April 24, 2025 • 27 mins
In this episode, host Rachel Foster discusses April’s theme of navigating challenges. The episode centers around practical advice for entrepreneurs, featuring a Q&A focused on effective time management for solopreneurs, delegating tasks, and scaling services into digital products or courses.
Listeners can expect insights on building a strong digital presence on a budget and joining supportive communities. Tune in for expert strategies to boost productivity, combat burnout, and make informed business decisions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:11):
Welcome to Imperfect Genius, the podcast that provides technical advice on effectivelynavigating the business development journey and offers advice on building successful
careers in the tech industry.
I'm your host, Rachel Foster, a tech professional, educator, and entrepreneur.
Hey everybody.
So our keen-eyed, our keen-ear listeners will note that this episode is coming out atleast a week late.
(00:35):
I say at least a week late because at the time of this recording, I'm not sure when I'mgoing to...
get it edited and actually produced and published.
So it's coming out at least a week late and that's because I was sick as you can probablyhear.
I have barely recovered.
I still don't completely have a voice.
I probably shouldn't even be recording.
(00:58):
But I thought I'd give it a shot.
I don't feel great, but I feel better.
So I thought I'd go ahead and try to record an episode.
So the community theme
for April is navigating challenges.
Quite ironically, it was just what I'm doing right now by recording this episode, eventhough I don't feel great.
(01:19):
So our community theme is navigating challenges.
And I'm not even gonna go through all that I went through in terms of deciding what I wasgonna record.
In the end, I was like, you know what?
I'll just do a Q &A episode.
And I was about to go.
look for some questions to answer.
(01:41):
And then I honestly, cause it's kind of kind of lead into my first, the first questionthat I'm going to answer.
uh But long story short, decided that I was going to work smarter and not harder.
ah Which is by the way, a phrase that I hate is the thing that people say that used to sayto me all the time.
I feel like people still say it to me all the time.
(02:03):
And for the longest time I was like, I don't even know what that means.
Like, what does it mean to work smart?
I mean,
I understood the concept, but it just, it was just such a rote thing that people wouldsay.
It just drove me crazy, but I'll give you a really good example.
I'll give you two good examples of it.
So first, let me read the first question.
The first question is, I'm overwhelmed by wearing multiple hats.
(02:27):
I should mention that I decided that these questions would be for my, um my entrepreneursand would be entrepreneurs in the audience.
So we're going to talk about navigating challenges.
with regard to entrepreneurship.
We'll talk more about navigating challenges in your career.
I'll comment on that at the end of this.
(02:47):
So let me go back to the first question.
The first question is, I'm overwhelmed by wearing multiple hats.
How can I manage time effectively without burning out?
And just like for my own notes, I labeled this particular question, the perils of being asolopreneur, which for those of you who don't know, when you're an entrepreneur and you're
the only
person in the business.
(03:10):
And that's sort of a bit of a stretch, but meaning you don't have a partner, you don'thave any employees.
And the reason I said it's a bit of a stretch, you could have interns and contractors andsome other people working with you, but it's called being a solopreneur.
So you're on your own, you're by yourself and you do tend to wear lots of different hats.
And so back to how I came about, how I came up with these questions for this particularepisode.
(03:33):
So like I said,
They had started down a path of, oh so the community topic is navigating challenges.
And I've got tons of stories I was trying to compile, like, okay, what would be my beststories of overcoming challenges to tell?
And then I was like, I don't want it to be all about me.
Let me see what kind of questions people have.
So I was going down the path.
I had asked ChatGBT to suggest some good sources, because I still can't get anybody tocall in with their questions.
(04:00):
So I was like, okay, let's try to find some good sources of
where people might be posting questions that I could answer, et cetera, et And so I'd gonethrough all of that and had a good list of where I was gonna pull some questions and was
about to start doing the research.
And then I said, again, this is where the phrase popped into my head, work smarter and notharder.
Because again, I'm still not 100%, I'm still not feeling great.
(04:23):
And I was like, wait a minute, I've already asked ChatGPT to go figure out a bunch ofthings and I've refined that result.
you know, got a list of sources.
I was like, why do I have to go look at the, why do I have to go do the research?
Why don't I have Chad GBT bring me back, you know, some questions?
And which is what I did.
you guys have, anybody who heard the episode I did with Ryan Fortman, I mentioned that Ithink that, you know, Chad, I consider Chad GBT to be like my, uh my intern, you know,
(04:53):
it's, it's, my cheapest employee in my business.
ah So I did that and I didn't love some of the questions or some of the groupings and Ididn't like the way it interpreted what I was asking.
And so there was a little bit of back and forth before I finally came up with a good setof questions that I wanted to answer.
But that was a case of me trying to work smarter instead of harder, trying to find thetime to go do the things when I wouldn't rather be in bed recovering.
(05:18):
ah So that was an example.
But I want to give you a better example ah with regard to Imperfect Genius.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's just that because my head isn't completely clear because I'm notfeeling well or I feel like I've told this story before.
I'm not sure, but I'm going to tell if you've heard this one before, then fast forward.
(05:41):
don't know.
um But so the example that I was going to give in terms of so it's back to the question,you wear multiple hats and how do you manage your time effectively without burning out?
um
The answer is to work smarter instead of harder, which again, I told you, hate that whenpeople say that to me.
(06:02):
you're like, you were me, if it was me from a few years ago listening to this podcast andhear that answer, I would throw my hands up like, what does that even mean?
ah So here's the example that I'll give.
When I first started this podcast, so before starting this podcast,
I used to, one of my hobbies was doing video editing in iMovie.
(06:24):
It was a thing that I just enjoyed doing.
And so I just naturally thought that when I started the podcast, that that would be askillset that I would rely on to do the video episodes.
And I would do some version of that for audio.
And then I learned about like Audacity and some other audio tools that I could use.
