Ask Me Anything: Solopreneur Challenges, Community, and Conscious Business Building

Welcome everyone. Happy Sunday for those of you in time zones where it's Sunday, and happy Monday if it happens to be Monday where you are. This is Scott Perry from the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model. Today's one of those days when I have got all of my work preparation for the week completed, found myself a little bit bored, had already taken a nap, decided that I would just go ahead and schedule an impromptu Ask Me Anything. If you are a member of the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model community of subscribers, whether that's a free subscriber or a circle member who is a paid subscriber, you should have gotten a notification in our subscriber chat inviting you to leave a question. We've got a handful of questions here. I'm going to go through them at the same time. If you have something that you would like to ask if you're coming on and are not a subscriber or not a participant in the chat thread. If you have a question, you're welcome to ask the question. I see Emma found her way here. Great to have you here, Emma. Thanks for your great question. We're going to get to you in just a second, but we're going to actually start with our very most recent newest member of the Solopreneur Success Circle community. Alice has joined us today and she is already leaping in with a I see Alice just jumped into the live, so welcome Alice. I see Bree is here. She has a question. We'll get to yours shortly. We're going to kick things off with Alice's question and then get to Emma and Bree. I do want to preface this ask me anything session with just a statement for those of you that might not be familiar with me and my work. I tend to come at things from a place of philosophy and principles. Things that are time-tested, timeless, and, you know, can be— are things that can be applied to a wide variety of situations. They're based on having some knowledge of who you are, what you're good at, where you belong. And I may get into some strategy and some tactics and some tools because I know people prefer that kind of thing most of the time. But Solving a problem, a challenge, or looking for insight about a situation, uh, and starting from tools, tactics, and strategy is always really dangerous because you can actually be solving the wrong problem or solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved because there's a deeper issue that needs to be unpacked or discovered or, uh, or built first. So, uh, you know, it's these Q&As and my approach to things is not for everyone. That's very intentional and on purpose. So if you get on here and you find my ramblings don't jibe with your personality and your preferences, that's cool. Move along. There's plenty of online gurus and digital marketers here on Substack that will seed you all sorts of tools, tactics, and strategy that will keep you feeling like you're doing something while you're going nowhere, and that's okay. So let's jump in with Alice's question. So Allison— Alice says, taking the best action when learning to awaken the person inside you when being dependable from the outside, command myself to be an awesome attractor of amazing things. So not really phrased as a question, but there is a question in there, like how, how do you awaken the person inside you, the person that you want to become. How do you become the kind of person that attracts the kind of people that you want in your life or in your community, or taking advantage of your offer, product, service, participating in your idea or cause? So the fundamental thing here— fundamental— one of the fundamental principles is something that we talk about in the Guardian Academy and also in the Engage the Field Handbook, which I know Alice is going to receive in the mail shortly. And that is this idea of you become the thing by doing the thing. That the only way to become the kind of person that is awakened, stays awake, and becomes the person they want to become is to start acting like that person. There's a process that I talk about in my book, Close the Gap, which is a book that helps you optimize your business to better fund and fit your ideal lifestyle. And it begins with this idea of, you know, this idea of self-actualization actually starts with self-awareness and then travels through self-efficacy. So Alice makes a great point. If your life is calling you to become a person who can achieve greater things, step into bigger, bolder possibilities, then the way to do that is to become the thing by doing the thing. But your becoming actually lies in being more of what you've always been. And so if For instance, you want to live a little bit more boldly and be a person that envisions greater possibilities and can turn obstacles into opportunities and all that sort of thing. You really— the best place to start is to take a look in the rearview mirror. You are already that kind of person when you were a young child. You learn to do impossible things, and you learn to do it without the instruction of, uh, mentors and teachers and gurus and guides. Uh, you did it. You learned to do impossible things by doing impossible things. When you wanted to learn how to walk, you saw people doing this walking thing, and you started figuring out, how do I do this walking thing? And you And then you stood up and then you fell down and then you stood up and took a step and fell down and you stood