Are You Tired Of Marketing Tricks? Watch This!

Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live. This is a show dedicated to helping solopreneurs achieve business success without digital marketing BS. My name is Scott Perry. I am the publisher of Transcendent Solopreneurship, and this is a broadcast where you are here because you are either a subscriber or a follower of Transcendent Solopreneurship, or maybe you just happen to trip into this live broadcast. You're in the right place if you're a purpose-driven solopreneur who's ready to make a better living by making a bigger difference. What we're going to talk about today is the top 3 reasons solopreneurs don't succeed on Substack or anywhere else. And how do you go about fixing that? So what's going to happen is we're going to jam on this topic for a little bit. And then, uh, for those of you that are members of the Circle or Inner Circle paid subscriber communities, we're going to be continuing the discussion in our weekly community calls and our monthly deep dive workshops and Q&As. And of course you can take what you learn here today and put it into the Cornerman Coaching Wizard, which is a 24/7 on-demand coaching app that you're welcome to use. It's trained on all of my intellectual property as a coach, and it will help you close the gap and get you where you want to go with greater ease and velocity. And so let's just go ahead and dive into it. So the 3 things The top 3 reasons solopreneurs don't succeed on Substack. I'm actually going to go through them in what I think is reverse order. So we're going to end with the big one at the very end. So number 3 technically is your system is actually perfect. The reason that you're not succeeding in the way that you want to succeed here on Substack as a solopreneur or anywhere else that you're trying to build your business is that The system that you built is perfectly designed to get the results that it's getting. That's not a whim. That's not just some sort of jargon. That's math, system reliability, system thinking. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it's getting. If you are experiencing stagnant growth in your business, it's not a mystery. It's math. And it's a function of the habits and the routines and your publishing cadence and the conversations and the clarity and your operating all of it is producing precisely what your system is designed for. So the lie that solopreneurs end up telling themselves here is, well, I just need to try harder. I just need one more tool or tactic and this thing will just magically start working. And it's just not true because system reliability says that the more you add to an inefficient system, the more inefficient the system becomes. The more ineffective tactics, tools, strategies you add to a system, the less effective that system will become. You don't need to work harder. You need to work smarter, and you probably need to work a little bit differently. It probably begins with getting rid of all of the time, attention, money, and effort that you're investing in tools, tactics, and strategies that aren't giving you any discernible return on investment. Doing that will immediately help improve your system. You'll start to get different results through subtraction. You'll get worse results through addition. So I would also recommend that if you're one of those people that is chasing down all of the brilliant strategies, tools, and tactics and insights being shared by the Substack growth gurus, you probably need to stop that. You don't need more tools and tactics. You don't need to become a Substack algorithm hacker. You, if you stop doing all of that, you'll immediately get better results. So the sin of solopreneurship here is you're being dull. If you repeat everything that you did yesterday, you're going to get the same results that you got yesterday. And so if you continue to do everything that you've been doing, you're going to get the results that you're always getting. And it is dull to think that anything is going to change. Hope and hustle are not operating systems. They're not strategies. It's, it's, it's not going to make your system miraculously start working. You're just continuing to feed and promote and encourage and nurture a self-perpetuating situation. And you'll just keep getting the same results you're getting, or you'll start to get worse results by just continuing to collect dots from Substack growth hacking gurus and all the digital marketers promoting niching tactics and branding tactics and ideal customer avatar tactics and everything else. So what's the fix to dullness? What's the system fix to this perfectly designed system that's designed to get the results that it's getting and the results are not desirable? The fix is the virtue of receptivity. It's time to think about, think differently, consider other ways of designing and optimizing the system that you currently have. It's time to stop adding things to it and start subtracting things from it. It's time to stop having these vague goals like, I want more clients, or I want more money, or I want more time. And actually create priorities, business priorities that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You have to measure what matters if you're going to iterate and improve your system. And you're going to find that success is not an accident. It's an operating system. And you can't win a game that you don't want to play. And if you are playing the Substack growth hacking game, the game is playing you. You're a hack in the system being played by the algorithm. So that is the third most important thing that you need to fix if you're going to achieve the kind of success that you want to achieve as a solopreneur here on Substack. You have to recognize that results follow systems, systems follow decisions, and decisions follow clarity. The clearer you are about the system that you have and the system that you're in and the elements of that system and The more you collect data on what elements