SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to Amplify Your Authority, the podcast where innovative marketing meets heart-centered entrepreneurship. Join Marissa Chadrick, an award-winning international speaker, Ray Edwards certified copywriter, and personal brand expert. You'll gain insights into the external strategies for business growth and how to navigate the internal journey of entrepreneurship. Now get ready to amplify your authority in a competitive digital world. And now here's your host, Marissa Chadrick.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Amplify Your Authority Podcast. Today I'm really excited to have a special guest with me. I have Joe Rando. And let me give you a quick snapshot of who he is. Joe has started several businesses in technology and real estate, but he's very excited about his current business, which is LifeStar. And if I can just tease it up a little bit, LifeStar provides knowledge, tools, and community to create the one-person business that lets you live your life your way. I love that. Joe lives in Florence, Massachusetts with his wife. He has four grown children. He has a degree in physics, right? Physics. Smart guy. And some of his hobbies include drinking coffee and playing the guitar. Welcome, Joe. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Doing well. How are you? Good to see you.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

I'm doing well. Thank you. So good to have you here and to talk about company of one. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

It's a thing. It's a thing now.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

It's a thing. We were joking earlier how technology has changed so many things, and some people have a love-hate with technology. But the one good thing that technology has brought to us is the fact that we can work from anywhere, anyplace, from home when the internet is working. So that's the one caveat. When the internet is working, we can work from anywhere. So what do you think, Joe, in just um a little bit, if we can just paint a backdrop? What have you seen as far as these changes? Are a lot of people now more accustomed to the idea of working from home? Before it was kind of taboo, like what are you doing? Working from home? And you mean is that just an excuse for not working at all? What do you see?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Well, we've we've all seen it, I think. It's, you know, there was a in 2019, you know, perhaps if you were a solopreneur, one-person business, you made a great effort to look like you were somehow professional. You made an effort to make sure that it looked like you were working in an office, um, keep the kids quiet, the dog, you know, for making noise. And and because of COVID and because of everybody working remotely, it's all changed. I mean, now, I mean, the dog barks, oh, there's my dog, you know, and nobody, you know, my we had a meeting um uh at an event earlier today, and and um one of the people was there with her one-year-old daughter on her shoulder. Well, we're you know, having the and it's just it, it's it's I mean, it there are some downsides. I understand there's some isolation issues, but in a lot of ways it's really wonderful that we can actually just be who we are, and it's about our skills and our abilities and what we bring to the table and not, you know, so much how we appear. And yeah, so I think it's a generally a positive shift, but the isolation has created some challenges, which is one of the things that I'm involved in trying to address.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Yeah. And it's kind of endearing when I see someone presenting and then their kids, you know, feel comfortable enough to tug on the sleeve to ask a question, you know, they're doing life just like we are. They become more human. We realize that they're trying to create that work-life balance, they're trying to be there for their children. Um, I don't really see it as being unprofessional or a huge interruption. I find it kind of endearing that they're learning, you know, and discovering how to balance all of that. So kudos to them for doing it, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Do you remember if it was, I don't know, probably five, six, seven years ago, um, or maybe it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm not sure, but there was CNN was doing an interview with some economist guy, and he was working out of the spare bedroom, and his kids came wandering in in the middle of this television live television interview, and the wife comes in and shushes them out. And I mean, this thing got played a million plus times because it was just such a funny thing. And now I don't know that you know it would get any hits on YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