up and took two steps. And over time you became the thing by doing the thing. You became a walker by being a walker. Did the same thing with talking and reading and writing and riding a bike and all the things that you do now that you take for granted. So we all are born sufficient and whole, possessing everything we need. To accomplish anything that we set our hearts and minds to accomplishing. And so becoming the thing by doing the thing begins with self-awareness. Who am I? What are my core values? What are my guiding principles? What are my boundaries and guardrails? What are my non-negotiables? What am I good at? What are my innate talents, uh, skills? Maybe think more about soft skills and, uh, the human talents of communication, connection, compassion, collaboration, creation, uh, rather than the things that you learned in school and on the job that may or may not align with your values or your innate talents. And then put yourself into situations where you are surrounded by people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives. And you will learn how to become the thing by doing the thing. You'll become the kind of person that shows up open, receptive, responsible, and with the requisite restraint to do what needs to be done and no more. So I think a lot of the answers to Alice's question come from this idea of stop looking out the window and start looking in the mirror. The answers are not out there to be discovered. There's no one out there that has the answers to how you're going to play your game on your terms without compromise. You have to, uh, you have to do some self-reflection. You have to put yourself into situations that help you cultivate self-awareness. Uh, Alice, you just joined a community of people that are dedicated to this kind of practice. And so surrounding yourself with the kind of people that are interested in becoming more self-aware, that are interested in self-efficacy and, and learning the value of temperance and resilience and intentional action and integrity and all these kind of things. And then putting yourself in situations where you get to field test this way of being in the world that will help you adopt the behavior of the kind of person that is being that way in the world and continuing to turn, turn those cycles until you become the thing by doing the thing. So I hope that that is helpful. Um, Emma asked, uh, a brilliant question. It's— I'm going to read the whole thing. It's, it's, um, long, but I'm going to try to distill it down to something that I can riff and rant on for a little bit. Uh, Emma says, my takeaway from Friday, which is— she's referring to a conversation that we had in the, uh, Solopreneur Success Circle. We meet every Monday at 11 AM Eastern and 1 PM every Friday Eastern time, and we have community conversations. We break out, go into breakout rooms, and, uh, groups of 3 people or so will, um, just share insights and ask each other questions around, uh, ideas, principles, concepts that apply broadly to anybody that is doing purpose-driven work, wants to make a difference in the world, doing work that matters with people they care about. And all they ask in exchange is that can make a slightly better living while they're making a bigger difference in the world. And so Emma was part of that, one of those conversations this last Friday. She says, my takeaway from Friday was that we are all working on our business. I think that we have difficulty in clearly stating our most immediate constraint. I would agree with you. I am aware that this is a skill we learn with time. Again, becoming the thing by doing the thing for sure. But how do we know what is enough? How many hours do I need to work on my business? Since we are solopreneurs and are doing everything, are we focusing on the right thing? I know that we are in the long game. I know that it takes time to get our clients. This most immediate constraint is like music. I can practice every day, but if I'm playing the wrong notes, I'm getting better at playing the piece out of tune. We might not be getting the results now. Every day we work without the certainty that we are getting a client. We do it because we are building trust and we hope that this will bring some benefit to our business. So the fundamental question here that Emma's asking, which is one actually that Alice also asked me earlier today, and it's one that comes up quite frequently, we've had several community discussions about this, is How do I identify my most immediate constraint? So again, I'm going to zoom out because before we can start thinking about what's my most immediate constraint, we actually have to know what is the vision of the life that we want to be living into. And I find that most people do not spend enough time on doing this. Everybody has this idea that I want to make more money and I want to have more time. And yes, pursuing solopreneurship so that we have more freedom when it comes to what we do, how we do it, who we do it with, when we do it, where we do it, you know, how much time we do or do not spend doing it and how much revenue we do or do not earn doing it. These are common reasons for going into business, but time and money are not great ends in and of themselves. And they are in fact constructs. They're stories we have made up to make sense of things. We've made up the idea of time because we needed a way to organize our days, and we made up the idea of money as a means of value