January 3, 2025 • 30 mins
People looking to ditch the cubicle and the W2 and strike out on their own may enjoy today's podcast about being a Solopreneur. On this episode we're talking to the author of the book "Succeeding As A Solopreneur", Liz Steblay. She says her book helps you achieve success at every stage of your solopreneur journey, from determining if you’re ready to “go for it,” to setting a marketing and pricing strategy, to lowering your tax rate to keep more of what you earn. Let's jump in.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hues of the Virginia
News Network. Those looking to strike out on their own
may enjoy today's segment about being a solo preneur. On
this episode, we're talking to the author of the book
Succeeding as a Solo Preneur, Liz Steebley. She says her
book helps you achieve success at every stage of your
solo preneur journey, from determining if you're ready to go
(00:27):
for it to setting a marketing and pricing strategy to
lower your tax rate to keep more of what you earn.
Let's jump right in. Thank you so much for joining
us today. I am looking forward to talking about this
concept of solo preneer. I'm not even sure I can
say it right and have you do it.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
No problem. Solopreneurship, that's the one.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So why don't we start by talking about what does
that mean? Because that was a new term to me.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, it is a fairly new term. It's self explanatory.
It's a butchering of the word entrepreneurship with being solo.
And basically, there's an increasing number of people who are
very interested in working for themselves, doing work. They love
not having any employees and not ever really growing into
(01:14):
something bigger, but just being self employed on their own.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I love that, and I did see the dedication was
to your father, and I thought that was interesting. Why
you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, actually the dedication is to both my father and
my mother, even though they were divorced when I was
a kid. But my father was an entrepreneur, and the
dedication says the first entrepreneur I ever knew. Right. Obviously,
he was self employed when I was born, and I
watched and admire him grow his business into at the time,
a national business. And I always knew I wanted to
(01:51):
be in business because his life looked so interesting and
so intriguing. But I just didn't know that my true
calling was to help others launched their own businesses.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, so that is intriguing to me because I'm one
of those people who's always been interested in it as well,
but never really understood where to start. So is that
what led you to write the book?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I kind of backed into it as it's the culmination
of about twenty years of me being a successful solopreneur.
But about seven eight years ago I started an educational
organization called the Professional Independent Consultants of America PICA for short,
and because a lot of people were coming to me
and asking for help. How do I get started? How
(02:37):
do I figure out what to charge? Do I need
an LLC? How do I do business development? What do
I do when they need a contract? How do I
negotiate a contract? You name it. I've gotten the questions.
So one week actually I had coffee with two different
guys and they asked me the same exact questions, and
I thought, oh, there's got to be with that a
way to help more people. So I reached out to you,
(02:58):
fellow solopreneurs independent consultants, and I said, hey, I've got
this idea of this educational organization and community to help
people launch and grow their own solo businesses. And thankfully
those two friends said yes, let's do it. So the
educational organization was born PIICA, and as a result of
leading workshops and writing articles and creating templates and everything
(03:20):
for the last eight years through PIKA, I said, well,
maybe I had to just put this all together in
a book and then really be able to help more people.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I love that you kind of did it yourself. And
then you talk about that, you know, the questions you got,
and those are things that my mind jumps to the
Small Business Administration as a place to get those answers.
But it makes sense that you would go to another
entrepreneur that is successful as well. Do you think that
we've seen an increase in this solo preneurship because of
(03:50):
COVID or after COVID?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes? Absolutely, People who reevaluated their lives during COVID. I
don't know anybody who didn't think, Wow, do I really
want to be commuting two hours a day to and
from work? Do I really want to go back to
that job? And this is pretty nice being able to
walk the dog in the middle of the afternoon or whatever.
It was a lot of people reevaluated how they were
(04:12):
living their life, and so yes, it's the number of
people who have applied for employee identification numbers has gone
through the roof. More and more people are finding the
courage and the resources they need to step out on
their own and say, you know what, I don't need
this ninety five job and headache anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Right, It's almost like a full circle because you figure,
and I'm maybe stretching here, you tell me, but like
before the Industrial Revolution, this was the way most people
did it.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, you're right, it is almost coming full circle, although
with some noticeable changes. The Internet and smartphones have really
accelerated that.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right, definitely. I know I've seen a a big increase
in homesteading, you know, which I think you just want
to be a small farmer, like you know what I'm saying.
But it's really neat to watch how society has made
that circle. Like I said, so, what are some of
the you mentioned some of the most common questions. What
(05:17):
are some of the strangest questions You've ever gotten?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Some of the strangest questions. Ah, it's not that it's
not that often that I get really stumped, but I
think you just did it, Rebecca. Some of the strangest questions, Well,
you know, there are some unusual ones. Like sometimes people
ask me this just happened last week. There's two independent
(05:45):
consultants who were both consulting to Fortune five hundred companies,
but they want to come together to go to market
under one brand name. But they still want to maintain
their own businesses and their own LLCs, And so I
don't know if it was strange, but you're definition, but
it's unusual for people to want to collaborate but still
maintain their own businesses. And they came to me and
(06:06):
they said, how do we structure this? Where do we start?
And I said, well, it's a little bit like dating, right.
You need to put together your prenuptial agreement, right what
you have to try to think in advance what could
go wrong, and then how will you address it before
that ever goes wrong. It might never go wrong, but
you need to think it all through in advance. So
(06:26):
that was an unusual question that I've got just last week.
But mostly what people are concerned about it is not unusual.
Mostly it's fud what I call fear uncertainty in doubt.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Can you say that again?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Bud fear uncertainty and doubt. And in fact I call
it I always picture it as a fud monster sitting
on my shoulder saying nasty things into my ear, right,
like who are it's Sometimes people call it imposter syndrome.
