Lead Your Business.
Share the Load.

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

When you run a business on your own, the hardest person to deal with often isn't your clients, it's you. There's no team to bounce ideas off, there's no boss to keep you on track, and no one to celebrate the wins. You have to manage your time, your energy, your emotions, and your mindset every single day. And that's not easy. And most people don't talk about what that really feels like. Today I want to talk about the real side with Dixie about making your way as a solopreneur. The mental, emotional, practical stuff that happens behind the scenes.

Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:46

Good morning, Brad. How are you today? Looking good? Your office Beckermond? And it's fancy.

Brad Hauck 00:51

Fancy background. Got to have a fancy background. Working on your own, it's a pretty common thing for speakers. We often start out on our own, we leave a job, or we're doing a job and we start speaking on the side. Not many people actually kind of sit down and go, I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to have this big team around them and bring a million dollars to the table. It doesn't really start like that where a startup business might have capital and things. Most people start out on their own, or maybe with one person helping them, might be a family member, or it might be someone that they hire.

And there's a lot of things going on in your life when you're doing things yourself.

Dixie Carlton 01:29

There sure is. And certain times when you have to actually step away from your business because you've got to go to a conference or you've got to be in transit somewhere in this particular industry, that can be even harder because you've got to think about whether you need someone to cover you or whether you're going to be doing Zoom calls at the airport or waiting in the lounge and things like that. It can be really challenging when you are a solopreneur if you don't have someone who can also back you up when you are stepped down in the office.

Brad Hauck 01:56

Absolutely.

Dixie Carlton 01:57

Yeah. Many of our listeners know that I travel and live between Bali and New Zealand these days. So I also have to deal with time zones and things like that. But the ability to have someone to assist becomes purely a matter of how I deal with that on a remote basis. So most of my team, my constant team, are constant. We know each other. We all just work. Sometimes we do get together around a table, but often it is a remote working situation. But it makes it really hard when I think about, which I am at the moment, thinking about bringing in a new person just to operate as the support back office extra hands-on person for when things need to be done, but we just run out of time.

And it is a challenging thing to even contemplate. I've thought about VAs, I've thought about getting people that I already know who do some things that could do additional things. It's a real conundrum. How do you handle it, Brand?

Brad Hauck 02:52

Yeah, look, it's really hard. I mean, I've mostly worked as a solopreneur over the last 10 years or so. But before that, I had up to 74 staff at any one time. And the way I did that was I actually had a manager in the other country. And the manager took care of things, and I talked with the manager, and that worked really well. And so actually just having a small team that I dealt with who dealt with the bigger teams made it much, much easier. It's a bit like at the fire station. I have my office of crew and they all have their responsibilities within the station, and then they take care of that and they get people to help and all those sorts of things.

But I don't have to deal with it fixing a truck on a daily basis. That's their job. And I think if you can bring some of that thinking in, sometimes it's really worthwhile to hire within a country, within sometimes they're organizations where you can have a manager and a team underneath them, where they're there in the room with the team, as opposed to necessarily everyone being virtual in their own little worlds, can work. There's no doubt I've had a lot of people who work like that. But yeah, sometimes it's just easier to be able to hand something to someone and know that they're going to deal directly with the other people.

Dixie Carlton 04:02

Yeah. And it takes time too. Like even the people that I work so closely with now on a consistent basis, like Amy, for example, who takes care of all our website work and all of our design work. She's my two I see. She's my go-to for everything, and she's in charge when I'm looking at. But it has taken a couple of years for us to get to the point where I can just hand things off to her and feel really confident that will be looked after to the level that I would expect it to be looked after if I was doing it in terms of client contact, for example.

So maybe there's this thing that we sometimes do when we get used to working on our own and doing our own thing so often that we forget to learn how to delegate. We forget to learn how to trust and appreciate what other people can do when we step back. And as you said at the beginning, sometimes we are our own worst enemy because or our own worst clients, because we get in our own way. We forget about stepping back and just letting go of the reins a little bit and allowing someone in to prove themselves.

Brad Hauck 05:04

Yeah, I think obviously most speakers are control freaks because they run their own business, they're in charge, they want to be in charge, and that's why they're doing it. So there's always that level of control. But I think the first thing you've got to learn about yourself is you're actually the worst at everything else except what you do. So just because you can speak on a stage doesn't mean you're good at doing accounting. And you need to realize you might be a really smart person, okay, but you are not the best. And if you've come from business, you were not alone.

You might think you were the person doing all the work, but in fact, there was a lot of other people doing work around you that you didn't understand necessarily what they were doing. You just thought it was something separate to what you do, and in fact, there's overlaps in all of that. And so the best thing you can do is find someone who you can work with, show how you want it done, but then let them show you how it can be done. In other words, give them a little bit of rope to actually go out there and bring back something that looks really good.