exchange. Fundamentally, these are not like laws of the universe or anything. They're just stories that we all believe in. And so it gets even more complicated when we say that the source of our happiness is more money or time, more of a story that isn't absolutely necessarily true. So the first thing is one of the exercises I talk about in the Close the Gap book is if that's the way that you're thinking about things, like I just need more money, I just need more time, I need more clients, you know, that's my constraint. That's not a constraint. That's a situation, that's a problem. And it's a problem created by the fact that you don't really know what you want. So start with— and I'm not in any way saying this is you, I'm just saying this is my experience working with people in general. Is be super clear, as clear as you can, clear enough about what you would do if you had the time and the money to do it. What would your average day, week, month, quarter look like? There's an exercise in The Close the Gap book where I help you audit the way you're spending your days. Every week currently and, and, and crafting a vision of the way that you want every day of your week to look in the future. Because when you define where you are and where you want to be specifically and clearly, now you have created a solvable problem. You'll know when it's achieved and you'll know how close you are to achieving it. If you're just chasing after more money and more time, you— more is never enough. We sometimes talk about the kinky hose analogy here. Like if you're trying to fill a bucket with an old kinky hose attached to a faucet, the faucet is your resources. Everyone has a finite amount of time, attention, money, energy, reputation at their disposal. Solopreneurs compound that finiteness by being the person that is doing all the things in their business. You know, you are, you're the lead generator, you're the marketer, you're the sales call person, you're the fulfillment department, you're the janitor, right? You're, you're everything. And all of those things that you do in your day cost you resources. It requires you to invest the resources of time, attention, money, effort. Reputation. So the bucket is the goal, the objective that you're trying to fill. Well, make sure the bucket's defined and that it's in good repair. Like filling a leaky bucket full of holes with a rusted-out bottom is an impossible task. What's the life— what is the ideal lifestyle that you want your business to fund and fit around? You have to actually know that first before you can identify your most immediate constraint. If you don't have that vision yet, if you don't know what that is, that's your most immediate constraint. If you have a vision of the lifestyle that you want your business to fund and fit around, now it's a matter of what do I need to have a business that funds and fits that ideal lifestyle? Well, if you're reading from at least the First Principles, you need compelling offer that's irresistible to an audience that is engaged and eager for the thing that you want to sell. And you have to have a way of putting that offer in front of that audience, some sort of marketing and sales system. Those are the 3 things that you need on a fundamental principle, first reasoning from first principles level. That's what you need. There are many ways that you can go about creating offers, finding audiences, and creating marketing and sales systems that fulfill things, that sell that offer to the right people more quickly. But you need to have those things set up before you start pouring resources into that kinky leaky hose. The kinks are the constraints, right? So if— I think in general, most of the people I work with have a pretty good idea of what their offer is, although sometimes they are selling an offer that doesn't really light them up, doesn't fulfill their soul. It doesn't provide a lot of meaning and fulfillment in their lives. It's just something that they fell into doing or that they can do, so they do do. Most people do have an idea of who their ideal audience is. I'm not a big fan of creating ideal customer avatars and all that, but you know, it's not that it doesn't work. Anything can work. Putting everything on black 36 and rolling the roulette wheel can work. Doesn't mean that it's a good idea. I'm just saying anything can work, but What I would suggest, again, going back to the self-awareness, self-efficacy, self-actualization idea that we were talking about with Alice is, what is, you know, who am I? What am I good at? Where do I belong? Like, what are my values and guiding principles? What are my core beliefs? What are my non-negotiables? And then what are my unique abilities? What are my talents and skills? You can build all sorts of offers when you know who you really are and what you really are good at. And then it's much easier to find people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives. So if your offer is not totally aligned with the kind of person you want to be or want to reflect to the world or want to become, then I would start with the offer might be your constraint. If you have an offer that really fills you with, you know, that you're very passionate about, fills you with a lot of energy, but you're struggling to find the audience, then finding the audience could be the constraint. If you have an offer and an audience that's defined enough, then it will come down to your marketing and sales mechanisms. And this is