The Solopreneur’s Guide to Success: Business Growth & Smart Hiring | Joe Rando

What does it take to build a thriving business as a solopreneur? In this episode of Small Business Pivots, we sit down with Joe Rando, Founder & CEO of LifeStarr, to explore the key lessons he's learned from decades of entrepreneurship.

Joe’s journey began in commercial real estate, where he leveraged creativity and relationships to develop shopping centers—without massive upfront investments. Growing up in a family of business owners, he honed his ability to adapt and find opportunities, even in tough economic climates.

But his entrepreneurial path didn’t stop there. Joe transitioned into the tech industry, launching retail site selection software that gained traction with a major mall developer and even contributed to the national expansion of CVS. While the venture ultimately faced challenges, the impact of his innovation endured, proving that setbacks can lead to lasting success.

In this episode, we break down:
- Smart hiring for small business owners – How to build a strong team by hiring people smarter than you
- Niche positioning for solopreneurs – Why specialization attracts better clients and increases profitability
- The solopreneur success cycle – Strategies for setting clear goals, staying agile, and fostering continuous learning

Joe also shares insights from the Aspiring Solopreneur podcast and LifeStarr’s resources, helping business owners build a business that runs efficiently—without burning out.

Listen now to discover how to pivot, scale, and sustain success as a solopreneur!

Joe Rando: Founder of CEO of LifeStarr

Website: https://www.lifestarr.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerando/

Podcast: https://www.lifestarr.com/the-aspiring-solopreneur-podcast

Blog: https://www.lifestarr.com/blog

Email: joe@workstarr.com

#Solopreneur #Entrepreneurship #SmallBusiness #BusinessGrowth #StartupSuccess #BusinessStrategy #SmartHiring #NicheMarketing #ScalingABusiness #LeadershipDevelopment #PodcastForEntrepreneurs #SmallBusinessPodcast #BusinessTips #SuccessMindset #EntrepreneurLife #JoeRando #LifeStarr #SmallBusinessPivots #GrowYourBusiness #SmallBusinessCoach #EntrepreneurMindset #BusinessSuccess #BusinessPodcast #MichaelDMorrison #BOSS #BusinessOwnership #OklahomaCity 

Chapters

• 0:00 Entrepreneurship and Commercial Real Estate
• 8:20 Adapting to Changing Business Trends
• 23:07 Smart Hiring and Niche Differentiation
• 30:54 Solopreneurship
• 36:15 Solopreneur Success Cycle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, Welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have a very special guest from around the world and, as I say week to week, only the business owner can pronounce their name and their business like they can. So tell us your name, where you're from, what you do millennial.

Speaker 2: 0:28

You know, I don't even know what to call it, but it is my real name and my company is called Lifestar, and we help solopreneurs build businesses that serve their lives.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Wow, there's not many of those are there out there, Solopreneurs.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Solopreneurs. Yeah Well, what we call solopreneurs are anybody with a one-person business. You know somebody that is either no or one W-2. And there's somewhere, depending on who you listen to, if you count the side businesses, 60 to 70 million in the US. So just a couple.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing and it's just growing ever since the pandemic.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Every time there's a back-to-the-off office order, I've saw new people coming in.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yep, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that is really. That is the truth. Well, how do you think we're going to help our listeners today?

Speaker 2: 1:12

before we introduce the show Well, I've been an entrepreneur and a solopreneur since 1990 and have done some really cool things and some really dumb things, had a business actually fail, lost a lot of money, but I've had some successes and you know, I just I feel like I've learned a couple of things and I really like sharing those things with people.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Fantastic. That's what this show is all about is small business pivots. So, listeners, get your ears ready. We got a lot of insights to talk about. Today we're going to introduce the show and we'll be right back. Ceo of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. We have a very special guest named Joe, and that is his real name. So tell us. Let's start with your journey of life, because you said you've gone through a lot of things in the business world and a lot of people because of trials and tribulations. They just can't overcome things. They get imposter syndrome. They don't have any self-worth. Let's talk about your upbringing, if you don't mind, just a small bit, so that we can kind of align with where you are today.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Okay. So my dad was in the restaurant business from the time I was born. The family had a restaurant. He was a very motivated guy, went off in his I think he was 30, 31 years old started his own restaurant, did $550,000 worth of business in the first year, which equates to many millions of dollars in current day dollars, and this was 63. Very, very smart guy. Unfortunately didn't have good lawyers. The people that he was leasing the space from saw how successful it was and booted him out, learned his lesson, went off to become a hotel guy, bought hotels with a partner and did quite well. Did quite well for himself.

