After working with thousands of solopreneurs, Carly Ries and Joe Rando have identified a pattern that keeps coming up: solopreneurs focus almost exclusively on getting more clients while ignoring the foundational question of whether their business is actually designed to support the life they want.
The result is predictable. Solopreneurs build businesses that demand constant hustle, then burn out running a company they never intended to create. The problem isn't a lack of clients, it's a lack of intentional business design.
A life-first business is one where the structure, pricing, client load, and working hours are all reverse-engineered from your ideal lifestyle. Instead of asking "how do I get the next client?" first, you start by defining what your life should look like and then build the business model to match.
This means getting specific. Vague goals like "make a lot of money" or "have more freedom" aren't actionable. You need real numbers and real boundaries.
What do I want my days to look like? Be specific about working hours, days off, and non-negotiable personal commitments. If you don't want to work weekends, don't build a business model that requires it.
How much do I actually need to earn? Many solopreneurs assume they need to earn more than they actually do. Calculate the real number that funds the life you want, it might surprise you.
What work energizes me versus what drains me? Build your services around work that gives you energy, and minimize or eliminate the rest through outsourcing, automation, or restructuring.
Who do I want to work with? Clients who drain your energy aren't worth keeping, regardless of what they pay. Carly compares difficult clients to "energy vampires," they'll never lead to the life you want, so it's better to let them go.
Joe points out that very few solopreneurs niche down enough to attract attention from the people they actually want to serve. Trying to appeal to everyone means you connect deeply with no one, and your marketing becomes generic and ineffective.
A tight niche lets you become the obvious choice for a specific audience, which makes lead generation easier, not harder.
One of the most powerful shifts a solopreneur can make is moving from hourly billing to value-based pricing. Joe shares an example of someone who charged $500 for work that ultimately saved a client $400,000. That same work could easily have been priced at $5,000 or more, and the client would have been thrilled.
When you price based on the value you create rather than the hours you spend, you decouple your income from your time. That's the key to working fewer hours while earning more, and it's essential for building a sustainable solo business.
Joe is candid: if your primary goal is to maximize income above all else, a solopreneur business may not be the right path. Hiring employees and building a team is a better strategy for pure wealth maximization.
That said, solopreneurs regularly earn well into six figures, and some reach seven. The point isn't that solopreneurship limits your income; it's that income shouldn't be the only variable you optimize for. Time, autonomy, flexibility, and quality of life matter just as much.
Once you've defined your ideal schedule and calculated your income needs, you might find a gap. If you can only serve a limited number of clients in your preferred working hours and it doesn't add up, you have several options: raise your prices so you need fewer clients, outsource tasks that don't require your direct involvement, leverage automation and AI tools, or restructure your offerings to be less time-intensive.
The answer is almost never "just work more hours." That defeats the entire purpose of building a life-first business.
The most important shift for solopreneurs is to stop treating lead generation as the first problem to solve. Instead, design the business model first: define your life, set your boundaries, price for value, choose your clients intentionally, and then build your marketing and sales strategy to fill that structure.
It requires some trial and error. But the solopreneurs who get this right are the ones who build businesses that last, because they actually enjoy running them.
FAQs
What is a life-first business? A life-first business is a solopreneur business model designed around your ideal lifestyle rather than built to maximize revenue at the expense of personal time and well-being. You define your preferred working hours, income needs, and boundaries first, then structure your services, pricing, and client load to match.
How much money can you make as a solopreneur? Many solopreneurs earn well into six figures annually, and some reach seven figures. The income potential depends on your niche, pricing strategy, and business model. Value-based pricing, in particular, can significantly increase earnings without increasing hours worked.
What is value-based pricing for solopreneurs? Value-based pricing means setting your rates based on the results and outcomes you deliver for clients, rather than the hours you spend. For example, if your work saves a client $400,000, charging $5,000 for that project is more appropriate than billing a few hours at an hourly rate, and the client is still getting massive value.