where most people are struggling. And this is where the online gurus and digital marketers make a killing. Because we are programmed by nature and biology to, and socially, to chase after shiny objects. So, you know, people, gurus and digital marketers with online roadmaps or with roadmaps and secret formulas and hacks and tricks for sale, you know, strategies, systems, Scott Perry, they do very, very well because they have this thing. I'm not saying that these are bad people. These are people that found a way to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish in the past, and their assumption is that it will work for everyone else right now. Well, the problem with selling a system that worked for you in the past is nobody else is you, and it's no longer the past. But that doesn't stop most of us. And I say this as someone that I have bought every single program on the planet and I've worked with most of the digital marketers and online gurus that are around. So I learned this the hard way and a very expensive way. Again, tools, tactics, strategies are not going to work for you if you don't fundamentally know who you are, what you're good at, where you belong, and you don't have a clear enough idea of your fundamental beliefs in operating systems. So if you're struggling, if you have the offer that you want and the audience that you want and you're struggling with marketing and sales piece, again, many ways that you can go about doing that. And that would be your most immediate constraint. It might be worth considering that maybe the marketing tools, tactics, and strategies I'm using are not working as well as they could because I'm not doing— like I'm doing the wrong thing. That's possible. It could also be that you're doing the thing wrong. Also possible. But while you're determining that, trying alternatives to whatever it is that you're doing can be useful. And for me and for almost all of my clients, when we break it down, the fastest path to cash, as Laurel and Nick say, is conversations. And there are lots of ways to start conversations and they don't all require Facebook ads or videos or starting a podcast or starting a YouTube channel or having an Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter or LinkedIn account. Most of us have enough people in our network already who already know us, who already like us and trust us, that if we actually just employed what I— I use the variations on the Silver Bullet campaign approach that Nick teaches in the R3 manual. But fundamentally, I just start questions with icebreaker questions. Alice is someone that just kind of experienced this, right? Hey, what are you trying to accomplish and what's your biggest obstacle right now? That's an icebreaker question. I get a response and say, hey, that's, that's really fascinating. Here's a few of the things that I see, but I would actually get a much deeper understanding of this and could be much more helpful and useful If I could send you 5 questions, if you answer them, I'll respond. I'll give you my best reflections. I'll tell you what I see. I'll do my best to reveal any blind spots or hidden leverage and help you define a success path and help you identify and take your next step. How does that sound? And people answer the questions, the 5 questions that I send. I do my best to blow their minds with my insight or by revealing something that they hadn't seen before or making them aware of a blind spot or missing leverage that they weren't considering because they're trying to read the prescription from inside the bottle. And then that will naturally lead to, if I've done my job properly, that will lead to them wanting more proximity and access to me and the helpfulness and generosity that I can make available to them if they become a member of the Circle community, if they continue on with my Inbox Catalyst coaching by email, which is incredibly affordable. And some of those, you know, after people get some help through the community and/or the inbox, the coaching by email, they are already gaining enough traction and momentum that joining me in one of my hybrid one-on-one group coaching programs that gives them daily access to me, you know, every day, every business day during business hours becomes like a no-brainer because they've already, they've already got so much more clarity, earned so much more confidence, have so much, have gained traction and some momentum already taking that next step to work directly with me to catalyze that experience and close the gap with greater ease and velocity is a no-brainer. All starts with a conversation. I don't do— I have done Facebook ads. I don't do them anymore. I've done YouTube ads. I don't do those anymore. I've done Google ads. I don't do that anymore. Have enough of a reputation and referral engine going where I can just talk to people that are already interested in talking with me. And if I deliver— if I'm just compassionate, empathetic, generous, deliver value, give them, uh, help them see the roadmap that will get them from where they are to where they want to be, uh, it will eventually be in their best interest to work directly with me so that we can work through all the unseen opportunities and obstacles together as they come up, and they can collapse time to target and close the gap between where they and where they want to be with more ease and velocity. So again, most immediate constraint. First, you have to know what you're actually building