Build A Business That Serves Your Life | Joe Rando

What if the business you built for freedom became the very thing stealing it? Joe Rando explains why so many solopreneurs unintentionally recreate the stress of a traditional job—and how to build a business that actually supports the life you want.

Summary:
Joe Rando, founder of LifeStarr, joins Chris and Alan to challenge one of entrepreneurship's biggest assumptions: that every business should scale. Instead, Joe explains how solopreneurs can build profitable, sustainable businesses without employees by focusing on lifestyle, recurring revenue, and value-based pricing.

The conversation explores Joe's journey from physics and real estate development to software and coaching, along with the lessons he learned through changing markets and business models. They discuss the "ownership trap" that keeps founders chained to their businesses, why underpricing hurts both the owner and the client, and how defining success on your own terms leads to a healthier, more rewarding business.

Whether you're a freelancer, consultant, coach, or solo service provider, this episode offers practical strategies to create a business that serves your life instead of consuming it.

🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmallBusinessSafari

💡 GOLD NUGGETS 

• What a successful solopreneur business really looks like
• Why growth isn't always the right goal
• Escaping the ownership trap that creates burnout
• Lessons from recurring revenue in commercial real estate
• The pivot from software licensing to service businesses
• Why Ikigai isn't always the best framework for entrepreneurs
• Pricing based on value instead of hours
• Lifestyle business examples that actually work
• Building a business around freedom, not obligation
• Inside the LifeStarr community, upcoming app, and AI solopreneur coach

🔗 Guest Links

• Website: www.lifestarr.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerando

🌍 Follow The Small Business Safari

• Instagram | @smallbusinesssafaripodcast
• LinkedIn | Chris Lalomia
• Website | https://chrislalomia.com

Thanks to our sponsor Smart Hire Solutions LLC!

Transcript

Finding Your Ikigai Intersection

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Talks about you find the things that you're good at, that you're passionate about, that people are willing, that people need and people are willing to pay for. And that intersection is what you should do.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

I didn't know what it was called.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Yeah. And so it's just icky guy. Yeah. It's it and it's the Japanese word ikigai just kind of means reason for being.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

And some I'm trying to spell that in my head.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I was actually I K I G A I.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

So we were I-K-I-G-I-K-I.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

We are I G U I. Like the icky guy.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Icky guy, yeah. Yeah. You're like the uh the old man at the bar, you know, sitting over there at the college place in the corner with his friends. I'm just thinking hypothetically, Alan, and he's the icky guy. Hey, what's that? What's that dirty old man doing on the corner, icky guy? Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls, and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there, and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through this safari. That's what we do after you listen to that music. You gotta get pumped up. You know, you just gotta keep going, keep making it happen. But before we got ready on this podcast, I had to take care of a little bit of the old work shit, people.

A Bathroom Remodel Goes Sideways

SPEAKER_02 1:41

How many people did you fire? No, I didn't fire anybody yet. How many people did you threaten to fire? I uh quick quick talk was um we pull out uh this this lady, of course, uh, when you go into a remodeling job or a small repair, um, we don't have a lot of money. We have to do this. They have one bathroom in the place we're working in. My guys pull out the tub in the bathroom uh just to do some tile work, and the tub literally disintegrates.

unknown 2:07

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

All the lips just fell apart. Uh, somebody had told them, totally done a hack job on this thing. And so the the the customers are in one of those, well, now what situations. Well, now what? Unfortunately, I hate to do this. There aren't really any options. Uh, you can do nothing, or you can pay us to rip out the tub, all the tile around your tub, and start over and do this thing the right way.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Um, it's a great way to scale your business.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

You just try the house and then you have to do more. That's what I kept telling the guys. I'm like, hey, keep telling it's rust, just show them. No, so you you find it share, show, you know, again with the trusted toolbox, Alan. Uh you have to be trusted. But what we had to know is my one of my guys is scrambling, going to get them a tub because they literally have one bathroom in their entire house. They can only be down for so long. Uh, and we're trying to hurry up and get it going. But the guys who were doing this are like, well, did the sales guy get the extra money for us to do this work? I'm like, just go and do it. And I just threaten the sales guy that you either get this done or I will take it and I will get the money. So it's up to you. I mean, the toilet still works, really. I mean, it's the first world they're doing. They're just holding stuff outside. The people aren't panicking, they're actually being very cool, but we're trying to be, you know, good corporate stewards doing another thing that we're doing. Oh, it's so lonely being at the top, Alan. And uh, especially when you got to make payments and stuff like that.