Speaker 2: 3:41

So I grew up in that kind of environment where I had a dad who wasn't around all the time because he was working but was very much an entrepreneur and so that was not foreign to me. I had no interest in the hotel business. It was much too boring and wound up eventually getting involved in developing shopping centers, and that I liked because it was more project-based. I didn't like the every day is the same kind of thing that was. The best scenario in our hotel business was every day is the same as the day before, no drama, and shopping center development I was really intrigued with because and this was going back to 1990 when the Home Depot was expanding and some of these other big box retailers so there was opportunity and was expanding and some of these other big box retailers, so there was opportunity and the result there was that you would work really hard on this thing and eventually get it done, and then it was just kind of like collect the money and pay the mortgage, which I like that model, because then you could go off and do something else Interesting, I guess.

Speaker 2: 4:40

I mean technically I don't have ADHD, but I kind of have that mindset of like let's do something new now. So I mean that's, that's, you know, my, my kind of getting started into business in a nutshell Well, I do have some entrepreneurs that would love to get into commercial real estate.

Speaker 1: 4:57

How did you, or what suggestions would you have, for them to find funding to do that? Because that takes a larger bucket of capital than just starting a business.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Yeah. So what happened with me was I. 1990 for people that are old enough to remember was a very bad time for for real estate in general. It was a crash in 88, 89. And there was just a lot of money had flowed in, a lot of dumb lenders loaning money to dumb projects and those projects failed. And so there's all this real estate being owned by the banks and nothing was happening. There was no financing.

Speaker 2: 5:33

So I went to a guy that owned a big piece of land that my software I had developed some software we'll talk about that after to figure out where to put shopping centers and it said this was a good location. And I got to know this guy and we became friends really. But he basically wanted a lot of money for his land and so I said, hey, give me the chance to make your land worth that much money and I'll give you that much money. So he basically let me work on this thing on the cheap and I was able to go and get permits and find tenants and get this thing all put together without having to spend a fortune on buying the land or optioning the land or something like that.

Speaker 2: 6:09

The world is not like that. Real estate's expensive Construction costs are ridiculous, and one of the reasons I'm out of the commercial real estate business right now is because I don't see the opportunity. That was there before and it'll come back around. I might not be of a mind to get involved again, but that was the story. There was making good things come out of bad times, and that's, I think, a running theme in my life in real estate is that the bad times are when you can make the good deals.

Speaker 1: 6:48

Yeah, that also goes along with being adaptable or problem solving limitations, being creative as entrepreneurs. Those are all critical thinking that we all need to have, or kind of look at things differently. You know, we typically hear the status quo of need to go get a bank loan or get a group of people that have money, and you went out just figured out how to do it because that's what you wanted.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Yeah, and it was the right. It was the right time for that. I mean, the biggest thing, I think, if I had any competitive advantage, it was the fact that, um, I have a kind of a math, a mathy background and everybody was looking at real estate. I mean, literally, the New York no, it was the wall street journal had a headline that said is real estate dead as an investment? That said, is real estate dead as an investment? I mean that's how bad things were.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And so people were so despondent and they take a ruler right and they go, oh, it was here and it was here. And they put the ruler and they go, oh, or, when things are going up, they put the here and here and oh, look, the sky's the limit. And I'm like I keep a French curve around Because it's doing, doing this and it's going to do that, and so you always have to be confident that whatever is happening will not be happening forever. So it's really important to look and say, okay, you know this, this is a really bad market right now, and this is. It goes for the stock market too. You know this is really bad.

Speaker 2: 8:20

But if it's a, if it's a company that's been successful over years and the industry is off. Well, that's probably going to come back, unless you know if they're making, you know, buggy whips or whatever back in the day there are, there are structural changes, but you know if, if, you know if, if healthcare is is is down, well, guess what? Healthcare is not going away. So so that's how I think about this kind of thing. Is that what goes up must come down, and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Yeah, there's got to be a demand. Well, let's talk about the software then, because it sounds like we're kind of moving into a serial entrepreneur and you mentioned software that we talk about, so let's talk about that, and then we'll kind of get back to some pivots that you learned along the way.

Speaker 2: 9:03

Great that. And then we'll kind of get back to some pivots that you learned along the way. Great. So yeah, I was getting an MBA because I wanted to start a business and my father convinced me that I was not going to fail for technology reasons, I was going to fail for not knowing how to run a business. So I did that, and to get the MBA I had to do a bunch of independent studies, for various reasons, and so I wrote some software to figure out where to put retail. So it would take us, you could put a location in and put in the location of all the other competitors and put in you know, information about the, from the census, about population or income or whatever, and it would tell you how that store would do, uh, or predict at least to try to tell you. And so I, when I got out of school and started the real estate thing, I wrote the software, I did a better job, wrote it up, made it really robust and was using it to evaluate pieces of land.