your business for. What's your ideal lifestyle? What is your average week look like and how far away are you from that? You have to determine that. Then you have to determine what's the offer, audience, and marketing sales strategy that's going to get you there. Whichever of those components is not figured out, that's your next most immediate constraint. I like to think that, you know, if you have nothing to sell, It doesn't matter what your marketing or sales strategy is. And if you haven't found an audience, it doesn't matter. So get your offer together and find an audience or find people that you actually like to talk to and talk to them and figure out what they're being challenged by and create an offer for them. And then the marketing and sales strategy can be as simple as starting helpful conversations with people that are looking for someone that will stop giving them, um, you know, bullshit digital marketing guru tactics, tools, and strategies, and give them some real help that will help them actually get what they want. Um, so that's, uh, that's some riffing on, um, identifying your most immediate constraint. Emma, I hope that's helpful. I will say that it is valuable to know, like, what kind of product or service provider you are. I like Dr. Jeff Spencer's categories, the tech, you know, technician, mentor, or corner man. A technician is someone that does a technical thing. You're someone that knows how to use a tool, knows how to build landing pages, or knows how to design an e-magazine, or knows how to create a funnel for or get testimonials, right, Emma? That's a technical thing and technicians make a ton of money. There's a bunch of people making a lot of money in AI right now, just teaching people that know they need to implement AI, but don't have the time or bandwidth to learn it. And so they're hiring people that were early adopters, innovators and early adopters in AI who can do it for them. Nothing wrong with being a technician. I've been a technician. Good place to be. Teachers, consultants, mentors, that sort of thing. That's people that generally, you know, a technician often is a done-for-you type of thing. A teacher, consultant, mentor is often someone that's kind of a done-with-you kind of thing. They're showing you they've done a thing and they'll show you how to do a thing. Our friend Laurel Portier is someone that started off in the agency world as a technician and has become more of a mentor and a teacher through her Lean on Laurel program. And then the Cornerman or Cornerperson is— that's a kind of a different animal, and it is an exclusive club in that, by Dr. Jeff Spencer's definition, it requires you have to be 60 years or more. You have to have gone through the 4 timeless cycles of, you know, hard times make strong people, strong people make good times, good times make weak people, weak people make bad times. 20-year cycles. If you're 60 years old, you've gone through the 3 cycles. And that's where I consider myself to be. I'm 60 going to be 61 this, this, uh, August. I've seen a lot, I've done a lot, I have a lot of experience across a lot of different disciplines. I started off as a school teacher at some of the most famous private schools in the country. I have worked in corporate, I have worked in retail, I have been a restaurant manager, and, you know, and then I had a 25-year career as a professional musician. And then I, through good fortune, became a friend and collaborator with Seth Godin and his Akimbo Workshops. And that's what led me into the coaching path. And I've taken all the experiences that I've had over the years as a freelancer, as a teacher, as a coach, and I leverage all of that. And I help, you know, I don't necessarily help people just with building coaching businesses. I work with creatives that are writers or photographers or musicians, uh, potters and painters. I work with people that are freelancers doing graphic design, or are doing social media advertising and agency work. And I, I work with plenty of technicians as well because I am coming from this place of philosophy and principles. I help them lay the good foundation and they can apply all of their strategic, technical, and tool-based knowledge to fundamental principles that help them actually build businesses that are fulfilling, sustainable, prosperous, and they can optimize them to fund and fit the lifestyle that they want. So those distinctions— technician, mentor, corner person— that's kind of worth thinking about, knowing where you are and which category you're in. All right, we're going to move on to Penny. I want to set up a focus group— I'm sorry, I want to set up a group of fundraisers to discuss making the focus of discussion what would it be like if fundraising was respected for more than money. So Penny works with, um, she's a, a coach consultant, um, working in the fundraising space. She has a proprietary way of thinking about fundraising that makes it more mission-centered than just treating people like ATMs. She wants to start a community, uh, about this, and she, um, says the first couple of group discussions will be free. Then charge a small fee. I would ask questions to qualify. What questions do I need to ask myself? So obviously, Penny, I'm a big fan of community. You're a member of, of our community. And it's even though it's probably the thing that costs me the most time and makes me the least amount of money, it's the thing I spend the most time on and love doing the