How to make a living while you’re making a difference. A weekly show for independent professionals who want to go from six-figures to seven while increasing their impact on the world.
Pivoting After A Layoff
Why you want to learn how to business—the craft of building a profitable, sustainable business for yourself.The three most critical areas to master (delivery, sales and marketing) and how to start practicing each immediately.What to do now to avoid the “sophomore slump”—your second year when referrals tend to dry up.Why speaking and writing—even at the very beginning of your business—are worth committing to consistently.Teaching your contacts how to look out for the key trigger that says it’s time to call you in.Quotables“Use that time (your first year of business) to learn how to business, learn the craft of business, building a profitable business that you want to show up and work at every day.”—JS“(Your pre-layoff work) came to a screeching halt because somebody else made a decision that was outside of your control.”—RM “You probably think that doing a great job is how you're gonna magically get new clients.”—JS“Selling is the art of taking someone who's interested and showing them how you can help them, how you can transform their situation into something better.”—RM“Instead of pitching, you try to talk them out of working with you, confidently, perhaps with some humor.”—JS“If you're just getting started, focus on actively listening (in a sales meeting) because your instinct is gonna be to do the opposite.”—RM “You're not gonna know who your ideal buyer is. You might not even know who your target market is, but you do want to show up in places where people who might have problems you can solve are hanging out.”—JS“Think in terms of a trigger: what does that other person have to hear to know that they should call you in?”—RM
Reaching Soloist Nirvana: Exploring The Five Mindsets for Success
The value of having an externally focused mission—and why it may take some time and exploration to find yours. Thinking like an investor—how to make bets with high upside potential while minimizing your risk.The role of experimentation in building your business—even when it feels risky or vulnerable.Why you want to discover your genius zone—and become brave enough to align every aspect of your business around it.Overcoming guilt to hire the home support you need to work at your best.Quotables“The thing with self-oriented goals, the me goals..they don't give you much direction. There's like a hundred ways you could reach these goals.”—JS“There's no shame if this is not the life for you. But it does get measurably easier if you've got a north star that you're shooting for.”—RM “I feel like I'm totally unemployable at this point.”—JS“People who are at the very pinnacle of this soloist life, they look at every decision as…is this going to bring me closer to where I want to be?”—RM“Look, it's a bet—you're making a bet. And if you're not a gambler...you want to de-risk the decision as much as possible.”—JS“Every human being has these fears, like the zebra that lifts itself up out of the herd will get slayed by a lion.”—RM “I think creating products is a great way to invest in your business.”—JS“We deserve to have a great life and to enjoy ourselves. This is not about doing things that we hate for people we don't like.”—RM
Positioning: The Numbers
The ideal number of competitors and target clients in your niche to ensure it’s big enough to keep you profitably in business and small enough that you’re memorable.Why fishing in the right barrel vs. trying to cover the ocean is an ideal strategy for a soloist.The importance of finding your "unfair advantage”.How to find and analyze a potential market niche, including government statistics, trade associations, and social media.Quotables“There's this sort of tacit assumption that more prospects is better. So why would you narrow your focus on a subset of the whole universe?”—JS“Maybe you don't need to have a hundred thousand people on an email list to have a viable business.”—RM“Would you rather be in the ocean with that hook, or would you rather be standing next to a barrel of trout?”—JS“I don't have to write about 20 different things. I don't have to have 10 different products and services—I can just focus on whatever this particular group is most interested in.”—RM“Where do you have an unfair advantage? Like where are you already connected with a bunch of people? That could be your target market.”—JS“You have to be excited by the depths you're going to go to when you decide to niche.”—RM “I’ve just heard this story so many times when people finally niche down to an appropriate level…they start feeling traction right away.”—JS“’I like all my clients the same.’ Nobody has ever said that to me. They’ll say ‘Oh let me tell you about Joe or Sarah. If I could fill my pipeline with people just like that, I would be thrilled.’”—RM
