Why, if you’re not feeling like an imposter, you’re not “working hard enough” (a Seth Godin quote from episode 100).Facing the fear—and the resistance—and moving beyond a self-limiting label.How working to become an expert can raise imposter feelings (and what to do).Shifting your mindset to treat your work as an experiment.The benefits of focusing on the people you’re serving vs. your own fears and resistance.Quotables“If we could deconstruct what people mean when they say imposter syndrome…it's like fake. I'm a fake, because I don't know if this is going to work or I don't know if this is the right way to do it. I don't know how to do this thing.”—JS“The thing is it's really tempting to say, ‘Oh, I have imposter syndrome. I just can't do that.’ And so I don't like the label.”—RM“If this sounds like tough love at all, it is because we don't want you in 10 years to be still stuck in the same place.”—JS“The signal you’re becoming an expert is when you realize that you couldn't possibly know everything: ‘How do I niche down in the area of expertise that’s most intriguing? How do I think about this?’”—RM“Imposter syndrome is probably that you don't know if it's going to work. You're doing an experiment. It's not like scientists are imposters because they don't know what's going to happen at the end of the experiment.”—JS“The second we turn our focus away from ourselves and onto the audience, everything's easier. Because you're focused on them and getting them the things that they want.”—RM“You're not here to be perfect or better than someone else—you're here to help. And if you focus on that, you don't have to be perfect. You just need to be good enough.”—JS“Maybe it's work it till you make it instead of fake it till you make it.”—RMLinksThe Imposter Cure The Imposter Syndrome The Middle Finger Project 

Why a big chunk of trusting your voice is being brave enough to let your “weirdness” out so you can find your tribe.The value in being authentically consistent and how to course correct as you go.Learning to keep playing your game, in your style, no matter where you are and what you’re doing.Why trusting your voice is an iterative process—and how to ensure you’re consistently reinforcing who you are.Quotables“I definitely let my inner weirdo out.”—JS“Part of this is just learning to trust that your weirdness is compatible with other people's weirdness.”—RM“What's the best part of you that's going to show up and be really thoughtful and consistent?”—JS“You play your game, your style.”—RM“Sometimes your inner weirdo is gonna preclude you being involved in certain things, but it's much more common for the opposite to be true.”—JS“Somebody else can’t empower you. You empower yourself to put your voice out there.”—RM“You’ve gotta find and hone and refine your voice.”—JS“When you get to the point where it's almost like the opposite of imposter syndrome, you trust that you have something to say.”—RM

Why breaking the rules in a surprising way is so important.Reaping the benefits of surprise—and how to figure out which rules are made for breaking.Balancing your strengths and available time with the highest impact moves.How to think about your rule breaking so you’re not copying someone else, but building your unique brand.Quotables“Some of my favorite strategies really do have a surprising piece to them, which is that I break a rule.”—JS“‘I would never bother my audience with daily emails’—if you’re ‘bothering’ them, why send it at all?”—RM“If you're known by name it's because you probably broke new ground, you broke some rules, some style practices and came up with something new and different that connected with people.”—JS“One of the things that makes me crazy is automated content based on SEO. They look like they're written by robots.”—RM“If you need an extra five hours a week, delete all social media from your life.”—JS“There's no reason to feel like, oh, you must have music on your podcast. As we've proven.”—RM“The reason I decided against that (using email salutations) was because I don't send emails like that to my brothers. And that was the feeling I wanted people to have when they got an email from me.”—JS“You can get sucked into social media, commenting about things that aren’t building your brand.”—RM

Exploring niche revenue opportunities and pricing strategies for business growth in 2024, delving into the importance of aligning daily activities with one's passions and goals, emphasizing the significance of focusing on expertise and unique style to succeed.

Why you need to answer this question: how much profit is enough for you?How to work your way up the difficulty scale to find clients with bigger, more expensive problems so that you can work less.The myth behind doing hard work—and how to work less without guilt.Making an impact with your ideal audience that leaves a memorable footprint (and builds a sustainable business).Quotables“Assuming you're comfortable with some profit, the question is how much?”—JS“What's that expensive problem that's inside your big idea, your revolution, that you can solve?”—RM“You can find people who are currently in a situation where they would write a big fat check to someone like you.”—JS“You're gradually working your way up the difficulty scale to find clients with bigger problems or more expensive problems so that you can work less.”—RM“If you only feel okay doing really hard work, then what does that look like in your future? You're dooming yourself to a life of toil.”—JS“The key is delivering huge value. You have to keep asking: are you moving the needle on your revolution by doing the work you're doing?”—RM“People do stuff all the time that is not in their best interest financially, for other reasons and one of them would be purpose.”—JS“It's not just about the money—it's about impact. It's about your footprint.”—RM

Why raising your price(s) doesn’t always bring you better clients—and how to keep pushing the envelope to find the right balance.How to raise—or lower—your prices without feeling manipulative or doing a bait and switch with your audience.The value of being vulnerable and asking for input (with the side benefit of getting you deeply wired into your audience).Joining high-end masterminds (or building your own) to solicit peer feedback and ideas. Getting in the regular habit of experimenting to grow your audience and your business faster.Quotables“We make an assumption that the higher price points we have, the better clients we're going to get and that’s not always true.”—RM “If you can't bring yourself to lower your prices back down (when a higher price isn’t working), cut the offer.”—JS“It's dangerous when we assume that the blocks we have in our own head are in the minds of our clients.”—RM“That's why the metaphor is a (product/service) ladder. Cause they can climb up it as you give them success on the lower rungs.”—JS“The only way to know that you’re wired into your audience is to ask them, because otherwise we put our own assumptions on our audience and we could be a hundred percent wrong.”—RM“One of the coolest things about running your own business and thinking of it like a business is that you can do this (experimenting) stuff.”—JS“Consider a mastermind that has other people who've experienced your kind of growth—getting peer comments is hugely helpful.”—RMLinksPickfu.com