The Lonely Reality Of Scaling

SPEAKER_02 3:29

You know, sometimes I kind of wonder, was it worth it to scale to 32 employees to get up to, you know, um in the I guess what what with the big words are seven figures?

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

That's because you made a two.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Sometimes wish you were just doing it by yourself.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Sometimes you kind of wish was I packed to just being a solopreneur. Give me the solo circuit, give me the mic by myself. I don't want to share the time with anybody else, Binky. Uh, but I do with Alan. That's right. Bye, buddy. I've been doing this podcast with Alan for four and a half years. Said I wouldn't do it with anybody else because I've got to do it with you, buddy. And we've been doing it because I don't like being alone a lot. And uh it's hard being a solopreneur, and that's why I said that was never my goal, never my ambition to do it. But now, after 32 headaches, I mean uh 32 employees, I'm thinking maybe it's not so bad. But that's why we're gonna talk to you today, because we got a great guest on who's gonna

Meet Joe Rando And His Mission

SPEAKER_02 4:23

help you with that. We got, and I didn't even have to ask him how to pronounce his last name because this is so cool. I mean, having this cool name, Joe Rando, come on. And back in the day, Rando rhymes with Rambo. I mean, come on, you had to play with that one, right, John? Come on, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Oh, I heard I heard I heard Rambo all through the 80s, and then the millennials decided to turn my name into the equivalent of Schmo. And he's a Rando. And I and I, yeah, some Rando showed up at the party. And I I walk into I make restaurant reservations, and they really think it's somebody famous coming, and they used a fake name. Oh, and I walk in and they're extremely disappointed. Oh, you should try to I'm gonna start doing in Vegas.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Yeah, I'm gonna do that in Vegas, dude. But you still got the best spot, right? They didn't like uh, I'm sorry, I can't get a nice table, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

But then you know next time they're smarter.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

So random something like a football coach in Jacksonville or something, something they can't trace real easy.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

But but that name that can't be the family name. That had to get shortened somehow, some way.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

No, no, it's I mean, literally, I can trace it back to the 1600s. Wow, yeah. I think it, I think it it in some dialect of Italian, I think it translates to boundary. But really, yeah, but um, you know, I I don't know too much more than that, except it's from a little tiny island off the coast of Sicily called Fillicudi. You can see that's where the family is from.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

We are cousins because uh, you know, as soon as he said a little island, I'm like, well, there's only a couple of them. And he says the one that I'm like, oh, that's the one I remembered. My family's all from Sicily up in the mountains. Uh okay, okay. Yeah, so last name La Lomia, uh, which means little lemon tree. Okay. Well, I don't tell people the money of that. That's I used to tell my grandmother, I was like, bitter lemon tree. I was like, grandma, no, that's exactly right. I'm I'm bitter like a lemon. I said, Are you sure it isn't like big badass? I said, Are you sure it's she goes, No, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. So uh boy, that's really cool. What a great uh history and lineage. Little lemon tree and boundary.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

So, Joe, why don't you give everybody a little snippet of what you do to help solopreneurs, and then we'll jump into stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Sure. Well, basically, I mean the the the short version of the story is I have spent you know decades starting businesses. Um, typically wanted something, at least from the tech perspective, wanted to buy something, couldn't find it, built it. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't. Uh, wanted to buy an app, didn't it didn't exist. I said, you know, I'm gonna make it. I made the app, then was like, where do we sell it? And I work with this woman, Carly Reese. She's also a co-host of our podcast. And um, she said, You should sell this to solopreneurs. This is makes total sense for solopreneurs. And I'm like, great, what is the solopreneur? This is going way back now. And said, Oh, okay, I've been a solopreneur, one-person business, no employees. Um, I've done that. And um, where do we find them? And then we looked where do we find them, and there was no good place to find them, to market to them. And I said, and then I found out there's like 30 million of them in the United States. And I said, you know what? Let's build the place. Then we'll build the app. And, you know, having been a solopreneur, my first business was a solopreneur business by, you know, on purpose. Um, I I kind of understood it and um and started studying it even more and more, getting a modern perspective. Uh, didn't take too long before we were really, you know, kind of became experts on the subjects, along with Carly, because she's a marketing person, and I'm not. And we wrote Solopreneur Business for Dummies, uh, which got published by Wiley back in September. And um been building out our kind of online community, online tools. Um, the app is is uh closely approaching release and all kinds of other fun stuff.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

So do you have to get like is it is your solo is your uh solopreneur for dummies actually the the yellow and black book? I mean, is it the official I mean, is there somebody who's in control of the whole for dummies? Yeah, Wiley. Okay, so Wiley has to go, okay, we like that, and we're gonna add it to our uh Well, they yeah, they they drive the process.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I mean, that really, you know, solid editing team over there, they're really great.