Who are you to think you can run your own
business and you don't know how to do that, You
don't know how to set that up, and you've never
negotiated a contract before, and you must be crazy and
(07:06):
what you're going to walk away from a full time job,
and you know, all of that self talk that the
fud monster puts in people's heads. That's why a lot
of people come to my office hours because they're like, Okay, yeah,
I do have a tiny, specific tactical question, but really
I'm just full of uncertainty. This week, nothing just seems
to be clicking, and so the fud monster keeps coming up.
(07:28):
And that's a lot of what being self employed is
about is how to tame that flood.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Monster, right, And that can come not just from yourself
but from people around you. I know, well meaning parents
will say things like that, you know, oh no, you
need a W two job. You need something steady, you
need this that because, like you said, fear uncertainty and doubt,
you know, instead of you know, celebrating. And I saw
(07:57):
something actually this week about, you know, when a person
opens a business, we should start a cultural thing where
we have business showers, like a baby shower, but for business.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I love that idea, Yeah I do, right.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I just thought that was so smart. And then I
also saw something that said it was on social media,
of course, but I was talking about even if all
you do is go to my business page and invite
all your friends to like this page. You helped me
out a ton. You don't have to spend any money, yes,
to support business.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
But you're right about how some of the people closest
to us try to talk us out of it and
hold us back, and especially parents. But it's because they
weren't about us. They don't want to see a struggle
or fail or they want to protect us. And actually
that's the same purpose of the monster that it's you know,
it's comes from our instinctive fight or flight, and it's
(08:53):
there to protect us from doing something stupid. And so
part of the way to tame that that monster is
to say, Okay, I hear you, but I know where
to get the help I need. I know how to
get the resources, and I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I love that. I love that. So that I'm assuming
is in the book in plenty of places.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yes, in fact, I think it's the first chapter. The
first key to success is be prepared to vanquish fud.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I love that. I love that. So how are you
able to break these down into six steps? How hard
was that?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Well? It was based on twenty years of experience in
eight years of leading workshops, and I had a really
good editor, because yeah, good editor helps for sure. But
they are intertwined, right, So it's it is. It is
a little bit hard to separate them into six distinct keys,
(09:51):
and I guess sixteen separate chapters. But they are kind
of chronological. So the first chapter is be Prepared to
Vanquished Fud and there's several questions in there are like
are you is this even the right choice for you?
So we're going from like ground zero or step with
zero if you will, all the way through building wealth,
(10:12):
like how do you invent the money to keep more
of what you earn? In fact, that trademark the phrase
friends don't let friends w two because they the best
way to build wealth is to be paid on a
ten ninety nine business to business basis and then funnel
certain percentage of your money away into your run self
for time and accounts because that creates a huge tax deduction.
(10:34):
So anyway, it's more of a chronological These keys are
more chronological, and that sort of helped lay them out.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I like that. I like that, and you're so right.
I mean, this younger generation doesn't seem to understand how
our structure, our economy works exactly. We reward people who
build jobs and who build new products and innovate and
bring something new to the market. Not that you don't
(11:03):
get a reward and a paycheck working for those people
as well, but you get a greater reward when you
are adding a new business and adding you know, like
you said, you can funnel that money business to business.
You can even put some of your assets in that
business and use them as tax deductions. And is some
(11:24):
of that listed in your book as well to kind
of help with financial literacy issues.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You bet yep, well in two ways. A key number
five is to charge what you're worth. A lot of
people under price for their services or into charge for
their services. Yes, obviously, if you're going to build wealth,
you need to make money, right, so you need to
increase the top line. But then key six is about
paying less tax to keep more of what you earn,
and that talks about the retirement plan contributions goes through
(11:55):
tax deductions, things like how to be smart with your money. Basically,
one of the best tips that I love to share
with people is when I first fell into independent consulting
back in two thousand and four, I realized that I
needed to save for retirement because it wasn't being automatically
deducted from my paycheck in my four one K like
(12:16):
when I was an employee, and I took in the
early days, the early years, half of every invoice that
was paid by a client, and I put it into
a separate bank, not my normal bank, because if I
log in, I see six thousand dollars in savings, I'm
going to tell my daughter, oh, let's go to Hawaii.
Because I have no physical discipline whatsoever. So I literally
had to hide the money from myself in another bank,
(12:39):
and then when it was time for quarterly taxes, I
would transfer the money to my checking account, pay my
quarterly taxes. When it came time to do my annual
tax return, then I would go back to that secret
bank account and there would be anywhere from twenty twenty
five thousand dollars left over. That's what went into my
self employed retirement account with my effective tax rate. And
(13:01):
of course then I invested it in stocks. And you
know that's how you build wealth.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right right? That is so smart, absolutely so smart. What
would you tell somebody who has the desire but questions themselves,
like that that food that we were talking about earlier.
What's your advice for how to self evaluate?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yes, I lead a free webinar about every six weeks
on this called the Solopreneurship the right Path for Me,
and I opened that webinar by saying, Okay, in the
next forty five minutes, I'm going to try to talk
you out of this because this is the hardest job
you will ever have. You're going to have to push
your boundaries, You're going to have to learn new things,
You're going to have to do things you're not comfortable
doing that you've never done before. On the other hand,
(13:49):
can be the most rewarding career ever that at the
end of the forty five minutes, if I haven't talked
them out of it, I tell them how to get started.
But yes, this is the key questions are in the book,
and also I go through them right in more detail.
If webinars are your thing, that would be the way
to get those questions answered. But I also encourage people
(14:12):
to write down the jot down their answers to the
questions and talk them over with somebody close to them,
their significant other, their spouse, their adult child, the best friend.