are working well, which ones are unnecessary, which ones need to be improved, the sooner you can start to improve your system reliability and start to get better results. Second thing of the three that are reasons that solopreneurs don't succeed here on Substack is you're spending too much time looking out the window. The sin of solopreneurship here is you are distracted. When you're trying to win By studying what everyone else is doing, you're already losing. Substack is full of creators chasing tactics, trends, and algorithm hacks, funnel gymnastics, niche paralysis, audience avatar, swipe file dependency. This is all noise masquerading as strategy. These are all just tools and tactics. They are unnecessary for you to succeed on your terms, or especially unnecessary if all these digital marketing hacks and tricks don't align with your values and the way that you want to show up in the world and to make the difference that you want to make as a solopreneur. So the lie that solopreneurs will be telling themselves here is, I need to look like the people that are succeeding. So you look at the Substack growth hacking gurus here and you say, well, I need to be more like this one or more like that one. And I need to take their masterclass. I need to enroll in their Notes bootcamp or whatever it is. No, you need to become the person your subscribers need you to become to help them achieve the things that they want to accomplish. You become the thing by doing the thing. You can't win a game you don't want to play. You're going to have to define what your game is, what the rules of engagement are, and you're going to have to play your game on your terms. And you're going to have to do that without compromise. So the diagnosis here is if you're building for the algorithm, you're building for the algorithm, not the human. And if you are publishing posts and notes and podcast episodes instead of actually doing the work that you love to do and making the difference that you want to make in the way that only you can make it, you're really doing it wrong. You, you're broadcasting instead of Conversing. You need to have more conversations. You need to be talking to the people that are already subscribed to your Substack. You need to be having conversations and connecting with the people that have already told you, yes, I trust you enough to give you permission to have this direct, personal, and relevant conversation with me. If you're trying to hack the Substack algorithm, you're just a hack being played by the Substack algorithm. So the fix here is the virtue of restraint. It's more about what you need to stop doing than it is what you need to do. And this is whereas we can resolve the sin of dullness and system failure through the Close the Gap method that we teach in here at Transcendent Solopreneurship, the priority setting and achievement strategy. You can fix your way of engaging here on Substack. And stop looking out the window at what all the hackers and tricksters are doing and start to think about what a forever offer looks like. Instead of focusing on avatars and niches and power offers, what's your forever offer? What's your positioning? Where do you stand in the market? How do you stand in the market? How do you stand in a way that reflects who you are, what you're really good at, and where you really belong. And if you focus on your positioning and promises that you can keep and deliver on those promises with real people and get them real results, that will become part of your Be a Blessing marketing strategy. It will be a way that you turn the great work that you do and the difference that you make into your marketing content, into your content.. And so you end up spending more and more time doing work that you love with people you care about, making the difference that you make in the way that only you can make it. And you don't have to pay any attention, invest any time or any money or effort in digital marketing gymnastics. You don't have to focus or create customer avatars. You don't need to define a niche. You don't need to create power offers or invest in launch formulas or any of that. You can build a perfectly thriving business without any of that. And just imagine all the time, attention, money, and effort you would recapture if you didn't have to do all of the digital marketing BS that you're already engaged in doing. So the idea here is serve one human well, build belonging before you go broadcasting about all the things that you think that you can deliver, that you don't have any track record or any social proof of being able to deliver. Give the value in public, follow up in private, and create a path to paid opportunities by demonstrating your competence, your preeminence in the difference only you can make. So make the right offer to the right people in the right way. That beats funnel hacking and power offers and launch formulas any day of the week. And that brings us to our top of 3 reasons why solopreneurs don't succeed here on Substack. And that is you're reading the prescription from inside the bottle. The sin is you're delusional. And we all fall prey to all of these sins. The delusional one most of all, and it's especially dangerous for solopreneurs because Being a solopreneur does not mean you have to do it all by yourself, but too often you end up doing it all by yourself. You are product development, product validation, you are product promotion, you are product fulfillment, you are customer service. In addition to all the other things that you do. And if you're trying to do it all by yourself and trying to pretend like you're some sort of big brand that has a team and venture capital and all sorts of resources and assets that they can afford to waste, you're going to burn out and blow up really, really fast. So you have to find a way that you can surround yourself with the right people. I'm not talking about hiring employees or hiring staff, but whether it's coaching or community or finding a mentor or a mastermind