SPEAKER_04 8:37

That's a much thicker book than yours was, Chris. I'm just gonna point that out.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

He's got a lot more depth than I do, Alan. Uh so let's back up. Let's back up a little bit, Joe, and uh just talk about you know coming out of school. Uh did you start in the entrepreneurial world? Where did you start? Where was your goal?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

So basically, what I did is I went to school for for physics. After I gave up trying to be a rock star, I went to school for physics, got a bachelor's in physics, ended up working in fiber optics, uh, doing, you know, kind of datacom over optical fiber for uh about three years. Decided I wanted to, I always had an entrepreneurial bug. I wanted to start my own business. So my father, who was a good businessman that didn't finish college, said, you know what? You're not gonna screw up because of technology, you're gonna screw up because you don't know how to run a business. He goes, get an MBA. So I started consulting. I went full-time for an MBA and uh took about 18, 19 months. And by the time I got out, we had had a massive real estate crash. And it was, I don't remember, 1989, 1990. It was terrible. And in the meantime, especially.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, it was really bad. And and so in the meantime, I had gotten exposed to this concept of retail shopping

Real Estate Deals During A Crash

SPEAKER_00 10:45

center development, and all this stuff was happening with Home Depot, and Kmart was expanding in those days, and Target was coming. And so I and I had an opportunity to get involved in that business. And so I said, you know, I'm gonna start my own solo business. I didn't call a solopreneur in those days, but I'm gonna do this. And it's a terrible time, and I everybody told me I was nuts, but I said, you know, when things are bad, you can make deals. Uh, and ended up tying up some land for really cheap and getting people to be really cooperative, and um developed over the time about a million square feet of retail and uh in the process built some technology to figure out where to put it. And um, so that was kind of where I started as a solopreneur because I just wanted the business to be something I could work at, but not have to develop, because I had a you know a train of you know of employees that I had to keep working, right? Because it's there's times to develop and there's times not to develop. And so that worked really well. I had you know, it was a good life. My kids were little, I had some time to be with them. I wasn't working, you know, a hundred hours a week. And um it that worked out really well. And then I of course I found a way to screw it up, but um, at least in terms of the don't we all let's go back to the fun stuff though.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

So the real estate, you you saw the opportunity. I I love this that you did that because you know, recently, uh for for a lot of people who remember 2008, it would have been good if you would have known it was time uh to wait, wait, wait, and then jump. Hard to time that market. How did you get an ice idea or a sense of that?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Well, what happened the detail is that my my father and his partner owned a holiday inn, and it was the oldest one in New England, and they were gonna revoke the franchise, and they didn't want to not run it as a holiday inn. So the plan was they were gonna tear it down and build a new hotel, but they had a bunch of property they had acquired around it and had a study done, and they said, build a power center. And they're like, you know, what's a power center? And it, you know, a power center is those big box centers that we have everywhere now, but in those days they didn't exist. And in the meantime, my my consulting work was drying up because I was doing fiber optics consulting, but it was drying up. I was charging groceries on my credit card, and I said, Hey, can I help you out with this? Um, I'm a good project manager. I know, you know, um, you know, stuff about you know keeping track of projects and being an engineer and all this stuff. And they said, sure, you know, so I got some work from them, from my dad and his partner helping with this and doing a lot of finance stuff because I was, you know, had gotten good with spreadsheets being an MBA student. And um I looked at the business and I said, you know what? I love this business. This is great. All the risk is up front, then you just collect the rent and pay the mortgage and keep the difference. So I kind of shifted gears and um and ended up changing my MBA conservation to real estate. Um, and when I finished up and working with them, I went out and started tying up property on my own, but the crash had hit. Um, so it was weird because you know, I was gonna probably try to do some little deal, maybe do like a CVS or something, but instead I was able to tie up 68 acres of land for pennies. The the guy that owned it was this Italian guy. Um, and he I was a son he never had, uh, although his daughter was amazing, a really great businesswoman. But, you know, he he worked with me, helped me out. He wanted a lot of money, gave me the chance to make it worth that much money by getting permits and getting tenants, and and we ended up developing that. So that was kind of off to the races. So we just kind of rode the economy back up. It took from 19, I saw the property in 1990 and we broke round on the first door in '98.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

