How to Scale Your Solopreneur Business: 6 Real-World Fixes for More Freedom

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I'm out of here. It's time for you to smash that alarm clock and start getting the dream business and life you, well, of course, are dreaming of. Let's join your host, David Ralph, from the back of his garden in the UK, or wherever he might be today, with another jammed-packed episode of the number one hit podcast, Join Up Dots. Yeah, good morning to you, good morning to you, and welcome to the Join Up Dots podcast.

If you've been following along for the last 14 years, yeah, 14 years, go us. Ben, you would have had a load of content thrown at you. we used to do interviews all the time we used to change to courses we used to change well we're always pivoting because we're always trying to find the easiest way for you to get the life that we've got and that's the get rich and live free and what we mean by get rich live free is yeah money is important but that's just not all of being what rich is it's being rich in opportunities being rich in health being rich in time certainly so that you can wake up every morning and decide what you want to do when you want to do it and um we've had some questions yes i love the questions keep them coming in joinupdots at gmail.

com whenever you've got anything um even if you just say david i listened to the show for the first time let us know joinupdots at gmail.com um whatever you want to tell us drop us a line because we love getting the emails and um these ones i haven't been allowed to look at at all so these are totally cold answers from me i've got no idea what they are um but um as always for all you guys we always like to give you a little fanfare and a round of applause because you've taken action and that first bit of action away from your normal life is what starts getting the dots rolling it really does so here we go yeah good on you for sending the emails in right okay so what's the first one we've got we've got one from sarah um well i assume she's from bristol england right it doesn't say actually on there but bristol england okay i've been in accounting for 15 years here in bristol but i am desperate to start my own creative agency how do i bridge that gap without losing my primary income or being paralyzed by financial fear yeah this is the thing you i i really think that you should keep your primary income for as long as possible i think that you should not think of it as a side hustle and i i really emphasize what a lot of people want to do they want to start a creative agency so they keep their job working and then they do that and the two have to match up as soon as possible and that's very very difficult and even the biggest companies in the world haven't bridged that gap straight away they've had to try to do things um i think i told this story the other day on a podcast it's certainly in the new book that i wrote that airbnb when they were trying to get their first business going um they they were doing loads of things and one of the things that they did was they created cereal boxes with McCain and Obama cereals um back in the day and they sold them during the American elections now it had nothing to do with what they were doing and what they were trying to do but it's a it's it's a financial win and those financial wins are the things that actually help your your your big dream come true because you're not putting all your eggs in one basket Sarah you're looking around uh the other day we were talking about a guy who made was it 900 pounds from flipping three water butts on uh Facebook marketplace and uh if you go into Facebook marketplace there was one the other day that I saw and it was a lovely table and I thought god somebody could buy that it was free just come and pick it up real solid oak table and either tart it up or paint it in some different way put a bespoke angle to it and then probably a hundred quid was sitting there and i know why the person was giving away perfectly adequate but they didn want it and they thought it easier to give it away than try to pay for somebody to collect it and stuff so there a lot of that stuff out there so if you can think of being creative then things become very very easy for you and you shouldn't be paralyzed by financial fear i was actually in the same thing Sarah i was reading about nintendo and i know they're all sort of like Mario Bros and stuff now but they've done everything from hotel rooms to taxis to boiled rice I think it was they literally have tried everything before they got to where they are so pull your big girl pants up don't be scared and and be humble and throw the ego out and if you can do something that might not necessarily be directly linked to what you want to do but it brings in a few quid then i would say do it you shouldn't be paralyzed by financial fear because there's so many opportunities to earn money while you're getting your new dream up and running you just have to say yeah all right it's not part of it but there's cash there so i'm gonna have it but well done to you well done to you right the next one is from Fitzroy in Melbourne Australia and he says I'm running a busy bakery and I'm exhausted I'm the one doing all the actual baking every single day how do I shift my mindset and my operations to actually own the business instead of just working in it yeah one of the big problems with this is that belief that because you're doing it the standards fail when you're not doing it and i think that's where a lot of the owners struggle where they think to themselves um you know i've got um an offline business and when i go down there um which i do every now and again and i cover it to keep it running for whatever reason i always take a lot more money than this stuff and i know why i do and because one of the things if i miss a call because there's customers in i always phone back the customers so i keep the business going now i could look at it and go oh my god i'm losing money i'll be down there all the time but i don't because i think okay if they're not doing it i'm not down there i can't keep on their backs i just have to let that go and i think one of the things that we have to do is we actually have to let a certain amount of the operational standards drop without it affecting the customer directly you've got to make a decision on what is most important to you okay um and i'm aware of this issue and i'm going to sort it out but i'm not going to be the one down there sorting it out it's going to be changed okay so you've got to basically allow yourself to relax and you've got to allow you've got to understand what the customer actually wants at its key um and certain things behind the scenes that the customer never gets to see then be more flexible on it i think that's what i would say okay so step away from certain things and if they're not done to your standard then don't worry about it but um yeah if you want more help on that Fitzroy drop us a line as I say I've got two offline businesses now I know exactly what it takes to run a local business um and uh I'm hardly there at all but I keep keep a hand on it right okay we've got one from Austin Texas from Elena and um I'm ready to launch my new product but every time i get close i feel like a total fraud how do i push past this self-doubt and stay consistent even when i'm terrified of being found out now this is one i get a lot but terrified of being found out about what you've created a new product then then just push it out you're not a fraud you're you're a brilliant brilliant person elena because you've actually done something you've created