most. So I'm a big fan of community. When you are thinking about community, I think what you are— need to think about is again, this idea of optimizing for connection and conversation. One of the reasons that I think community is going to only increase in popularity is as AI becomes more ubiquitous, you know, as more and more social media is taken over by bots and AI-generated videos and AI-generated personalities and AI-generated imitators and all that sort of thing. And, you know, coming out of the pandemic, spending all that time doing virtual communication, connection events, and so forth. I think, um, I think community in general become more important, and I actually think that in real life, in-person community will become much, much more important and, and a big force multiplier. Community and in-person events create a ton of leverage. Um, So the quote, what I would encourage you to start with, Penny, as you're thinking, like when you're thinking about building a community, it's easy, like it is with any other kind of offer to try to figure out how do I engineer the outcomes that I want? In other words, how do I engineer the conversations so that people do what I want them to do? And that centralized way of thinking about community is very common. You and I have been members of other communities that I consider to have been fairly centralized that were for a while very successful, but they ended up disappearing after a while. And that's because Centralization is a really, you know, any kind, anytime you're thinking about engineering design, rigid rules of engagement and rules of conduct and so forth, rigid things are fragile things. I prefer to think of community from a place of decentralization. I want to create and hold space for conversations where I'm not the only one talking. I want to create and hold space for spaces where when people connect, they are encouraged and desire to continue connecting outside of the community container. I want people in this You know, I want subscribers to the Purpose Driven Prosperity model to become members of the Solopreneur Success Circle, and I want members of the Solopreneur Success Circle to collaborate and create things together outside of the community container. So the— I would, I would encourage you to let go of any attachments about what you want your community to look like. Communities are— the best communities are built on culture. People like us do things like this. So what are the things that people do? And then where, where are people that are looking to do things like this? And if you can Again, the, the, the refrain I had about starting conversations as your primary marketing and sales mechanism is helpful here too. Just, you could start converse, iceberg your conversations with what are you trying to accomplish and your fundraising organization right now and what's the biggest obstacle to your success. And then you and I have, because you're a client as well as a community member, we've talked about your diagnostic questions, getting, put, putting some questions out there where you can about it. Um, uh, what, what is actually challenging people, where they're actually wanting to go, and, and helping define if they're a good fit for you and, and the work that you do, and how you can best, um, help them see where they are, where they want to be, and the 3 things that need to go right to get them there. So let the conversations and the connections as they happen define what the community container looks like. I would say start with the lowest level of obligation that you can. I would encourage you to reward the innovators and early adopters. You know, if you have people that are active that joined when it was free, let them stay for free while you start charging people that are coming in as members of the early adopter or early majority. The other thing about community is that you can really leverage the power of insider-outsider status and FOMO, which is— I am terrible about doing this, but What I do remember, like, I love taking pictures of our call, you know, our Zoom room with all the smiling faces and grandmas and grandpas and moms and dads holding their kids or the kids coming into the room or just, you know, seeing advertising that, you know, there are a bunch of people hanging out here who are obviously having a good time and obviously accomplishing great things. That's the way that I think about it is how can I create amazing— everyone in the room feels seen, heard, and understood and finds value, enough value in the conversation that they can't help but walk around in the world a changed, transformed person that gets their friends and neighbors to say, "Hey, what's going on with you?" Or even better, they become evangelicals that just can't help talking about you and the the work that you're doing. Um, and then let the community decide what the, you know, what the community needs and what the, you know, what, what, um, organizing scaffolding needs to be put up to continue to keep the community, uh, alive and vibrant and, um, fulfilling and joyful. Um, and it will often look much different than what you thought. You were a member of my very first community, and I'm sure you remember what that looked like. We had all sorts of stuff, uh, and none of it worked very well, and none of it was very well attended. But now that we're just like, hey, let's get together on Mondays and Fridays and hang out for a half hour and talk about stuff that's