Why profitability is the ultimate anti-vanity metric that will give you a quick read on the health of your business.How to start thinking about your time as part of your profit equation.One way to value your business that will rewire how you think about its profitability. The thrills of desire-based planning—and learning to consider and manage opportunity cost.Quotables“It's so easy to get wrapped up in ‘Oh, my podcast downloads are increasing’, or ‘My mailing list is growing dramatically’, or ‘My website traffic is going up’. None of that matters if you're not increasing your profitability steadily over time.”—JS“It's really tempting to just think that as soloists, we don't have any real costs so we don’t have to think about profitability.”—RM“The thing I do like about an S Corp is it is financially separated—the business and your personal money is separated. You have to run payroll, you have to pay FICA, you have to do all that stuff.”—JS“You know how much leverage you have when you try to sell or even think about selling a business. What is this actually worth if I'm not here?”—RM“So you can take your $245 million and put it where the sun don't shine because you are wrong and I'm not gonna do what you're asking me to do, which is bad work.”—JS“It's what I think of as desire-based planning. You ask what do I want? What is my desire? Who do I want to serve? What revolution do I want to lead? What new thing do I want to learn?”—RM“Given that constraint of not the entire full tube of toothpaste, you get creative about how you're gonna get that last bit out.”—JS“The thing that always makes me sad for people is when I see them not making decisions because they don't know what to do—so they do nothing.”—RM

Exploring the benefits of specialization in business, the podcast discusses the rapid learning curve and competitive advantage that consultants gain by focusing on a specific niche. It also highlights the challenges of transitioning from a generalist to an expert and emphasizes the importance of defining expertise through clear positioning statements. The significance of narrowing down options and focusing on a tighter positioning is emphasized, showcasing the abundance of new opportunities that arise in entrepreneurship.

How do you/they disclose that there will be real-time training happening?Your role as the buyer when your seller isn’t coming to you with full disclosure and pricing options.Assessing the impact on your authority when you tell your client you’re not an expert (and the surprisingly positive view most buyers will take).How not to fall into the employee mindset trap—and what to do instead.Using new challenges as a way to move up the food chain with your clients.Quotables“Should you always warn the client that you don't have experience in something they've asked you to do? My answer to that is yes. Why wouldn't you?”—JS“When you’re on the buyer's side…asking those pricing and cost questions up-front—even if your person isn’t bringing them forward—makes the working relationship so much better.”—RM“It might be an opportunity for you to learn on the job, but you should give them some kind of picture of how long you think it would take so they can at least have an estimated price.”—JS“When I heard ‘I worked those hours and you owe me’ that told me their mindset was an employee mindset versus a business owner mindset.”—RM“Never accept ‘I have no idea’ as an answer.”—JS“We want to be business owners, perhaps partners in what they're doing. We don't want to be a vendor, and we don't want to be an employee.”—RM“If you are a commando type and you are the person that they call when they don't know who to call, you can be dropped behind enemy lines and come away with a win.”—JS“When you don't know something, that’s your opportunity to move up the food chain.”—RM

How the emotions they’re experiencing impact how they perceive you and the choices you’re offering.Why you can charge more (and sell faster) when you’re referred by someone your buyer trusts.Why your buyer compares your price to something totally different (a car, a trip, a fill-in-the-blank).How your buyer thinks about the increments between your price tags (and how to apply that to your pricing model).Why some buyers will pay more for speed—and how to set yourself as their premium choice.Quotables“There can be a whole bunch of emotions wrapped around the delivery.”—JS“We didn't ask what it cost—we didn't care.”—RM“Bob can charge a lot more than the next person who does what Bob does because you got a referral...If you didn't get a referral, you're Googling for a generic category or solution.”—JS“When they gave us the final number and the guy was out of earshot, I looked at my husband and said ‘well, that was a weekend away’.”—R“They purposely put you in a scenario where you're highly likely to say yes to anything reasonable.”—JS “The fact that they were so specialized…and so prepared for whatever happened —I was impressed with them (and would buy again).”—RM“There's a very small list of things that would not be like this—where you've got a problem, you want it fixed, and the faster it gets fixed, the more you're willing to pay.”—JS“It was like magic.”—RM

The four aspects of being a soloist that you’ll want to consciously examine now—and revisit over time.How to discover whether you’re a good candidate to hire employees for your business.Setting financial goals for your business and deciding where your “enough” lies.Incorporating time off into your work life (and the magic of boundary setting) in a way that fits your personal vision.Building the right amount of flexibility—for you—into how you work, where you work and when you work.Quotables“Being a soloist is awesome…it allows you to have some dreams that would be really hard to achieve when you're working for somebody else.”—RM“If you don't have your objectives defined or the vision for what these four things are going to look like in the future, then it's really difficult to decide what to do.”—JS“Ask yourself: Do I enjoy the idea of leading employees? Do I want to inspire them? Do I want to show them how to do things? Do I want to mentor them? Do I want to listen when they have issues?”—RM“Once you replace your salary, then it's like, all right, do I need more and/or how much more do I want?”—JS “There comes this point where you start to look at the future and you think, ‘I'm gonna do this for the next 20 years?’”—RM“It's not like you need to alert the media and be like, ‘Okay, I'm not answering email between these hours or on these days.’”—JS“If you don't think about the intention for your business, if you don't examine it, then it's easy to let your business start to run you instead of the other way around.”—RM “How much time do I want away from doing client work—doing delivery—so that I can either work on the business or play with the kids?”—JS