If you can do it in iMovie and extract the audio, but I knew I'd probably want something.
(06:46):
a little bit more sophisticated for the audio, but I'm not a sound engineer.
So, I mean, I knew Audacity was free and there was a couple of other tools.
And I also have um Final Cut Pro and some other tools that, again, I just played with as ahobbyist.
And so I figured between all the tools that I already had that, you know, something wouldwork.
And one of the first things that I figured out like was that, A, I'm not a sound engineer.
(07:10):
So you'd be surprised when you, you you just think it's, you're just going to, you know,
cut and paste or just snip some things together, take out the loud noises or things likethat.
But like I said, I just did it just now.
Now I'm so conscious of every time I inhale or swallow or drink or anything like all ofthose little noises, you have no idea how loud they are when you're trying to edit a
(07:35):
podcast and when you're trying to make it sound good and clean.
Anyway, so.
Like I said, the first thing I figured out was that I was not a sound engineer and I did adecent enough job.
It wasn't terrible.
My first few episodes were okay.
I think it was the third episode or so.
So I started with just doing the audio and then when I decided I was gonna start doing thevideo, I thought I had this great idea.
(07:59):
I was like, I know what I'll do.
I'll just do the video first and then I'll extract the audio.
which isn't a terrible idea except the way that I didn't think about the audio when I wasediting the video.
And unfortunately, when I was editing the video and I was editing it, this was an episodethat I had guessed.
And so I was editing it to show different perspectives in terms of the video to make itmore visually interesting.
(08:24):
And what I didn't think about was I was chopping up the audio every time I split thevideo, which was, you can...
split the video without splitting the audio, which is what I should have done.
And I did not, I didn't think it through until after I'd already done it.
And then when I extracted the audio for just the audio podcast and listened to it back, Icould hear every single point at which I cut the video, even though the audio should have
(08:48):
flowed normally, like there was no reason to have cut the audio, but I can say I wascutting the video and the audio at the same time, which is a bad idea.
Anyway.
Not to get into podcasting, this is not a podcasting, you know, how to podcast podcastepisode.
My point is it wasn't great.
And I like I had spent so much time on it and I would, there were some other things that Ihad to do and I just, I did not have time to go back and fix it.
(09:12):
I had spent so much time putting it together and it was time to publish it.
It was like, you know, publication day or whatever.
And I just, I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to put it out as is.
And
I had somebody, I had an audio uh editor, a sound engineer reach out to me and say, hey,by the way, love your podcast.
However, I have a few tips I want to give you about, you know, audio editing.
(09:35):
And I'm like, you know what?
And so this is a shout out to Christian Perry at your podcast pal.
I was like, you know what, dude, I will absolutely hire you to do this for me.
was like, those are really great tips.
Thank you so much for that, but I would rather pay you to do it.
than to spend more time doing this myself.
Because when I looked at how much time I was spending as compared to my bill rate and allthe other things that I needed to be doing in the business that were more important
(10:02):
because this is a free podcast.
This is just a free resource that I put out there.
This was not the thing that was bringing in any money.
So why was I spending all this time on it?
ah So anyway, so that was, and I made the smart decision to hire him.
so,
That was a really good business move on his part to reach out to me.
uh And so he's and he's been my my audio engineer ever since.
(10:26):
And he also does the videos too.
So again, hey, thanks, Christian.
Shout out to Christian.
um So anyway, so back to the question, which is I'm overwhelmed wearing multiple hats.
How do I manage my time effectively without burnout?
You have to you have to figure out the things that you should be doing and that youshouldn't be doing now.
(10:47):
Having said that, there's an important thing that I think, especially if you're trying tobe serious about being an entrepreneur, not just dabbling, but if you're serious about
trying to grow your business to some point where it'll be like a huge, um not necessarilyhave to be huge, but if you're trying to grow to the point where you're have a regular
(11:07):
staff of employees, I highly recommend Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth Revisited.
And there's probably,
I don't know, there's probably new versions of it out, cause it's an older book, but inthe book, so first of all, the E in this, in the title, it stands for entrepreneur, not
like electronic, whatever.
So it's the E-Meth Revisited.
(11:28):
And he talks about, and I think the subtitle is, Why Most Small Businesses Fail and WhatTo Do About It.
And so in the book, he talks about a lot of different things, but he talks about beforeyou hire somebody to do a job in your business.
You need to do that job yourself.
You need to figure out what that job is so that you know how to tell somebody what youwant.
(11:49):
Because if you just hire somebody to do a job and you don't know how to do that job, thenthat person's going to do it a certain way.
And then if they leave, then now you replace them and you still don't know what the job isor how to explain to somebody how to do it.
Then you replace them.
And now this other person is doing it a different way.
And then you're like, wait a minute, why are you doing it that way?
They're like, well, you didn't tell me to do it any different.
(12:09):
So you need to be able to.
define each role and the standards that that role needs to meet and exactly how that roleneeds to be done.
that, so you need to do it yourself first so that you understand what the role is beforeyou delegate it out to someone else.
But the important part here is that you do eventually need to delegate these things out.
You cannot possibly do all the things yourself.
(12:32):
It's just not possible.
So you have to get smart about what things you can and can't do, what things you shouldand shouldn't do.
But at the very least, mean, and if it's a thing that you physically like, it's just athing that you, like, let's just say, you know, in that example that I just gave, let's
just say I did not know anything about video or audio editing.
didn't, you know, it wasn't a thing that I was already, you know, dabbling in.
(12:54):
Then at the very least, when I decided to hire somebody to do it, then I should have satwith them while they're, while we're figuring it out together and deciding what is the
standard going to be?
What are, you know, what are, you know.
What are our ad breaks going to be like?
What's our intro music?
We should have decided that together.
should have written it all down, said, OK, this is the standard.
(13:14):
This is what this is.
And by the way, I did do all that because for those of you who've been with me from thevery beginning, you'll know that I used to have assistant podcast producer Emma Bergen.
