Start Here: The Solopreneur Blueprint You Didn’t Know You Needed

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Ever feel like you're building your solo business one guess at a time?

In this episode, Carly and Joe pull back the curtain on the Solopreneur Success Cycle, the foundational framework behind their new book Solopreneur Business for Dummies. From defining your goals (hello, Step Zero!) to tweaking, refining, and reimagining your business as it grows, they break down the entire cycle designed specifically for one-person businesses.

It's not a lecture, it’s a roadmap with a healthy side of real talk, laughs, and lessons you can apply right away. Whether you buy the book or not (but, like, you should), this series is your shortcut to building a business that actually works for you.

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Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr Intro gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. 

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

EpisodeTranscript

Carly Ries: Ever wish someone handed you a roadmap for solopreneurship? In this episode, Joe and I break down the solopreneur success cycle. This is the framework behind our new book, Solopreneur Business for Dummies. Learn the three essential phases and eight steps that can help you start, run, and improve your one person business without the trial and error headache. Plus, find out why step zero might just be your secret weapon to success.

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. 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 missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Okay, listeners. So as you just heard, we just talked about this incredible offer that we are doing right now. And as we lead up to the release of our book, Solopreneur Business for Dummies, which saying that out loud, Joe, is still so crazy to say.

But you may be wondering, like, okay, you talked about it briefly in that teaser. What is this book about? you can kind of deduce what is solopreneur business for dummies, we really laid out for you. But the entire book is based on a framework, the solopreneur success cycle, that Joe, you actually came up with. So I figured, I mean, I helped, but you this is your brainchild.

And I feel like we should start with an overview. Listeners, we are gonna kinda do a series when it's just Joe and I over the next couple of months, kinda diving into highlights that we discuss in the book. We're not gonna give away everything. Obviously, we want you to buy it. But just really the framework behind the methodology of everything that we're discussing.

Again, the Slopreneur Success Cycle. Joe, why don't you dive into it? You start. It's your baby.

Joe Rando: Yeah. Well, let me first say that, this is not gonna be like a we'll give you half of the info and leave you hanging. There's so much in the book about getting into the details of nitty gritty that we can give you the whole picture here, and still, it's gonna be worth buying the book. So I'm not worried in the least bit. You know, the whole aspect of the solopreneur action plan, which is covered through the book, and there's a link to download your own copy so you can create your own.

But, basically, it's a business plan concept for solopreneurs that kind of cuts through the nonsense that you don't need for a one person business. But, anyway So I'm gonna not leave anything high level out of here. Obviously, not going too far in the weeds because these are short podcasts. But so the Solopreneur Success Cycle is defined by three phases. The first one is getting started, starting your business. A lot of you listening have probably already gone through that phase. If you looked at what we put together here, maybe you'd say, gee, I wish I had done it that way. I hope you'd say that.

But then the second phase is doing, but while you're doing, you're learning. So you're running your business, and you're learning what's working, especially what's not working or what could be better. or what maybe you want to be different for your life. And then lastly is the, improving phase where after you figure out all the things that are going wrong or not going the way you want them to or could be better, you implement some of those improvements. And then you go back to doing, so it's a cycle.

You're going around in a circle. Right? And you're gonna put a link to an article that shows these graphics. Right, Carly?

Carly Ries: Yeah. We actually have an entire page on our website, that we'll link to in our show notes.

Joe Rando: So these three phases are broken up actually into eight different steps. And the first step is called goals and success. We call it step zero because nobody ever does this. Everybody says, oh, I'm gonna start a business.

I start a business. And the next thing you know, there's a good chance they're running a business they don't like running or isn't doing what they needed to do or isn't making enough money for them or whatever. So we start off with this, we call step zero, defining what your goals you have for starting a one person business.

It's not about becoming a billionaire, I hope, because if you do, you wanna have employees to do that. So there's something else about your life or something about what you want that a one person business serves. Once you've got those goals defined, you have to envision your business, and we try to encourage people to think outside the box a little bit. You know, just because you're a CPA doesn't mean you have to go and do accounting. Maybe you wanna do something related, but not, just a freelance accounting person or bookkeeper.

So this that step. And then when you decide what you wanna do, you gotta plan it. You gotta figure out the details of how you're gonna get it up and running. Next step, which is step three, is getting set up.

You gotta set up the business that you've now planned. Once you've got it set up, now you're in business. So now you're running, executing, learning. That is step four.

And as you execute and learn for a while, at some point you decide, hey, I'm gonna step back and rethink this business a little bit. Or maybe, we have a step five called refine, or maybe reimagine. So it's refine, reimagine, depending on how the business is going. It's, a couple of tweaks you need, you refine it. My God, this isn't making enough money, or I am hating my life, or gee, I see a way better opportunity, then you might reimagine it.

Go through that process of refining or reimagining the business, decide what you're actually gonna do, which is step six. And finally, step seven is adjust. Make the adjustments you've decided to make. At that point, you're going back to executing and learning. So the idea here is that you have this process of starting, running, and improving your business continuously.

Does that makes sense?

Carly Ries: It makes sense to me, but I'm very biased.

Joe Rando: Look at the pictures on the link from the show notes, because that will tell a much better story than my describing this thing. But it basically looks like kind of a spiral that circles back on itself. So let's just dig in really briefly why. So it's a flywheel, because you should never be done, right?

You should never be done with your business. Something's changing. You're changing, the world is changing, your customers are changing, something's going on out there. so it's always good to have a process of, thinking about what you're doing and making adjustments of some kind.

Second thing I would wanna stress is that step zero is the secret weapon. If you don't decide why you're doing this and what you want out of it, you're going to find yourself building a business that isn't quite serving what you hoped for. And, Carly, you're gonna talk about that a lot, I think, the next podcast episode.

Carly Ries: Mhmm. Yep. Absolutely.

Joe Rando: And the reason we did this is that trial and error is expensive. It costs money. It costs time. It costs, just brain damage as we used to call it. You know, your brain hurts when you make a mistake and you have to turn around.

So, there's some things we can do to avoid making the rookie mistakes and get this thing right or closer to right the first time. So that's what that's about. I wanna assure people that this is not like some MBA framework that I, took and tweaked. This is a ground up. I didn't even look at any other processes when I came up with this.

It was over a summer. It was the summer that you were actually, having your youngest, I think, if I remember. And, I just kinda started a solopreneur business. I started a second one, had been an entrepreneur. I said, what's different?

And just came up with this, for solopreneurs. And so that kinda covers the solopreneur success cycle at a high level and why. Do you have anything to add or anything you wanna ask me, Carly?

Carly Ries: No. I think this makes a lot of sense. I mean, like you said, I would encourage everybody to click on the link in the show notes to the page on our website that has the diagrams and everything. I think you'll find that really helpful.

Just refer to that. Like I said, we're doing this series, and that'll be helpful throughout each of these episodes. But, whether you buy the book or not, which we certainly hope you do, these short segments that we're gonna be sharing with you will hopefully be helpful in your business regardless if you have that supplemental piece of literature. Hopefully regardless. But speaking of which, next time we're gonna be talking about those goals and that step zero, so be sure to tune in.

And of course, as always listeners, leave that five star review, share this episode with a friend, subscribe on your favorite podcast 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. 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.