Talk it over to somebody who knows you. Talk that
over with somebody who knows you very well, because it
takes a lot of emotional support and encouragement as well.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Okay, so with all your experience, this is kind of
a different style question. How long did it take you
to get all of that out of your brain and
onto paper?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
What depends if you can't the workshops? Right? So I
started by leading the workshops to the educational organization. Actually,
even before we launched the educational organization, I started blogging. So,
oh my gosh, I can't even imagine how long I've
been blogging on the topic. And the blog is called
Successful Independent Consulting dot com. Way too many syllables, So
(15:10):
I can't really distinctly answer your question, because, to be honest,
to get everything out of my head into the actual book,
I had been blogging, I've been leading webinars and workshops,
and I turned all of that content over to a
ghostwriter and then they interviewed me, and then they sifted it.
I knew what the keys were, but they sifted all
(15:31):
the stories and examples and the templates and everything. If
it was up to me, and it never would have
gotten into a book.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, that sounds like something I would need to do.
I was gonna try to do something like this. Will
this be your only book? Do you think or do
you think there's more coming?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I am one hundred percent certain this is my only book.
I guess you should never say never, but it was,
even with ghostwriters and a terrific editor. It is a
royal headache. Yeah, this book.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, I think people don't They underestimate, you know, the
difficulty and what it takes to do things like that,
you know, because it just seems easy. It's like people
underestimating voice talent. You know, you're just talking. No, it's
a little more into it than that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
You know, Yeah, exactly. You don't see what's under the
under the covers. I'm reminded of the image of the
swan gliding across the lake, and I know, oh, that
looks so beautiful, but really underneath the paddling like hell.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Right, exactly, If you don't mind, if you could share
with us a little bit. One of the other things
I'm pretty curious about, and I think other people would
be too, is you know, when you're working by yourself,
like you said, you're a one man band, and you
want to grow in a way to sustain that one
man band ness, if that's how that said, but not
(16:53):
grow so big that maybe you have to deal with
employees and now you've got all that other stuff. What
is your best advice for doing that?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, because there's only so many hours in a day,
and time is really, as a solopreneur, your most precious resource,
because you're not going to find more than twenty four
hours in a day, right, So one of the things
that I would suggest is to quickly realize what you're
not good at and hire somebody to help with that.
So for me, I was doing just fine my first
(17:25):
few years as an independent consultant. Well, maybe let's say
the first two years as an independent consultant. I was
actually using software Quicken, which is super simple, and I
would keep track of my revenues, my expenses, my client's fine.
But the second time I forgot to actually pay myself
transfer the money from the business account to my checking account,
I realized, oh, I am not good at this. So
(17:47):
I went out and found a bookkeeper and I said, listen,
I just need you to help me with us because
I'm terrible at it. So that was the first, the
first support person that I hired, and it was to
this day. She's still a contractor. She's still her own
business and she supports other clients. Even though my other
business it's a national business and generating millions in revenue
(18:11):
a year, she runs that too, but she's still paid
on a business business basis. The second most important person
in my life is my virtual assistant, and over the
years she's gone from just scheduling things and helping me
post to social media to now she practically runs the
educational organization. So a virtual assistant and a good bookkeeper indispensable.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Well that's good to know. So obviously, there are different
seasons in life that people go through. You know, you're single,
you're young. Some people stay single and as they get older,
other people get married. Some people have kids, some people don't.
Is there any season of life better than another for
becoming a solopreneur.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Ah, yes, even though you have the energy and I
don't know the courage, and when you're young, like in
your twenties and your thirties, to be self employed as
a solopreneur, you really need experience. But there is an exception.
(19:23):
I'll come back to the exception. But the reason I
say that you really need the experience is because if
you put yourself in your client shoes, and let's say
they want to hire an executive coach, and do you
want to hire somebody who's thirty, who's never been an executive,
who never really worked with executives? So you're going to
hire somebody who's fifty and he's been already doing this
for twenty years. So experience matters if you're in a
(19:44):
knowledge business, if you put yourself in your client shoes,
sometimes it is better to be in the later stage
of your career, or maybe the fall season of your
life to use your terminology. And I see so many
people who have said, you know what, I'm fifty eight,
I'm sixty, I still have a lot to give back.
(20:06):
I'm not ready to full retire, but I am so
done with this corporate BS and forty hours a week.
So there's a lot of people making the leap later
in life, and they have a lot of wisdom to share.
The one exception that I will double back to is
if it's if your area of expertise is something up
(20:26):
and coming or new or in fresher that let's say
older generations aren't really gonna know as well, then yeah,
you might be able to go for it. I'm thinking
of maybe a somebody help you launch a TikTok platform. Right,
I wouldn't hire somebody who's sixty five mailed me with that.
I would hire somebody who's thirty. Or maybe it's using
(20:46):
AI to boost some business or something. But if that's
something that older generations didn't grow up with, I wouldn't
hire somebody older to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So
you're the expert, and I'm just really curious. Is there
anything the audience really needs to know about this book
or about being a solopreneur that I haven't thought to
ask you about.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Oh sure, there's lots of things. I mean, see if
I can think of one, and oh gosh, we could
talk about anything. One of the first things one of
the things we haven't talked about that is very difficult
for people.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Everybody struggles with This is what I call narrow when
your niche be the second key is to be memorable
and be known for something. And a lot of people
make this mistake where they think, oh, I'm going to
I'm going to go to market, or I'm going to
position myself as being available to do a stakeholder alignment
(21:53):
and communications and executive coaching and or design and the
leadership development. Okay, that's you know, called the jack of
all trades. You know, you're bringing yourself to a market
is doing way too many things. And again, if you
put yourself in your client's shoes, they're not interested in
hiring a jack of all trades. They want to hire
an expert. Particularly they're going to be spending tens of
(22:16):
thousands of dollars to solve their problem or to capitalize
on their opportunity. They want an expert. They don't want
a jack of all trades. So people really struggle with that,
like what is my niche? What makes me unique? What
do I do when I'm really at my best? When
do I really knock it out of the park? And
I lead a live workshop on that where we brainstorm
(22:36):
what really is the tip of your spear that makes
you memorable? And what are the key words that are
going to have you pop into somebody's mind when a
particular situation comes up and they're like, oh, you should
talk to Liz Stubley because she's an expert at that.