I know it's true. And I remember Jimmy Fallon doing a lot of episodes from home, and his kids were literally crawling on his head and pulling his hair and doing all this, and I'm just laughing because he never he he never flinched. He just kept talking, he didn't even blink, he just let them do whatever they were doing behind him, and he kept delivering, you know, his monologue. It was hysterical. I loved it. He's a real pro. Yeah, I know. And we kind of had a little bit of a suggestion of this. Do you remember when there was that whole buzz of the great resignation, too? Yeah. It's like people were going, Hey, wait a minute. I don't know if I want to go back to corporate. You know, they're starting to think maybe I have some options. Have you noticed more and more people? Maybe those that are displaced.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yes. And there are people setting up businesses to help those people transition from corporate to solopreneurship.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Oh, that's so good, right? Yep. I have some. Yeah, I have some clients that have come out of corporate too, and they just decided, you know what? I've got skills, I've got this knowledge, I've got this experience, I have a full education, I'm gonna just do this on my own, figure it out. So that's great that we have more options than we did back in the day. So for someone, I mean, you have so much knowledge and wisdom. So so feel free to segue into another direction if you want to, as I ask the questions. But for those that are maybe thinking about being online and they find it very attractive to be able to work from home for some of the reasons we mentioned, or maybe they want to um, maybe they want to do a little bit of travel, maybe they want to be a speaker, you know, but they're trying to figure out how to monetize everything. Um, how do they take their ideas, their expertise, their experience, the things that they were paid for, and how do they begin to turn that into an operational business? Any suggestions for them?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Well, I always say that, you know, if you're going solo, you're doing it, I hope, for some reason, other than that you're trying to get as rich as you can get. Because if you want to get as rich as possible, you don't want to give up employees because that's a really powerful scaling um tool is being able to hire people that work exclusively for you is how businesses oftentimes can scale. Um, there are some people that have made multimillion dollar businesses as solopreneurs, not common. Some people have made it as rock stars and famous actors and gotten elected president, but it's not the path that everybody's going to follow. So if you're doing it solo, you're doing it for some other reasons besides the money. And it's important, I think, to start off by defining why you're doing it that way. What are your goals for your business? What are they, what do you want your business to do for you that you're not getting from corporate and that you wouldn't be getting from being an entrepreneur and starting a business and going out and raising venture capital and trying to scale it? And you know, the most of the time the answers are something like I want uh enough freedom to spend time with my my my kids, my spouse, my I I want to have time to pursue a passion that I have. I a lot of people are saying they want to be able to do the kinds of work they want to do and not the stuff they don't like, which they can't do in a corporate job oftentimes. So, you know, but those are the kinds of things to kind of come to terms with first. And as you define the business, make sure that the business you're defining is going to serve those goals. That's where I always start with people.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

So when you say goals, does that mean they need to maybe set revenue goals, but also goals as far as how many hours do they want to work every week? What kind of business is it going to look like? What do they like? What do they don't like? Because you suggested that. So that would eliminate some things that that may be options that they would not dive into. So do you think they need to, you know, separate financial goals with lifestyle goals and all of that?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

I think you I mean, I think you need to have obviously, you know, maybe you're independently wealthy, in which case the financial goals don't matter. But it's nice, you know, for most people to have, you know, a financial goals. You know, I want to be able to pay the bills, I want to be able to retire, whatever it is, put a number on it, and you know, you should have a plan to get there. Um, but you know, there's things like, you know, let's say you're a public speaker, you're a good public speaker, and you're thinking, well, I could monetize my ability to, you know, speak publicly, and then you say, well, and the reason I want to go solo is because I want to be able to go to all my kids' games. Well, if you're speaking public if you're doing public speaking and people are expecting you to show up and do it live, that might not be a good match. You know, you you won't you're gonna miss a lot of games if you're on the road. So those those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. I mean, the obvious ones are you know are revenue goals and and you know, maybe how many hours a week you want to work, but there's other considerations that you want to take into account because you know, if you don't, you might build a a business that's successful in the context of a typical business, but you might not like running it or it might not serve what you're what goal the goals that you had. So I always I always like to start there because that really can can define um you know where you um might want to take your your one-person business idea. And then the next thing that's really important, and and people don't want to do this, and we I feel like a broken clock sometimes, but is to focus your offering to a relatively or maybe very narrow niche of the market. And everybody says, I don't want to give up the market, I got you know, I can help all these people, why would I want to narrow it down? And the answer is because they will not hear you. If you're talking to everybody, you're talking to nobody. And so you need to, if you can help this group of people, this you know, large group of people, you need to figure out what small subset of that you can target so that when they see what you say about what you do, they go, That's me. They're talking to me. So I can help people, you know, um, I can't, but I could, you know, if I were somebody that could help people do a better job in public speaking, um, I could say that, but I don't think any there's a lot of people that help with public speaking. Why would I choose you? And you know, maybe you can do it with with social proof, and maybe you get somebody famous that said you help them. Great, if you can do that. But for most of us, it'd be better for me to say, you know, I help uh long-term entrepreneurs who have struggled with getting up and speaking in public, you know, or better yet, you know, men that are have been long-term uh entrepreneurs that have struggled for public speaking and have decided that that they want to make a change in that after 50. So now you know they look at they look and they go, Oh, well, that's me, and he's kind of like me. And so I I you know I feel this uh connection, and maybe I'll have some of those people actually respond to my offer. But if I just say, hey, I help you with public speaking, I don't care if you're a high school student or you know, a retired nun, nobody's gonna listen.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Right. Nobody's nobody's gonna hear it. It's true. And with copywriting and copywriting clients, I run into that as well. It becomes too general, too vanilla, and it's not quite landing for those people that it could possibly be a good alignment for. They just don't see themselves in that description they've given, or they're thinking, they're making them think too much about whether or not it's a good fit for them. And we don't want to have them think too much. It's like if somebody says, I help writers improve their writing. Well, what kind of writing is it? Is it copywriting? Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? You know, poetry? What what type is it? And then you can even probably go further than that too. Because some people do it as a hobby, some people want to monetize it, so you can even go deeper than that. No, I agree. I think it's so important. And it's it's not easy, is it? It's not easy because I think they feel that the market is going to get so small there's not gonna be enough people, but when there's a big planet, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