honestly the world is full of people that come up with ideas and don't do anything about it at all so you're past that you're not a fraud um i really don't understand that just just get it out there because once you get it out there you can get data and you can get feedback from people and you can see if it's working or not and you can see where your market should be and you can you you don get that unless you get it out into the world so you really need to do that but honestly elena um just say to yourself i not a fraud i in the in the one percent of people that have actually done something so there nothing to be terrified of being found out okay it may not work like a rocket straight away but you can pivot and you can you can just keep going on it okay so um no you can do that you can do that i'm gonna give you a round of applause for that because you have created a new product and you know good on you good on you love to know what it is um who's this david david k from toronto canada says i'm a financial consultant and i'm drowning in 60 hours of admin work every week if i can only start with one dot to automate what is the most effective first move to stop the overwhelm well first of all don't work in 60 hours of admin okay that's the key thing limit your hours right that admin will wait the next day okay and it'll wait the next day so that's the first thing that i would say limit your hours i've worked in jobs where i've allowed the the hours to just keep on going on and on and on i did that in join up docs at the beginning um literally i was here all the time trying to do stuff and then i realized that the only person that was really fixated about that admin was myself nobody else was tapping me on the shoulder and saying you've got to do that um so first of all i would say if you're drowning in 60 hours um limit it to say 50 hours first of all and see if anything different happens because there is a thing called parkinson's law and parkinson's law means that you will always feel the amount of time you've got allocated to a task so if you you know i always say when we was at school and we had six weeks summer holiday and we had a bit of homework we were still doing the homework on the very last evening because we thought we got six weeks to do it and so it just expands so i'm a great believer in only giving myself a certain amount of time for a task so say it's uh i don't know it's 10 emails i would say instead of you just writing those emails and responding give yourself an hour and a half to get them done set a timer and then bash them out as quickly as possible and i promise you the quality will just be as good but you just get your head down and you get on with it and you can take that 60 hours down to 40 hours down to 50 hours you know yeah whatever that's what i would say to you so first of all reduce the overall hours you're working make it non-negotiable don't worry about the admin that waits till next week and um after that start compressing the time set a clock and say right no one can bother me i'm going to be doing this task for two hours and get as many as you can do and you can make it into a bit of a competition david so the next day you're doing more and more and more that's what i do with all my work um i don't ever let it expand beyond the time i've allocated and then boom i'm out or i'm doing something else so um hopefully that goes well for you um i don't know how to say this i wrote a oath a o i f e um from dublin island um yeah sorry about that but i'm not sure i a o feet um i work for my home office in dublin and i'm struggling without a boss or a team looking over my shoulder how do i maintain high level discipline and focus when no one is watching well one of the things that i think is basically do what i said to uh david um when you're working from home give yourself a two hour window that's your boss that's the boss looking over your shoulder so you can just go right i've got two hours gotta get this done and focus in on that clock ticking down ticking down and uh that's that's a great way for maintaining the motivation um you know i i've got two more books coming out i've got a load of other stuff coming out uh i've just started a new business and my wife actually says when do you do this when do you do this you know you look like you're floating around all the time but i do very compressed busy work and that's my boss that's my boss over my shoulder my boss when you're working for yourself isn't saying i want you to be at the desk it's only bothered about the task that you're doing so um that would be my advice for you set yourself a timer and then make that your non boss um the last question uh i in cape town south africa this is from jacks i trying to build an online coaching business but the internet feels incredibly crowded how do i compete find my voice and actually stand out in such a saturated global market well if it's a saturated global market you need to niche down okay you need to find something that those people aren't um offering um and it can be a tiny little thing but the key thing jacks is i see this all the time people create coaching programs that other people actually aren't wanting the customers aren't actually wanting and they then keep on working keep on working adding another product onto it add another product if the customer isn't wanting that thing and you're not getting the concept of the solution you can provide to that person um i'll give you an example there was a guy on uh episode five or something of uh join up dots and he had a business called uh manosphere or man something um it it was something to help men become better men um and then he came back on the show later on and uh he said it didn't work he said because actually the men thought they were perfectly all right and they didn't want to come on a thing his market would have been the women but he didn't he focused in on men thinking that was the solution but the men were quiet wasn't going to turn up because they were thinking why do i have to do this but it was the woman wanting it so know your customer and then niche down niche down get as much information as you can about your avatar and then you have got a starting point so don't worry about the saturated global market make sure that you are solving something that people are actually crying out for and that's how it comes true for you okay uh once again jacks if you need any more help join up dots at gmail.

com drop us a line and we will help you in any way we can on that so um yeah different questions um a few of them about sort of overwhelm so i really emphasize don't allow the work to spread say to yourself right i'm only going to do three hours today um and that three hours make it the best three hours you can and uh certainly a lot of the time that's that's as good as eight hours you do in an office where you go into the coffee machine and you're coming back and you're chatting to sarah in accountancy and all you know all the things that happen in offices when you start work compress it down um research the Pareto principle and Parkinson's law um and batching all those kind of things we've talked about over the years in join up darts and that's how you can get a ton of work done in a very short period of time it's not about killing yourself in the process of building new business because you've got to be rich in time and what's the point in doing that if you're just creating a new prison it's not worth it okay so um thank you all for dropping us a line and thank you for everybody else that is continuing to drop us a line we never get bored with your emails uh as we say joinup.

gmail.