So that's that's one of the most difficult parts is
figuring out your niche and being being memorable.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And like you said, I think that's where that flood
that you said, the fear, uncertainty and dowd creeps back
in because you start a new venture and you're new
and nobody knows that you exist, and you try to
market yourself and then maybe it doesn't take off quite
the way you had hoped, and so then you start panicking,
you know, and so doubling down, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yes, yes, it's true. I mean I've been self employed
for twenty years and I still the fud monster is
still Every December, actually, I get a little panicky because
a lot of contracts end at the end of the year,
and I always look at my business and going into
the next year like, oh, all these contracts are ending,
(23:43):
We're going to starve, We're not going to be able
to pay everybody. And it's been fifteen years I've been
running that business and I still every December freak out.
So yes, the fud the food never the fud never
really goes away. The other thing though, that you we
haven't talked about that I would like to mention. It's
that even though it's called solopreneurship, you don't have to
(24:06):
do it on your own. There's organizations all across the country.
There's one called the Society of Professional Consultants in the Northeast,
there's a called one called Women in Consulting in the
Bay Area, And of course there's my own educational organization
community PIKA the PICA that these people come together and
(24:26):
help each other, encourage each other, and provide feedback. And
it's one of the most rewarding things about having started
the Professional Independent Consultants of America is seeing other solopreneurs
help each other in the community that's growing there. You
don't have to do it alone.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I love that. I love that is Entrepreneurship and solopreneurship
are those things that can only be done by people
who have those financial resources, at least in a small
way to stand on or what's your recommendation if that's
not true poor people like myself and people who may
have grown up even much poorer than I did in
(25:06):
how do you get started when you don't have that
capital to begin with?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That was a loaded question, but let me see if
I can taste it. Apart and provide some guidance. When
I stumbled into self employment, I literally fell into it
in two thousand and four because I was laid off
of my job and I prior to that job, I
had been a consultant with a major national firm, and
(25:33):
so when I got the news there was being laid
off from my job at Levi Strauss, I called a
former client from the big firm and I said, Hey,
I just got laid off. Do you need any help?
You know? And he said, are you kidding? How soon
can you get here? So I literally fell into independent
consulting in two thousand and four. I didn't even have
a laptop and I had my first client, so I
(25:54):
was a little bit lucky. But that's the same year
I got divorced. So there was a single mom in
San Francisco, very expensive city, you know, out there hanging
out my shingle, and I didn't really give it much thought.
I just thought, oh, I got laid off. I bet
you they need help down there at that other company.
(26:16):
In that first year, I realized I made more money,
worked fewer hours, I had more quality time with my kid,
and discovered how to save more from my retirement and
I thought, well, this is great. I'm just going to
keep doing this. But of course it's not quite that
simple to answer your question about the financial resources. If
when you're laid off, it could be the very best
time to go for it, because you do have that
(26:38):
financial cushion. You have at least a little bit of
severance if you're in a situation where you're not laid off.
I see lots of people do it as do it
whatever it is their side business, literally as a side hustle. Right,
let's let's say executive coaching. I was just talking to
a one yesterday and she said, you know, I did
(27:00):
executive coaching as part of my job when I was
in HR, and then I did it for five years
part time. And then when they called everybody back to
the office last August, I said, you know what, I'm
not I don't want to go back to the office.
And that's when she cut the cord. But she had
five years of building her business on the side, and
(27:22):
so that's the safest way to do it. The other
thing about being a solopreneur, though, is that it's you
almost never have a tangible product. You're usually selling expertise,
whether you're a financial consultant, interior designer, an executive coach,
and a leadership development expert whatever you know, whatever, external consultant.
(27:43):
There's very little startup costs, right, it doesn't cost a lot.
You don't need to set up an LLC. You can
be a sole proprietorship when you're just starting out. You
can build your Heck, I have an on demand class
called how to Build your how to build your website
as a solopreneur, or something to that effect, and it's
(28:04):
only twenty nine dollars and we literally teach you how
to build your own website. So it's it's not expensive
to launch launch your own business, and you can do
it as a side hustle.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I love that great answer. That was perfect, and I'm
sorry for the convoluted question.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh no, no, it was fine. I appreciated it.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Well, I think we've come to the end. I definitely
want to give you a chance to plug the name
of the Bookkins and tell people where they can get
it and if you have a website.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yes, all of those things. So the book is succeeding
as a solopreneur. And solopreneur is hard to say, and
even harder to spell. So I do have a website
to make it easy to find, and that website is
six keys dot info, not dot com because dot coms
are very expensive, and so it's six keys dot info.
And you can either do the number six key, you know,
(28:57):
the number numeral six k y s, or you can
spell it out and it'll all take you to the website,
and there you can buy it from Amazon or bookshop
dot org or sign copy directly from me or whatever.