The thing I ask is, you know, would you rather have you know 10% of a small market or zero percent of a huge market? And you know, that and that's I think is the choice. And the thing is you can always expand your offering. You know, it's almost like you know, when when the military goes in and tries to to to take over someplace, they you know, they get a piece of territory, they they they they own it, and then they try to expand the boundaries. And you can do that, you know. We call it in, you know, with startups, they call it a beachhead. You know, where are you gonna start with your new product? And that is not where you're gonna stay, but you go in with this beach head. I'm gonna land here, I'm going after this little small niche, and then as I get that under control and start to own that, I'll go to the next one. I mean, I did that in our our last company that I started with a partner, and we started out just doing kind of figuring out where to put new stores, you know, helping supplying technology for retailers and uh shopping center owners to figure out where to put new stores. But by the time we sold the company, we were helping companies with marketing and merchandising and branding, you know, kind of analyzing whether all of their stores were up to stuff on their branding. And it was just this huge kind of application, but we started at this very narrow area and then spread out through the organizations over time. And it's a good strategy.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Yeah, no, I love that. I think that's important to do that. And I I know it's difficult for people, they just have to kind of trust the process and really try to niche. And like you said, it doesn't, it's not like it stays that way forever. Start there, it simplifies everything. And your messaging, once you have that figured out, everything else is so much easier to create because you know exactly who you're writing it for. So that takes a lot of the pressure off, too.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

And you got that three and a half seconds when they get to your website, right? That they read your they read your H1, you know, your hero, and and if they don't see see something that makes them want to read more, they're gone. And I I've watched people interact with websites, you know, studying their their behaviors, and it is incredible. That whole thing about us having a shorter attention span than goldfish, that I don't think anymore it is not is not hyperbole anymore. I think that's true.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Yeah, that's funny. I've heard that too. That's funny. But even in the example that you gave, because people might think, well, how can you niche down with a public speaker? But when you think about it, pastors of churches are speakers, but they were never maybe necessarily trained for public speaking. So there's a whole niche, and especially if it's a mega church, I mean, you start providing programs for that. I mean, there are speakers everywhere, but you got to find those pockets, like who you want to help and where potentially the revenue could be. So, and that brings me to the the validation for the revenue. How do you take that idea and validate it and think there is a market for this? How would you go about that?