How do I avoid burnout as a solopreneur? Start by designing your business around the life you want, not the other way around. Set clear boundaries on working hours, choose clients who energize rather than drain you, price your services so you don't need to overwork, and consider outsourcing or automating tasks that don't require your direct involvement.
How many clients does a solopreneur need? The number depends on your pricing, service model, and income goals. Calculate your target annual income, divide by your average project or retainer value, and see if the resulting client count fits within your preferred working hours. If it doesn't, raise your prices or restructure your offerings rather than adding more hours.
Episode Transcript
Carly Ries: Most solopreneurs obsess over one thing, getting more clients. But what if that's actually the wrong place to start? In this episode, Joe and I break down why chasing clients before designing your ideal business is a recipe for burnout, and what to ask yourself before you ever think about lead generation. From pricing for value instead of hours, to knowing exactly how many clients you can realistically take on between nine and five, this conversation is a reality check and a roadmap all in one. So if you've ever caught yourself saying you want too much money without knowing what that actually means for your life, then listen up.
This one is for you. 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.
Joe, we have worked with hundreds actually thousands of solopreneurs at this point through our events, through our community, on the podcast. What do you think aside from, wanting to run a Life-First Business, what do you think they complain about the most? Not complain, but have the most issues with?
Joe Rando: It's always about getting clients, lead gen, you know, I need I need to get more customers.
Carly Ries: Yes. And while I will not argue that customers are necessary to bring in income and run a business, which obviously they are, a lot of times what I have seen is people aren't setting up their businesses efficiently, and aren't figuring out ways to streamline their operations to, one, get clients, but also to live the life that they want to live. And so they don't start with that why in mind. So their brain immediately defaults to, let's get clients, let's get clients, let's get clients, and that turns into their whole business. And then they burn out from their whole business, cause they're running a business that they never wanted to run-in the first place.
Is that kind of the pattern you've been seeing?
Joe Rando: Yeah. It's multi pronged whatever has multi prongs. It's a fact that very few solopreneurs niche down as much as they should in order to get attention from the people they actually want to serve, right? So there's that aspect of it.
There's the fact that they don't necessarily define the product around the life they wanna live, So they want weekends off, but then they create a product that involves them working lots of hours to get it done and they're charging by the hour. So now they're in a position where if they don't work the hours, they don't make the money. And so there are a lot of mistakes like that that go into this problem, which is really a function of, as you said, thinking through the kind of business that you need to run-in order to support what you want for your life.
Carly Ries: Yeah. I think before you ask yourself, how do I get the next client? You need to be asking, these are some questions that I think are important. What do I want my days to look like, genuinely? what do I actually need to earn to fund the life that I want to live?
You may not need as much as you think you do to run the life you want to live. And maybe you need more. But you need to think of what that life looks like. You need to think of the kind of work that energizes you versus what drains you, and when to do that work. Like you were saying, if you don't wanna work on the weekends, don't run a business where you need to work on the weekends.
Maybe don't start a wedding photography business. Who do I want to work with? I mean, that is so huge. The people you work with, there's in the show, It's the like satirical vampire show.
What We Do in the Shadows, there's a character , he's just an energy vampire. And he's not a regular vampire. He just sucks your energy. And it's like, if these clients are your energy vampires,
Joe Rando: He's real.
Carly Ries: Yeah. Exactly. And in the show he is. And if these clients are your energy vampires, get rid of them. They're not gonna lead to the life you wanna live anyway.
So think about questions like that, and then think, okay, if I only wanna work Mondays through Friday, if I know I wanna stop at 5PM, like, think backwards and think realistically how many clients can I take on between nine to five if I'm running it solo? And if you need x amount, and you don't think you can get it done to make the income you want, then you consider outsourcing. You consider automation. You consider AI. Or you think, okay, I can take these amount of clients and maybe I raise my prices so that I don't need as many clients.