Why the more you invest—time, money and processes—in any system the more it starts to limit your thinking.The value of choosing your apps/vendors wisely and then going all in for the future vs. frequent platform switching.Protecting yourself (and your business) if one of your systems goes bad.How to think about changing and communicating systems when you have clients and buyers using them regularly.Quotables“The more code I build up, the more I've invested in any particular system, the more it limits my thinking.”—JS“When my VA of 10 years left…I started to relook at and rethink every single function. Had she not left, I would not have done that.”—RM“I am super choosy about which platforms I'm going to go all in on on them. But man, is it frustrating when something changes out from underneath you.”—JS“The thing that makes some of these apps so wonderful is how comprehensive they are. You just have to ensure that you're protected if something really bad happens.”—RM“When I pick a platform, I just suck it up. And I'm like, okay, the thing's going to evolve and I'm just going to deal with it as it evolves. But also it means that I really learn how to use it…so that I'm really getting my money out of it.”—JS“You can't over-communicate in those situations (where your clients experience your systems changes).”—RM“If we're talking about a gravitational pull of a system and you've got people in the system, there's no silver bullet to making changes.”—JS“If you've got five people in a group and you change your systems, it's probably not a big deal. If you have 500, it is a big deal. All the more reason to pick the systems you want to invest in at the very beginning.”—RM

What insights your current behaviors, systems and habits can give you into creating more time.The value of time boxing—limiting the period (and the amount of head space) you’ll devote to a particular thing.Using habit stacking to create efficient ways to complete “must do” tasks.How to use consistent habit tracking—aka streaks—to motivate you to stay on course.When to buy back time—and overcoming your mental blocks that keep you from doing it.Quotables“Checklists or SOPs lift a weight off of you. It's this cognitive weight where…if you just do it in an order—the stuff that's going to happen every day—it gives you more freedom.”—JS“It’s like Steve jobs wearing his black turtleneck and jeans every day. He didn't want to dedicate brain space to something that didn't matter.”—RM“Time boxing helps quite a bit with the good enough slash perfectionism thing. Like the more you work on it, the better it will feel like it's getting therefore it becomes infinite.”—JS“A little trick that I found that works really well—if morning is a good time for you to do detailed work—push your lunch as late as you can.”—RM“I'm all about streaks. It's in my DNA to not want to break a streak.”—JS“We can buy back time by hiring people to do things that we believe must be done. And it's not just about the business. It might be that you hire somebody to mow your lawn or buy your groceries.”—RM“One thing is just to get rid of the things you don't need to do.”—JS“There are people who will think nothing of spending a hundred thousand dollars in their business, but…can't have somebody mow their lawn. ‘I can't spend $10, but I can spend a hundred thousand.’ Sometimes the $10 will give you more value.”—RM

Why a focus on outcomes naturally changes your sales conversations and how you think about delivery.How becoming the client yourself helps crystallize the importance of outcomes vs. inputs.Changing your mental model away from valuing time spent to the outcomes your clients are seeking.Becoming the Mercedes option where your clients happily pay big premiums for your reliably transformative outcomes.How using an outcomes focus in the sales process also weeds out undesirable clients.Quotables“You change the way that you talk to the client, so that you're finding out more about what is the transformation they want instead of how much work is this going to be for me to execute.”—JS“They (the billers of time) just have to invert their thinking. And it's funny because once you really see it from the other side, it's hard to unsee it.”—RM“I fundamentally believe deep down that the majority of software projects go 2x over the initial estimate because nobody talks at the beginning about what the success metric is.”—JS“It's just all in what you want, what you value and what the person is going to deliver (when you’re hiring a consultant).”—RM“You found someone who you considered to be a Mercedes option—like a premium luxury purchase—and you just believed that it would work and it did work and it didn't need to take a lot of time. In fact, the less time it takes the better.”—JS“There are some clients who really don't want to be challenged. They don't want to have those tough questions asked and those are not good clients.”—RM“It's like finding the mission for the project and then it's all about everybody's on the same mission—you've got something to align everybody around.”—JS“Going from time spent to outcomes is messing with somebody's mental model—it's really hard to imagine that someone will value the outcome only and not care about the inputs.”—RM

Using this as a path out of hourly billing and/or simplifying your sales and marketing while juicing your revenue.Why offering productized services forces you to get really tight on your delivery, messaging and outcomes.How you can use a productized service offering to test drive a more laser-focused positioning for your entire business.We share a host of real life examples you can check out to see how it’s done.Quotables“Productized services are like a path out of hourly billing for people who are used to delivering services by the hour.”—JS“We need to not underestimate the power of making your marketing and selling simpler.”—RM“If you're scared of positioning your overall business in a laser-focused way, you could just have the one (productized service) offering.”—JS“Do not underestimate the power of using emotion to identify that final outcome to the client from your productized service.”—RM“II you're embarrassed by your website, how do you think that might be trickling into your behavior and your actions?”—JS“When you start experimenting with productized services, you might find that it gets you into a higher level problem than you'd been solving.”—RMLinkshttps://jonathanstark.com/examples-of-productized-serviceshttps://www.weekofthewebsite.com/https://worstofalldesign.com/how-it-workshttps://www.eleanormayrhofer.com/ https://sarahmoon.net/ https://www.emilyomier.com/ https://www.aprildunford.com/