Speaker 2: 9:52

And what happened was that professor I worked under was giving talks, because professors go out and give talks, and, and somebody from a big mall developer at the day, a company called DeBardolo. They, I think they own a 49ers and I think they sold to Simon eventually. But they heard about it, called me and wanted to license it. And I'm like you know, hey, the world just beat a path to my door and it was 1994. So I'm like, great. So I, you know, get all excited. I start, I started a company, I, you know, create a corporation and sign the license deal with these guys and I hire a programmer to help me with it and then I hire a sales and marketing guy. It's just right in there, got everything going, we get all the pieces put together, get our first sale after this guy. After that the Barlow Company was for six figures a year and you know, just recurring revenue. So every year they were going to give us six figures. We were probably going to keep. I'm going to say probably 60% of that was going to be, you know, gross profit from our costs, maybe a little more. And so we're just like we're on our way. This is great. Here we go.

Speaker 2: 11:08

And then something happened. It was called the internet and all of a sudden every retailer and retail developer in the world stopped worrying about buying technology to figure out where to put stores put, worrying about whether there were going to be stores and worrying about how they were going to get their online presence going and what was going to happen. And we did not make another sale, wow. And I eventually had to pivot to being a service bureau because they still needed answers. So the real estate departments would basically pay us to do a study for them and I desperately didn't want to be in the service business. I liked what we would now call the SaaS business software as a service, but was then nobody had that name, but so we would. Just, I had employees and I said, okay, we got to do something.

Speaker 2: 12:00

So we pivoted to the service bureau and it couldn't make money. Couldn't make money and it just they wouldn't pay enough to cover the cost of doing it right. I didn't want to do it wrong, so I shut it down. Um, you know, laid everybody off and shut the business down, which was really painful, and that was 19,. I made it to 1999 before I had to do that. So um had a, you know, five-year run of excitement into. But you know you can't fight. You can't fight these mega trends. You know, if you know, if I, you know I completely missed out on the whole internet, the first wave of the internet, which is probably good Cause a lot of people I know ended up going bust, but I did it in my own special way.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Was that referred to the dot-com or was that afterwards the dot-com, the dot-com?

Speaker 2: 12:48

boom and crash. And yeah, one of my best friends had an $80 million deal on the table for his business and the thing crashed before they closed and it went away. Goodness.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Well, we still have what now, now, 26 years from from that year to now. So let's keep rolling with your story.

Speaker 2: 13:12

We got, we got a lot of years here to go, all the people that were working. Well, one guy went over to CVS, the pharmacy chain, to help them kind of develop a market research department and he ended up bringing in all the other people. So most of the you know, with the exception of, like the sales guy, ended up at CVS creating their market research department and, you know, with my blessing, they built out some of the tech that we had already built and started expanding CVS across the country. So it was kind of, you know, financially it stunk, but it was kind of a little proud moment to see this stuff actually going out and doing something. So one of the guys that went to CVS, a guy named Bill Dakey, called me up and said hey, I think the world has changed. Do you want to give it a go? And another go. And I said, yeah, let's do it. So he came over. I had kept that one customer, that one customer I told you about from before. I had kept them this entire time. So we basically transitioned them.

Speaker 2: 14:22

So we started this new business with one customer and with one guy taking a paycheck and me not taking a paycheck. We were actually profitable when we started this and so we locked him away in the back room and he started coding and created a really great product and we started trying to sell it and we were both really terrible salespeople. We were good at our tech but we were bad salespeople. I've since studied sales and learned a lot about it, but we picked up a few more customers just because people that really understood what we were doing. An industry that was really kind of focused around desktop applications and you know spreadsheets of data stored on people's hard disks and third party consultants giving opinions, and we were building out kind of an enterprise software solution where there was none and where the market didn't understand it. And so the idea was, instead of having you know this database on Bob's hard disk in an Excel spreadsheet, you have it in an enterprise database on a server that people have access to as they need to, and it's more secure and et cetera. So we had a new vision that's the important thing about how this stuff should run, and it took a long time to get the world to kind of see the vision. So we started this really in 2004, had probably two customers until 2009,. But they were really good customers, so it was fine. But then we started hiring some people, you know and hired a salesperson and by the time we sold the business in 2020, we had, I think, 80 customers.

