an AI tool to help create promotional assets), she knows a thing or two about how to market and gr...