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

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

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

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

Explore the rollercoaster journey post-project completion, from project dynamics and winding down effectively to post-launch client engagement. Discover the importance of marketing efforts, self-care, and reflecting on past achievements to adjust business strategies. Learn about client work completion rituals and storage practices.

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

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

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

How your target audience can guide how much you reveal about yourself and/or your politics.Deciding which boundaries and guardrails make sense for you, your work and how you want to roll. The advantage we have as soloists—but don’t always use—when deciding how much of ourselves to share.One technique to deal with clients who have disclosed something distasteful to your core values (but you can’t fire them yet).Quotables“I'm not saying no to (talking about) chicken vindaloo, I'm saying yes to ‘Let's talk about pricing today’.”—JS“If you're doing B2B to big corporates—unless you're running a politically oriented law firm—then you're probably not talking politics.”—RM“I don't know how to build a business or help someone build a business where you really don't care about your clients.”—JS“We’re soloists—we get to decide…we're not working for ‘the man’ getting a salary and having to serve whoever comes in the door.”—RM“Maybe you're not there yet, but you will be able to become increasingly picky over time (about who you take as clients) and it's delightful.”—JS“If you can't say goodbye right now, then you put them on the list—they're the first one that's gonna go, and you'll find somebody else to replace them.”—RM“Just write something that you want to learn a lot more about. Pick that as your central topic, and if you’re really excited to learn more, you don't have to be an expert.”—JS“Think about glass or plexiglass so you can see them, but they can't touch you. That negativity, that thing that you really don't like, can't touch you—that's a technique that therapists use all the time.”—RM

When automating or outsourcing tasks makes it clear that they don’t need to be done at all.How to evaluate contractors and advisors for signs that they’re saving—vs. costing—you time and money.How to think about out-of-pocket cost vs. your time and the complexity of your business operation.Why you want to periodically re-evaluate your existing leverage and how it’s working for you.The role of your mindset when working with outsiders (or paying their invoice).Quotables“It's usually just making (automation leverage) simpler by shaving off stuff that apparently doesn't need to be there.”—JS“How do you know when you cross the line from leverage saving you money to costing you money?”—RM“In the context of this episode, the question becomes ‘do I even need to hire anyone to do this at all?’ Like maybe I shouldn't even be doing this anymore.”—JS“So it's really being aware of when someone you're handing things off to is making your life more difficult rather than less.”—RM“In re-evaluating places where you create leverage, I feel like systems is the one that's the easiest. If we're talking about SOPs and text documents, they're so fluid and easy to update and super useful.”—JS“Deciding to outsource something—or even thinking about outsourcing—changes how you think about things. Either you don't miss it at all or you ask ‘why was I doing that?’”—RM“Ask: is there a way I can optimize this in a one-time way that will produce ongoing leverage from this money that I'm spending?”—JS“There might be something in there (SaaS upgrades) that we hadn't considered before, that we hadn't known was available that might make our lives so much better.”—RM