And we wrote out what that job description was.
We wrote out what the role was going to entail.
The things that she would do, the things that I would do, things that she would do as theassistant producer, things I would do as the producer.
(13:35):
Et cetera, et cetera.
So we did do all of that.
So my point is back to the question, you can do it all.
You just, cannot possibly do it all.
And you have to prioritize.
You have to learn how to prioritize to decide, is this important?
Because there were times when, know, back when I was doing the podcast editing myself,where I had to decide, is it important for me to be editing this podcast right now or
(14:00):
going to this conference or, you know, going to this networking group or.
doing a cold call on this potential client.
Like the things that are going to bring the money into the business are more importantthan the things that are, not to say that marketing isn't important, but like you have to
prioritize.
You have to think about what are the things that, um know, everything can't be prioritynumber one.
(14:20):
You've got to make your choices.
So I don't know if that was a coherent answer.
Again, I am, my head's a little bit cloudy, but hopefully that was helpful.
um And this sort of leads into question number two.
(14:45):
So question number two is, I'm hesitant to delegate tasks.
How do I build a team that I trust and let go of control?
That is very hard.
I will agree that that is very hard, but delegation is absolutely crucial if you ever wantto grow your business.
ah So you have to figure out how do you build that trustworthy team in order to eliminatethat workload on yourself.
(15:09):
So that back to the question number one, so that you're not burning yourself out.
And it's a hard thing to do.
The other thing that I will say is the other thing that tugs against that is I amfollowing from a financial management perspective for this business.
As for some of you, you know this is not my first business, but for this particularbusiness, I am following a financial methodology called Profit First.
(15:37):
And Profit First says that,
you pay yourself for well, you pay profit for it.
So you get money that comes into the business and you put money aside for profit first.
You put money aside for taxes.
You put money aside for owner's compensation.
And then whatever's left, that's your operating income.
So you don't, know, cause a lot of times when people start oh businesses, they start like,I got to pay, I need to buy this thing.
(16:00):
I need to, you know, they immediately started putting all their money, all their incomeinto expenses and then they're not paying themselves.
And then the end of the year comes around and they're like, no, there's this tax bill andI don't have any money for taxes and profit.
What is that?
That's someday, you know, maybe in 15 years I'll have a profit.
You that's usually the way people start um with businesses.
(16:21):
And so, but with Profit First, the idea is the first thing you do is you set aside profitand you decide what that percentage allocation is.
And you set aside profit, you set aside tax, you set aside owners uh compensation, andthen whatever's left is expenses.
And if there's nothing left, then that means your business can't afford it.
So back to the, you know, trying to build that team, a lot of things, another thing that alot of entrepreneurs will do is, you know, the first thing they're gonna do is they're
(16:48):
gonna hire all these great people that are gonna make this business great with them.
If don't have any money coming in, where are you paying these people?
Like, where's this money coming from?
Now, mind you, you might have investors, you might have a loan, you might have a grant ormultiple grants.
So you might have some money that you have, you know, some disposable income in thebusiness that you have to start, but you need to think about how you're going to sustain
(17:10):
this business.
That money is not always going to be there.
So if you don't have any money coming in to pay these salaries, then you probablyshouldn't have those employees.
uh And so, you know, so back to the question of
you know, how do you delegate and how do you let go and build a trustworthy team?
Well, maybe in the beginning, it's not employees that you need.
Maybe it's, you know, vendors, third party contractors, interns, whatever.
(17:33):
So for example, like I say, my audio engineer is a guy who owns his own business.
This is what he does.
And so I pay him as a vendor and, you know, and he's great.
Maybe one day, the business will be bigger and the podcast will be bigger and maybe I needto hire a full production staff and I'll consider that when that day comes.
(17:55):
That day is not here right now.
ah And similarly, like, so you guys have heard me say, mentioned on the podcast, I havenot dedicated enough time to it, which is why um it hasn't happened yet.
But I've mentioned that I need to hire somebody.
I need to hire a copy editor to do the newsletter, which is why the newsletter hasn't beengoing out because I just haven't had time and from a priority,
perspective, it was not a top priority.
(18:18):
so, and the reason I haven't hired anybody yet is because I haven't written the ad, thejob ad, you know, so like, need to, need to get back to the, you know, finding the right,
you know, figuring out your timing.
so I do need to do that.
But my point is that, um, you know, when I'm looking for that person,
I'm not immediately looking for an employee.
I'm looking for maybe it's an intern, maybe it's somebody who was an English major incollege and they're just looking for some extra money.
(18:44):
So as opposed to, you know, immediately hiring the best copy editor I can find, you know,it's, it's a newsletter for a podcast, a small startup podcast that has, you know, a small
following.
I don't need to go hire the best copywriter I can find right now.
Again, maybe someday, but that day is not today.
So
Again, back to the question, if your head is to delegate tasks, it's important because youneed to make sure you're doing the right work, but you also need to be cognizant of your
(19:14):
finances and your expenses and figure out what the right balance is.
But it is important, it is very important to be able to find somebody you can trust and tobe able to let go of the control and be able to.
allow somebody to help you.
Because otherwise you're going to, you're back to that question number one, you're goingto burn yourself out.
(19:35):
All right.
Let's go into the third question.
So the third question is, I want to scale my one-on-one service into a digital project.
uh Terrible at reading aloud.
Let me try that one again.
I want to scale my one-on-one service into a digital product or course.
Where do I start?
So now this is an interesting question because this is something that I am actively doingright now.
(19:58):
I mentioned in a previous episode that I just finished writing oh the first course underthe Imperfect Genius banner.
I did course writing for other people in the past, but this is the first one I'm doing forthe Imperfect Genius brand.
I just did this course and it's a part of a set of courses that I'm releasing this year.
(20:20):
One of the reasons that I am doing this is exactly this thing.