Speaker 2: 16:10

So, but the trick was and the hard part is, if you're doing something new or different, it's not very easy to get people to understand that, what you're doing, why they should do it, especially if you're like we were and kind of going in and going well, it's got an enterprise database and it's this and it's that and it does this, and people just go. I'm too busy. But if you go in and you say you know how, when you try to go into the real estate committee and three people come in with three different answers about how well the store is going to do with that location, that stinks right. Well, if you have our system, everybody will have the same answer because they'll be using the same data and now you can start to get people. Oh my God, I can go in there. Or you know how?

Speaker 2: 16:57

You spent $8,000 evaluating 10 sites each. So you wasted $80,000 in the last quarter looking at sites you didn't want to do. What if we could turn that into $5,000 instead of $80,000? Oh, so that's learning to speak in the context of the pain points of the customer instead of speaking in terms of what we do, or what our thing does, or what we do is a really hard lesson for most entrepreneurs, because and solopreneurs because it's just, we just were so close to what we do and yet, you know, people don't care what we do, they care what you know we can do for them. What? How can we make their lives better, make their pain points go away? Cause I mean, that's the other thing. Something I learned recently that I really like is you go in and and it's way easier to sell painkillers than vitamins. You know, that's just brilliant.

Speaker 2: 17:53

I don't know who who made that up, but it is so true you know and I'm thinking in terms of killing people's pain, getting rid of people's pain we really get a lot more attention.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yeah, how it can change their life. Kind of like the painkillers. You know I can solve your you will feel different. These vitamins, you're not going to feel different, you might live longer, but you could also be hit by a bus in between there, you know.

Speaker 2: 18:17

Exactly, and it's just, even if I, you know, take a vitamin to feel a little better, I think I, oh man, maybe I feel a little better, great yeah. But if I've got like you know, if I'm in pain and you, you know, literally like and this is true I woke up with a sinus infection this morning. My head was pounding. I took some, some Advil you know I love Advil because I feel so much better now than I did this morning, and so you know my. I got some vitamins over here and they're great, but I never feel the way about my vitamins as I do about my Advil boy.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Well, that's a that's a powerful message for almost every business owner, cause we get so stuck in the it can do this, it can do that. Nobody cares. You know what it can do. Vitamins they can make you live longer, have healthier blood pressure. They don't care. How's it going to make me feel different? You know Right Addictions. You know drug dealers and everything else. That's how they get addicted, you know.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Perfect, yeah, now you feel different. You're in pain, exactly, and you put them in. Basically, you're in pain, right, yeah. But yeah, I mean, I just you know I don't know if you've ever read that $100 million offer is Alex Hormozy, I haven't. Yeah, he talks a lot about this of you know, focusing on pain points and just you know, really, really going through all the reasons that people, the pain that they feel and the reasons that they don't feel like they can do whatever it is that you want to get them to do, and if you can solve those problems and those pain points and speak to them in those terms, you'll get a lot better response. And you know, I think it's very true.

Speaker 1: 19:57

Yeah, what was that book? Again? For our listeners it's called $100 Million Offers.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Okay, alex Hormozy, but yeah, it's a really interesting book and I'm not sure how many businesses can't get something out of it. I mean, he focuses on high ticket items, which I'm not doing right now. I'm doing a relatively low ticket item, but I still feel like I got something out of it. You know, his whole thing is, if you do it a certain way, you can charge a lot more for what you do than if you just end up being one of the crowd, and I totally agree with that. But what I'm trying to do is something where I don't want to be high priced. I want to be low priced so that lots of people can afford it, but it's still added value to what I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Absolutely. And that brings up a good point, because a lot of our listeners, like myself, are not very studious and so we go reading a book and we're like I can't remember all this. It's chapter or chapter. Just take one or two things from the book you know and make it applicable. You don't have to do. Just because the book was written doesn't mean everything in it's going to work for you, Right, Right.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Yeah, and that's true, and this is really just a single process that you could do over months if you wanted to, and it's very easy reading. It's not a dense book. It's got a lot of little drawings and large font. It would probably be a booklet if you wrote it the way a lot of books are written, yeah especially with AI.

Speaker 2: 21:25

But a lot of great books are short because they're just giving you some good piece of advice and a lot of times people have to write fluff around it just to get the publisher to publish it. But another one is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller.