But that's the easiest way. Six keys dot info.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Now is that where they can sign up for webinars
as well.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
There's a link there too to find out more about
the educational organization PICA.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wonderful. That is wonderful. Thank you so so much for
spending some time with us today and helping us understand
all this and giving us an idea of where we
can get your books so we can learn more.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
My pleasure, Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with a Virginia News network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hues of the Virginia
News Network. Those looking to strike out on their own
may enjoy today's segment about being a solo preneur. On
this episode, we're talking to the author of the book
Succeeding as a Solo Preneur, Liz Steebley. She says her
book helps you achieve success at every stage of your
solo preneur journey, from determining if you're ready to go
(00:27):
for it to setting a marketing and pricing strategy to
lower your tax rate to keep more of what you earn.
Let's jump right in. Thank you so much for joining
us today. I am looking forward to talking about this
concept of solo preneer. I'm not even sure I can
say it right and have you do it.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
No problem. Solopreneurship, that's the one.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So why don't we start by talking about what does
that mean? Because that was a new term to me.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, it is a fairly new term. It's self explanatory.
It's a butchering of the word entrepreneurship with being solo.
And basically, there's an increasing number of people who are
very interested in working for themselves, doing work. They love
not having any employees and not ever really growing into
(01:14):
something bigger, but just being self employed on their own.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I love that, and I did see the dedication was
to your father, and I thought that was interesting. Why
you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, actually the dedication is to both my father and
my mother, even though they were divorced when I was
a kid. But my father was an entrepreneur, and the
dedication says the first entrepreneur I ever knew. Right. Obviously,
he was self employed when I was born, and I
watched and admire him grow his business into at the time,
a national business. And I always knew I wanted to
(01:51):
be in business because his life looked so interesting and
so intriguing. But I just didn't know that my true
calling was to help others launched their own businesses.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, so that is intriguing to me because I'm one
of those people who's always been interested in it as well,
but never really understood where to start. So is that
what led you to write the book?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I kind of backed into it as it's the culmination
of about twenty years of me being a successful solopreneur.
But about seven eight years ago I started an educational
organization called the Professional Independent Consultants of America PICA for short,
and because a lot of people were coming to me
and asking for help. How do I get started? How
(02:37):
do I figure out what to charge? Do I need
an LLC? How do I do business development? What do
I do when they need a contract? How do I
negotiate a contract? You name it. I've gotten the questions.
So one week actually I had coffee with two different
guys and they asked me the same exact questions, and
I thought, oh, there's got to be with that a
way to help more people. So I reached out to you,
(02:58):
fellow solopreneurs independent consultants, and I said, hey, I've got
this idea of this educational organization and community to help
people launch and grow their own solo businesses. And thankfully
those two friends said yes, let's do it. So the
educational organization was born PIICA, and as a result of
leading workshops and writing articles and creating templates and everything
(03:20):
for the last eight years through PIKA, I said, well,
maybe I had to just put this all together in
a book and then really be able to help more people.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I love that you kind of did it yourself. And
then you talk about that, you know, the questions you got,
and those are things that my mind jumps to the
Small Business Administration as a place to get those answers.
But it makes sense that you would go to another
entrepreneur that is successful as well. Do you think that
we've seen an increase in this solo preneurship because of
(03:50):
COVID or after COVID?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes? Absolutely, People who reevaluated their lives during COVID. I
don't know anybody who didn't think, Wow, do I really
want to be commuting two hours a day to and
from work? Do I really want to go back to
that job? And this is pretty nice being able to
walk the dog in the middle of the afternoon or whatever.
It was a lot of people reevaluated how they were
(04:12):
living their life, and so yes, it's the number of
people who have applied for employee identification numbers has gone
through the roof. More and more people are finding the
courage and the resources they need to step out on
their own and say, you know what, I don't need
this ninety five job and headache anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Right, It's almost like a full circle because you figure,
and I'm maybe stretching here, you tell me, but like
before the Industrial Revolution, this was the way most people
did it.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, you're right, it is almost coming full circle, although
with some noticeable changes. The Internet and smartphones have really
accelerated that.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right, definitely. I know I've seen a a big increase
in homesteading, you know, which I think you just want
to be a small farmer, like you know what I'm saying.
But it's really neat to watch how society has made
that circle. Like I said, so, what are some of
the you mentioned some of the most common questions. What
(05:17):
are some of the strangest questions You've ever gotten?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Some of the strangest questions. Ah, it's not that it's
not that often that I get really stumped, but I
think you just did it, Rebecca. Some of the strangest questions, Well,
you know, there are some unusual ones. Like sometimes people
ask me this just happened last week. There's two independent
(05:45):
consultants who were both consulting to Fortune five hundred companies,
but they want to come together to go to market
under one brand name. But they still want to maintain
their own businesses and their own LLCs, And so I
don't know if it was strange, but you're definition, but
it's unusual for people to want to collaborate but still
maintain their own businesses. And they came to me and
(06:06):
they said, how do we structure this? Where do we start?
And I said, well, it's a little bit like dating, right.
You need to put together your prenuptial agreement, right what
you have to try to think in advance what could
go wrong, and then how will you address it before
that ever goes wrong. It might never go wrong, but
you need to think it all through in advance. So
(06:26):
that was an unusual question that I've got just last week.
But mostly what people are concerned about it is not unusual.
Mostly it's fud what I call fear uncertainty in doubt.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Can you say that again?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Bud fear uncertainty and doubt. And in fact I call
it I always picture it as a fud monster sitting
on my shoulder saying nasty things into my ear, right,
like who are it's Sometimes people call it imposter syndrome.