Shifting your mindset from “I must be a guru” to “I want to contribute to the conversation”.Battling imposter syndrome and perfectionism by thinking about expertise from your prospective clients’ point of view.Adopting the consulting mindset of “I’m here to help” vs. “I’m awesome at this”.How to speak up and contribute to your ideal audience long before you feel like an expert or an authority.Quotables“I try to point out to people that if you know way more about your area of expertise than your ideal buyer, then as far as they're concerned, you are an expert.”—JS“If you're earlier in your career when you go out on your own, you can think ‘Oh, who am I to call myself an expert?’”—RM“The reason I started thinking about perfectionism along with imposter syndrome is because you can combat those things by helping.”—JS“Is the guy who does my WordPress site the world's expert on WordPress? I doubt it. But I don't care because he gets whatever I need done.”—RM“’I'm here to help’ versus ‘I'm awesome at this’ is like automatically going to put you in more of a service posture, more of a consultative mode.”—JS“If you never say no, you're not a consultant.”—RM“When you show up, it's not about pitching or seeing how smart you are or anything like that. It's about finding out if you can help.”—JS“If you don't have a comparable level of expertise with somebody else—say the “guru”—that doesn't mean you don't have plenty of value to add to the conversation.”—RM

How years of conditioning have wired our brains to believe that more and/or harder work is always better than “sloth”.What happens when you move away from billable hours, where more work=more money.The importance of building some structure—for example a system for lead generation—so you’re always “gardening” whether your business is in a peak or valley.Why you want to hold a big picture vision beyond your business to keep you grounded and focused.Quotables“It's not uncommon for people to be like, ‘I could never not be working like ALL the time.’”—JS“We've been sold with this idea that if you're not booked that you are failing.”—RM“You could be doing well, but if you don't know where your next client is coming from, that's not a great feeling.”—JS“You want to find that balance of how much lead generation you need to do on a regular basis. That becomes your system—and you work the system.”—RM “If you're complaining about how busy you are, then that's a sign that you don't want to be that busy.”—JS“We have a different version of what’s “enough”, but some people don't have any version. Like ‘it's never enough’ is their version.”—RM“If busy-ness isn't making you happy, then you know what monster you need to slay.”—JS“The gift of having a business like ours…is that we have to reinvent ourselves because at some point, there is a sea change around us and…we have the opportunity to change before it takes effect.”—RM

Three ways to scale your business with employees (and when it makes sense for them to be contractors instead).How to think about and map your monetization strategy when you have employees—and why cash flow is queen.What to do instead when you think it’s time to hire your first salesperson. The four steps to create personal leverage in your core business—with or without employees.Why your business deserves to be structured so you can live and work in your genius zone.Quotables“Hiring employees is held up like a milestone in the journey of every entrepreneur.”—JS“Having employees changes how you think about your business day to day.”—RM“Minimees are inexperienced versions of yourself where you're gonna mark up their time, bill them out and make the profit off of that.”—JS“(When you’re thinking of hiring) you first want to map out your monetization strategy.”—RM“If you're billing by the hour, just shut this episode off because what we're gonna talk about next is how to deliver more with less work.”—JS“You can hire a whole bunch of employees and go broke five times faster than you would otherwise.”—RM“What would you be considering hiring employees for? It's always because you think they're gonna create leverage…to make your business better.”—JS“I always wanted my employees to make plenty of money because it meant we were all really successful…I paid them based on the outcomes they met, and we could all make a lot of money.”—RM

Exploring the excitement of experimenting with Amazon as a promotional tool, diving into the buzz of re-releasing a book, highlighting the organic success of book promotion, managing content challenges, building momentum with unique marketing strategies, navigating niche publishing fears, and launching new projects on Amazon.

How to think about email as a tool to spread your ideas and share your expertise.Why simple is often best—and what to focus on to keep it that way.Basic automations that will allow you to help more people at scale (without overcomplicating your life).Creating the client and buyer experience that stays true to your brand and message (hint: you’ll want to test how it’s working).Quotables“If you're in the business of changing people's minds… it's a pretty good strategy to do it slowly over time, like drip information out in digestible bits, until finally it clicks.”—JS“We want email to work for us. We want it to engage people in our revolution—engage them in buying things from us, learning things from us.”—RM“Having things scheduled in advance and set to go out on a particular schedule is really useful from an impact standpoint, because you can help people for free at scale.”—JS“A welcome or nurture sequence…is where you're bringing them in a very nurturing, welcoming way. That's really important when we're talking about expertise, authority.”—RM“The cautionary tale is it's really easy to overcomplicate this at the beginning and think that you need to know every move each person makes to get it customized to the situation.”—JS“There's just something different about when you look at your emails from the buyer's point of view.”—RM“Periodically I'll have a big jump up in subscribers and it'll like, push me into a new category price wise and I'll be like, eh, maybe it's time to prune.”—JS “It's the brand experience—what do you want people to experience as they go through these different emails with you?”—RMLinksDitching Hourly with Jason Resnick