Stop Avoiding Your Numbers: Financial Confidence for Solopreneurs

Watch on YouTube

What Is the 20-20-10 Rule for Solopreneurs?

Fractional CFO Andy Weins breaks down a simple weekly framework for solopreneurs: spend 20 hours working in your business (billable client work), 20 hours working on your business (sales, marketing, operations, systems), and 10 hours investing in yourself (reading, professional development, capacity building). This structure forces you to stop spending 60+ unproductive hours at your desk and start making intentional use of your time.

How to Calculate Your Minimum Billable Rate

Andy shares a dead-simple formula any freelancer or solopreneur can use today. Take your annual revenue goal, divide it by 48 weeks (accounting for two vacation weeks and two dead weeks like holidays), then divide that number by 20 billable hours per week. The result is the minimum hourly rate you need to charge to hit your income target. If the number surprises you, that's the point, most solopreneurs are undercharging because they've never done this math.

Why Do Small Business Owners Avoid Their Numbers?

Entrepreneurship is fundamentally emotional and illogical. Business owners chase passion, not spreadsheets. Andy explains that when 85% of businesses fail within 10 years, starting a business isn't a logical decision in the first place, which means entrepreneurs already have a built-in tendency to avoid logic, rules, and data. Numbers tell stories that business owners may not want to hear, and that discomfort keeps many solopreneurs from tracking the financial metrics that could save their business.

What Is the Difference Between Accounting and Financial Leadership?

A bookkeeper and CPA keep your business compliant;  they look at historical data for tax preparation and regulatory purposes. Financial leadership is different. It means tracking real-time operational data like daily revenue, customer acquisition cost, average ticket price, employee attendance rates, and conversion ratios. These numbers never appear on a financial statement but directly determine whether your business grows or stalls. Andy argues that most small business owners have accounting covered, but have zero financial leadership in place.

What KPIs Should a Solopreneur Track?

Andy recommends starting with customer acquisition cost as the single most important KPI for any business. Beyond that, useful KPIs for solopreneurs include the number of outbound calls or outreach attempts per week, the number of billable hours, the average project rate or hourly rate by client, and the conversion rate from estimate to booked job. He cautions against two extremes: tracking 50 KPIs (which leads to analysis paralysis) or tracking the wrong 5. Start broad, see which metrics come up naturally in decision-making, and whittle your scorecard down to the 3–5 numbers that actually change your behavior.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost for a Small Business

Andy breaks down three ways to measure customer acquisition cost. First, return on ad spend (ROAS): divide total revenue by total marketing and sales costs, a healthy ratio is 3:1 or 4:1 depending on the industry. Second, cost per customer: divide total marketing spend by number of new customers acquired to get a dollar amount per customer. Third, customer acquisition as a percentage: divide marketing spend by average customer value to see what percentage of each sale goes toward acquiring that customer. All three methods require tracking how customers heard about you, which most small businesses fail to do.

What Happens When You Don't Track Client Profitability?

Andy shares the story of a solopreneur graphic designer who tracked her hours meticulously but never connected that data to what she charged each client. When they ran the numbers together, her most profitable clients were generating $125–$130 per billable hour. One legacy nonprofit client on a $250 monthly retainer was consuming roughly 30 hours per month, effectively $9 per hour. That single client was the reason she couldn't afford a vacation. Without a KPI scorecard connecting time spent to revenue earned, she had no idea the problem existed.

Can Your Best-Selling Product Actually Lose You Money?

Yes. Andy works with business owners who discover that the product or service generating the most revenue is also their least profitable. One client had six service lines, with one accounting for over 90% of revenue. She was spending half her time and energy on the other five, some of which had no margin or were actively losing money. A KPI scorecard that measures margin percentage, margin dollars, and customer acquisition cost by product line reveals which offerings deserve more investment and which should be cut entirely.

How Do You Build a KPI Scorecard for a One-Person Business?