By the way, did not.
You know, I did some prompt engineering to get chat GPT to come up with the kinds ofquestions that I wanted, but it was interesting that this was one of the ones that it came
back with because it was like perfect.
Actually, this one in the next one, the question number four were like perfect for forwhat I'm doing right now.
(20:41):
So was, you know, I guess I did some really good prompt engineering there.
But anyway, my point is um so.
What I do is technology coaching and working with business owners to um to get them up tospeed in.
technology needs they need in order to scale and grow their businesses.
uh And so I wanted a way to be able to make that a thing that I could put out on a massscale as opposed to just one-on-one coaching.
(21:10):
I wanted it to be a course that anybody or I wanted these things to be courses thatanybody could take.
So this is something that I actually myself uh have just done.
The course that I just wrote is in beta test right now.
We released.
uh
Stay tuned.
It'll be released soon.
I'm kind of waiting on what we'll talk about platforms in just a second.
My platform has a new feature that is coming out that I really want to take advantage ofbefore I release the course.
(21:36):
And it just depends on what their timing.
They're kind of hedging their bets on when it's coming out.
think it's coming.
This new feature is coming out in the next couple of weeks, in which case, because I wouldlove to release this course in May.
Actually, I wanted to have released it by now, but I'm kind of waiting on this feature.
But anyway, so coming soon again, stay tuned for more on that.
But ah so you want to look at course platforms.
(21:58):
There's a lot of different platforms that you can look at.
uh I when I was doing my research, I looked at all the big ones.
I looked at Teachable and Thinkific and I can't even remember all of the ones that Ilooked at.
But when I was doing my my due diligence and I was researching different platforms, therewas something like, you know how you you'll do you'll find like a say.
(22:20):
you know, the top five, you know, course platforms, da da.
And they usually have like best for this and best for, you know, best for X and X for Y.
one that, something that was said consistently was best for community building.
And it was always Mighty Networks.
Whenever, you know, like it'd be best for this or best for that.
But then it was like best for community building.
And Mighty Networks was always the one that was listed as best for community building.
(22:44):
And I knew that I wanted, I wanted,
my community, well, I knew that I wanted some component of the Imperfect Genius brand toinvolve community, ah but I didn't exactly know what that meant.
And so whenever I was looking at different course platforms and trying to figure out,know, I wanted, of course I needed the features to see, you know, what kind of features,
(23:08):
what kind of things I could do with my courses and monetization and all that kind ofstuff.
But ah when I kept seeing best for community building, I was like, I think.
I was like, don't even know what that looks like from a course platform perspective, but Ithink that this is something that I want.
so, and I, and if you want to hear more about how I found Mighty Networks, I think thatwas episode, I don't remember the episode number, but there's an episode called Finding
(23:32):
Community.
And I talk a little bit more about how I found Mighty Networks and became, well, was kindof like, I became a member of their community before I ever became a host on their
platform.
Anyway, there's more in an old episode about how I found Mighty.
Mighty Networks.
But anyway, so the point is you want to find a platform where you want to build yourcourse so that it's got the features that you need.
(23:55):
And then you want to look at email marketing tools.
if the course platforms don't offer landing pages, then you might need to look at landingpage builders.
ah Ideally, you would want a platform that's going to allow you to be able to marketwithin their platform without having to go somewhere separately to do that.
But those are the kinds of things that you want to do.
(24:15):
But you need to figure out
what features you want for your course and how you want to be able to market to youraudience.
And then kind of like, you know, look at the big ones and line them up and see which oneslook good.
So just some suggestions there.
uh And then the fourth question is, I don't have a big team.
(24:36):
I want to look more professional online.
How can I build a strong digital presence on a budget?
So.
I'll give you the short answer to this, but the longer answer is this whole entire list ofcourses that I just mentioned that I'm in the process of building out this year.
Because again, this is a thing that I consult on regularly, and it's just a set of coursesthat I'm planning on writing.
(25:01):
The first of which I already mentioned is coming out soon.
But yeah, you've got no code website builders.
If you don't have a team and you're not really tech savvy, there's a lot of good drag anddrop website builders out there.
You want to look at branding tools.
ah There are like social media schedulers that you can use and things like that.
So you're going to want to look at different tech tools that can help you do all of thesethings.
(25:26):
I feel like you could just throw a stone in the US and you can hit an entrepreneur.
There's a lot of solopreneurs out there that are trying to do a lot of different things.
And so there's lots of good tech tools that are trying to make it easier for people whoare trying to do.
too many things on their own.
But again, stay tuned for more on this because the answer to this entire question is anentire set of courses that I'm working on building.
(25:54):
I'm hoping to have more, oh listen to this space for more information on those coursescoming soon.
So those are some of my uh answers to some questions about navigating challenges.
If you've got questions about navigating challenges or being a solopreneur, leave us avoicemail or send us a text at 404-425-9862.
(26:17):
You can follow us on social media at Ask Imperfect Genius.
Oh, by the way, at the beginning, I mentioned that if you had questions about navigatingchallenges in your career, have a million stories on that.
Anybody who knows me knows that I've got a ton of stories because I've been in the techspace for a...
a really long time.
I've been in corporate America for a really long time.
(26:39):
So if you've got questions about navigating uh challenges in your career, I'd love toanswer those questions in a more personal setting, a more one-on-one.
So I would say, you if you're a, well, you can hit me up on social media at Ask ImperfectGenius, but if you are a woman of color in uh a, what's the,
(27:01):
word I can't think of right now.
underrepresented, thank you.
I'm like, what's an underrepresented space ah or an underrepresented field?
And you want community to be able to talk about things like the types of challenges thatyou face.
You can head over to community.imperfectgenius.com.
And the whole purpose of that community is to provide a supportive space for women ofcolor to navigate the challenges in their career.
(27:24):
And like I say, I would love to, uh or again, just hit me up on social media.