Yes, you can control, say, branding, but let them show you how things can really look or how they can be done, because they're gonna have a whole different life experience to you. And it will be within that area that you're hiring them for. Unlike you, who doesn't have any skills in that area. You just think you do.

Dixie Carlton 06:30

Exactly. And it's that whole process of learning to let go and trust that other people do know at least as much or more than what you do in some areas. But the testing is still hard to do if you've been burnt a couple of times, which I know I have, and I know you have every now and then you strike a dud mix of someone that thinks that they're gonna sell you a really good thing and then they just don't deliver. And that can be hard to move past as well. One of the things that I'm critically aware of at the moment is that I'm working on scaling up my business and bringing on a few people who are additionally specialist in areas that we do a little bit of, but we need to do more of.

And so we're looking at perhaps the option of the VA concept, someone we know who trains specifically people who are VAs for speakers and authors. I'll be looking at that. And of course, that process of going through and making those decisions means looking really carefully at all of the things specifically we want them to be able to do. So a VA, for example, which is a relatively easy to uh engage now, looking at your onboarding process, looking at what exact skills you need them to have, to what degree of cyber security are you going to engage in with them?

How are you going to deal with things like the passwords and the one-time password, the extra access double factor authentication issues that we often have, for example, signing into many of our platforms now?

Brad Hauck 07:59

Yeah, center five.

Dixie Carlton 08:01

Yeah. So we have to do a lot of planning now, a lot of thinking about not only what skills they need, what platforms they're used to using, what level of, I guess, even emotional and software intelligence they need to have and bring to the table. And then how often, how much do we need them? There's so much planning that goes into that.

Brad Hauck 08:21

Yeah, there's a lot of work involved. The two-factor authentication is the bane of my life because I work in people's websites and social media platforms and things like that all the time. And invariably I change from my desktop to my laptop, but it doesn't know that Chrome version, it knows this one. So then I've got to ring them and get logged in on that one. Like it's a constant battle for me. And often you can get kicked out by the systems as well. There is a lot of planning involved. And I think there's some steps you can take.

And one of the things, as I said earlier on, is I hired within a team where it had a manager in that. And there is a lot of companies in the Philippines and India now where you can actually hire into a place. And then they hire and fire people to fit what you need. So you're not dealing with that. They can go through people, but they're still delivering the product. Now, it costs you a little bit more because you're actually paying for the management, but it takes away the hassle having to find the people. And so I often encourage people to look at that rather than having to hire one and go to these places.

And you'll see this on Upwork and places like that, where they actually are large teams, even though they're advertising their own services. It's worth looking at their full portfolio and saying, Oh, they are part of this company or something, because you can save a lot of time and money because you're not having to do the hire and file.

Dixie Carlton 09:46

Very good point. And as we get to this time of the year, it's quite an interesting time to be considering all of this, because we get to that point where, oh my goodness, a whole other year has almost gone by. And we're busy, we're thinking about what we're going to do for planning for next year, we're putting things in place for kicking off in February, for example. There's also this busyness now at the end of November, early December. But then at the same time, there's this big gap, this big gaping chasm that comes up for all of us down under where things shut down and pretty much everyone knows that business stops from about the 15th of December till about the 15th of January, or maybe a week either side of that, even.

So four to six weeks of time out, which is a really good time to actually get these things sorted and to start onboarding someone or onboarding a new system if that's what you decide to do. Do you do a lot of planning for growth and people needs or resource needs at this time of the year?

Brad Hauck 10:46

I spend a bit of time thinking about what I want to achieve, a bit of goal setting, I suppose, more than anything. I try to stay away from hiring and firing at this time of year because there's just too many people not available. Yes, I want to start back into doing that, but I know I really can't look at that till say February, because of the fact that Christmas, certainly within your Western countries and in a lot of other countries now, to be honest, is a big holiday. It's a big religious festival and it's also a holiday time where people travel to see family, or in many countries, it's the only time of the year they get time off when business is shut.

So you're not going to get much out of a lot of people around that time of year. So it's not always the best time to do that, but definitely the time to be thinking about okay, what do I want to achieve this year? What am I going to need to be able to achieve that? How many clients do I need to be able to pay that person? Those sorts of things, looking for that sort of plan.

Dixie Carlton 11:44

That's right. Then there's the other whole side of this, even in this last few months, has become more and more evident in conversations I've had more people recently, where they've said, instead of hiring someone new, just learn a couple of new software platforms or a new AI option, and that will actually take care of most of what you think you need. And I that and thought about that a lot too. I mean, you're a whiz with AI, obviously. I use various platforms that make my life easier and faster and more efficient. But sometimes it does come down to sitting and planning how much can I actually get through myself?