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Yeah, that's that's that's important. And I I, you know, from my my thought is that you don't want to start with too many just kind of assumptions, right? And I mean, we I've done it, and you know, sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, but it's really important to kind of take that somewhat scientific approach and and and test your assumptions, right? So so what I like to the way I like to think about it is that you you define what I call a customer type, right? So let's go back to that example that I made up off the top of my head about the the public speaker. So let's say that I said, you know, I'm thinking that maybe I can help public speakers that are men over 50, that are long-term entrepreneurs. Um but also I could say, you know, I could help um uh C, you know, C-suite people that are, you know, or people that that are aspiring to the C-suite that need their to to up their their their speaking chops in order to kind of make that leap. Um and you know, perhaps I could say not just that, but only in the retail industry.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Right. So so now I'm helping people that are, you know, vice presidents, executive vice presidents in the retail industry that want to improve their speaking skills to get up to the next level. So I could come up with a few different things like this, what I call customer types, um, and then try to find some of those people and talk to them and just try to understand, you know, how painful this is to them. You know, do they is speak public speaking a challenge? Is it a problem? Is it something that they feel is a pain point? And you go through maybe a few of these different customer types and try to understand which ones have the pain point the most and maybe understand what whether they're willing to kind of spend some money to address it if it's worth their while. And you know, I I like to always start by asking them just what are your pain points, what are your challenges? And if they say yours, great. If they don't, then you ask about it afterwards. But you don't want to start off by going, gee, is public speaking a problem? Because they'll the people are nice usually and they'll say, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they'll want to make you feel good, but you really want to understand what they're thinking. And it might be that they feel like there's no solution, so they don't mention it, and that's great because you can say, I've got a solution for you. But interview these people, and one thing that's really important is if you're having trouble finding them to interview them, you're gonna have trouble finding them to sell them. So that's a little bit of a learning experience there as well. And so once you find a customer type that really seems promising, then you can dig in on that one. Um, I like to then kind of take it to the next level, which we you know, people call personas. Uh some people I think call them um there's another name. Um Avatar. Avatar, yes, thank you. And and and you know, kind of maybe there's different ones. Maybe there's the, you know, I I settle on the people in the retail industry trying to make the transition up to C-suite. And there's the there's the ones that are um, you know, dealing with shyness, and then there's another one that are just dealing with uh an inability to kind of organize their their their ideas into into effective speech, you know, into effective speeches or talks, and you know, maybe have some of these different clusters that you attack a little differently. Maybe you focus on only one of those too. So it's you know, it it's it's really about that, you know, instead of a sledgehammer, try to use a chisel, and it'll be a lot easier to break that rock.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

I like that. I like that. Yeah, and oftentimes, you know, the the research that you do and even talking to people, you know, I think is so important because you're talking about not just the superficial, at least this is what I heard when you were talking about, not just the superficial problem solution, but the internal struggle that's going on because of it and being able to communicate in a way that they feel like they're seen and heard. Um, I know it's kind of cliche now. We say that a lot, but I notice even for myself, when I see something that really resonates with what I'm feeling at the moment, I tend to comment or make some kind of, if I see a post or something on social, it resonates and I totally identify with what they're saying. And so I think that's that's where it could get a little difficult. But I think what you're suggesting makes it a little easier. And it is chiseling, it is refining and improving. Back in the day, they used to just say, Well, who's your avatar? And they'd have you create this like out of the air, you know, and they'd say it's it's probably like you, you know, five years ago. But is it, you know, it it really is more than just filling in a worksheet, you know, and saying this is my avatar. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Absolutely. I mean, I don't think you can just um I mean I you can you can go out and you can just define these avatars or personas, but you better be ready to to adjust. And you know, when we got started doing LifeStar and we were, you know, targeting solopreneurs, and there's a lot of different kinds of solopreneurs out there, and we said we don't want to we don't want to distinguish by industry because we don't think that's really the the place. It's just too many, you know, and we didn't want to focus on industry because we felt like there could be a lot of cross-pollination, but we created a couple, and by the time we were done, I think we ended up with five we ended up with five personas and one negative persona. Um because one one kind of person that we we didn't want. And you know, so so because but it it was it came it came about over time, and then as we you know, as we started to get to know people in the in, you know, and talking to them, uh, and it really ended up kind of being a you know bigger than I expected. I was thinking we'd have two or three, but we we do have five different ones. It's a little much, but it just makes sense because we we're breaking our own rule in a sense, very deliberately breaking our own rule of focusing um extremely um by serving all solopreneurs uh that are trying to build businesses to serve their life. So um, so that's uh yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