Why Your Stuff Isn’t Selling
You’re not on the radar of your ideal clients, so you’re not making their short list.Your ideal buyers are aware of you, but don’t recognize your offerings as a solution to their problem.Your buyers recognize that you offer a potential solution to their problem, but they don’t find your claims credible—they don’t trust you (yet).Your ideal people trust your solution to their potential problem, but your solution costs more than it’s worth to them to solve it.Quotables“A market is a place—virtual or otherwise—where buyers and sellers regularly show up to transact, to trade goods and services.”—JS“If there is commerce, there's the opportunity to make a profit.”—RM“It's very common that the buyers will not recognize that the inputs that you are selling are solutions to the pains they're experiencing.”—JS“If nobody knows you exist, there is no surprise that your stuff isn't selling.”—RM“You put a big label on the front of your bottle that says fast migraine relief…and you've still got the small print on the back with all the ingredients.”—JS“A feature is not a solution.”—RM“Find people who have a bigger version of the same problem, which probably looks like a larger buyer.”—JS“Wanting to work in your genius zone…might cause you to change your niche market vs. changing your offerings.”—RM
Choosing Your Growth Path
The role of leverage in scaling your expertise business.Building a solo business model without leverage from products or employees.Growing as a solo but adding leverage to scale: products (books, memberships, workshops, licensing) and/or people (contractors).Building a firm with traditional W-2 employees—and the two key activities you’ve got to love to make this work.The challenges—and opportunities—to grow and scale in each business model and how to decide which is right for you.Quotables“There are certain kinds of industries and certain kinds of expertise where when you combine them in the right ways, you can actually build a million dollar plus solo business with no leverage.”—RM“Anything that allows you to do more with less is leverage, whether that's your pricing model or anything.”—JS“Contractors are usually contractors because they don't want to be employees.”—RM“You're using a team of people to help you produce new income streams, new lines of business that are more highly leveraged .”—JS“Having contractors first is a really good training ground for having employees.”—RM“It's (having employees) like being married to 10 people and you're worried about 10 mortgages now.”—JS“If you're gonna have employees, it's the equivalent of baby birds saying “give me a worm”. You've got to keep them busy.”—RM“As soon as you get into product, then you can have a real hit—like you can really have a hit.”—JS
Growing Your Authority Circle
The leap of faith required to act generously right from the start of any promising relationship.Moving transactional interactions—like say guesting on a podcast—into relational ones.How to find the right watering holes for other leaders in your niche—without limiting yourself to social media.The one invitation you can offer new contacts that is often a hard yes.The sometimes hidden value from buying cohort-based courses and programs.Quotables“There needs to be a leap of faith in your mind that reaching out to broaden your authority circle (to maybe someday amplify your message), is gonna start off by you showing up in a generous way to help other people.”—JS“You’re in the green room and you have this interaction and then afterwards you've developed a rapport and you've got the opportunity to build a relationship—I love podcasting for that.”—RM“There's this group of people that are all climbing the same mountain, but we're at different points or different places so we don't know they're there.”—JS“You can move something that's a transaction into something more relational.”—RM“A good watering hole: some kind of class that has a cohort where people are birds of a feather flocking around this particular idea.”—JS“I wanna find other people like me, because guess what? The Chamber of Commerce in my town doesn't have anybody like me.”—RM “If you cannot find a watering hole—like you're pretty clear about who you're looking for, but you just cannot find a place where they gather online—you can start one.”—JS“You will help them (new contacts) because you think what they're doing is interesting or there's something about their story that resonates with you.”—RM
Choosing Your Top Priorities