Speaker 1: 21:38

Don Miller, yeah, yeah, and that's another one where you just I read that book and I'm like you know this is really actionable and can make such a difference in terms of your ability to kind of attract. You know, it's amazing when you get around an author you're like you haven't heard of him or her. You know because I, you know, once you get around one, you kind of follow them Right, follow them. Don Miller if listeners haven't heard of him, he has a lot of great books. I still talk to business owners that have not heard of him or the story brand at all. I think he has what? Probably four books now that are probably number one. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: 22:14

I've got a very large pile of books that I need to read and it's tough. I'm actually writing a book right now. I'm in the process of writing Solopreneur business for dummies with my my fractional CMO, carly Reese. But yeah, we're going to put out. You know it was, there was no book for solopreneurs and Wiley decided that they could do a dummies book on this topic, which I'm really excited about.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Yeah, yeah, there's a yeah, that's a very good book. So for the plug, any time commitment end of 25?.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Oh, it's coming out in September of 25. Yeah, September.

Speaker 1: 22:52

We'll put that in the show notes for our listeners and hopefully they'll stay engaged and follow you Before we move to our next business because these are technology-based and I know we have some tech entrepreneurs. You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest Before we move to a next business because these are technology-based and I know we have some tech entrepreneurs is these are technology-based and I know we have some tech entrepreneurs. What were some of the things you learned? Things that you wouldn't do again, or things that were detrimental, or things you would have done Because technology in that industry is a little different than a brick-and-mortar retail contractor, things like that. So for our listeners that are in that space, any insights you could share on that?

Speaker 2: 24:05

Well, I think so. Yeah, I mean, I've I've not been a, I've been a contractor, but more more technology contractor I've. I've done a few solopreneur businesses, but, um, but you know, just in general terms, let's see if, if we're talking entrepreneurs, if we're talking people that are hiring, let's see if we're talking entrepreneurs, if we're talking people that are hiring. The one thing that I've said, you know, to anybody that asks or anybody that'll listen, is hire people smarter than you. If you can have a meeting with your staff on topics related to what they're doing and be the dumb one, you're being successful. That's the way to be.

Speaker 2: 24:44

So you know, there are people that have egos that make them afraid to hire people smarter than them. I've, fortunately, never had that problem because I'm not very good at a lot of things, but I'm in your camp. Yeah, I'm like you know, I need to hire a controller. I want somebody that's way better at accounting than me. I want to hire somebody that's going to do marketing. I want somebody that's way better at accounting than me. I want to hire somebody that's going to do marketing. I want somebody that's way better at marketing than me.

Speaker 2: 25:07

Um, and it's, you know, and it's worked really well. So that's the first thing is is that you know, hire the smartest person you can find, and um and then, and then trust them. You know, I mean, guide them, point them in the right direction, but you got to trust them. If you don't, if you're, if you're second guessing them or micromanaging them, they won't stay around. But if you don't, I have people in I haven't talked about yet, but I have a property management company that have been with me for literally 30 years.

Speaker 2: 25:34

Wow, that's incredible these days 30 years, yeah and um, and I tend to keep people around because because I, like I said, I hire people that are smart and then I trust them to do smart things and they don't want to lose that. You know. Yeah, they don't want to lose that. That's what, you know, smart people want is the ability to do a good work. So that's one piece of advice. The other one is, you know, make yourself special. Find some way to make yourself your business, whatever it is. Stand out from the crowd, and that could be niching down on an industry, niching down on a geography, niching down on a pain point, something, but find some ways to kind of stand out and do something where people, a smaller group of people, will look and go. That's who I want, because then, number one, you get the attention, you get the deals. But two, you can usually charge a little more because you know you're solving specific problems for specific people.

Speaker 2: 26:33

So if I come out and say, you know I make websites for businesses, okay, well, a lot of people do that, so I'm now competing with you know, a thousand other people. But if I say, you know, I make websites for, um, you know, uh, michelin star restaurants. Um, you know there's a lot fewer of them, but if I've, you know, built my business around that they, you know it might be a lot easier for to get a lot of money from Michelin star restaurant that wants a top notch website for their rest and I'm just using dumb examples here, but you get the idea. But it's, you know, if I turn around and I'm looking for a life coach, and they've got a life coach for people, and then another one says you know, life coach for men who are serial entrepreneurs over 60 that have gray hair, you know wearing a blue shirt with lifestyle Exactly.

