Less Is More

Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, a show dedicated to helping solopreneurs like you build a fulfilling lifestyle business that funds and fits your ideal lifestyle. I'm your host, Scott Perry, author of the Solopreneur Success Stack on Substack, also your guide in the Close the Gap 90-Day Solopreneur Success Accelerator, and also author of the Close the Gap handbook coming out on Thanksgiving Day USA 2024. Uh, to learn more about Close the Gap, the book and the program, you can see the, uh, articles that are linked down below. And this is a series of, uh, broadcast called Solopreneur Success Secrets where I'm sharing some of the principles and practices that are taught in the book to help solopreneurs get clearer about their destination and their starting point so that they can clarify their direction, craft their path, and collapse time to target to achieve your solopreneur goals. And today we're going to talk about the topic of less is more, or more does not equal closer. And this is a principle that applies itself a couple of different times throughout the book. What I'm going to do is I'm going to refer on, on this for just a little bit, maybe 10-15 minutes, and if members of the Solopreneur Success Circle community hop in the broadcast room, we'll bring them up to roundtable, uh, and discuss these ideas, uh, together. Um, the Solopreneur Success Circle are paid members of the Solopreneur nerd success stack Substack publication. So the thing to— place to begin probably with this idea of less is more or more does not equal closer is to acknowledge and accept that chasing after more, seeking more is kind of our default setting as human beings. We are programmed through neurochemistry, evolution, biology to chase after more. We are very attracted to new things, to shiny objects. We love tools and tactics. And oftentimes, as solopreneurs, that default programming and conditioning causes us to just keep chasing after more tools, more tactics, more strategies, especially those that are peddled on social media by digital marketers. And online gurus who have some sort of tool or tactic, some software solution, what have you, that, uh, or maybe some system or, uh, strategy that is guaranteed to help you book more calls, get more clients, fill your program, teach you how to, uh, become a successful solopreneur by starting an Instagram account or a YouTube channel or a podcast or write a book or what have you. So it's a kind of almost, almost a drug for solopreneurs. We love collecting these, chasing these shiny objects. We love learning. And we spend a lot of our time collecting dots. And it turns out that in most cases, especially with the solopreneurs that I'm working with that have demonstrated that they have the ability to create businesses that make a difference worth making and have had some success in marketing and selling that service or product, they have already demonstrated that they possess everything they need to have a successful business. And it's not really a question of what else do they need. There's not this missing puzzle piece in there that they need to find, or this missing link in their marketing or sales system. What they actually need to do is to just connect the few necessary dots that they've already collected and put that together into a system that will help them get the word out about their product or service and, uh, then start to boost the efficiency and the effectiveness of that system, that sales system, that marketing system. We use, uh, what we call Be a Blessing Marketing. We're going to be doing a workshop about that coming up in a couple of weekends, and so you can learn more about that by just going to the Solopreneur Success Stack on Substack. But in addition to the— our default programming and conditioning, uh, and our kind of desire to keep chasing new tools, new tactics, new solutions to problems that maybe we really need to solve and wasting our time, our precious resources around time, attention, money, and effort. There's also the problem that more causes when we have crafted some sort of marketing and sales success system for selling whatever it is that we sell, whether it's a coach or a teacher or a healer or that's filling a program or or someone that is selling an online course or some sort of other product. And what we're talking about here is a core component of the Close the Gap Handbook and the Close the Gap 90-Day Solopreneur Success Accelerator. And that is that we are— in order to build a dependable, reliable, sustainable sales success system, we have to think like system engineers. We have to remember that system reliability is not an addition problem. Adding more components to your system will not make it more effective or efficient. In fact, it will do exactly the opposite because system reliability is not a function, is not a, is not an addition problem. It's a multiplication problem based on the, the percentage of effectiveness and efficiency of each of the components. If you take a system that has 3 components that are 90% reliable, that system overall is going to be 9, 9, 9, 90% times 90% times 90% reliable. Which is 90% times 90% is 81% times 90% is 72%. So even if you have a pretty highly functioning system where each component is, is operating at 90%, when you multiply the efficiency of all those components, your efficiency is greatly diminished. So what we need to first do, instead of chasing after more, is instead of adding components to our system, what we actually have to do is a little bit of subtraction. We have to take away all the components of that system that are unnecessary or that are driving down the efficiency and effectiveness of our system. And after we get rid of all the unnecessary components, what we look at the essential and necessary components that are left over. We have to look at boosting the efficiency and the effectiveness of whatever the least efficient or effective component is. So this is where things can get really interesting, because again, if I have 3 components that are 90% effective, and therefore have a system reliability of of 72%, but I'm only maintaining those, those components and, and optimizing and working on those components 50% of the time, I'm going to really reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of my system. And so here's another feature of system reliability. The least effective component of any system at least any system that, that has to do with marketing and sales around solopreneur services or products or causes, is the human being at the controls. The human being that's pushing the buttons and pulling the levers and trying to get that system to work. That is the least effective component. Why is that? Because human beings, I don't know if you've noticed, are pretty fraught creatures. We, we are prone to cognitive distortions and cognitive biases and false beliefs, to imposter syndrome and our inner critic and our inner saboteur and all of these things. So really, when we're looking at, once we have dialed in a system for marketing and selling our product or service, when we're looking at when we've dialed it into just the essential components, the place to begin, in terms of boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall system, is almost always going to be at working on the human that is at the controls, the human that is creating the content that's going on social media, or crafting the emails that are going out to the mailing list, or creating blog content, or YouTube videos, or podcast content, whatever it is. That human, if we can boost the effectiveness and efficiency of that human, then the system is going to be much more reliable. So again, the, the core idea here is more does not get you closer to what you want. More, in fact, always will get you further away from what you want because you're either chasing after things that are unnecessary and collecting more dots that you don't need to collect, which means that you're distracting yourself and wasting your precious resources around time, attention, money, and effort on things that are not necessary. And you're not spending time connecting the right dots that you need to create the most effective and efficient system that you can begin with, and then start raising the floor on the least effective and efficient components of that system. So that the system can be optimized. If you have a system, a sales success system, that is made up of just the essential components and you are working every day at raising the floor on the least effective or efficient component, what you are doing is you are conserving your most precious resources as a solopreneur, which are your time, your attention, your money, and your effort. So As you're thinking about optimizing your solopreneur business, or maybe if you're just beginning to build a solopreneur enterprise, think about making sure that you take an audit of all your assets and resources, the things that you already possess. What are those, those things that you need to connect together into a sales success system? And then how do you work at maintaining the most effective and efficient system possible with the least number of components and raise the floor on the least effective and efficient components so that you can optimize the system over time, which only will give you more time, attention, money, and effort to invest in either continuing to optimize or maybe even scale your business but maybe invest in the things that really matter to you. The reason why you started a solopreneur business probably is not because you thought it was the best way to make a lot of money and save a lot of time. If you wanted more time or more money, there's lots of easier ways to do it other than creating a solopreneur business. Um, but if that is what you are called to do in your life, then you can craft a business that funds and fits your ideal lifestyle, leaving you plenty of time, attention, money, and effort to invest in the things that actually matter to you. So if you're interested in exploring these ideas more, you can, uh, look at the links down below. There's a link to the, the upcoming book. Uh, the people that are subscribed to the Solopreneur Success Stack are already reading the advanced copy and, and the chapters that have been published. And, uh, if you're interested in the Close the Gap 90-Day Success Accelerator, then there's a link there as well. We've got Penny in the broadcast room. And so we're gonna jam for a few more minutes here on this topic of "More Does Not Equal Closer" or "Less Is More." And there she is. Hey, Penny!