interesting and insightful, and, uh, if you want to come watch me coach clients on Wednesdays, you can sit in and do that. And every Every month we'll get together and do a deep dive on some sort of topic that will help move your business forward. That's what our community is, and it's the most successful community I've ever been the host of. So I hope that is helpful. See, we're going to move on to Brianna and then wrap up. Yeah, Emma. Okay, so that was a question before Emma got here. Okay, so Bree is last up, but before I do that, I just want to confirm that there are people here. Okay, good. Penny, Penny wrote a comment. Yeah, and Penny, because we're working together and you have access to me every single day, we can use our Voxer app connection to continue to unpack this idea. I think it's a great idea for you, by the way. Okay. Moving on to Bree. Uh, Bree says, I think I've dialed into who I work with best. It includes therapists, but not just therapists. I think I'm drawn toward helping people who are creative and feel like the world has pushed them down a certain path in life, but now they are tired of it and want to build a business that works with who they are and their wild creativity. Excuse me. I also realized that coaching is often about, is often the path to self-actualization. I would agree with that. I am working on a post about the above. I'm also working on building that asynchronous coaching. So she's referring to something like the email coaching that I do, which is called Inbox Catalyst. Here's the question. I continuously feel stuck with reaching out to prospects and building structural tension as Joseph talks about. Or inception. I think it's because I'm highly sensitive and afraid a bit of what could happen, or maybe it's because I'm not ready. I think building a community helps protect me from this as I get to know people. My question is, how do you push forward when you keep feeling an inner nope about reaching out to prospects? I love that. This actually is a great question and it ties directly or loosely to all the other conversations, and it's something I haven't mentioned yet, and it's the idea of non-attachment. We all have these preconceived notions of what success means to us, what it looks like, and It's usually tied to reputation, remuneration, fame and fortune, right? Likes, shares, comments. But none of that stuff actually matters. Like, I know Bri, you, like really any member of our community, I mean, your primary objective is to make the biggest difference that you can in the world with the people that you care about. You've clearly defined who those people are and you have very good ideas about what you can help them accomplish. The thing about any kind of offering is you have to remember that everybody likes to buy things, but nobody likes to be sold. If we didn't like to buy things, there wouldn't be so much shit to buy. Go to the grocery store, go to Target, go to Walmart. We love to buy stuff, but we don't like to be sold to. And in the online space in particular, the digital marketers and online gurus have gotten so ubiquitous and are so good that they have figured out every trick in the book when it comes to psychological tricks and hacks and false urgency and scarcity and reciprocity and all these things that they found every way they can to tricking us into selling something through trickery and hackery. As opposed to us, like, buying that. Now the market is so jaded and in some cases bitter, definitely, you know, cynical, or at the very least skeptical about anybody that's selling anything. So what I have found is that I just, like, as someone that definitely tried to be a digital marketer for a little while and didn't like the way it made me feel. Everything changed for me when I just stopped selling, period. I don't even really like think about marketing in the way that people usually think about it. You know, I'm not just trying to steal people's awareness and attention so that I can steal their permission and trust so that I can steal their interest in what I want to sell. And then I can use all the tricks and hacks to get them to invest in what I have to offer instead. I just, I put myself in, into conversations where I can truly help people see what they don't see and help them see that they already have everything they need to accomplish the things that they want to do and give them some sort of roadmap that shows them that here's where you are, here's where you want to be, and here's the way that you can get there. And We all know that time and randomness are undefeated and time and randomness will happen. Time will pass, random things will happen, and there are opportunities and obstacles to you achieve— accomplishing what you want to accomplish that we just can't see right now. And if you want a trusted guide then to help you recognize and respond to the inevitable opportunities and obstacles that are coming so that you can continue to collapse time with greater ease and velocity, I'd love— I'm available. So I'm not selling anything. I am— when I do an icebreaker and 5-question assessment of a person's situation. That's all entirely for free. And it takes some time. You know, it doesn't take me much time because I've been doing this for so long, but it's not like it doesn't cost me anything. But if during, you know, what normally happens is you got someone interested enough to get on a call and then you use all the discovery call, sales call tricks