Start by tracking simple activity metrics: how many outreach calls you made, how many posts you published, how many proposals you sent, how many billable hours you logged. Then layer in outcome metrics: revenue booked, jobs won, conversion rates. Andy started with over 50 KPIs, reduced to 15, then narrowed to 5 numbers that actually drove decisions. The key filter is which numbers come up in everyday conversation and decision-making. If a metric doesn't change your behavior when you look at it, it doesn't belong on your scorecard.

About Andy Weins

Andy Weins is a fractional CFO, professional speaker, and owner of a junk removal business with 17 years of entrepreneurial experience. His book, "Stop Avoiding Your Numbers: The Guide to Financial Confidence for Small Business Owners," was written specifically for business owners under $2 million in revenue. He can be found on LinkedIn and at AndyWeins.com.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• "Stop Avoiding Your Numbers" by Andy Weins — available on Amazon
• "Atomic Habits" by James Clear
• "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Most people don't start a business because they love spreadsheets. They start it because they love the thing, or they know the kind of life they wanna live. And somewhere along the way, they hire a bookkeeper, assume the financial side is covered, and then move on. But it isn't. Andy Weins is a fractional CFO and author of Stop Avoiding Your Numbers, and his argument is simple.

There's a massive difference between having accounting and having financial leadership. One keeps you compliant, the other keeps you in control. In this conversation, Andy breaks down why solopreneurs are wired to avoid their numbers, what a KPI scorecard actually looks like for a solopreneur, and how a focused set of the right metrics turns financial anxiety into clarity, and clarity into growth. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I spend every episode with solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen.

We like to say life first, then business. So let's get right to it. Andy, I've been having so much fun talking to you offline. And again, we always wanna be respectful of people's times, but you seem like one of those guys where I'm like, I can hang out with you all day. So welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you.

Andy Weins: Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Carly Ries: Well, before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this episode, we like to start with an icebreaker question that kinda makes our guests feel like one of us, one of the audience. Because we've all been through various things in our entrepreneurial journey, solopreneurial journey. So here's my icebreaker question for you. If you could redesign your very first workday as a business owner, knowing what you know now, what is the first thing you'd put on the calendar, and what would you take off?

Andy Weins: Oh, you know, normally, when we get an icebreaker question. It's like warm people up and make it really simple like a favorite color. What is Your favorite color. We Went really deep really quick. It's Green.

What I would do is, first thing I would take off my list was my panic session I probably had with my brother, like, what are we doing, impostor syndrome? Right? Like, those over 13 times I probably called him that first day wondering what the heck we were doing. So take off that worry because I find myself seventeen years later still having those moments where I wanna call my business partner, where I'm calling him so I feel better.

Not that I have any questions or any new information. It's like I'm coddling him for my sake. so take off those unnecessary phone calls that I've had with my brother in the past and my business partner now. The thing I would add on, and this is a little more simple, is a conversation with an adult.

A conversation with somebody that's not in already in my sphere of influence, a conversation with someone that's real. Because in my sphere, when I first started, I had two camps. The, oh my god, you'll do great and don't worry about it camp, and the what the heck are you doing camp. And I didn't for a couple months, I would say, have someone that's like, hey, kid. You'll probably figure it out.

Between now and then, how about I give you some advice? And so ten years ago was when I jumped in all the way full time, and there were two gentlemen that very first summer where the words they spoke to me that summer still resonate with me today. And I stumbled upon them. I did not have them on my calendar day one, I didn't even look for them. They came to me.

So day one business owner, find someone that's not in your sphere of influence that can be your mentor, your champion, your battle buddy, that's also gonna tell it to you straight.

Carly Ries: Yeah. Oh, that is such great advice. And on the advice note, I feel like you are gonna leave some wisdom for our audience today. Let's get right into it. Most small business owners say, I'm not a numbers person.

I would say, I am not a numbers person.

Joe Rando: I would not say that.

Carly Ries: Yeah. Joe, You just stay quiet for a second. We're gonna focus on me. Where does that belief come from, and why is it so dangerous for the long term health of a business?