Joe Rando: Or change your pricing strategy . maybe instead of charging hourly, you're charging based on a project. And especially charging based on the value you're creating, not on some arbitrary hourly rates that people seem willing to pay for your services. Because somebody might say, well, I can only pay $90 an hour for that. But when you look at the work you do I was talking to somebody the other day and you know, they made I don't know.
I think it was something like $500 and realized that the work they had done had saved the company $400,000 on lost investments. there were no details given, but the person said, gee, I probably could have charged 5,000 and They would have been thrilled. You know, and thinking through that value add, instead of just, oh, what's a fair rate for what I do, is really a powerful way to raise prices.
And, let's face it. You can't have a life first business if you're not making enough money to survive. So we gotta put that on the table and you gotta do that, but that doesn't necessarily mean more customers and more hours worked.
Carly Ries: No. Exactly. And I mean, we'd be lying if I said there wasn't some trial and error. Sometimes you really do have to go through that trial and error to see what works with your schedule. You are now a solopreneur or you've been a lifelong solopreneur.
Joe, you are unemployable. You've been an entrepreneur for decades.
Joe Rando: 1990.
Carly Ries: Yeah. So some people have that background too.
But if you're listening to this show and you're like, this is resonating with me, just take a look inward, not to get like too foo foo. But you do need to look inside and be like, what do I actually want? If somebody asks you, how much money do you wanna make? And you're like, oh, I mean, a lot of money. I mean, can you make a lot of money while also making it to your kid's soccer games?
And what is a lot of money? And like, you need to have that holistic view to run a life first business.
Joe Rando: When my nephew was very, very little, I was with him and he wanted raisins. I said, how many raisins do you want? He said, too much. And I think some people do that with income. How much do you want?
I want too much. If you want to make as much money as you can possibly make, don't be a solopreneur. You need employees. I know people talk about it's gonna be the billion dollar solopreneur company and it'll probably happen, but there are a lot of things that can happen once. If you wanna make a lot of money and you wanna increase your odds, hire employees, build an employee based business.
Don't be a solopreneur. You wanna build a life around what you want, a solopreneur is a great path.
Carly Ries: And that doesn't mean you can't make a living. we're just saying probablay not the next billionaire.
Joe Rando: Yeah. You won't necessarily be a billionaire, but no. People make 6 and sometimes even seven figures as solopreneurs. And you know, 7 figures, there's a lot to that. And there's some luck and there's some, you know, amazing skill involved and the right thing at the right time.
But making well into 6 figures a solopreneur is not at all unreasonable. And, most people can live on that pretty comfortably.
Carly Ries: Yeah. And again, it's a matter of where your priorities are. I just think if you want one where you can go get out, grab a cup of coffee with your friends or do a workout class at 9AM and then work for a few hours and then do this and then do that. Like, think of how many hours you actually wanna work and then up those prices. You can only have to work those hours and you can still live the life you want.
There are a lot of ways to approach that, which is what we are going to be talking about in The Aspiring Solopreneur, and all of our episodes moving forward, how you can achieve that, as well as LifeStarr in general. So Joe, anything else for today?
Joe Rando: Not really. I think you're a great example of somebody that's done this. You know, you said you talked about how you were working so many hours when you first started as a solopreneur, but, you've balanced it out. You have time for your kids. You have time for other things, and you put the time that you need to in to do the job that you've agreed to do here.
Carly Ries: Mhmm.
Joe Rando: So Well, you've done a good job of that.
Carly Ries: So everybody just refer to me if you have any questions. Just kidding. But we do have a lot to teach from all of the solopreneurs that we've talked to who've been able to do this, and we're excited to continue to provide that information to you. But as always, leave a five star review if you found this episode helpful or motivating or anything, or you're just like, I wanna do a good deed today. Let me give that five star review.
It helps us spread the word to other solopreneurs looking to build a life first business. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, 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.