I'd be happy to.
uh
to schedule some time to set aside and talk about how I might be able to help you.
But until next time, this is Rachel Foster reminding you that while you're draining my napwith flawless, it can be phenomenal.
Welcome to Imperfect Genius, the podcast that provides technical advice on effectivelynavigating the business development journey and offers advice on building successful
careers in the tech industry.
I'm your host, Rachel Foster, a tech professional, educator, and entrepreneur.
Hey everybody.
So our keen-eyed, our keen-ear listeners will note that this episode is coming out atleast a week late.
(00:35):
I say at least a week late because at the time of this recording, I'm not sure when I'mgoing to...
get it edited and actually produced and published.
So it's coming out at least a week late and that's because I was sick as you can probablyhear.
I have barely recovered.
I still don't completely have a voice.
I probably shouldn't even be recording.
(00:58):
But I thought I'd give it a shot.
I don't feel great, but I feel better.
So I thought I'd go ahead and try to record an episode.
So the community theme
for April is navigating challenges.
Quite ironically, it was just what I'm doing right now by recording this episode, eventhough I don't feel great.
(01:19):
So our community theme is navigating challenges.
And I'm not even gonna go through all that I went through in terms of deciding what I wasgonna record.
In the end, I was like, you know what?
I'll just do a Q &A episode.
And I was about to go.
look for some questions to answer.
(01:41):
And then I honestly, cause it's kind of kind of lead into my first, the first questionthat I'm going to answer.
uh But long story short, decided that I was going to work smarter and not harder.
ah Which is by the way, a phrase that I hate is the thing that people say that used to sayto me all the time.
I feel like people still say it to me all the time.
(02:03):
And for the longest time I was like, I don't even know what that means.
Like, what does it mean to work smart?
I mean,
I understood the concept, but it just, it was just such a rote thing that people wouldsay.
It just drove me crazy, but I'll give you a really good example.
I'll give you two good examples of it.
So first, let me read the first question.
The first question is, I'm overwhelmed by wearing multiple hats.
(02:27):
I should mention that I decided that these questions would be for my, um my entrepreneursand would be entrepreneurs in the audience.
So we're going to talk about navigating challenges.
with regard to entrepreneurship.
We'll talk more about navigating challenges in your career.
I'll comment on that at the end of this.
(02:47):
So let me go back to the first question.
The first question is, I'm overwhelmed by wearing multiple hats.
How can I manage time effectively without burning out?
And just like for my own notes, I labeled this particular question, the perils of being asolopreneur, which for those of you who don't know, when you're an entrepreneur and you're
the only
person in the business.
(03:10):
And that's sort of a bit of a stretch, but meaning you don't have a partner, you don'thave any employees.
And the reason I said it's a bit of a stretch, you could have interns and contractors andsome other people working with you, but it's called being a solopreneur.
So you're on your own, you're by yourself and you do tend to wear lots of different hats.
And so back to how I came about, how I came up with these questions for this particularepisode.
(03:33):
So like I said,
They had started down a path of, oh so the community topic is navigating challenges.
And I've got tons of stories I was trying to compile, like, okay, what would be my beststories of overcoming challenges to tell?
And then I was like, I don't want it to be all about me.
Let me see what kind of questions people have.
So I was going down the path.
I had asked ChatGBT to suggest some good sources, because I still can't get anybody tocall in with their questions.
(04:00):
So I was like, okay, let's try to find some good sources of
where people might be posting questions that I could answer, et cetera, et And so I'd gonethrough all of that and had a good list of where I was gonna pull some questions and was
about to start doing the research.
And then I said, again, this is where the phrase popped into my head, work smarter and notharder.
Because again, I'm still not 100%, I'm still not feeling great.
(04:23):
And I was like, wait a minute, I've already asked ChatGPT to go figure out a bunch ofthings and I've refined that result.
you know, got a list of sources.
I was like, why do I have to go look at the, why do I have to go do the research?
Why don't I have Chad GBT bring me back, you know, some questions?
And which is what I did.
you guys have, anybody who heard the episode I did with Ryan Fortman, I mentioned that Ithink that, you know, Chad, I consider Chad GBT to be like my, uh my intern, you know,
(04:53):
it's, it's, my cheapest employee in my business.
ah So I did that and I didn't love some of the questions or some of the groupings and Ididn't like the way it interpreted what I was asking.
And so there was a little bit of back and forth before I finally came up with a good setof questions that I wanted to answer.
But that was a case of me trying to work smarter instead of harder, trying to find thetime to go do the things when I wouldn't rather be in bed recovering.
(05:18):
ah So that was an example.
But I want to give you a better example ah with regard to Imperfect Genius.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's just that because my head isn't completely clear because I'm notfeeling well or I feel like I've told this story before.
I'm not sure, but I'm going to tell if you've heard this one before, then fast forward.
(05:41):
don't know.
um But so the example that I was going to give in terms of so it's back to the question,you wear multiple hats and how do you manage your time effectively without burning out?
um
The answer is to work smarter instead of harder, which again, I told you, hate that whenpeople say that to me.
(06:02):
you're like, you were me, if it was me from a few years ago listening to this podcast andhear that answer, I would throw my hands up like, what does that even mean?
ah So here's the example that I'll give.
When I first started this podcast, so before starting this podcast,
I used to, one of my hobbies was doing video editing in iMovie.
(06:24):
It was a thing that I just enjoyed doing.
And so I just naturally thought that when I started the podcast, that that would be askillset that I would rely on to do the video episodes.
And I would do some version of that for audio.
And then I learned about like Audacity and some other audio tools that I could use.
If you can do it in iMovie and extract the audio, but I knew I'd probably want something.
(06:46):
a little bit more sophisticated for the audio, but I'm not a sound engineer.
So, I mean, I knew Audacity was free and there was a couple of other tools.