Speaker 2: 27:28

Exactly. I'm like oh my God, that's, that's for me, but that's, you know, that's. And that's the thing that people have a tough time. They don't want to give up. Oh, there's so many opportunities and if I narrow it down I'm going to lose all these other opportunities. But if you don't get any of them because nobody notices you, that's, you know, that's not great either. So niching down, you can always expand it, right, you can always make it bigger later. But niching down and really appealing to a smaller group of people is powerful and, I think, not appreciated by a lot of small business owners.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Well, I'll tell you, that's not just true for technology either. That's true for every business, especially the people side, because as a business coach, I see many business owners that come to us and they're like I can never leave the office and I'm stuck in the office. I can never get away. Well, you might look at your people, because if no one's smarter than you, that's why you're stuck in the office, because you're the only one that knows how to do it. And then, on the flip side of that, I see business owners. I share with them. Be humble, lose your ego, because you know so many business owners. They won't hire somebody smarter than them because they're afraid of many things like well, they'll take over my business. They'll, you know. They'll be telling me what to do, and I don't want that. That's not why I own, you know. So get over yourself. In other words, business owners.

Speaker 2: 28:52

I love it when people tell me what if smart people tell me what you know don't do, don't do that, do this? I'm like, oh, okay, great, you know, I mean that's why you hire them. But you know it's hard for some people and you know there is that risk. You know, I know a guy. He ran a really good landscaping company and he just, you know he did really good work, he had really good equipment, you know, just really great. And he had this guy working for him and that guy was great. Well, eventually that guy said you know what I can do this too. And that guy was great. Well, eventually that guy said you know what I can do this too. And he went off and started his own company in a competition.

Speaker 2: 29:27

That's a risk. But you know what? This guy didn't go out of business. You know he struggled because he was relying on that guy and he had trouble replacing him, but he didn't go out of business because of it. And you know he probably wouldn't have gotten to where he got to without that guy helping them in the early days. So you know it's a. You know business has risks and everything changes and ends and you know that's the worst thing in the world is not somebody helps you grow your business and then, you know, spreads wings and flies away. The worst case is you never get off the ground, right?

Speaker 1: 29:58

Yeah, yeah, and something you haven't said directly, but just through your journey, what I'm realizing is we have a lot of business owners that come to us and they just want a checklist. They're like tell me what to do, when to do it, and then, for some magical reason, they think they never have to do anything again, like they just want this business, okay, it can run without me. No, no, no, no, no. Look at your journey it's like no, I'm always pivoting. No, no, no, no. Look at your, your journey it's like no, I'm always pivoting, I'm always moving. There's always a challenge. The internet came and disrupted what I had planned and it's just the needle's always moving. So, business owners, that's a powerful lesson for those that just think you're going to have this business fixed and never have to do anything again. That's, that's not how it works, and we're hearing that from your story. Let's keep talking about your tech journey so we can get to what you're doing today.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Yeah. So I mean, let me continue on your last question, which is advice. One thing that people don't do and I am guilty of this is, as you're starting a business, you know you got to start with why. Why do you want to start a business? Okay, business. You know you got to start with why. Why do you want to start a business? Okay.

Speaker 2: 31:10

And if the answer is, you know I don't like my job, well, maybe that's a good reason to start a business. Maybe you should find another job. You know, some people aren't built to be in business for themselves. So the point is you should have a why and goals that make sense. And that's one of the things that leads me into Lifestyle, which is what I'm doing now, and that's one of the things that leads me into Lifestar, which is what I'm doing now. But this whole idea of having some goals your goal probably wasn't to be in the office all the time, for most people at least. And so there is where, when you start a business and say I want to have a certain amount of free time, well, how are you going to build a business around the ability to do that? And that might force your hand into hiring smarter people. So it's always good to start there. And so that brings me to, I guess, the latest chapter, because, as I mentioned, I sold Trade Area Systems in 2020 to calibrate, and then I sold off most of my real estate holdings the shopping center stuff in the next few years.

Speaker 2: 32:12

But what I did then was I had an idea for an app and, if you go back to that whole thing with my first company, I wanted to buy technology, couldn't find anything that was worth buying to figure out where to put shopping centers, and that's why I really ended up building my own. And so I wanted to buy an app and I couldn't find it anywhere. So I said you know what? I'm going to build that app. So, after I sold Trade Area Systems, I said I'm going to start building this app, and the idea for the app was basically a task management tool that let me work with anybody. So it was kind of like you know, asana meets Facebook, right, I could connect it with anybody that wanted to go on there. There was going to be a free version of it.

Speaker 2: 32:54

You know, maybe ad supported and started building this thing, and my Carly Reese, who I'm writing the book with, she does some marketing. She said, you know, we should target solopreneurs because they don't have teams. So they need a tool like this because they don't even have teams. And I said, brilliant, let's do it. Where do we find solopreneurs?