Is it a good idea to have multiple themes or strategies in a single year?Why running your business—prospecting, closing deals, delivery—always has to be a top priority (hint: nothing good happens when you don’t have cash flow).The natural progression from starting a business to defining your value proposition to earning serious revenue—and how a single focus will move you faster.How to think about monetizing your expertise as you grow.Quotables“You still have to do all of the care and feeding of your business. You have to have money coming in. You have to be closing deals… you have to be doing delivery.”—JS“Prospecting never stops. Ideally on the road to authority, you do a lot of prospecting in the beginning and then it tapers off.”—RM“I get nervous when people are splitting their time between two themes.”—JS“I focus a lot better if I've got one lodestar that I'm shooting for.”—RM“Of all of the things that people have been paying me for, what is the thing I really want to show up and do?”—JS“How are you going to make money out of this?”—RM“Clients are happy to pay your exorbitant fees and your growth looks like getting bigger and bigger clients for whom you'll deliver more and more value and therefore can charge higher and higher.”—JSYou really have to marshal all of your energy into one thing to push to that next level.”—RM
The Care And Feeding Of Your Authority Business
Deciding what checklists, systems and automation make the most sense for you.How to determine where your time has the most value (and let go of what you can).Knowing if/when you’re ready to outsource any tasks—and why you want to understand the process and potential outcomes before you hand them off.How to think about and plan the financial side of your business so it’s serving you (vs. the other way around).Quotables”The automation that I have now began its life as checklists.”—JS“There are five areas where you can have systems and checklists—where you want to pay attention to your business and the underlying systems.”—RM“It gives you a chance to step back and be like, is everything I'm doing here adding value? Especially the really hard stuff—is that adding value?”—JS“It (making checklists) also gives you better insight into how much time you're spending running your business.”—RM“Have a really simple, straightforward (selling) system that is as easy as it can be…that you're comfortable with, so it doesn't make you cringe.”—JS“It's really easy to let the selling go when you have a thorny client problem. Having a system—with checklists—is really important to keep your pipeline full.” —RM“The stuff that you do to keep your marketing machine operating on a regular basis can be very small—like it doesn't need to be overwhelming.”—JS“This is where you ask, so do I want a 401k? Do I want some kind of a retirement plan inside my business? What are the best options for me?”—RM
Kick-off 2023
When it’s time to develop a new strategy (or pivot from the old one).How to use your strategy as a filtering system to evaluate and choose the right tactics.Using themes to focus your activities for the year.Punching through an income plateau with new strategy and tactics.Quotables“It was like I had a team of people that just did what they were supposed to do.”—JS“Your strategy is like a filtering system—there's a gazillion things we can do in any moment but if we're filtering through a strategy, we're much more likely to be productive.”—RM“Tactics without strategy is a disaster.”—JS“You've got this litmus test of the strategy to say, okay, does this tactic align with my strategy?”—RM“A strategy automatically has risk. If your strategy can't fail, it's not a strategy.”—JS“What are your people working on? What are the buzzwords they're using? What are the challenges that they're facing?”—RM“Part of my overall mission does point me to reaching people who are younger and younger. I even have a children's book sketched out that illustrates the insanity of hourly billing.”—JS“If you've been at an income plateau for a while, and nothing you do seems to punch through—that's when you need a new theme for the year to shake up your tactics.”—RMLinksGood Strategy Bad Strategy
BONUS Clips from Episode 211: Systems, Habits and Creating Time
Clips from Episode 211: Systems, Habits and Creating Time
BONUS Clips from Episode 219: Time ≠ Money
Full episode:Episode 219: Time ≠ Money
Consulting vs. Coaching
The differences between the opposite ends of the spectrum and how to own any position you choose to claim.How to migrate from one point on the spectrum—selling, marketing, service delivery and authority building—to another.Matching your business and revenue model (including how big an audience you’ll want to attract) to your unique balance between consulting and coaching.Deciding which kinds of transformations matter most to you.The role of advisory retainers in moving across the spectrum.Quotables“It (coaching) feels a lot more like a transformation that you're selling and…it feels more like you're transforming the buyer into thinking a new way.”—JS“You have these opposite ends of the spectrum between consulting and coaching and then there's so many points in between you can own.”