And I also have um Final Cut Pro and some other tools that, again, I just played with as ahobbyist.
And so I figured between all the tools that I already had that, you know, something wouldwork.
And one of the first things that I figured out like was that, A, I'm not a sound engineer.
(07:10):
So you'd be surprised when you, you you just think it's, you're just going to, you know,
cut and paste or just snip some things together, take out the loud noises or things likethat.
But like I said, I just did it just now.
Now I'm so conscious of every time I inhale or swallow or drink or anything like all ofthose little noises, you have no idea how loud they are when you're trying to edit a
(07:35):
podcast and when you're trying to make it sound good and clean.
Anyway, so.
Like I said, the first thing I figured out was that I was not a sound engineer and I did adecent enough job.
It wasn't terrible.
My first few episodes were okay.
I think it was the third episode or so.
So I started with just doing the audio and then when I decided I was gonna start doing thevideo, I thought I had this great idea.
(07:59):
I was like, I know what I'll do.
I'll just do the video first and then I'll extract the audio.
which isn't a terrible idea except the way that I didn't think about the audio when I wasediting the video.
And unfortunately, when I was editing the video and I was editing it, this was an episodethat I had guessed.
And so I was editing it to show different perspectives in terms of the video to make itmore visually interesting.
(08:24):
And what I didn't think about was I was chopping up the audio every time I split thevideo, which was, you can...
split the video without splitting the audio, which is what I should have done.
And I did not, I didn't think it through until after I'd already done it.
And then when I extracted the audio for just the audio podcast and listened to it back, Icould hear every single point at which I cut the video, even though the audio should have
(08:48):
flowed normally, like there was no reason to have cut the audio, but I can say I wascutting the video and the audio at the same time, which is a bad idea.
Anyway.
Not to get into podcasting, this is not a podcasting, you know, how to podcast podcastepisode.
My point is it wasn't great.
And I like I had spent so much time on it and I would, there were some other things that Ihad to do and I just, I did not have time to go back and fix it.
(09:12):
I had spent so much time putting it together and it was time to publish it.
It was like, you know, publication day or whatever.
And I just, I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to put it out as is.
And
I had somebody, I had an audio uh editor, a sound engineer reach out to me and say, hey,by the way, love your podcast.
However, I have a few tips I want to give you about, you know, audio editing.
(09:35):
And I'm like, you know what?
And so this is a shout out to Christian Perry at your podcast pal.
I was like, you know what, dude, I will absolutely hire you to do this for me.
was like, those are really great tips.
Thank you so much for that, but I would rather pay you to do it.
than to spend more time doing this myself.
Because when I looked at how much time I was spending as compared to my bill rate and allthe other things that I needed to be doing in the business that were more important
(10:02):
because this is a free podcast.
This is just a free resource that I put out there.
This was not the thing that was bringing in any money.
So why was I spending all this time on it?
ah So anyway, so that was, and I made the smart decision to hire him.
so,
That was a really good business move on his part to reach out to me.
uh And so he's and he's been my my audio engineer ever since.
(10:26):
And he also does the videos too.
So again, hey, thanks, Christian.
Shout out to Christian.
um So anyway, so back to the question, which is I'm overwhelmed wearing multiple hats.
How do I manage my time effectively without burnout?
You have to you have to figure out the things that you should be doing and that youshouldn't be doing now.
(10:47):
Having said that, there's an important thing that I think, especially if you're trying tobe serious about being an entrepreneur, not just dabbling, but if you're serious about
trying to grow your business to some point where it'll be like a huge, um not necessarilyhave to be huge, but if you're trying to grow to the point where you're have a regular
(11:07):
staff of employees, I highly recommend Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth Revisited.
And there's probably,
I don't know, there's probably new versions of it out, cause it's an older book, but inthe book, so first of all, the E in this, in the title, it stands for entrepreneur, not
like electronic, whatever.
So it's the E-Meth Revisited.
(11:28):
And he talks about, and I think the subtitle is, Why Most Small Businesses Fail and WhatTo Do About It.
And so in the book, he talks about a lot of different things, but he talks about beforeyou hire somebody to do a job in your business.
You need to do that job yourself.
You need to figure out what that job is so that you know how to tell somebody what youwant.
(11:49):
Because if you just hire somebody to do a job and you don't know how to do that job, thenthat person's going to do it a certain way.
And then if they leave, then now you replace them and you still don't know what the job isor how to explain to somebody how to do it.
Then you replace them.
And now this other person is doing it a different way.
And then you're like, wait a minute, why are you doing it that way?
They're like, well, you didn't tell me to do it any different.
(12:09):
So you need to be able to.
define each role and the standards that that role needs to meet and exactly how that roleneeds to be done.
that, so you need to do it yourself first so that you understand what the role is beforeyou delegate it out to someone else.
But the important part here is that you do eventually need to delegate these things out.
You cannot possibly do all the things yourself.
(12:32):
It's just not possible.
So you have to get smart about what things you can and can't do, what things you shouldand shouldn't do.
But at the very least, mean, and if it's a thing that you physically like, it's just athing that you, like, let's just say, you know, in that example that I just gave, let's
just say I did not know anything about video or audio editing.
didn't, you know, it wasn't a thing that I was already, you know, dabbling in.
(12:54):
Then at the very least, when I decided to hire somebody to do it, then I should have satwith them while they're, while we're figuring it out together and deciding what is the
standard going to be?
What are, you know, what are, you know.
What are our ad breaks going to be like?
What's our intro music?
We should have decided that together.
should have written it all down, said, OK, this is the standard.
(13:14):
This is what this is.
And by the way, I did do all that because for those of you who've been with me from thevery beginning, you'll know that I used to have assistant podcast producer Emma Bergen.
And we wrote out what that job description was.
We wrote out what the role was going to entail.
The things that she would do, the things that I would do, things that she would do as theassistant producer, things I would do as the producer.