As they're as they're doing this, now you touched on it a little bit. Earlier. So let me go back to it, differentiating yourself. Say you know what you want to do, you know the niche or the avatar or the type of person that you want to work with. How do you differentiate yourself from competitors? So what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Great question. So I I look at it in kind of two. I think there's a lot of ways you could look at this, but the way that I like to break it down is I call it market positioning, right? So now you know who you're trying to serve, but that may still be too broad, right? And so then there's kind of business-based focal points and customer-based focal points. And some of the business-based ones are, you know, um things like, you know, um your values, you know, your your your values, like what do you stand for? What do you believe in? Um these could be anything from kind of religious values or you know, um environmental position. You know, there's just a lot of ways that you can kind of paint yourself as a as a certain believer in certain kinds of things. But there's geography. You know, I'm I'm in in western Massachusetts, so guess what? That's where I'm going to be working. Um, there's different kinds of specialties. So you know, you think about a photographer. Well, you're a photographer, but you know, but you focus only on doing events or you do only portraits. Uh there's special skills. So I could be a photographer that does um macro photography, right? So I have a special skill, a certain kind of um thing that I can do that most photographers aren't really good at. Uh I could focus on an industry. I could do something where I focus on a particular price um you know point. So I could be, you know, uh, you know, low, I could have some reason that I can come in at a lower price because I'm doing something differently from the competition. Or I could be high priced, you know, I could be really, really high, high value. You know, I give a lot more time to every customer, but I charge a higher price because of it. And there's, you know, that's a good way to differentiate. I somebody wants the best, they're willing to pay the price. You know, again, kind of related to that quality. Uh, and there's lots of potential other ones. And then there's the customer-based ones, um, you know, job titles, gender, life stage, you know, demographics, you know, age, income, education levels, the customer's goals, um, any special needs or challenges that the customer has. And kind of relate it to that value is one on the other end. It could be the customer's religion, spiritual, some kind of affiliation um that you're targeting. So there's lots of ways there to you can you can kind of take that that avatar, that persona, and then focus, focus it even more to get their attention by doing certain things like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Will their origin story be part of that too? The reason why they're doing it?

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Well, I think it's it it certainly could be. I I think it's better when it is. I mean, you know, the more your business reflects, as a solopreneur, especially, the more your business reflects who you are, the more authentic it's going to be to feel to other people, and I think the more traction you will get.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

I'm so glad you said that.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Why?

SPEAKER_03 25:54

And so because I always say that your work is an extension of who you are, you know, and it's like it starts with you and then it extends outward. So, but it's true. And and you can be very authentic. You don't have to, you know, be somebody else. You can just be you.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

So that's that for me, that makes it a lot easier to just kind of do do everything because I yes, but you know, I mean, there are always exceptions. There are people that, you know, and I'm not saying that they're frauds, but they might be doing something that you know doesn't reflect their own reality. Um someone maybe could help people that have gone through trauma um get you know back into the working world or be more effective at their job that didn't actually suffer trauma. I mean, it's it's possible and it could be a very valuable service, but if somebody did recover from trauma and did that, it might resonate a little more, it might feel a little more authentic to the to the potential customer.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit, and I know you know about this topic, a little bit about technology, because oftentimes people love the idea of starting a business, but they hate technology. And so, and now there's so much more of it, and there's AI and all these other things. I mean, what would you tell somebody that's starting a company of one as far as technology if they're you know entering in with a little bit of anxiety, the wondering, I don't know all the ins and outs of technology, what should I look at, what should I not do? What would you recommend? I know it's a broad topic and you can't cover all of it, but at least the starting point.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Well, I mean, if you're a typical business, you're going to want customers. So a customer relationship management system is kind of a no-brainer. Yeah. Um, there are some, you know, really easy ones. There are some really sophisticated ones and everything in between. Um, and it really depends. You know, if you're if you need four customers to support your business, you probably don't want to invest in a very sophisticated system, but you might want to have something, maybe not nothing expensive, but you know, but if you're if you're trying to get, you know, if you're selling an online course or something, you might love to have 10,000 customers, in which case you'd really want a somewhat more robust uh customer relationship management. CRM is the term they usually use. Um so I think anybody that's starting a business is gonna likely want to look there early on in order to kind of build out their their leads and and be able to close sales. Um you know, the when they said this a year ago, but you really want to start looking at AI. And I don't personally think that AI is the kind of thing that should take over for representing you in the world in the sense of using it to create all your content. But you can it can certainly help you to be more efficient at creating content. I mean, it's been astonishing for me. Um, you know, just the idea of I want to write a blog on something, and instead of having to think through all of the aspects that I should cover, I can go to Chat GPT and ask it to kind of generate a blog on a particular topic, and it'll miss some things that I would have put in there, and I'll make a list first of what I want to think I should talk about, but it'll also come up with some that I missed. So when I do that, I now have a much more complete uh blog uh than I would have had otherwise covering the topic. Um I don't let I don't take its words, um, but I will take its uh you know its concepts, put them in my words. Um we have a um a guy that I work with, George B. Thomas, and he's trained his Jat GP to the point where he's got it talking like him. So he's actually a little more efficient than I am because he's got this thing putting out blogs and things in his in his uh his style, which I think is really interesting. Um, but it's still the kind of thing you certainly don't want to copy and paste. You want to be very careful about what comes out of ChatGP and goes into the world in your name. But it's still it's uh it's definitely a technology. I mean, it's great for naming things. Um, I have struggled with coming up with names for products and things, and it's it's really helpful. Um, lots of other places where it can be, you know, it's a little bit like you know having somebody to just kind of bounce ideas off of. And um so I strongly recommend that because it can make you a lot more efficient. Um, some kind of organizational tools. Um there's lots of them out there. Unfortunately, there's not a lot that are really great for solopreneurs in terms of like task management, project management. Yeah. They're good, but they they aren't designed for it. That's one of the things I actually lifestyle is working on an app for that because you know, there's nothing that really targets solopreneurs. So that's a very big one of the big pain points we see is is productivity. So we're working on that. And um and I mean this, you know, there are obviously tons of other kinds of tools out there, depending on what you're doing. A lot of people love Canva for creating, you know, uh artwork that you can then use for social media posts and that kind of thing. There's tools that allow you to schedule your social media posts in advance so that you can, you know, kind of sit down and crank out a week's worth of social media posts and have them all ready to go, lined up for a certain time each day. Um, yeah, but you know, there's there's lots of stuff like that as well. But um yeah, we could spend the rest of the day talking about those things. But those are some of the basics, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Yeah, they're there to help us as long as we're using them strategically and there's a reason, you know, if it's if it's going to do a function for us, how is that function going to help us with the goals that we've set? You know, um, because but one thing for sure, I will say technology it's so much easier to use than it was back in the day, right? It wasn't that, it was pretty clunky before. But even websites are so much easier now. Maybe I'm dating myself, but they they weren't that intuitive. But now um it's really much easier to use. And once you learn how to use a few, it's almost like it has a language of its own that you can kind of adapt that to other tools. Would you agree that it's a little easier?