Hi!

I saw you pop in there towards the end. I don't know if you were listening elsewhere or not, but I'd welcome any reflections or questions you have. Just off the top of your head from what you heard and what was shared?

No, I think part of the learning for me is to apply it to me. I can repeat to you what you said, but then to apply it. I think the fact that I'm trying to create some change in my work, that, that's, it's the re-expression or changing how do I express it so that people are interested, not just think that it's not worthy. And, and it's taken me a while to really value that, that part of it, but I think working with a potential client, I've been really able to see what, in a live way, what she's concerned about and what she wants to do. And, um, so that's helping me. But I do— I'm very easy to pull me off into something where I think I'm going to learn something and it's nothing but a waste of time. And so I think also being quick to identify those things so you don't go wandering down some rabbit hole. Somewhere. I, I'm good at that.

Yeah, well, congratulations, you're a human being acting like a human being, because I think that's, that's most human beings, uh, find themselves pretty easily distracted. I mean, the fact that I'm broadcasting across social media, which is designed and engineered to be distracting and to help people spend more of their precious time, attention, and energy on the platforms, and providing a platform for online gurus and digital marketers to sell their stuff is— the irony is not lost upon me. But one, one additional reflection based on what you just shared around this idea of, you know, not chasing after more, and, you know, more does not equal closer, less is actually more, is You know, as you're looking at what do you need right now to, to hone your craft and, and build your— take the next right step with your business is you have to kind of establish what is enough. And what I was hearing and what you're saying, and because you and I have been working together for a while, I know more of the context around this potential client that you're working with. Like, is, is, is we, we think that we need to chase after, uh, we have to build this funnel so that we can get thousands of people in the top of the funnel and, and jam them through some sort of email sequence and, um, get 1 or 2 of them or 10 of them to drip out the bottom as clients. But what I love about the way that you're, you know, what you've been doing over the past, um, couple of months in the Close the Gap program is, you know, you have this very interested lead that is, it sounds like you're turning into a client. And that's enough for right now. Like, it's always about what— we talk quite a bit about what's the next right step and doing the right thing at the right time in the right sequence. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of this less is more and more does not equal closer thinking. Baked into that idea. You've got plenty to work with right in front of you right now, and therefore there's no need to go chase after some new program or read some new book or join some new course or what have you.