How much of a lifestyle does my business want to be in terms of a growth model versus a lifestyle model that is still profitable but doesn't rely so much on other people? So you also have those kind of decisions to make. Do I spend the next few weeks onboarding something new in terms of new people? Or do I spend that time getting more sophisticated with my use of software and resources that I already have available?

Brad Hauck 12:47

Yeah, that's true. I mean, AI is a wonderful thing, but I think sometimes it's worthwhile looking at maybe I should hire someone who does AI. Instead of going and finding more programs, you need to find someone who does automations, who builds those things, and maybe hire them to do some for you. But make a list of problems that could be solved with AI possibly. Because in the end, you're still handling a lot of stuff. I know I have tools like Opus that I use for my videos to do my shorts. And until recently, I've I've been uploading those videos and then I've been choosing the options and then downloading the videos and uploading them individually.

And then recently I realize they've upgraded their software. And in fact, it will pull my latest video from YouTube. It will automatically cut it for me and do it using the template that I've already chosen. And then all I got to do is go select all and schedule, and actually schedule all of them to my social media without me having to do anything. Things change in how things are done as well. So you need someone who's keeping on top of that, and you're not always going to have the time to do it. So getting someone who's actually up on AI who can do the program and can set stuff up where you can just flick stuff too.

It's a bit like having a PA, except they're an AI PA. They can get rid of a lot of that ongoing work, the busy work that could be automated.

Dixie Carlton 14:05

That is a very good point. Yes. So what will you be tackling as a result of this conversation? And I'm asking you, Brad, as well as all of our listeners, what will you be doing and taking action on over the next few weeks as you consider brings things?

Brad Hauck 14:23

Yeah. So something I've been working on. Basically, I believe education is the key to selling. Always have, always will. I think it's about understanding people's businesses and getting them to understand what you do. So I developed a series of questions that I ask people now. I do that as a video interview. And then I take that video interview and I've developed an AI that then turns that into content for people. And so we've got video content, reels, we've got written content for your social media, articles for your website, email follow-ups, breakdowns on your business and how you can better word what you do, all those sorts of things.

So I get an almost one-hour interview, and out of that I get so much content for people. So I'm in the process of just finishing the automation of that. I've got it where I can do the work. I've got all my prompts done. And now I'm sitting down and I'm actually programming that up so that I can feed in a transcript and have all the other stuff come out the other end for somebody. So I'll be spending a lot of time on that. But the output at the moment is exceptional. It blows me away. I've just done some work with Lindsay Adams stuff, and I've got to see him this afternoon, and I'm going to show him some of the stuff that's come out of that.

And it is mind-blowing because when people are interviewed and asked about their business, what comes out is entirely different to what they write on their website. It gives such a much more in-depth view of how they see what they do.

Dixie Carlton 15:49

Yeah, absolutely. Sign me up for that.

Brad Hauck 15:53

So what are you doing?

Dixie Carlton 15:54

What am I doing? I am working on some scalability options with mentors and engaging myself in two new mentors that I've been talking to so that I can keep accountability straight for myself. As a coach myself, it's always hard to sometimes recognize that we also need good coaches working with us to get things done because otherwise it'd be easy to become like the plumber with the dripping tap. And so working really closely with a couple of mentors to actually map out some specific scalability projects is what I'll be focusing on over the next few weeks.

But yeah, I'm really liking the sound of what you're talking about with getting the AI assistant. Sounds like a really good plan that I'll be investigating further.

Brad Hauck 16:41

Yeah, look at just simple problems that can be solved simply. And don't go for the big complex ones. That's the worst place. Most people start with an AI and they go, Oh, I'm going to solve world peace, instead of saying I'm going to solve this one little chunk. Because once you've got that chunk, you can tap that onto the next chunk and then it becomes world peace eventually.

Dixie Carlton 17:00

But small goals start off with with promises of world peace.

Brad Hauck 17:08

So being a solo entrepreneur isn't about building a business, it's about learning to manage the use. The highs up at the quiet moments can test your mindset more than any client will ever. The good news is once you learn to lead yourself and run your business, everything else becomes a little bit easier. Thanks for tuning into the experts' journey. If you picked up some useful tips today, take a moment and subscribe and share this episode with a fellow speaker or expert in your network. It really helps us reach more people. And don't forget to check out our books on Amazon, Dixie's Start with a Draft, How to Easily Plan and Write a Nonfiction Book, and a dynamic new conference in a book series.

The first one being Connect, Lead Succeed. And my book, of course, Micro Course Profits, Build a Seven Figure Income with Bite Size Courses. Both are packed with practical tools to help you grow your business faster. We'll catch you next time.

Dixie Carlton 17:58

Thanks, Brad. Talk soon.