Speaker 2: 33:14

And we looked around. We couldn't find any place to find them. There was no place for one-person businesses. You know, there are places for people that were building SaaS companies and places for people, like you know, that were just, you know, small businesses, but nothing for the one person business. And I said, oh, that's a bummer. And then I looked and found out there were 60 to 70 million of them with the side hustles and I said I cannot believe there's no place for these people to come together, did a survey of over 300 one person businesses and found out that most of them share the same problems, regardless of their industry. And I said, you know what? Let's build that place instead.

Speaker 2: 33:50

And the app is kind of on hold and we're building out and releasing momentarily something called Lifestar Central, which is a place on the internet and it's just got all kinds of stuff for solopreneurs. So we've got tons of searchable content. We've got both a paid free and paid tiers, but, you know, overall we've got, you know, an AI trained to answer business questions from a solopreneur perspective. We've got a library of videos of speakers on topics directed completely at solopreneurs community ask questions, office hours on different topics related to solopreneurship, marketing and accounting and using a CRM and all these different topics that people need help on. They can just pop in and ask a question. So we're just building this entire place for one person businesses and, as I mentioned earlier, trying to keep the price really reasonable so that people can afford to do it.

Speaker 2: 34:52

Because solopreneurs, again, you choose solopreneurship. You got reasons you're doing that. You're not going to entrepreneurship, and the reasons shouldn't be I'm going to get rich or I'm going to work four hours a week and make $10,000 a month Because, yeah, it's been done. But you know, lots of things have been done by somebody but not by everybody. So we're helping people in regular businesses their coaches, their consultants, their contractors, their you know, basically some. Some are entrepreneurial but definitely don't want employees.

Speaker 2: 35:25

We have one guy, his name is San San Hong and he's like I used to define how successful it was by how many employees I had, and he goes now it's the opposite, like how many employees I don't have. He's like he's one person business. He's using contractors for everything and um, and that's just the kind of life he wants to live. He just wants to keep it. You know more simple to live. He just wants to keep it, you know more simple. And so it's just one of those things where where you know, if you think through your why, then we wanted to build a place to help people first take that step of thinking why are you doing this? You know what are your goals and then helping them build the business around those goals, so you don't wake up finding yourself in the office, you know, every day, until until eight, 30 at night, and uh, or you know, whatever it is that your your goals are, but helping people avoid the mistakes, see the pitfalls and just build a business that works for their life.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Yeah, it's a very robust site. You said it's kind of in in the works. But for those that are considering starting a business, there's even topics on here like you're not sure what kind of business to start, and then there's show me how to start. You know, there's a lot of stuff and it looks like it's for different seasons of solopreneurship. Is that what I'm seeing?

Speaker 2: 36:36

Yeah, yeah, I've created something called the solopreneur success cycle and so it's basically a flywheel model. It starts with the goals, right, so I call it step zero, because everybody skips it. So start with defining your goals and your why, and then there's a process of basically envisioning your business, right. What might it look like? Let me think. You know, just imagine it. You know, start with that and then basically go in and you know figuring out what you actually want to do and then making those decisions, then building out the business. You know actually setting it up and then you run the business. But as you run the business, you're learning from it, and this is something we chatted about. You know offline beforehand, but you know the whole process of running a business.

Speaker 2: 37:26

It should always be a learning experience because things are going wrong and every time something goes wrong you wind up firefighting, and firefighting is the biggest time waster. So with me I mentioned to you I had a property management business still do, but that was a great example. We had a small team of people and every time something went wrong we brainstormed so what caused this? How do we fix it? So we never made the same mistake twice. And same thing with the enterprise software company. I think we were a little more stressed with that one, but we would eventually stop making the mistake.

Speaker 2: 38:01

But the idea is you learn from it. So then you're operating and learning and taking notes, not just fixing, because sometimes fixing is a big deal, but at least noting the problems as you're operating. Then you go into a phase of refining your business, maybe even reimagining it, depending on how it's going. But using all that stuff you've learned about what went wrong to refine your business or reimagine it. So you think through what could I change, make a decision, what things you're actually going to try to change, because some things might be too heavy a lift right now and then make the changes. And then you're back to operating. But you're going through this cycle and you get started and then you're cycling around and continually learning and fixing on some schedule that makes sense for your business. Maybe it's once a year, maybe it's every six months, maybe it's every quarter, but having that process of fixing problems lets you. It really can help people stay out of that. I'm in the office till 8.30 every night.

Speaker 1: 38:58

Because usually that's firefighting.

Speaker 1: 39:00

Yeah, for sure. And the things you just described, that's every entrepreneur, most business owners that come to us. They've never started with why. They don't even know their North Star. I call those guiding principles Like where do you even want to go? Why are you doing this? Because if you don't know, how are you going to get anybody else on board? And there's a lot of topics on here that I think any entrepreneur that's in that position could really benefit from. And it shows you have a podcast. You want to throw that out here?