I, I think that what's, what has become clear in this chasing for me is is though, is to trust myself that I can put this together and I don't need to attend another class to tell me, like, it's going to give me the answer and I'll just take what I hear and put it here and it will get me the client. And obviously that's not true, but I think that's been part of, well, I don't want to miss something because maybe, maybe I'll learn something that's going to help me put this together. When to really work and putting this together with this particular client has had me stop and really go into here and my experience, and, and it's there. I think I just didn't give it I don't know, just, just afraid that it wasn't, I guess, or something. Just a lack of trust in myself.

Yeah, well, that's a, that's a great reflection. What it brings to mind for me is how chasing after more, in addition to just being kind of our default setting as human beings and, and something that we're, um, you know, that that we're conditioned to do by social media. Um, it's also a really seductive way to hide. If you're spending all of your time chasing after more information on YouTube, or, you know, more, uh, learning on, on Facebook, or, um, listening to more podcasts, or taking more courses, or what have you, it, you know, it feels like you're doing something meaningful that it feels like more might be a way to get you closer.

Right.

But, but in fact, if it's taking you away from actually engaging the field and doing the work that you need to do so that you can learn what you need to learn to hone your craft, both in whatever, whatever business you seek to be preeminent in, but also to hone your craft in, in terms of marketing and you know, and selling that offer. It is, it is just plain and simple, uh, hiding. It's seductive, and it's, uh, and it may be an unconscious, but to, you know, we're, we are, we, we talk about the, the Dr. Jeff Spencer's 3 sins quite often in our program, right? Dull, distracted, or delusional. You know, dull is you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result. And this is, you know, what happens when we just keep moving from book to book to book or course to course to course, thinking that somehow this will be the one that changes the game for us without ever really taking action on the content we're consuming. So that's just a way of being dull. You're, you're expecting a miracle to happen by repeating things that have proven to never effectively get you what you want. Distracted is when you are chasing after things on social media or courses or books or what have you and distracting yourself from actually engaging the field and doing the work. And then delusional is also tied to this idea that we believe what we believe simply because we believe it. We don't question our assumptions and we don't— and, and we don't test and validate our systems or optimize them. So it's a, it's a really great share. And I think one of the things that has been hopefully clarifying to you and the other people in the Close the Gap 90-Day Solopreneur Success Accelerator is, you know, when you, when you clearly define a 90-day goal, And you take an audit of all of your assets and resources. You have established direction. You know where you are and where you want to be. And then you can craft the path that will get you there, the 3 things, you know, that need to go right enough for you to start making progress towards your goal. And then we can optimize that system and close the gap by raising the floor on the Least Component System. It's, it's a, it's a way of, it's an antidote to our default programming of just chasing after more stuff and more tools and tactics and strategies and so forth. But by putting ourselves on the hook and focusing on just the few necessary things that have to go right enough to achieve whatever our goal we have for ourselves, whatever our version of success is, I'd be interested if you want to reflect on this. You know, what I notice is that the process makes sense just through common sense, but also just by virtue of the fact that we're reasoning from first principles and using system thinking and system reliability. And, you know, this idea of taking low-risk microsteps so that we don't blow ourselves up or burn ourselves out and You know, we're just doing the next right thing, day after day after day, and those microsteps compound. At the same time, it makes sense. There's proof that it works because you can see it working for yourself. But there's also this discomfort of putting yourself on the hook. Because when we define what success means to us, or what success is to us, we also are defining what failure is, which is everything that is not the version of success that we've established for ourselves.