Andy Weins: We get an entrepreneurship. This reminds me of the movie Almost Famous. They were banned, and all of a sudden they had rules. And, the whole reason we got into this thing was to not have rules. The same with entrepreneurship.

We chase our passion and our passion often is not qualified or quantified because you're like, I'll work however long it takes to make as little as money as possible as long as I can chase my passion and I was there for years. I lived that life and numbers get in the way and numbers start telling a different story that maybe you're not telling yourself. And numbers aren't fun and they're not sexy and they're not exciting and most people don't get into business to be number crunchers. They don't get into business to do spreadsheets. They go into business to do the thing.

I do junk removal. You're a graphic designer. You're in business to be a graphic designer. The thing you do. And numbers have a tendency to be the one thing that entrepreneurs don't jive with because when we look at it, right, entrepreneurs are risk takers. We don't get the health insurance.

We don't get the guaranteed paycheck every other week. We don't get the two weeks of vacation. When you look at numbers, you start making logical decisions. When 85 of businesses fail in ten years, being a small business owner isn't logical. So we as business owners already have a predisposition to avoid logic and rules and numbers and things that might slow us down from chasing our passion.

And so societally speaking entrepreneurs are worse and avoid their numbers more than people that are more logical. I'd say my wife is a prime example. My wife is 40 years old. She balances her checkbook every single month. That is important to her.

She loves her numbers. She's a nurse. Numbers matter. She knows all the numbers and the stats and the A1C and your cholesterol, right? And yet she works for somebody else because the idea of getting an entrepreneurship, that risk is too great for her.

So again, numbers are rooted in logic, and entrepreneurship is illogical. It's emotional. And so we struggle as a community when it comes to our data.

Carly Ries: Mhmm. Well, so and speaking of numbers, you draw a sharp distinction between having accounting and having financial leadership. So can you break that down for someone who assumes their bookkeeper and CPA have everything covered for them?

Andy Weins: Yeah. When I mean numbers, I'm talking so We have 52 fundamentals at work, one for every week. And one of our fundamentals, our fundamental this week is parked trucks don't make us money. That's a number.

I have 12 trucks in our service fleet. We have two that are basically spares. And so we wanna put eight trucks on the road every day. That's four teams, eight trucks on the road, we hit our number. So when I come back here and I see more than four trucks parked, we're having a bad day because that means trucks aren't on the road.

What does it have to do with accounting? Nothing. Right? And yet it's a very important number. How many dollars of revenue do we have on the board today?

How many employees do we have? What is our on time rate to come to work? What's our on time rate to show up for our customers on time? What's your average ticket price? These are all numbers that never live on your financial reports.

And so bookkeepers and accountants, tax planners are looking at things, tax preppers rather, they're looking at things in the past to keep you compliant. The opportunity with financial planning is let's look at our data now and what does it tell us? What story is it telling us and how do we get more of the things that are working? Whole reason I got into being a fractional CFO is I was successful very early in business, and I was part of a franchise. And people would reach out to me, and they would ask me questions like, hey.

What's the best marketing, tactic I can use? I'm like, well, what's working? They're like, we do this, this, this. I'm like, okay. Well, what's working?

Well, the phone keeps ringing. Okay. Well, do you ask your people how they heard about us? Do you measure how many dollars against the spend to get a customer acquisition cost or return on ad spend? They're like, well, no.

I'm like, well, then I don't have enough data to tell you what's the best marketing. Because in some markets, parking trucks is a good tactic injuncable. In some markets, it's yard sign. Some markets, it's Google Ads. Some markets, it's networking.

Until you measure the data, we'll never know. And none of that has to do with accountants.

Carly Ries: Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you worked with a business where a KPI scorecard revealed that their best selling product was also their least profitable. Is that also kind of what you're talking about?

Andy Weins: 100%. there are a lot of BS questions we ask in business that makes us feel good. Hey. How's business? Oh, it's doing really well.