—RM“I took baby steps from consulting to coaching because it was like a relatively small number of people paying me a relatively high amount of money.”—JS“I had this philosophy—even when consulting—that the answer wasn't in me. The answer was in the client. And my job was to get that answer out.”—RM“It's really hard for me to imagine ever reversing direction on that spectrum (of consulting to coaching).”—JS“Now my greatest joy is when somebody hits a new level. Watching that dawn on people—midwifing those transformations—that's what I value.”—RM“And they're like, ‘I know I've heard you say this a thousand times, but you said it a little differently this time, and all of a sudden it clicked.’ I just love those because they're so visceral to the reader or the listener.”—JS“Advisory retainers are another option where you can start to straddle the difference between classic consulting (where you're doing) and classic coaching (where you're always there).”—RMThe Experience Economy Episode with Joe Pine
Predictions for 2023
Planning around the amped up fear about uncertainty—recession, inflation, monetary policy, cryptocurrency, war, politics (just to name a few).The power of building even more discreet and creative niches—and making money from them in new ways while serving people who energize and inspire you. The birth of a major social media platform that optimizes information exchange within communities—with tighter controls on access.Soloists will keep multiplying, especially those migrating from tech space layoffs and those disenchanted with corporate business-as-usual.We crave connection even more after a long shut-down—we are drawn to those who help us feel connected in our work and our lives.Quotables“There is going to be so much fear about things like recession inflation, monetary policy, war, politics—and it's easy to get sucked into that. But those who don't—those who conquer it—have got the opportunity to up our game and take home a bigger share of the marbles.”—RM“There's a great line from Game of Thrones. There's a character called Little Finger, and he's talking about how the world will be thrown into chaos. And he says ‘Chaos is a ladder’. And it's such a great way to look at it…like it can be good.”—JS“Niching is actually fun because you're finding your people, you're finding the way that you can use your superpower…the next thing you know, your business is full of people who energize and inspire you.”—RM“Another social media related prediction that I'll make is that LinkedIn benefits from all of this bananas on Twitter.”—JS“A reasonable number (of those laid off from tech) will say, you know what? I'm done. I'm done with somebody else having control over me…I am gonna do this on my own.”—RM“There's a really interesting development in the AI world called stable diffusion, which turns text prompts into unbelievable 2D images.”—JS“Actuarial valuations were a commodity, but nobody recognized it until somebody decided to start a new firm and change the pricing structure. And then guess what? All the big firms dropped their prices and started to finally look at that data as a commodity.”—RM“If your clients cannot differentiate you from other people who have a similar looking resume in any meaningful way—like they don't see any meaningful difference between you and the next 10 people—then you're on sort of thin ice.”—JS
Behind The Scenes Of Daily Publishing
Why frictionless publishing and distribution is usually the way to go (and what to do when it isn’t).One publishing tech stack suggestion for low friction daily posting and sharing.Working around the downside of automation, AKA how to make sure your posts aren’t riddled with typos.Evaluating alternative social media distribution options.Quotables“It's really important to make this stuff as frictionless as possible so that you can just stick to the really important piece, which is coming up with brilliant new insights and getting them out to the people who are excited to read them.”—JS“I schedule everything that can be scheduled.”—RM“Zapier gives you these little building blocks that you can just drag and drop or select from a list.”—JS“I'm always looking for preset easy ways to do some of this kind of automation without making yourself crazy.”—RM“A relatively new addition to my stack is Grammarly. I installed Grammarly on everything and wow—immediately addicted.”—JS“Cutting and pasting my post into ConvertKit and sending it to myself allows me to see it like the reader does, and I will edit in ways that I wouldn't otherwise.”—RM“If you are just syndicating content to these platforms, your engagement's not gonna be really high.”—JS“Once you've gotten in the habit (of posting) and you're feeling good, then look carefully at the social distribution of what you're doing, because every platform is different.”—RM