Speaker 2: 39:28

Sure, we have a podcast called the Aspiring Solopreneur and it's really for people that are thinking about getting started or want to kind of think through maybe different ways or better ways to run their solopreneur business. It's available anywhere that there's podcasts. I co-host it with Carly Reese, the marketing person, so I come at it from this business perspective. She talks about the marketing stuff because that's one of the biggest challenges for at least most solo businesses is marketing and sales, and so we cover these topics. We bring on experts to discuss things. We also have we do twice a week, once with interview with an expert and the other one is just Carly and I taking on a topic and kind of working through it and, um, yeah, it's uh, you know, I, I, I feel really good about it, I, I, I listened to it and I go that I wish I had been able to hear that 20, 30 years ago, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:20

I know the same thing.

Speaker 2: 40:24

So, Lifestar, that's L-I-F-E-S-T-A, two R's dot com Two R's, so I encourage listeners, not the Medevac Helicopter Company. Yeah, that's with one.

Speaker 1: 40:37

R. Oh yeah, well, I encourage everybody to go check that out, check out the podcast, and I believe you have just wet people's whistle. They probably want to follow you, learn more. What's the best way to do that? Social media, any channels, yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:52

I'm mostly on LinkedIn, joe Rando, you will. You know, if you do the linkedincom slash ins, I think slash Joe Rando will bring you to me. But just if you search me, you'll see this big head of gray hair and I show up pretty much close to the top at least. So that way, if you come to the website Lifestarcom, you can sign up for something called Lifestar Intro, which is free. It'll give you access to free events. We do two free events a month. We have a weekly newsletter. We'll keep you informed on different things that are going on, and that's all free. We'll be free forever. But yeah, just go to lifestylecom and just I think it says join the movement right now. So you can just join the movement and, like I said, it's free forever.

Speaker 1: 41:54

So hopefully, see you there. Yes, and it brings up a question before we sign off here. So what about the entrepreneurs that are solopreneurs now? So, in other words, they've started a business, they are flying solo, they intend to grow a business, but who knows when that might be? Maybe they'll? Would this be beneficial for them as well?

Speaker 2: 42:17

I think it would. I mean there's a little. I mean, the only thing is, one of the things that we're trying to differentiate ourselves around is the idea of people that are doing solopreneurship because there's a higher goal than scaling, right. So if you're a solopreneur because you want to be an entrepreneur but you don't have the money to hire employees, but basically scaling is everything, it's probably not the place for you, because there's plenty of places for people like that. There are just tons of people out there that are helping people scale businesses. So ours is more about people that are choosing solopreneurship because there's some other thing that they want to have a business. It might be that they only want to do the work they want to do. It might be that they want to be able to go to their kids' games or go skiing when the weather's right. I mean, it could be a thousand things.

Speaker 2: 43:09

But the main thing is, if you're trying to scale, if you want to scale a business, the idea of foregoing employees for the long term doesn't make any sense. They're your most powerful scaling tool, and contractors are great. I love working with contractors, but it's not the same as an employee. You don't have the same. Say, if you do have the same say, you're violating, at least in the United States. You're violating tax laws and you could wind up getting sued and lose a lot of money, so don't do that. But yeah, so you've got this decision. You've made to forego employees, and probably with good reason. But knowing those reasons and then finding ways to make sure that those reasons, those goals, are being met, is what we're all about.

Speaker 1: 43:51

So you're sticking to your standard. You know your vision, who this is for, so nicely done. Well, I always end our show with one question. You can take a second to think about it. If you're in a room full of entrepreneurs, business owners, all solopreneurs, different sizes of business, been in business different lengths of time, what's something that's applicable for all of them? It could be a quote, it could be an insight, or it could be a book.

Speaker 2: 44:20

Sure, I'm going to go to my go-to book for any human being which is it's old now, but I don't think some books don't really get old. It's called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. That book kind of set the direction of my life and I've never I've read that book many times. I've never regretted what it did in terms of the trajectory of my life, because it really solidified things for me. So you know, I just I don't think anybody can really get hurt by reading that book.

Speaker 1: 44:54

It's a great book and, as I always say, learn to earn. Well, joe, you've been a blessing to many and a wealth of knowledge. I appreciate you being with us today and I'm sure our listeners do too. Please go follow Joe. Thanks again, I wish you continued success. Thank you, michael. You too, my pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing. Yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.