SPEAKER_02 32:12

I mean, there are certain paradigms, you know. If you start learning the paradigm and like, you know, for example, Microsoft has a certain paradigm with its tools, right? And if you then go and try to use Adobe Tools, you'll be like, I don't have any idea what's going on here. But once you learn the Adobe paradigm, you can use other Adobe tools pretty easily. Yeah. And so they they call it patterning. And um, so as you develop software, you start trying to develop, you know, you want to keep a pattern that people can get used to. So, and and a lot of times there's like certain patterns that people design to when they build new software. So as you learn more software tools, a lot of times it'll help you with other ones that have used a similar pattern.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Yeah, yeah. I didn't know what the technical term was, but I call it a language, but for sure. Yeah. I do want to talk about LifeStar, but before we get there, um I just I always love to be very honest with the audience and give them some encouragement because along the way, it will be like this. It's not going to be this linear or this graph that goes consistently up, up, up and with growth. I mean, there's ups and downs depending on what's happening in the market and everything else, and plateaus, and they might think, oh, what am I doing wrong? I'm just, I'm in the wrong thing. This doesn't happen to other people. They're sitting by a beach working only three hours a week, and here I am grinding. What am I doing wrong? Could you speak to that and kind of encourage your listeners? Because I, for one, have not found it to be the easy. It's work. It it is work. It is work. I'm going to say it's work. It's work that I love, but it's work.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Two kind of general concepts I'd like to cover there. The first is a pattern that we see all the time with solopreneurs, right? Solopreneurs are usually doing a good chunk of it all. Maybe they have a contractor helping them with bookkeeping or or appointment setting or you know, some other things, but there's they're doing a lot of the work. And one of the things that happens a lot is that they go out and they start, you know, looking for opportunities and they they start um prospecting and they get some some some deals and they go now it's time to produce. So now they start working on the deals. Well, guess what? Now they're not prospecting anymore. So then they crank out the work and they collect the money and they would look out and they go, I got nothing in the pipeline. Now they go back to prospecting. So it's a feast or famine pattern. So you need to watch out for that. And you know, they just you know, there are ways to kind of avoid it by kind of balancing your your efforts, but um, it's something that has to be done very consciously. So that's one thing that we see a lot, and that can feel frustrating for people. But then sometimes you just you know, you start a business, and we all have an idea of of you know how easy it's gonna be, right? Because, you know, I I I don't know, I put this on on LinkedIn the other day, but I saw this wonderful, it was uh actually like a banner, and it it the banner said, we do this not because it is easy, and then it's small letters it says, but because we thought it would be easy. And this is this is the the entrepreneur's uh mantra. We we always think it's gonna be easier than it ends up being, and that goes for solopreneurs too. So when you get going, you're gonna find out, guess what? You know, I thought I was gonna be making $10,000 a month by now, and I'm making three, and it's just isn't working. And so I have like a three-question process that I like to go through as I do this, and and and it it looks like this. Does the question one is does anybody currently love what I'm doing? Is there anybody that's just completely psyched about what I'm doing? If the answer to that is no, and you've been at it for a while, you probably have to rethink what you're doing. But if the answer to that is yes, then the next question is if I found enough of those people, would this be a viable business? And that really comes down to are the people that love it willing to pay enough for it to be profitable? You know what I'm saying? So if and the answer to that is no, well, again, you might want to rethink something because you you know, you can't lose 10 bucks on every deal and make it up in volume. So you you need to think about how can I get this business in such a form that if I get enough customers, it will be profitable. And then the third one is if if if people some people love what I'm doing, and if I found enough of them, I'd be profitable in terms of my operation. Do I have a clue how to find the people that love it cost effectively? And you know, if the answers to those are yes, then you keep going. You've got a business, you just haven't, you just haven't got it, you know, gotten traction yet. Uh if not, if it's no to any of those, then you've got to move on. So so that's uh that's that's how I think about it. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