Hey. What's your best product? Oh, we sell a lot of this. A better question is, how are you doing year over year? How are you doing year to goal?

What are your goals this year and what does it look like? because those questions take critical thinking or even, hey, you can say, well, what's your best product? What does best mean? Instead, what's the product that has the highest margin percent? What's the product that has the best margin dollars?

What product has the least customer acquisition cost? I had a woman I started work with six months ago. I said, she had six product service lines. I said, what percentage of your service is this one thing? She's like, oh, it's like 90 plus percent.

I go, okay. Then why aren't we even talking about the other five service lines? Why are we spending all this time and energy on five service lines that represent less than 10% of your total revenue? And she's like, well, because I wanna sell those other things. I go, okay.

Let's sell like one or two of them. And now we're down to three product lines because there are one or two legacy things that she says she sells but really doesn't sell. There are one or two that she wants to get going. And then there's one that is clearly the bread and butter. And so she's spending half her time on these five product lines that aren't selling and there's no margin in them.

She's losing money in one of hers because she's taking money from the product that's working to put into this other product that she wants to work and she knows in her heart of hearts, it's money right down the drain.

Carly Ries: I imagine these like these hidden landmines for businesses are very unique to certain businesses sometimes. Like yours, for example, a lot of solopreneurs don't have trucks. You know, When you use a scorecard. like KPI scorecard, what does that actually look like to identify these areas and how can solopreneurs use one?

Andy Weins: Yeah. It can be as simple as how many posts did I do this week? How many outbound calls did I do this week? How many billable hours do I have this week? What is my average, you know, for your project costs?

I had a woman years ago, she was a solopreneur, graphic designer, and she charged some people on a retainer. Some people were per project and I think a couple customers were hourly. She did a phenomenal job of tracking her time , almost like a lawyer. I Mean she did down to start every time she would start herself. So perfect job on starting her time and she knew how much she charged customers.

She never put the two and two things together. When we looked at how many dollars and how many hours she worked, we saw on the high end she had a couple customers that were in the $125 to $130 an hour billable. She had one customer, $9 an hour billable when it was all said and done.

Joe Rando: Okay. That's really interesting. Can you break that down? I mean, she obviously wasn't charging $9 an hour on an hourly basis.

Andy Weins: It was a company that was one of her first client and she had a retainer. It was like $250 a month for work to be done. And over the month, oh, I'll do it here. I'll do it here.

And she ended up doing like thirty hours a month for them at $250. And thirty hours over the course of a month doesn't sound that much. Oh, it's like five, seven hours a week, no big deal. It's like, well, hold on. What if you did thirty hours a week at a $130 an hour instead of $9 an hour?

And what happened? It was a legacy client. It was one of her first clients. She didn't wanna charge them more. They were a nonprofit.

Like all these reasons.  And as soon as I go, okay, well, this is why you can't take a vacation this year. So the scorecard and another perspective. So I own a junk removal company. That's my thing I do. I'm also a speaker and so that's my solopreneur. It's me against the world. Right?

So the audience here, that's the world I'm in. My consulting work is it's me. so I know good and well when I track my numbers.

So I started recently tracking, how many cold calls I make a week to get speaking gigs and my goal is 25. I can tell you when I go on there and I put in zero for the week, I feel some sort of way. Because I know that I did not do what was necessary this week to grow my speaking business the way I say. And I'll give myself all the excuses. Oh, well, you know, one day you got away from me and this and that. The scorecard never lies.

It keeps you honest. So people say, I wanna grow my business. You say, well, what are you gonna do about Well, I'm gonna do this. Okay. Start tracking that. you know, when people say, oh, I'm gonna go to more networking events. Okay. Well, how many more? Five a month. Okay.

Track how many did you do this month? Track how many did do this week? And after three weeks, if you've done none, guess what? You're doing five networking events next week.

Carly Ries: How do people know which KPIs to track for their business? Because in theory, it could be like, I'm gonna track networking, I'm gonna track blog posts, social media, or just all of the above to until you try to figure out what sticks.