or whatever it is, You need to have conversations with people that will reveal your blind spots, call you out on your nonsense, and help you see the missed leverage that you aren't employing and will help you unpack all of the false beliefs and the narrative fallacies and the cognitive distortions and biases, all the self-protecting stories and all the optimism bias and imposter syndrome, all that. It's all invisible when you're the only one in the room. You need to put yourself in rooms with people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives, or with people who share your values and have been there, done that, gotten results that are based on principles and philosophy, not tools, tactics, and strategies. That may or may not work for you. So the lie that solopreneurs are telling themselves here is, I need more information. I need to keep collecting dots because I don't have enough dots. It's not about collecting dots. It's about connecting the right dots and ignoring all the other dots. You don't need more confirmation bias by listening to all these growth hackers and gurus and digital marketers that are telling you the secret formula, the secret roadmap, the secret blueprint. To success. You need an external perspective from someone that has experience and has competence and understands that just because something worked for them in the past doesn't mean it's going to work for you right now. You need to put yourself in communities and with coaches and mentors that let you play your game on your terms without compromise, that help you clarify what your game is and what your terms are and help encourage you to do that without compromising on your values or your guiding principles or your non-negotiables. So you may be thinking that you're strategizing as you're listening to all these tools and tactics and strategies that are out there, but you're actually just feeding the doom spiral. You're collecting more information. Learning that does not lead to action is useless. You need to take the things that you need to know, and you need to engage the field and create feedback loops that will help you collect the data that you need to iterate and improve your systems. So the virtue here is responsibility. You need to take responsibility for recognizing that you can't do this alone and that it's going to take some kind of coaching and community to make this work for you in the way that works for you. So you don't rise to the level of your goals. You always rise to the level of your support and accountability. Otherwise, you're just going to fall to the level of your incompetence or delusion. So Isolation breeds delusion, collaboration breeds clarity, community compounds momentum. And so if you are resonating with any of these things that are keeping you stagnant and stuck as a solopreneur here on Substack or elsewhere, you will see these patterns of dull, distracted, and delusional cropping up in your day-to-day thoughts and activities and actions. And you're going to, if you don't do something about it, you're just going to lose momentum, continue chasing the noise and get trapped in your own story. The path forward is the 3 virtues of solopreneurship: receptivity, restraint, and responsibility. Keep open loops, remain considerate of other ways of being and doing other than the ones that you're doing, that you're currently being and doing that aren't working for you. Show some restraint. Don't just keep chasing after shiny objects. Take some time to audit your system and get rid of all the things that you don't need to be doing and take responsibility for your own journey. Take responsibility for your lack of success and do the work that's necessary to achieve the things that you want to achieve. So if you want solopreneurship and Substack to work for you, You need to stop playing the content game, the notes game, the algorithm game. Uh, you have to stop chasing all the guru growth hackers and their masterminds and notes boot camps. And you're going to have to start playing the human game, the human game that begins with the conversation with the person in the mirror, and then the human game of having conversations with the people who have already invested their permission and trust in the difference that you can help them make. So I hope that that's helpful. Uh, and I look forward to, uh, hearing your comments. And if you are a member of the Circle or Inner Circle paid subscriber communities here at Transcendent Solopreneurship, I would love to continue talking about these things and provide you with the help and resources support that you need through our weekly community calls, through our monthly deep dives. And of course, you also have 24/7 access to the Cornerman Coaching Wizard, which is an app that will— is trained on the entire Purpose Driven Prosperity model operating system and all the content that we share here at Transcendent Soulpreneurship so that you can collapse time to target with greater ease and velocity by applying our foundational principle-based purpose-driven frameworks that forever offer the Be a Blessing marketing web and the Close the Gap business priority and achievement plan framework. And if you're not currently a Circle or Inner Circle member, I encourage you to consider joining us for as little as $7.50 a month, uh, with the annual plan or $9 a month with the monthly plan. You can jump in and check it out. You'll get access to weekly calls that provide lots of instruction and support and implementation support, monthly deep dives in the core frameworks that come with worksheets and GPT prompts that will help you implement the learning right away, and all the other resources, including the exclusive content that I put out every Friday. So if any of that sounds interesting, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and upgrade to whatever plan suits your current budget and needs and willingness to invest. And yeah, I hope that this has been helpful. So until next time, be well, do good, have fun.