to back them into a corner, blast all their objections, use false urgency and scarcity to get them to buy something. And then as soon as you hang up on that call, they immediately go into buyer's remorse. Like, that's not a great way to start a relationship with a client, customer. Um, what I do is I just front load the process. If I have a conversation with someone and I realize that they're not a good fit for me, I can encourage them to move on or suggest a competitor that is better suited for what they're trying to accomplish. If I identify that they are the kind of person that would, that I would like to work with and who would benefit from working with me, the kind of audit assessment diagnostic process allows me to Give them a MapQuest roadmap. Here's what I, here's what you actually are trying to accomplish. Here's where you actually are. Here are the 3 things that need to go right in order for you to get there. And I give this to you and I wish you the very best of luck. And just be aware that, that there's going to be opportunities and obstacles that come up that we can't see right now. And that's going to create confusion and even increase the amount of uncertainty. I totally get it. I've been there a million times before. My superpowers, I'm able to navigate the obstacles, identify the opportunities, and in many cases turn the obstacles into opportunities. That's the kind of person that you would like to work with so that you can catalyze your experience, collapse time to target, and build the kind of business, optimize your business to fund and fit the lifestyle you actually want to be living. There are ways we can work together. Just let me know and I'll let you know what the options are. I never sell anybody anything. So at every step of the way, they have to ask me what the next step is that we can take together. You know, I give them the icebreaker I send them the icebreaker question, they send the responses, and I tell them, hey, I've got some time. If you want to answer 5 quick questions, I'll see if I can be more helpful. They don't have to request the 5 questions. I send them the questions and tell them that if they can get it to me in a couple days, I'll be happy to provide as much help as I can. They send the 5 questions, I share as much help as I can, and I tell them if they'd like to continue this process, I have a very low-cost I have a, um, coach by email program that, um, includes 5 additional, uh, 5 email exchange over the course of 2 weeks. I'm confident we can get some traction and momentum going. If you want to do that, let me know. They request the link, they enroll in that. We go through that exchange. They get more clarity, more certainty. They're actually in motion, taking intentional action. They've changed their mindset already. And so when I say, if you want to, if you want to continue to work together, there are definitely ways that we can do that. If you're interested in talking about that, just let me know. And if they respond, I'd let them know what the options are. I've not at any point said, here's what's for sale, do you want to buy it? I've helped them at every stage and let them know that there's more help if they want it. And so that's the inception move. It's never my idea to get them to buy something. So I'm not selling anything. It's their idea to buy something because what they just got from me worked. Which gives them confidence that the next thing they buy from me, even if it's just purchased with time and attention and effort, that it will work. And if I keep delivering on my promises, when it comes time to spend some real money, it's much easier to do. It doesn't even seem like, um, an expense. It seems like an investment in helping them get what they want. Faster and easier. Uh, so that's my take on inception. Um, I haven't read Joseph's stuff on structural tension in a while, but, uh, I get the idea. Um, it's, it's akin to empathetic antagonism, uh, which you should be very familiar with. Awesome. Well, we, uh, we had just 4 or 5 questions, but we managed to go a our— I haven't seen any other questions coming in. I see that Margaret and Meta Medieval Realms and John also joined the call. So I appreciate the gift of your time and attention. If you're not currently subscribed to the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model, it's— we deliver goodness to your inbox about building and optimizing a business that better funds and fits Your Ideal Lifestyle every week for absolutely free. And if you want to take a bolder step into possibility, the Solopreneur Success Circle is part of your paid subscription. $9 a month, $90 a year gives you access to two weekly community calls, sitting in on a weekly coaching call, and doing a deep dive workshop with Q&A and implementation every month. Awesome. Thank you, Alice. Appreciate it. Great to have you with us, by the way. Emma, Penny, Bri, Alice is our newest member. Make her feel welcome. And yeah, I don't know if I'm going to share this replay on Substack, but I will create a YouTube video and share it in the community chat. So if anybody wants to review this, there will be a way to do that. Happy Sunday, everybody. I'm going to go, I'm going to go make some burgers and You know, I'm on a bun with a lot of ketchup and mustard. Have a great, great rest of your weekend. Have a great week. I'll see some of you tomorrow on the community call, the Monday @Purpose call in the Circle community. Take care.