(13:35):
Et cetera, et cetera.
So we did do all of that.
So my point is back to the question, you can do it all.
You just, cannot possibly do it all.
And you have to prioritize.
You have to learn how to prioritize to decide, is this important?
Because there were times when, know, back when I was doing the podcast editing myself,where I had to decide, is it important for me to be editing this podcast right now or
(14:00):
going to this conference or, you know, going to this networking group or.
doing a cold call on this potential client.
Like the things that are going to bring the money into the business are more importantthan the things that are, not to say that marketing isn't important, but like you have to
prioritize.
You have to think about what are the things that, um know, everything can't be prioritynumber one.
(14:20):
You've got to make your choices.
So I don't know if that was a coherent answer.
Again, I am, my head's a little bit cloudy, but hopefully that was helpful.
um And this sort of leads into question number two.
(14:45):
So question number two is, I'm hesitant to delegate tasks.
How do I build a team that I trust and let go of control?
That is very hard.
I will agree that that is very hard, but delegation is absolutely crucial if you ever wantto grow your business.
ah So you have to figure out how do you build that trustworthy team in order to eliminatethat workload on yourself.
(15:09):
So that back to the question number one, so that you're not burning yourself out.
And it's a hard thing to do.
The other thing that I will say is the other thing that tugs against that is I amfollowing from a financial management perspective for this business.
As for some of you, you know this is not my first business, but for this particularbusiness, I am following a financial methodology called Profit First.
(15:37):
And Profit First says that,
you pay yourself for well, you pay profit for it.
So you get money that comes into the business and you put money aside for profit first.
You put money aside for taxes.
You put money aside for owner's compensation.
And then whatever's left, that's your operating income.
So you don't, know, cause a lot of times when people start oh businesses, they start like,I got to pay, I need to buy this thing.
(16:00):
I need to, you know, they immediately started putting all their money, all their incomeinto expenses and then they're not paying themselves.
And then the end of the year comes around and they're like, no, there's this tax bill andI don't have any money for taxes and profit.
What is that?
That's someday, you know, maybe in 15 years I'll have a profit.
You that's usually the way people start um with businesses.
(16:21):
And so, but with Profit First, the idea is the first thing you do is you set aside profitand you decide what that percentage allocation is.
And you set aside profit, you set aside tax, you set aside owners uh compensation, andthen whatever's left is expenses.
And if there's nothing left, then that means your business can't afford it.
So back to the, you know, trying to build that team, a lot of things, another thing that alot of entrepreneurs will do is, you know, the first thing they're gonna do is they're
(16:48):
gonna hire all these great people that are gonna make this business great with them.
If don't have any money coming in, where are you paying these people?
Like, where's this money coming from?
Now, mind you, you might have investors, you might have a loan, you might have a grant ormultiple grants.
So you might have some money that you have, you know, some disposable income in thebusiness that you have to start, but you need to think about how you're going to sustain
(17:10):
this business.
That money is not always going to be there.
So if you don't have any money coming in to pay these salaries, then you probablyshouldn't have those employees.
uh And so, you know, so back to the question of
you know, how do you delegate and how do you let go and build a trustworthy team?
Well, maybe in the beginning, it's not employees that you need.
Maybe it's, you know, vendors, third party contractors, interns, whatever.
(17:33):
So for example, like I say, my audio engineer is a guy who owns his own business.
This is what he does.
And so I pay him as a vendor and, you know, and he's great.
Maybe one day, the business will be bigger and the podcast will be bigger and maybe I needto hire a full production staff and I'll consider that when that day comes.
(17:55):
That day is not here right now.
ah And similarly, like, so you guys have heard me say, mentioned on the podcast, I havenot dedicated enough time to it, which is why um it hasn't happened yet.
But I've mentioned that I need to hire somebody.
I need to hire a copy editor to do the newsletter, which is why the newsletter hasn't beengoing out because I just haven't had time and from a priority,
perspective, it was not a top priority.
(18:18):
so, and the reason I haven't hired anybody yet is because I haven't written the ad, thejob ad, you know, so like, need to, need to get back to the, you know, finding the right,
you know, figuring out your timing.
so I do need to do that.
But my point is that, um, you know, when I'm looking for that person,
I'm not immediately looking for an employee.
I'm looking for maybe it's an intern, maybe it's somebody who was an English major incollege and they're just looking for some extra money.
(18:44):
So as opposed to, you know, immediately hiring the best copy editor I can find, you know,it's, it's a newsletter for a podcast, a small startup podcast that has, you know, a small
following.
I don't need to go hire the best copywriter I can find right now.
Again, maybe someday, but that day is not today.
So
Again, back to the question, if your head is to delegate tasks, it's important because youneed to make sure you're doing the right work, but you also need to be cognizant of your
(19:14):
finances and your expenses and figure out what the right balance is.
But it is important, it is very important to be able to find somebody you can trust and tobe able to let go of the control and be able to.
allow somebody to help you.
Because otherwise you're going to, you're back to that question number one, you're goingto burn yourself out.
(19:35):
All right.
Let's go into the third question.
So the third question is, I want to scale my one-on-one service into a digital project.
uh Terrible at reading aloud.
Let me try that one again.
I want to scale my one-on-one service into a digital product or course.
Where do I start?
So now this is an interesting question because this is something that I am actively doingright now.
(19:58):
I mentioned in a previous episode that I just finished writing oh the first course underthe Imperfect Genius banner.
I did course writing for other people in the past, but this is the first one I'm doing forthe Imperfect Genius brand.
I just did this course and it's a part of a set of courses that I'm releasing this year.
(20:20):
One of the reasons that I am doing this is exactly this thing.
By the way, did not.
You know, I did some prompt engineering to get chat GPT to come up with the kinds ofquestions that I wanted, but it was interesting that this was one of the ones that it came
back with because it was like perfect.