Who are you to think you can run your own
business and you don't know how to do that, You
don't know how to set that up, and you've never
negotiated a contract before, and you must be crazy and
(07:06):
what you're going to walk away from a full time job,
and you know, all of that self talk that the
fud monster puts in people's heads. That's why a lot
of people come to my office hours because they're like, Okay, yeah,
I do have a tiny, specific tactical question, but really
I'm just full of uncertainty. This week, nothing just seems
to be clicking, and so the fud monster keeps coming up.
(07:28):
And that's a lot of what being self employed is
about is how to tame that flood.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Monster, right, And that can come not just from yourself
but from people around you. I know, well meaning parents
will say things like that, you know, oh no, you
need a W two job. You need something steady, you
need this that because, like you said, fear uncertainty and doubt,
you know, instead of you know, celebrating. And I saw
(07:57):
something actually this week about, you know, when a person
opens a business, we should start a cultural thing where
we have business showers, like a baby shower, but for business.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I love that idea, Yeah I do, right.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I just thought that was so smart. And then I
also saw something that said it was on social media,
of course, but I was talking about even if all
you do is go to my business page and invite
all your friends to like this page. You helped me
out a ton. You don't have to spend any money, yes,
to support business.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
But you're right about how some of the people closest
to us try to talk us out of it and
hold us back, and especially parents. But it's because they
weren't about us. They don't want to see a struggle
or fail or they want to protect us. And actually
that's the same purpose of the monster that it's you know,
it's comes from our instinctive fight or flight, and it's
(08:53):
there to protect us from doing something stupid. And so
part of the way to tame that that monster is
to say, Okay, I hear you, but I know where
to get the help I need. I know how to
get the resources, and I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I love that. I love that. So that I'm assuming
is in the book in plenty of places.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yes, in fact, I think it's the first chapter. The
first key to success is be prepared to vanquish fud.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I love that. I love that. So how are you
able to break these down into six steps? How hard
was that?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Well? It was based on twenty years of experience in
eight years of leading workshops, and I had a really
good editor, because yeah, good editor helps for sure. But
they are intertwined, right, So it's it is. It is
a little bit hard to separate them into six distinct keys,
(09:51):
and I guess sixteen separate chapters. But they are kind
of chronological. So the first chapter is be Prepared to
Vanquished Fud and there's several questions in there are like
are you is this even the right choice for you?
So we're going from like ground zero or step with
zero if you will, all the way through building wealth,
(10:12):
like how do you invent the money to keep more
of what you earn? In fact, that trademark the phrase
friends don't let friends w two because they the best
way to build wealth is to be paid on a
ten ninety nine business to business basis and then funnel
certain percentage of your money away into your run self
for time and accounts because that creates a huge tax deduction.
(10:34):
So anyway, it's more of a chronological These keys are
more chronological, and that sort of helped lay them out.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I like that. I like that, and you're so right.
I mean, this younger generation doesn't seem to understand how
our structure, our economy works exactly. We reward people who
build jobs and who build new products and innovate and
bring something new to the market. Not that you don't
(11:03):
get a reward and a paycheck working for those people
as well, but you get a greater reward when you
are adding a new business and adding you know, like
you said, you can funnel that money business to business.
You can even put some of your assets in that
business and use them as tax deductions. And is some
(11:24):
of that listed in your book as well to kind
of help with financial literacy issues.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You bet yep, well in two ways. A key number
five is to charge what you're worth. A lot of
people under price for their services or into charge for
their services. Yes, obviously, if you're going to build wealth,
you need to make money, right, so you need to
increase the top line. But then key six is about
paying less tax to keep more of what you earn,
and that talks about the retirement plan contributions goes through
(11:55):
tax deductions, things like how to be smart with your money. Basically,
one of the best tips that I love to share
with people is when I first fell into independent consulting
back in two thousand and four, I realized that I
needed to save for retirement because it wasn't being automatically
deducted from my paycheck in my four one K like
(12:16):
when I was an employee, and I took in the
early days, the early years, half of every invoice that
was paid by a client, and I put it into
a separate bank, not my normal bank, because if I
log in, I see six thousand dollars in savings, I'm
going to tell my daughter, oh, let's go to Hawaii.
Because I have no physical discipline whatsoever. So I literally
had to hide the money from myself in another bank,
(12:39):
and then when it was time for quarterly taxes, I
would transfer the money to my checking account, pay my
quarterly taxes. When it came time to do my annual
tax return, then I would go back to that secret
bank account and there would be anywhere from twenty twenty
five thousand dollars left over. That's what went into my
self employed retirement account with my effective tax rate. And
(13:01):
of course then I invested it in stocks. And you
know that's how you build wealth.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right right? That is so smart, absolutely so smart. What
would you tell somebody who has the desire but questions themselves,
like that that food that we were talking about earlier.
What's your advice for how to self evaluate?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yes, I lead a free webinar about every six weeks
on this called the Solopreneurship the right Path for Me,
and I opened that webinar by saying, Okay, in the
next forty five minutes, I'm going to try to talk
you out of this because this is the hardest job
you will ever have. You're going to have to push
your boundaries, You're going to have to learn new things,
You're going to have to do things you're not comfortable
doing that you've never done before. On the other hand,
(13:49):
can be the most rewarding career ever that at the
end of the forty five minutes, if I haven't talked
them out of it, I tell them how to get started.
But yes, this is the key questions are in the book,
and also I go through them right in more detail.
If webinars are your thing, that would be the way
to get those questions answered. But I also encourage people
(14:12):
to write down the jot down their answers to the
questions and talk them over with somebody close to them,
their significant other, their spouse, their adult child, the best friend.