Did you ever experience a low in your business and how did you get out of it?

SPEAKER_02 37:07

How never never had a low.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

I'm just curious because I think I think this helps people understand that we are doing the mental work, the actual business work, the fulfillment, the prospecting, and everything. But there's a lot that we have to do mentally. I mean, I journal and everything to keep myself healthy mentally. What about you? Has it been a time where it was low? And how did you how did you get out of that?

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Well, I listened to Tub Thumping by I can't remember the name of the group, the one I get knocked down, but I get up again.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Um, that is just, I mean, honestly, that song used to resonate in my head all the time because yeah, I've had so many lows. I mean, I remember when I got into the real estate development business and we got a deal done very quickly, and it was great, and I tied up another deal um and pretty quickly put the pieces in place and got Kmart to want to go into this, just get the shopping center off the ground. And then they killed the deal and every other deal they had in the pipeline all at once. And that was it was year after year was going by, and I got nobody. And it was just to the point where I didn't even want to go into that city anymore because it was just so embarrassing. You know, because you go in and you're getting permits, and you know, it's kind of public, and and but you know, I just I said it's worth it. It's it's it should it should work, it makes sense, it's it's a matter of time. I just kept telling myself that you know my assumptions were correct. Yeah, it was just that the world the world hadn't come around to it. And then I got the phone call one day that Home Depot wanted to go there, and boom. But yeah, I mean it it really comes down to making sure that you know if your idea is solid, keep going if you can afford to. Um and but you know, I don't know. I mean, I kind of I feel like uh honestly I'm a little bit of a stubborn person. I don't know when to quit sometimes, and I probably should have quit some things sooner than I did.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

Um it's worked out well overall, but um but it doesn't let's flip that and let's say that you've developed perseverance, right? The stubbornness has turned into perseverance. That's at least what I say.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Yeah, I mean, but again, you know, sometimes you know you can persevere into a place where you where you probably shouldn't have, but it's you know, the real the the reality is that if you are not somewhat patient, somewhat willing to stick with things when it feels hard, it might not be the right place for you. You know, it might you know, solopreneurship, entrepreneurship might not be the right path for you because you know, these overnight sensations that we see all the time, there's a lot of times 10 years of work behind that that night. Yes, you know, I mean these guys at Airbnb. I mean, they started out getting people to rent out air mattresses in their living room to people that wanted to go to concerts or something in other other cities. I don't remember what it was, but they had nothing for a long time. It was uh it was nothing. And you know, they stick with it, they keep thinking about it, figuring out what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and then it clicks. And it's the same way with with um smaller businesses too. You know, you have to keep in touch with it.