Andy Weins: How do you know what products and services people are gonna buy from you? You put a bunch of things out there, what sticks, and then multiply it. Right? And that's it. KPIs?

At one point, had over 50 KPIs I was looking at every single week. 50. Five zero. I spent more time developing my scorecard than I did working in my business and those 50, I got down to 15. In the 15, we got down to five.

Joe Rando: That's what I was gonna say. It's like you don't want 50 KPIs because you can't react to them.

Andy Weins: But you also don't want the five wrong ones.

Joe Rando: Right. Yeah. So you kinda looked at the ones that were doing the most good, being the most indicative

Andy Weins: Correct. And also which ones came up in like normal conversation? So for example, with junk removal, we'd say, okay. Well, how many jobs do have next week? Alright.

We got 15. Alright. Well, we need 50, for example. Okay. Well, how many estimates do we have this week?

Because how many jobs we have next week is kind of a leading indicator. How many estimates do I have this week is a better leading indicator. So if I have 50 let's say, I need 50 jobs and I got 15 on the board. And I know I'm gonna get 15 more on the phone calls, so I have a delta of 20.

I need 20 jobs booked this week to fill my schedule next week. And I know two thirds of the time when I do an estimate, I get the job, which is about my numbers. That means I need 30 estimates. And, that's a lot of big math and it's really not that difficult. It's when I do 30 estimates, I get 20 jobs.

When I get 20 jobs, I hit my revenue goals. When I hit my revenue goals, I can go on vacation. When I go on vacation, it was all worth it. The inverse is, well, when I have enough money, I'll go on vacation. And not really sure how I get there, but I know sometimes I get there.

I know sometimes when I look at my bank account, there's money in it. And I know sometimes there isn't. And based on that is, you know, do I sign the kids up for soccer based on what's in my bank account today? My wife and I put an offer in for house yesterday. The last couple weeks here, our business has been relatively down.

Now this week, it's good. And yet I'm still 99.8% to goal. And for my wife, I go, by the end the year, it'll all wash out. So I really had a great January, February, and then there was some turbulence in the economy. So March was garbage. April started slow. Yesterday, it was raining here. Normally, when it rains, it means our phones are slow. It's weird.

And yet our phones were on fire. I'm like, yeah. Because the last six weeks, people were timid, whatever, and now they're like, we gotta get stuff out of our basement. It doesn't really matter what's going on in the Middle East. Let's go.

And I know that because for ten years I've been tracking my data and for ten years I have an idea. I also know I'm 99.8% to goal because I had a goal and I measured it. Most people don't even have the goal. It's like, well what do you want to do this year? I want to have a good year.

Well what does that mean? And how do we get there together?

Joe Rando: You know, it sounds to me like what you're saying makes so much sense and it really sounds like you're kind of working backwards or you could work backwards to kind of start with, this is what I need. This is what's gonna implement.

Andy Weins: Real quick, what's your favorite sport?

Joe Rando: To watch? Wave bogging. No. I'm just kidding. I don't watch professional sports.

Andy Weins: Carley.

Carly Ries: I'm hockey.

Andy Weins: Hockey. Okay. What's the goal every year?

Carly Ries: To win the Stanley Cup.

Andy Weins: That's it. Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people. Begin with the end state in mind. The goal is to win a Stanley Cup.  so okay, over the weekend, it was an NFL draft. What's their goal? To win the Lombardi trophy named after Vince Lombardi from the 13 time world champion Green Bay Packers. Okay. The goal is to win the championship.

So who do we draft? Is it like, ah, that guy looks good. No. It's like, well, we gotta build a winning team to win a Lombardi trophy. What is our team currently lacking? Okay. Hire for that. Let's look at hiring needs with your business. Right? or even customer needs.

A lot of people are like, well, I'll take whatever work I can get. Well, it's like, hold on. Who's your best customer and define what best means to you? You can do that. And then once you define your best customer, how do you get more?