Actually, this one in the next one, the question number four were like perfect for forwhat I'm doing right now.
(20:41):
So was, you know, I guess I did some really good prompt engineering there.
But anyway, my point is um so.
What I do is technology coaching and working with business owners to um to get them up tospeed in.
technology needs they need in order to scale and grow their businesses.
uh And so I wanted a way to be able to make that a thing that I could put out on a massscale as opposed to just one-on-one coaching.
(21:10):
I wanted it to be a course that anybody or I wanted these things to be courses thatanybody could take.
So this is something that I actually myself uh have just done.
The course that I just wrote is in beta test right now.
We released.
uh
Stay tuned.
It'll be released soon.
I'm kind of waiting on what we'll talk about platforms in just a second.
My platform has a new feature that is coming out that I really want to take advantage ofbefore I release the course.
(21:36):
And it just depends on what their timing.
They're kind of hedging their bets on when it's coming out.
think it's coming.
This new feature is coming out in the next couple of weeks, in which case, because I wouldlove to release this course in May.
Actually, I wanted to have released it by now, but I'm kind of waiting on this feature.
But anyway, so coming soon again, stay tuned for more on that.
But ah so you want to look at course platforms.
(21:58):
There's a lot of different platforms that you can look at.
uh I when I was doing my research, I looked at all the big ones.
I looked at Teachable and Thinkific and I can't even remember all of the ones that Ilooked at.
But when I was doing my my due diligence and I was researching different platforms, therewas something like, you know how you you'll do you'll find like a say.
(22:20):
you know, the top five, you know, course platforms, da da.
And they usually have like best for this and best for, you know, best for X and X for Y.
one that, something that was said consistently was best for community building.
And it was always Mighty Networks.
Whenever, you know, like it'd be best for this or best for that.
But then it was like best for community building.
And Mighty Networks was always the one that was listed as best for community building.
(22:44):
And I knew that I wanted, I wanted,
my community, well, I knew that I wanted some component of the Imperfect Genius brand toinvolve community, ah but I didn't exactly know what that meant.
And so whenever I was looking at different course platforms and trying to figure out,know, I wanted, of course I needed the features to see, you know, what kind of features,
(23:08):
what kind of things I could do with my courses and monetization and all that kind ofstuff.
But ah when I kept seeing best for community building, I was like, I think.
I was like, don't even know what that looks like from a course platform perspective, but Ithink that this is something that I want.
so, and I, and if you want to hear more about how I found Mighty Networks, I think thatwas episode, I don't remember the episode number, but there's an episode called Finding
(23:32):
Community.
And I talk a little bit more about how I found Mighty Networks and became, well, was kindof like, I became a member of their community before I ever became a host on their
platform.
Anyway, there's more in an old episode about how I found Mighty.
Mighty Networks.
But anyway, so the point is you want to find a platform where you want to build yourcourse so that it's got the features that you need.
(23:55):
And then you want to look at email marketing tools.
if the course platforms don't offer landing pages, then you might need to look at landingpage builders.
ah Ideally, you would want a platform that's going to allow you to be able to marketwithin their platform without having to go somewhere separately to do that.
But those are the kinds of things that you want to do.
(24:15):
But you need to figure out
what features you want for your course and how you want to be able to market to youraudience.
And then kind of like, you know, look at the big ones and line them up and see which oneslook good.
So just some suggestions there.
uh And then the fourth question is, I don't have a big team.
(24:36):
I want to look more professional online.
How can I build a strong digital presence on a budget?
So.
I'll give you the short answer to this, but the longer answer is this whole entire list ofcourses that I just mentioned that I'm in the process of building out this year.
Because again, this is a thing that I consult on regularly, and it's just a set of coursesthat I'm planning on writing.
(25:01):
The first of which I already mentioned is coming out soon.
But yeah, you've got no code website builders.
If you don't have a team and you're not really tech savvy, there's a lot of good drag anddrop website builders out there.
You want to look at branding tools.
ah There are like social media schedulers that you can use and things like that.
So you're going to want to look at different tech tools that can help you do all of thesethings.
(25:26):
I feel like you could just throw a stone in the US and you can hit an entrepreneur.
There's a lot of solopreneurs out there that are trying to do a lot of different things.
And so there's lots of good tech tools that are trying to make it easier for people whoare trying to do.
too many things on their own.
But again, stay tuned for more on this because the answer to this entire question is anentire set of courses that I'm working on building.
(25:54):
I'm hoping to have more, oh listen to this space for more information on those coursescoming soon.
So those are some of my uh answers to some questions about navigating challenges.
If you've got questions about navigating challenges or being a solopreneur, leave us avoicemail or send us a text at 404-425-9862.
(26:17):
You can follow us on social media at Ask Imperfect Genius.
Oh, by the way, at the beginning, I mentioned that if you had questions about navigatingchallenges in your career, have a million stories on that.
Anybody who knows me knows that I've got a ton of stories because I've been in the techspace for a...
a really long time.
I've been in corporate America for a really long time.
(26:39):
So if you've got questions about navigating uh challenges in your career, I'd love toanswer those questions in a more personal setting, a more one-on-one.
So I would say, you if you're a, well, you can hit me up on social media at Ask ImperfectGenius, but if you are a woman of color in uh a, what's the,
(27:01):
word I can't think of right now.
underrepresented, thank you.
I'm like, what's an underrepresented space ah or an underrepresented field?
And you want community to be able to talk about things like the types of challenges thatyou face.
You can head over to community.imperfectgenius.com.
And the whole purpose of that community is to provide a supportive space for women ofcolor to navigate the challenges in their career.
(27:24):
And like I say, I would love to, uh or again, just hit me up on social media.
I'd be happy to.
uh
to schedule some time to set aside and talk about how I might be able to help you.
But until next time, this is Rachel Foster reminding you that while you're draining my napwith flawless, it can be phenomenal.
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