SPEAKER_03 40:27

Even actors and actresses too, you uh they get their break and you find out that they had been doing all kinds of small parts for years and nothing nothing happened. So um so tell us a little bit about Lifestar.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Sure. Well, LifeStar, I'll give you the the short version of the history. I had uh my my last tech company was a piece of a product I wanted to buy that didn't exist and I wanted it, so I built it, and then that's got spun off. It was a a tool to figure out where to put retail uh stores. It spun off into a separate company um that um uh grew into grew into a very successful enterprise software company that I sold in 2020. And the um I had a similar thing. I wanted to buy a task management system that would let me work with anybody, not just my team, because I had a lot of people I was working with that didn't work for me. And none of the tools out there worked well, so I started imagining what that tool would look like. And I um I I once I started imagining it, then I couldn't stop. So um as we sold the business, I started building that tool. And I said, Well, who am I gonna market this to? And um I work with this woman, Carly Reese, she does marketing, and she said, you know, solopreneurs don't have teams, it's a natural. And I said, You're absolutely right. That's great. Let's do that. Where do we find them? And then we said we started looking around, and there was no place to find solopreneurs, like there was no really good place. There were some, you know, Facebook groups and things, but no real place for solopreneurs. And I said, that doesn't make any sense. It's like 50 plus million of them if you include people that are doing it on the side. And so I said, you know what? The first thought was forget it, that's not gonna work. But then I said, but there's 50 something million of them, let's build a place for them. So LifeStar is basically, yes, there's the app in the works, but we built out community, we've got courses, we have events, we have an AI system trained up to answer questions from the perspective of solopreneurs, you know, not for subject matter experts or people that work for big companies. And so we're just, you know, we're building out all the kinds of things that people that are solopreneurs need to address their challenges. And those challenges are mostly uh pretty short list. It's lead gen and sales, right? How do I get customers and how do I how do I find potential customers and how do I close them? It's how do I operate more efficiently, be more productive? And then it's loneliness. Working alone is lonely. So we're addressing those issues uh for people that are getting started. Sometimes, you know, people don't really know how to get started. So we're building out some some uh processes for people to um to start their business more effectively, avoid the common mistakes. But yeah, office hours, so you can call, you know, call in on Zoom and kind of ask your questions and courses, et cetera. So it's really kind of a whole we're trying to build out a whole ecosystem to help solopreneurs start and then effectively run and keep their businesses current. Very cool. Is it a program that you go through or is it a membership? What it what is it? It's it's a membership. It's a month. Well, there's a free tier, and then there's two different paid tiers. One is for people that are just getting started, and another is for people that are established. But um it it's it's like I said, it's a it's it's a membership thing, and um, and you just uh you have access to all the different tools, all the different events, all the different courses, office hours.

SPEAKER_03 43:59

Very cool. That sounds amazing. So let me do uh just a quick questions just to find out about you. What's your favorite color?

SPEAKER_02 44:09

My favorite color is blue.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

Blue. You're wearing a blue shirt too. Uh what is your favorite food?

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Oh yes. No, um my favorite favorite food. Oh, there's so many. Um, I think you know, if I just have to pick up a really good true Italian pizza, like that you almost can never get except in Italy.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

Very good. Last question Do you have a favorite book or quote that has really resonated with you?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Well, I'm gonna go with book just because it's an older book that a lot of people probably don't know about anymore, but it really changed my life um and has informed a lot of the ways that I kind of go in the world. It's called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it sounds like maybe one of those books to you know how to go out and manipulate your way into success, but it's not. It's about it's about building character, about doing the right thing, about you know, walking, walking the walk, walking the talk, or whatever, however they say it. You know, and um it's just a it was a wonderful book. I first read it in my early 30s and um had a large impact on the way I think about how I how I operate in the world.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

Wow, you get those books, yeah. Those classic books. Was that was that Covey too?

SPEAKER_02 45:39

Stephen Covey, yep.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

Oh, didn't he write the four disciplines of execution too? Or was that his son? Might have been his son.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

I don't know. I'll have to look at it.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

Don't quote me on that, listen to me. So anyway, I know we'll Google it. Joe, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Uh so generous with all your info and insights and experience. Thank you so much. Oh any last words, any last words for our audience before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Well, um I'm on LinkedIn. If you want to connect, I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. And um, and you know, as I said, we have a free tier. There's a community uh on Facebook that you can join. Um if you can come to the to the website, lifestyle.com. Star has two Rs, lifestar with twors.com. The other one's the helicopter, the medical helicopter. So but um the uh we'd love to have you join us there. Like I said, that's free and um and a lot of great stuff happening.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

So I'll be sure to get those links in the show notes. We'll put all those links there. And so that's the best place for them to go to the website.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

I will go to the website or or you know, you can you can search me out on uh on LinkedIn, Joe Randall.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Awesome. Awesome, excellent. Thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate it. This has been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Thank you, Marissa. Take care.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

All right, and bye bye.