Carly Ries: Yeah. Well, so let me ask you this. you said you started with 30 KPIs at one point, whittled it down. Are there any calming KPIs or, nonnegotiables you think people should start with? is there something like starting their business?

Andy Weins: Yeah. Customer acquisition cost. That's one of the first ones. Customer acquisition cost. Because in order to do customer acquisition cost, you need several things going for you, and a lot of people don't even do them.

The first thing is customer acquisition cost. How'd you hear about me? Ask the question. Secondly, document it. That's data.

A lot of people think data are these numbers and they have a dollar sign next to them or there's a percentage. No. Data. There are plenty of customers, I've met people, They've been in business ten, fifteen years and they got 200, 300 customers in a Rolodex and I say, okay, well how'd they hear about you?

Well, don't really know. That's ten years of data we never collected. So in order to get a customer acquisition cost, you have got to know how my customers heard about me. You have got to know what money did I spend on my advertising. Because day one of business, you start spending money advertising your services before you get your first customer.

You bought a logo or, you know, paid for a logo design. You got a business card. You got a Facebook page. You got Google AdWords going or at least a Google My Business listing. Like, you incurred some cost whether it was real dollars you paid somebody or your time, you have some cost into letting people know who you are and what you do.

Was that a good investment or not? And s that is not a rhetorical question.

Joe Rando: I wanna get a little clarity here because this is interesting. So, I'm used to customer acquisition cost. There's a guy named David Skock who does this for SaaS businesses. But the idea is you just basically take all of your marketing costs, right? Everything you're spending on marketing and sales, and then you use that number and you basically divide it by the number of customers you get and work the math.

But I think what you're saying is to look at the individual customers and try to calculate what each customer cost based on how they heard about you . So that's neat. that's a little different, but it sounds like a lot more work, it's, a way to kind of say, this particular method of marketing is working better for us and getting more for less money.

Andy Weins: Yeah. You have two choices. You can work on the front end and you can work on the back end. Life is work. I choose the work I do. so I can either sit here and stay up all night and worry and talk to my wife and talk to my business partner and talk to our employees and guess and spend all that time and energy wondering how the heck we got here and what we're gonna do. Or I can spend the time on the front end collecting the data, analyze the data, and then within the data is the answer. I'm gonna spend the same amount of time and one leads to a result and one leads to worry. so customer acquisition costs can be expressed several different ways. for example, return on ad spend.

That's as simple as add up all your marketing or you add up all your revenue divided by all your marketing and sales cost. Depending on your industry, our goal is a four to one ROAS, return on ad spend. You watch Shark Tank depending on what the business is, anywhere north of three to one. Four to one is good.

Some businesses are ten, fifteen, 20 to one. So recently, we ran Facebook ads. We ran five different campaigns. Of the five different campaigns, one of them, one of the five accounted for 80% of our new leads. So it's like, well, yeah, I'm gonna put all the rest of my money into that one.

I'm not gonna divide my money five ways. I'm gonna find the one that's working the best and put all my money into that one. And so that's one way. Another way to look at it is you take your total marketing spend divided by number of customers you have. And now you have your customer acquisition cost expressed as a dollar as in it's 20% of my revenue, right.

It costs me $20 to acquire one customer. And then also customer percent where it's okay we spent you know $50 and our customers worth $200 so it's 25% customer acquisition cost. So that's three different ways to measure the same thing which is how much does it cost for people to find out who I am? And that's because the number one question we get well, first question we always get is where's all my money? That's my first question.

Second question I always get as a CFO, and my business partner also is how do I get more sales? it's how do we get more sales? How do we get more revenue? How do we get more customers? It's the same thing.

And the first thing I ask is, well, how'd you get your customers in the first place? when you know that you hit the multiply button and it's not the same. Every market is different. Every person is different. So for me, right now I know that cold calling for my speaking business, cold calling has about a one in 30 return.

So for every 30 phone calls I make, I get one customer. Okay. That's my customer acquisition. 30 phone calls.