And so I do think there's a thing that of getting over. I think the, the thing with this, um, 90-day, the idea of being very specific, and you, um, with the weight, like you were just breaking up there, the idea of being opened, being resilient. But the responsibility word is there. And the thing with Jeff and with Nick, they're always— one, I just— that word responsibility has become so big to me that— but it's helping me believe in myself in ways that I never had. Because they make it— and you, and you too— it's like, well, of course you can do it, you know, just take responsibility. Um, and you do it in ways that, that you're not taking great big steps, you're doing it in small ways. And I, that, that— I don't know if I've explained it very well, but that, that has been a huge learning for me. Not that I didn't have it, but I did— it's been this whole mixture of very, very specific steps. Or, you know, just to take something and say DALL-E: Distracted and Delusional, I mean, to make that just so clear when, when you— and it also links with responsibility. And, and so to me, that has been the big word that seems to be everywhere. And in some reason, all that you and Nick and Jeff and Laurel have done has, has enabled that for me, that it's, it's come clearer. It's become in a space— I'm in a space where I can at least try it. And if I screw up, it's not gonna— I'm not gonna be hung out to dry, you know, kind of thing. And, and so I don't know. I think that's huge. And it's not something you can see very well. It's something that helps you not to hide anymore.

It's a— excuse me. It's a great share. And it, it's making me change my mind a little bit about the framing that I use for— so there's the 3 deadly sins of solopreneurship: dull, distracted, and delusional. And then there's the antidote are the 3 virtues of solopreneurship, which you've mentioned responsibility, but there's also receptivity and restraint, right? You have to be open to the fact that there, that there are additional perspectives. There's always additional ways that you can get to where you want to be. And we want to have that, that, that sense of being open and considerate of other, of other perspectives, that we may not have all the answers, and that believing what we believe simply because we believe it is not certainty, it's actually delusion. And then around restraint, like the restraint to not just go chase after the next shiny object, the restraint to not hop on social media just because it feels like it might be something that's worth doing, because maybe you'll learn something for your business or checking your metrics or what have you. And then taking responsibility is, you know, what you shared. That's, to me, that's the biggest one. And it speaks to what we were just saying, you know, when you are holding yourself responsible for what is your responsibility and not taking any responsibility for anybody else's irresponsibilities, it's incredibly empowering. Everything is beyond your control. You can't control other people. You can't control the way elections turn out. You can't control circumstances and situations or when natural disasters are going to strike. All these things that we're going to talk about later this weekend in, in the Stillness in the Storm workshop, which is just a 3-step process for navigating the inevitable challenges of being a human in the world. But when we take responsibility for the really just the 2 things that are always our responsibility or always within our control, which is, how do I see things? And what do I decide to do next? How am I framing myself and my situation and the people I'm with? And how, and how am I deciding and doing what I need to do next?

Yeah, that being very specific. When you take responsibility, it somehow goes together, I think, too.

Yeah, responsibility is definitely the catalyst.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's at this— yeah, I, I do. I think it's just accept, and its ability to accept whatever happens when, when you accept responsibility like that, right?

Oh, well, I— you're, you're speaking to exactly, um, the third step in the process that we're going to be talking about this weekend. I'll be sure to share a link down below. We're having a free workshop uh, free to all Substack, uh, subscribers. Um, and really anybody that, that hears about the, um, workshop is welcome to attend. It's, it's wherever you're watching this, uh, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook, there is a link in my post today that will take you to the information about that workshop.

So, um, so yeah, I'm not gonna be able to come because I've got my nephews nephew's wedding this week on Saturday. So what can I— if I— you want me to sign up so I can get a copy of it so I can watch it, or—

Sure, absolutely. Well, you'll, you'll all— you'll, as a, as a, as a member of the Solopreneur Success Community, you always have access to the replays. But if you sign up, I, I'll be sending a link out to everybody after the broadcast. And, and congratulations on your nephew's wedding. Um, you know, Wedding is a fabulous institution, and if you want to be institutionalized, you know, definitely there, there are worse institutions. Um, and you have your priorities straight, so that's really fantastic.

Yes, yes. Yeah. All right, everyone, it's up in Millinocket, so I know you know where that is.

I sure do. I sure do. Well, we want to thank everyone for tuning in. Penny and I appreciate the gift of your time and attention. I hope today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility in building your solopreneur business on your terms in a way that funds and fits your ideal lifestyle. And if you're ready to keep go-go going with defining and developing and delivering your solopreneur business, go to Substack and find the Solopreneur Success Stack and become a subscriber. If you want to join the community, you can join for as little as $7.50 a month gives you access to all sorts of weekly calls, monthly deep-dive workshops, one-on-one coaching every week with me. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, please take a second and give us a 5-star rating and review the podcast. It really helps more of the right people connect with this content. And now take whatever insight or inspiration you took from this conversation and apply it to building your business and developing yourself in a way that gets you closer to what you want. And we'll look to seeing everyone, uh, next Thursday on the next broadcast. Thanks so much, Penny, for, for swinging by.

Thank you, I enjoyed it.