Talk it over to somebody who knows you. Talk that
over with somebody who knows you very well, because it
takes a lot of emotional support and encouragement as well.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Okay, so with all your experience, this is kind of
a different style question. How long did it take you
to get all of that out of your brain and
onto paper?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
What depends if you can't the workshops? Right? So I
started by leading the workshops to the educational organization. Actually,
even before we launched the educational organization, I started blogging. So,
oh my gosh, I can't even imagine how long I've
been blogging on the topic. And the blog is called
Successful Independent Consulting dot com. Way too many syllables, So
(15:10):
I can't really distinctly answer your question, because, to be honest,
to get everything out of my head into the actual book,
I had been blogging, I've been leading webinars and workshops,
and I turned all of that content over to a
ghostwriter and then they interviewed me, and then they sifted it.
I knew what the keys were, but they sifted all
(15:31):
the stories and examples and the templates and everything. If
it was up to me, and it never would have
gotten into a book.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, that sounds like something I would need to do.
I was gonna try to do something like this. Will
this be your only book? Do you think or do
you think there's more coming?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I am one hundred percent certain this is my only book.
I guess you should never say never, but it was,
even with ghostwriters and a terrific editor. It is a
royal headache. Yeah, this book.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, I think people don't They underestimate, you know, the
difficulty and what it takes to do things like that,
you know, because it just seems easy. It's like people
underestimating voice talent. You know, you're just talking. No, it's
a little more into it than that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
You know, Yeah, exactly. You don't see what's under the
under the covers. I'm reminded of the image of the
swan gliding across the lake, and I know, oh, that
looks so beautiful, but really underneath the paddling like hell.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Right, exactly, If you don't mind, if you could share
with us a little bit. One of the other things
I'm pretty curious about, and I think other people would
be too, is you know, when you're working by yourself,
like you said, you're a one man band, and you
want to grow in a way to sustain that one
man band ness, if that's how that said, but not
(16:53):
grow so big that maybe you have to deal with
employees and now you've got all that other stuff. What
is your best advice for doing that?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, because there's only so many hours in a day,
and time is really, as a solopreneur, your most precious resource,
because you're not going to find more than twenty four
hours in a day, right, So one of the things
that I would suggest is to quickly realize what you're
not good at and hire somebody to help with that.
So for me, I was doing just fine my first
(17:25):
few years as an independent consultant. Well, maybe let's say
the first two years as an independent consultant. I was
actually using software Quicken, which is super simple, and I
would keep track of my revenues, my expenses, my client's fine.
But the second time I forgot to actually pay myself
transfer the money from the business account to my checking account,
I realized, oh, I am not good at this. So
(17:47):
I went out and found a bookkeeper and I said, listen,
I just need you to help me with us because
I'm terrible at it. So that was the first, the
first support person that I hired, and it was to
this day. She's still a contractor. She's still her own
business and she supports other clients. Even though my other
business it's a national business and generating millions in revenue
(18:11):
a year, she runs that too, but she's still paid
on a business business basis. The second most important person
in my life is my virtual assistant, and over the
years she's gone from just scheduling things and helping me
post to social media to now she practically runs the
educational organization. So a virtual assistant and a good bookkeeper indispensable.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Well that's good to know. So obviously, there are different
seasons in life that people go through. You know, you're single,
you're young. Some people stay single and as they get older,
other people get married. Some people have kids, some people don't.
Is there any season of life better than another for
becoming a solopreneur.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Ah, yes, even though you have the energy and I
don't know the courage, and when you're young, like in
your twenties and your thirties, to be self employed as
a solopreneur, you really need experience. But there is an exception.
(19:23):
I'll come back to the exception. But the reason I
say that you really need the experience is because if
you put yourself in your client shoes, and let's say
they want to hire an executive coach, and do you
want to hire somebody who's thirty, who's never been an executive,
who never really worked with executives? So you're going to
hire somebody who's fifty and he's been already doing this
for twenty years. So experience matters if you're in a
(19:44):
knowledge business, if you put yourself in your client shoes,
sometimes it is better to be in the later stage
of your career, or maybe the fall season of your
life to use your terminology. And I see so many
people who have said, you know what, I'm fifty eight,
I'm sixty, I still have a lot to give back.
(20:06):
I'm not ready to full retire, but I am so
done with this corporate BS and forty hours a week.
So there's a lot of people making the leap later
in life, and they have a lot of wisdom to share.
The one exception that I will double back to is
if it's if your area of expertise is something up
(20:26):
and coming or new or in fresher that let's say
older generations aren't really gonna know as well, then yeah,
you might be able to go for it. I'm thinking
of maybe a somebody help you launch a TikTok platform. Right,
I wouldn't hire somebody who's sixty five mailed me with that.
I would hire somebody who's thirty. Or maybe it's using
(20:46):
AI to boost some business or something. But if that's
something that older generations didn't grow up with, I wouldn't
hire somebody older to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So
you're the expert, and I'm just really curious. Is there
anything the audience really needs to know about this book
or about being a solopreneur that I haven't thought to
ask you about.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Oh sure, there's lots of things. I mean, see if
I can think of one, and oh gosh, we could
talk about anything. One of the first things one of
the things we haven't talked about that is very difficult
for people.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Everybody struggles with This is what I call narrow when
your niche be the second key is to be memorable
and be known for something. And a lot of people
make this mistake where they think, oh, I'm going to
I'm going to go to market, or I'm going to
position myself as being available to do a stakeholder alignment
(21:53):
and communications and executive coaching and or design and the
leadership development. Okay, that's you know, called the jack of
all trades. You know, you're bringing yourself to a market
is doing way too many things. And again, if you
put yourself in your client's shoes, they're not interested in
hiring a jack of all trades. They want to hire
an expert. Particularly they're going to be spending tens of
(22:16):
thousands of dollars to solve their problem or to capitalize
on their opportunity. They want an expert. They don't want
a jack of all trades. So people really struggle with that,
like what is my niche? What makes me unique? What
do I do when I'm really at my best? When
do I really knock it out of the park? And
I lead a live workshop on that where we brainstorm
(22:36):
what really is the tip of your spear that makes
you memorable? And what are the key words that are
going to have you pop into somebody's mind when a
particular situation comes up and they're like, oh, you should
talk to Liz Stubley because she's an expert at that.
