Making changes in your business is exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming when everything seems important at once. In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, Carly and Joe walk you through the PRIORITY Framework, a practical tool to help you decide which changes are worth your time, energy, and resources. From spotting critical survival moves to weighing risks, opportunities, and alignment with your vision, this framework will help you cut through the noise and focus on what really matters.
If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at a never-ending list of “should-dos,” this conversation will show you how to turn it into a clear, strategic plan.
Popular Questions and Answers From The Episode
How do I know which business changes to tackle first?
Start with survival. If something threatens the health of your business, like a major client loss or a broken system, it automatically goes to the top of your list. Joe calls this the “Peril” step in the PRIORITY framework. Handle what keeps the doors open before anything else.
What if I have a change in mind, but I don’t have the skills or resources to pull it off?
Then it’s not a priority...yet. Implementation and resources are key filters in the framework. If you can’t realistically execute the change now, put it on a “someday/maybe” list instead of draining energy and momentum.
How do I avoid wasting time on changes that don’t move my business forward?
Ask whether the change creates real opportunity and aligns with your vision. Will it grow revenue, reduce stress, or bring you closer to your long-term goals? If it’s just a shiny object, it might feel exciting, but it won’t serve your bigger picture.
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!
Episode Transcript
Carly Ries: When you're running a solo business, spotting what needs to change is one thing, but deciding which changes to make is an entirely different challenge. In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, we break down a simple but powerful tool, the priority framework. From tackling business threatening issues first to weighing resources, risks, and opportunities, this framework helps you cut through the noise and focus only on changes that are truly worth your time. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by a list of should do's and wondered where to start, this conversation will give you the clarity and confidence to move forward without stalling your momentum. So tune in to learn how to sort the urgent from the optional and walk away with a process you can use to make smarter business decisions today.
You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving. I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumb stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot.
Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. So Joe, we the past few episodes, we've been talking about the improving phase of the solopreneur success cycle. And today, we're gonna actually talk about deciding which changes to make once you've started kinda looking at your business, seeing what's working, seeing what's not. And hence you have a lot of choices to make about what you need to prioritize.
So how do you decide which changes to make once you know you have changes to make?
Joe Rando: Yeah. you know, you probably are gonna have more changes than you're gonna wanna try to make at your business at one time. Because, when you're making these kinds of changes, you're not doing work, and that usually impacts your revenue. So carving out some time to do this type of stuff is the kind of thing where you wanna be very strategic about it because you only wanna do the things that are really worth doing and worth losing that productivity time for. So we came up with something called the priority framework.
And the priority framework. the priority stands for something. And this is a time honored tradition, of creating acronyms around things. So full disclosure, I'm not good at this, so I use ChatGPT to come up with the acronyms. And, anyway, let's walk through priority.
So it starts with p for peril. And we mentioned this in the last episode. If it's critical to survival, don't wait. If this something that's gonna destroy your business, just get on it now and forget about all the other changes. So those go to the top of the list. Resources. do you have the money, the time, and the energy to do this now? Because if you don't, you're gonna start it and not finish it or just waste time.
So if it's something that's too big to take on right now, you're gonna wanna put it on a kind of a someday maybe list, we call it. Just put it on a list for later. maybe it's gonna not be important anymore. You don't know how those things are gonna go. Then the I is for implementation, and the idea is, do you have the skills and the tools to make it happen?
Or if you don't, can you outsource it to someone that can? Is there someone that can do it? Can you afford to pay them? These kinds of questions. You know, a change is only good if you can actually make it happen.
So if you don't have the skills, then that's another nonstarter if you can't get somebody to help you. Opportunity. What will this move forward? What's it gonna do for the business?
And this is the kind of thing where you have to ask yourself, given what it's gonna take to do this, is the opportunity really there? Is it gonna make the revenue grow? Is it gonna reduce stress, make me more effective, do something to improve my life and my goals? That's kind of thing you need to think about, for that step.
And then r is for relevance. Does it align with the overall vision you have for the business? Because there are lots of cool things to do that could be helpful. But if they're not aligning with kind of where you're trying to take the business, what you see the business, going to next, maybe it's not worth the energy or the time or the money.
I is for impact risk. If you do this, could something bad happen? You know, could this cause confusion? Could it break a system?
Could, it cause customers to leave? Could it do something bad for your brand? You know, there are just these kinds of things that can happen when you make, significant changes to your business. You wanna think those through. The t is for, threats of execution.
When you're executing this, could something go wrong while making the change that you would then wanna reverse back? Is it reversible? So if you're going in and making major changes to your email marketing system and or maybe you're changing email marketing systems, and it just doesn't work the way you wanted it to or something's really wrong, can you go back? Do you wanna keep that old email marketing system in place until you're convinced the new one works, etcetera?
So thinking through those threats of execution. And then last, the y is just for making a decision, and there are three possible decisions about any given change. One is, yes. I'm gonna do it now. I'm gonna do it later.
Or this is just a bad idea, and it's going in the trash. I'm not gonna do it at all. So yes, no, or not at all. And that is the kind of thing that will let you pair down your list. So this is only the first step of pairing down. You're gonna pair that down. And once you're done with that, then you're gonna look at these and say, okay. Now I've got this paired down list that I'm gonna try to take on now. But you still gotta think through whether it makes sense to do all of these changes.
You might not have the time or the energy. And you also wanna step out and say, hey. You know, this looks good on paper. Is my heart in doing this right now?
Do I really wanna do this? And you might look at a change that, checks off all the boxes on the priority framework, but you go, you know, just not into this right now. I don't know, might be a reason you can't explain, but you do wanna trust your gut with these things because sometimes it's just not the right thing for you to do. You know, talk to people about the changes. Ask customers or, friends and, other people in your solopreneur community. What do you think about this? Did this make sense? And then as you look through the list, see, how much of these can I do? I like to sort them in priority order, like what's the most important to least, and then go down and say, how much can I do and then stop?
And as you cut off, you know, you may have something that's high effort, and there's something beyond it that's lower efforts, not as high priority, but you might be able to squeeze that one in for this phase. So it's just one of those things where, you have to think through this stuff and then be very careful about what you decide to change at one time because it can get a little tricky. And lastly, as you're doing this, think what the order that might make the most sense to do because there may be some systems dependent. You know, if I'm gonna change my email marketing, maybe I wanna first, change my website around so that it integrates with the new email marketing system or something. who knows?
But there are just different ways that you might do this that make more sense than others. And thinking these through and organizing before you start going in and willy nilly making changes will lead to a lot more successful outcomes. So that's that.
Carly Ries: Yeah. Absolutely. I love acronyms. It's so funny how helpful that could be to retain information. So well played ChatGPT, well played Joe and it's ChatGPT.
Well done. Well, Joe, before we end the episode, we said in a previous episode that we're gonna start thanking people for their five star reviews and giving them shout outs. And so, Simi O'Brien, thank you so much for your recent five star review. You said, our show is a must listen for any solo business owner navigating the messy middle of building something meaningful. I always walk away with at least one thing I can apply right away.
That means the world for to us. Listeners, if you want us to give if you want us to give you a shout out, there you go. Don't forget to leave that five star review. And for everybody else, please subscribe to our show 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.