So when Annie makes 30 phone calls a day for a week straight, I will get, as long as I do 30 phone calls for five days, get five customers. Maybe it takes me till Friday to get all five. Maybe get five on Monday and none the rest of the week. On average, it's 30 phone calls for every one customer. Right now LinkedIn is about 10.

For every 10 outreaches, I get one. I'll call them not customers, one opportunity. One person that calls me back or you know hits me back up. So right now LinkedIn is significantly more efficient than cold calling. So now I'm gonna spend my money, my time, same same, doing LinkedIn in messaging because it has a faster ROI. It's 10 to one versus 30 to one, and it's faster to copy and paste than it is to dial and press buttons and do the number.

Now the disadvantage is not everybody looks at LinkedIn. More people pick up their phones, and then I play that game. What actions and activity give you the results you want? I could sit here all day and say, I want more speaking gigs, or I can go do something about it. Yeah. Fair point. Well, speaking of doing something about it, there are going to be some listeners that are like, Andy, this all makes sense, but I'm a solopreneur. I have so much on my plate right now. I will get to this at some point. Not a priority for me.

Carly Ries: But you argue this is no longer optional with higher cost, tighter margins. What is the specific risk for solopreneurs if they don't look at this financial leadership strategy that you've talked about today?

Andy Weins: When you choose different, words matter. When you choose different, you get different results. You no longer are in control of your future, you're leaving it to chance. And luck chance, whatever you wanna call it, I want to be proactive in my own success. I teach all my entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs, it's as simple as math.

I teach them this, twenty, twenty, 10. Here's what you can do today. This is a simple math exercise. Decide how much money you wanna make this year. Whatever the number is. Take that number. Divide that number by 48 because you're gonna have forty eight weeks. Because as an entrepreneur, you're have two dead weeks. Christmas week is typically dead, fourth of July or, you know, you're gonna have two dead weeks.

And then also you're gonna have two weeks where I'm telling you right now, take a vacation. Everyone says I never have time. Nope. Block it off. So at the very least, break your year down to forty eight weeks, not fifty two. Once you have those forty eight weeks, take the amount of money you wanna make. Like bring it. We'll say revenue. Right?

Divide it by 48 and then divide it by 20. That's your billable rate. That's your starting billable rate per hour because you're only gonna work twenty hours a week from now on in a billable rate. Right, in your business. Twenty, twenty, ten.

Twenty hours in your business, twenty hours on your business, ten hours on yourself. And once you start giving yourself that actual discipline, people will say, oh I work sixty, seventy hours a week. No, You sit in front of your computer sixty, seventy hours a week. You spend half that time being unproductive. Give yourself twenty hours a week to make money in your business, twenty hours to work on your business, make yourself more efficient, to get more customers, all of sudden, you're gonna stop doing a bunch of behaviors that no longer serve you because you only get twenty hours a week.

Carly Ries: So let me ask you this for the twenty twenty ten. So that's assuming that somebody's spending fifty hours a week in some capacity. The 10, is that self development or is that like go get a massage or go get a workout in and take care of yourself?

Andy Weins: Me? I read a book. My goal is 10 pages a day. When when I read 10 pages a day, I'm a better person. When I commit to 10 pages a day, I end up reading a book every week, week and a half because it's never less than 10 pages and it's often more than 10 pages.

So for me it's reading. Reading and working out. Those are my two things. Meditating, not my thing. Gonna get a massage, I talk about it.

Alright. I didn't talk about it. I often think about, oh man, won't it be nice to get a massage and then why would I do that?

You know what mean? Like wait. Why do I wanna pay $200 for a nap? I can take a nap for free. Because as soon I get on a massage table I'm out like every time. Oh I love a good massage and yet reading a book to me is more fulfilling. So that ten hours on yourself, I don't care what it is. now I would argue against massage unless you're living like a high stress environment and that really really suits you. I want you to work on yourself as in it's an investment in the future. Massages and sometimes relaxation merely get you kinda caught up with the past. I wanna build capacity, not just decrease the stress within your current capacity. So I would argue against massage as your entire ten hours.