So that's that's one of the most difficult parts is
figuring out your niche and being being memorable.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And like you said, I think that's where that flood
that you said, the fear, uncertainty and dowd creeps back
in because you start a new venture and you're new
and nobody knows that you exist, and you try to
market yourself and then maybe it doesn't take off quite
the way you had hoped, and so then you start panicking,
you know, and so doubling down, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yes, yes, it's true. I mean I've been self employed
for twenty years and I still the fud monster is
still Every December, actually, I get a little panicky because
a lot of contracts end at the end of the year,
and I always look at my business and going into
the next year like, oh, all these contracts are ending,
(23:43):
We're going to starve, We're not going to be able
to pay everybody. And it's been fifteen years I've been
running that business and I still every December freak out.
So yes, the fud the food never the fud never
really goes away. The other thing though, that you we
haven't talked about that I would like to mention. It's
that even though it's called solopreneurship, you don't have to
(24:06):
do it on your own. There's organizations all across the country.
There's one called the Society of Professional Consultants in the Northeast,
there's a called one called Women in Consulting in the
Bay Area, And of course there's my own educational organization
community PIKA the PICA that these people come together and
(24:26):
help each other, encourage each other, and provide feedback. And
it's one of the most rewarding things about having started
the Professional Independent Consultants of America is seeing other solopreneurs
help each other in the community that's growing there. You
don't have to do it alone.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I love that. I love that is Entrepreneurship and solopreneurship
are those things that can only be done by people
who have those financial resources, at least in a small
way to stand on or what's your recommendation if that's
not true poor people like myself and people who may
have grown up even much poorer than I did in
(25:06):
how do you get started when you don't have that
capital to begin with?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That was a loaded question, but let me see if
I can taste it. Apart and provide some guidance. When
I stumbled into self employment, I literally fell into it
in two thousand and four because I was laid off
of my job and I prior to that job, I
had been a consultant with a major national firm, and
(25:33):
so when I got the news there was being laid
off from my job at Levi Strauss, I called a
former client from the big firm and I said, Hey,
I just got laid off. Do you need any help?
You know? And he said, are you kidding? How soon
can you get here? So I literally fell into independent
consulting in two thousand and four. I didn't even have
a laptop and I had my first client, so I
(25:54):
was a little bit lucky. But that's the same year
I got divorced. So there was a single mom in
San Francisco, very expensive city, you know, out there hanging
out my shingle, and I didn't really give it much thought.
I just thought, oh, I got laid off. I bet
you they need help down there at that other company.
(26:16):
In that first year, I realized I made more money,
worked fewer hours, I had more quality time with my kid,
and discovered how to save more from my retirement and
I thought, well, this is great. I'm just going to
keep doing this. But of course it's not quite that
simple to answer your question about the financial resources. If
when you're laid off, it could be the very best
time to go for it, because you do have that
(26:38):
financial cushion. You have at least a little bit of
severance if you're in a situation where you're not laid off.
I see lots of people do it as do it
whatever it is their side business, literally as a side hustle. Right,
let's let's say executive coaching. I was just talking to
a one yesterday and she said, you know, I did
(27:00):
executive coaching as part of my job when I was
in HR, and then I did it for five years
part time. And then when they called everybody back to
the office last August, I said, you know what, I'm
not I don't want to go back to the office.
And that's when she cut the cord. But she had
five years of building her business on the side, and
(27:22):
so that's the safest way to do it. The other
thing about being a solopreneur, though, is that it's you
almost never have a tangible product. You're usually selling expertise,
whether you're a financial consultant, interior designer, an executive coach,
and a leadership development expert whatever you know, whatever, external consultant.
(27:43):
There's very little startup costs, right, it doesn't cost a lot.
You don't need to set up an LLC. You can
be a sole proprietorship when you're just starting out. You
can build your Heck, I have an on demand class
called how to Build your how to build your website
as a solopreneur, or something to that effect, and it's
(28:04):
only twenty nine dollars and we literally teach you how
to build your own website. So it's it's not expensive
to launch launch your own business, and you can do
it as a side hustle.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I love that great answer. That was perfect, and I'm
sorry for the convoluted question.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh no, no, it was fine. I appreciated it.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Well, I think we've come to the end. I definitely
want to give you a chance to plug the name
of the Bookkins and tell people where they can get
it and if you have a website.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yes, all of those things. So the book is succeeding
as a solopreneur. And solopreneur is hard to say, and
even harder to spell. So I do have a website
to make it easy to find, and that website is
six keys dot info, not dot com because dot coms
are very expensive, and so it's six keys dot info.
And you can either do the number six key, you know,
(28:57):
the number numeral six k y s, or you can
spell it out and it'll all take you to the website,
and there you can buy it from Amazon or bookshop
dot org or sign copy directly from me or whatever.
But that's the easiest way. Six keys dot info.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Now is that where they can sign up for webinars
as well.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
There's a link there too to find out more about
the educational organization PICA.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wonderful. That is wonderful. Thank you so so much for
spending some time with us today and helping us understand
all this and giving us an idea of where we
can get your books so we can learn more.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
My pleasure, Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with a Virginia News network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
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