After 8 years, I'm changing the name of this podcast from How I Built It to Streamlined Solopreneur. Here's why.  You can learn more at https://streamlined.fm  ★ Support this podcast ★

The first documented parachute jump happened in the late 1700s, when André-Jacques Garnerin just from balloons at “only” 2000 feet. He no doubt prepared for this moment, testing his parachute and doing everything he could to mitigate risk. Today, skydiving is a sport and a recreational activity, with a lot of safety measures and technology to further mitigate risk.  Why am I telling you this? Because human beings are, by and large, risk-averse…so doing everything we can to reduce it is...

Today we have a good old fashioned feed drop from my friends at The Podcast Host, and their show, Podcraft. What really makes someone a successful podcaster? Is it a certain number of episodes, downloads, or reviews? Is it whether content creation has become their full-time job? Or could it be because they’ve been recognised with a prestigious award? That's what they'll discuss on this episode, and every episode this season. I hope you enjoy! Check out Podcraft wherever you listen.  ★...

I love shuffling poker chips. In fact, I love playing poker…but there’s a fallacy in gambling that can get you into a lot of trouble. It’s the fallacy of sunk cost. Basically, you think you should continue what is ultimately a losing battle because you’ve already invested some amount of money in the pot. The same thing can be applied to lots of stuff. Have you ever finished a book or a movie you didn’t like just because you started it? That’s the fallacy of sunk cost. And I’m happy to say...

I remember touring a Murano Glass factory on my honeymoon to Italy. Basically as soon as we stepped foot into the place, a man giving us the tour had us pegged. So when it came time to sell us something, he didn’t just ask us if we wanted to buy some glass art.  He painted us a picture of a unique conversation piece that we can put in our home, to help us remember this time at the beginning of our marriage. To turn into a family heirloom for when we have kids and grandkids. He wasn’t selling...

My grandfather came to the United States from Italy in 1949 and worked in New York City for much of his life — primarily in construction. For as long as I can remember, he had this big, metal toolbox. And when he passed away, he gave it to me, and I still have and use it to this day. Pop had that toolbox for decades. When he found something that worked for him, he held on to it and took care of it. There’s a hammer in there that has to be as old as I am. And when you think about it, the...

I abhor hustle culture. Telling someone to work a full-time job, then go home and work more all for some goal that keeps changing is, in my opinion, how to lead an empty life. I’m worried that, even in 2024, we continue to fetishize making money and hustling. So I decided to take it to Khe Hy.  Khe, if you don’t know, worked hard – as he puts it, he hustled for 10 years of his life. He worked on Wall Street, becoming the equivalent of a junior partner in a law firm, and earning a 7-figure...

What do you want your life to look like? Last week I talked about how not being intentional is kind of like driving a car without the GPS. But goal setting without knowing what you want – that’s a bit like driving a car without having a destination in mind.  Well, today, Tanya Alvarez is going to help us figure out the destination – you can think of her as your own GPS. And much like that Google Maps car, she’s well-traveled and has a ton of experience to back up her advice – from funding...

Not being intentional in your business is a bit like getting in your car and driving without the GPS. Sure…you generally know where you’re going. But what if a road is closed? What if there’s avoidable traffic? A GPS can help you navigate around those things. When you’re intentional about your business, you go from wandering aimlessly, taking any work that makes ends meet, to setting and achieving your goals. And today, I’m going to talk about how I’m being more intentional in my business,...

Do you really need social media to build a following? To build expertise? To be successful? It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I think lots of creators are too. The rote advice that you see from the ultra successful people just doesn’t work for most of us. And it doesn’t have to. What if I told you there was a better way.  As it turns out, today’s guest, my friend and Amazon best selling author of the book start a binge-worthy podcast, Krystal Proffitt, agree: starting a podcast...

During the pandemic, we were told one thing seemingly over and over again: You need to start a membership. You need a community. That’s the only way you can scale your business. And to be honest, I fed into it. I believed that a membership was the key to stop trading for hours for dollars.  But the truth is I was trading more hours for fewer dollars. See, what most solopreneurs don’t realize (what I didn’t realize for a long time) is that you’re always trading hours for dollars. That’s what...

Choosing the right platform can feel like an impossible task sometimes. There are so many options, from services to creating your own website and owning everything – how do you choose? Well, Nathalie Lussier and I have both been around the block. She owns a popular WordPress-based LMS called AccessAlly, and I’ve tried dozens of platforms for memberships, including ones I’ve built myself.  So it was interesting timing when we both decided to start publishing on Substack in late November/early...