Right now, is it like two of your ten hours? Fine. And the other eight hours a week you're taking care of yourself? Fine. In the 20 20 10, that can be, hey, Mondays and Wednesdays, those are my billable days.

I only take customer calls those days. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm doing outbound dialing and sales efforts and I'm working on my business and Fridays is my day to increase my capacity and that is going on podcasts, listening to podcasts, reading books, taking a seminar, doing a webinar, whatever as long as you're increasing the capacity. Every time I come on a podcast, I'm increasing my capacity. Or the old adage, you know, one person teaches, two people learn. Every time I come on a podcast, I leave with a nugget I hadn't had before because I'm learning from you.

I'm learning from your audience. I'm learning what's important. Something that we say here today, I will take with me future in life. Right now, is part of my ten hours working on myself.

Carly Ries: Yeah. Andy, this is such a helpful conversation. like you were just saying and I appreciate how you framed everything, because it is a different mindset and view of how you approach your business that I think a lot of solopreneurs don't look that look at. And I think you'll find help a lot of our audience find success with that. So I'm gonna pivot to our question we ask all of our guests about success.

What is your favorite quote about success?

Andy Weins: Favorite quote about success. Spite is a hell of a drug. Success is much more sustainable. Often, I did things early in business because people saw to whom I couldn't. I do them to prove other people wrong.

I did them because of the emotional response, right? And I got it and there was an instrumental motivation. It's like, yeah, I stuck it to him. Whatever the emotional feel was. And then over time I realized being successful is enough.

Reading for the sake of reading, not because I had to read the book, not because someone told me I couldn't whatever, right? And in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits talks about that. Once you start making success part of your daily life, it's no longer luck. It's no longer something you stumble upon.

It's no longer you doing it to prove to anybody anything. You are successful because you are successful. It's like talk about with happiness. Right? You can choose to be happy and when you choose to be happy, you'll see the world in a certain way.

So when I walk out and say, you know what? I'm gonna be successful today. Well then, I'm successful. When I say hey I'm gonna do all these things and once I do all these things then I'm successful, then I'm relying on the outcomes and the process versus the identity. So for all business owners, look at the mirror every now and then, remind yourself who you are and say, you know what, I'm a successful business owner.

At one point in my life, I did not have the opportunities I have today. At one moment in my life, I wished I could have what I have today. I'm gonna celebrate all that I've done and I'm gonna continue to be successful because I'm gonna celebrate it because it's lonely. Being a solopreneur is lonely and we're always looking for answers and my argument is simple. Even my book, my newest book, there's over a 100 questions in there.

All the answers are within you. Ask yourself the real questions. Sit on the edge of your bed. Ask yourself, what is this for? What is the purpose of my life?

Start answering those questions, having honest conversations with yourself, and all this stress and worry and frustration, all this stuff you carry, all this crap you carry with you starts to go away because you remind yourself who you are. So spite is a hell of a drug. Success is much more sustainable.

Carly Ries: I love it. Well, speaking of your new book, where can people find that and where can people find out more about you and learn more about you and give you a call if they want to?

Andy Weins: Yeah, absolutely. New book is called Stop Avoiding Financial Confidence for Small Business Owners. It was written specifically for business owners under $2,000,000 in revenue. 99% of businesses never make it to $2,000,000 in revenue. So this is written for you, the solopreneur.

It's available on Amazon and I can be found really anywhere, LinkedIn, Facebook, primarily LinkedIn, and also my website, andyweins.com.

Carly Ries: Love it. Well, Andy, thank you so so much for coming on the show today. We appreciate it, and we know our listeners will enjoy it as well.

Andy Weins: Thank you so much.

Carly Ries: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave us that five star review. It helps us spread the word so we can get episodes like Andy's out to more solopreneurs. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube, 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. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.