One of my favorite Disney+ shows is Loki. It’s a truly fascinating look at time travel, predetermined events, and controlling your own destiny. And now I’m going to give you a major (if not very simplified) spoiler, if you haven’t seen it. In the finale, Loki masters the ability to “time slip,” or transport to any time, any place, in any timeline (for all intents and purposes, a timeline is a parallel universe). This also allows him to relive events over and over again. So as all of existence...

It was Christmas Eve, and I was waiting in line for bagels.As someone who grew up in New York now living close to Philly, I’m admittedly a snob about the quality of the bagels I eat. But there’s a bagel shop not 5 minutes from my house that makes the best bagels I’ve ever had outside of NY/NJ.And they offer preorders for Christmas Eve. It’s become a bit of a tradition in our house to get those bagels and do a Christmas Eve brunch.They also have a select stock for people on a first come first...

I sweat bullets over finding the right tools. Some might say I am an Overthinker. And that is an asset to me. But occasionally, it causes crippling analysis paralysis. I’ve spent every day of this very young year, thinking about the implementation for my membership, even though I know the simplest solution is to use Substack. And last week, I would have told you that’s the end of the story. But it’s not. So today, I’m going to tell you about a journey that led me to Substack and grossly...

It was a wild year for social media in 2023. Twitter turned into X. Meta launched Threads. And LinkedIn started off the year as a promising platform for engagement and growth before tweaking the algorithm and tanking all of that.  Matt Clark, founder of The Virtual Edge, host of the Rainmaker Show, and expert in sales argues that we shouldn’t treat LinkedIn like a social media platform because it’s not one. It’s a professional networking platform.  That means we need to treat it more like a...

The word 'Control' evokes various thoughts and emotions, many of which are negative. Control is often associated with an excessive desire to dominate or dictate every aspect of a situation.The bad guys in movies and in real life desire control at almost any cost. Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars said the only way to improve life in the galaxy was for him to seize control. Thanos said the only way to save the universe was to control the population by controlling the infinity stones. Countless...

Take the 2024 Listener Survey!  Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard from multiple guests about the importance of research – Dappz talking about calculated risks and doing research for the actual calculation. Nikki Rausch talking about speaking your potential customer’s language. Adriana tells us to do research when we’re guesting on a podcast.  But that begs the question: how? How do we make sure we’re doing the right kind of research to yield helpful information – especially if we’re not a...

Take the 2024 Listener Survey!  A few weeks ago, I ruffled some feathers on social media. I said, “Telling people you wrote your book with AI is like telling people you ran a marathon with your car.”  Wow. People took umbrage with that statement. And while I stand by what I said, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to an AI expert. So I reached out to Bryan McAnulty of Heights Platform to see me (or everyone else) straight. And you know what he told me?  We’re all doing it wrong. We...

Imagine that you’re going to give a talk on a topic you know really well. You spend time on the presentation, rehearse it 100 times, dial in the slides, and you’re feeling great. You get the conference, deliver the talk, and you think you nailed it. But when you ask for questions, one person raises her hand and says, “Nous ne parlons pas anglais.” That’s right. You just delivered your talk in English, and the entire audience speaks French. You made an assumption that you knew that audience....

Recently, I sat down to dinner with my family when the doorbell rang. It was a door-to-door HelloFresh salesman, who wanted to make dinner easier for us (while ironically preventing me from eating dinner). I immediately got frustrated for two reasons:  It was dinner time and the interruption was unwelcomed I had already told this guy’s partner “no” several hours earlier.  It was a conversation that not only was unwelcome but was already flat-out rejected once before.  This sort of tactic is...

Social media advice these days reminds me a bit of the parable of the Emperor with no Clothes. See, it's easy for anyone to display how smart and successful they are. They say things like, "Here's your content strategy for 2024: Post three times on X daily, post one thread on X daily. Create three LinkedIn posts per day and one LinkedIn carousel per week."  People read that and think, "That's easy to understand," without realizing that just posting content is not a strategy at all.  I often...

How much help is too much help? When do you go from the actual worker to the visionary? And where does AI fit into all of this? Over on LinkedIn, I said using AI to write your book is like using a car to run a marathon.  People took issue with that. So my friend Alastair MeDermott and I decided to have a good old fashioned debate.  You’ll hear a nuanced discussion around: How to think about AI assistance in writing and content creation Where AI can help versus replace in the creative...

Imagine making $70,000…from your bedroom…in one night.  That’s exactly what Matt “Dappz” McGuckin did with his online trading cards shop. He got his start “breaking” – that is, buying and opening boxes of cards live online, and selling the contents…all on TikTok.  Sounds risky? It is! But today, Dappz Sports is the Live Shopping Company on TikTok in the U.S., making over $20 Million in gross sales. So the risks have paid off.  Now maybe it seems like too far-fetched to say you’ll make $70K in...