That took a long cycle.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah. But getting permits, you know, getting the it was a it was a site that my software said was great. Wasn't as obvious to the kind of you know, um, real estate people that it was a great location, but eventually they came around and but it was a good way to get off the ground. And so um, and uh I did some other stuff in the meantime, but that was the big one. That was that was almost half a million square feet.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Wow, that's a great deal. All right, so then you you you hinted that, well, I kind of screwed it up. So one of the things we like to do is help everybody not make the same damn mistakes we made.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

So so here's here's what I did. And I I'm glad I did it because it kind of helped me get where I am now today in a couple of ways. But what I did was because the way the development was going, it was really on again, off again. So there's times when I was very busy, and then there were times there was nothing to do. And I don't do well with nothing to do. It's one of the reasons that I probably will never retire because I'll I don't know what I'll do. I'll have to do something. So so I'm I'm kind of bored half the time, and half the time I'm busy. And so I started a software company because I had built this software to figure out where to put uh stores, you know, where stores could do well and um and where they would do poorly. And um, so I had been contacted by a company called Debartolo. Um, they were one of the big mall developers back in those days. They were bought by Simon Malls, but Debartolo owned or still owns the 49ers.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

That's how I knew him. Is that how you knew him? That's how I knew him. Well, really, yeah, but I didn't realize that's how he made his money. I just knew him from Debartle, the one who left.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, and closed malls.

When The Internet Broke The Model

SPEAKER_00 15:57

They were they were like the second biggest in the country, I think. And they had heard about this software I had written um from somebody and wanted to license it. And I'm like, whoa, uh, you know, uh the world just beat a path to my door. So I started another company, and I started a company um doing this, you know, selling this software, and uh kind of went and hired a sales guy, hired some programmers because you know I was gonna be doing other stuff and um got uh some really great people working with me. And we went out and kind of put it all together, and lo and behold, you know, it was it was really a SaaS business, software as a service business. We didn't have that name in those days, but the idea was it was a subscription, you pay it every year. And the sales guy goes out and he lands a hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year deal. I mean, in 1995, that was real money. And well, we were like, we're off to the races, this is the best thing ever. Well, something else happened in 1995 um called the internet. And right, so so what happened?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Don't worry about that, Alan.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

So what happened is now all of a sudden everybody's wondering if there's going to be stores in 10 years, right? So nobody wants to invest in kind of taking this kind of enterprise software into their business and training up their people on how to use it and dah, dah, yeah. So I had two options. I could, I could hang, you know, I had one customer, I could hang it up, um, or I could start doing services, you know, running the software for them, producing the analyses for them, and I decided that I would do the services. And it was a really tough go. I mean, it was a very tough life. Um, you know, doing surveys at night and um just cranking out reports, you know, making all your money, you know, late in the day on Friday because everything else was going toward expenses, and it was it was a lousy business. And, you know, I did it because I had uh, you know, this this you know freight train that was running down the tracks, and I was either gonna have to try to stop it or find a way to keep it going, and I chose to keep it going. And eventually I was, you know, uh everybody was burning out. I was having trouble making money with it, and so I closed it down in 1999. And um, but but some good things happened from that. I don't know if you want me to go into that, but I did, I ended up shutting it down. Uh, it was very pain, it was a very painful process, let's put it that way. But like I said, some seeds were planted that worked out very well in the long run.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

So you learned your lessons. I mean, you obviously go through that. Let's go uh kind of jump forward to Lifestar and what you're doing with that to help people not you know help them get better as a solopreneur.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Yeah, so I mean there's a couple of like I think premises that I I I want to lay out first, which is that you know, I know there's talk about the first billion-dollar solopreneur and all that, and I'm sure it'll happen, and that's great. That's you know, but you know, 99.999% of us. No idea. Oh, yeah, there's there's lots of talk about though there's gonna be a a billion-dollar one-person company.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Okay, somebody's somebody's gonna do that. Hey, between you and me, let me put this on mute for a minute. Between you and me, which one is that? So I can do that. What was that?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

I have no idea. They're just they're just predicting somebody's gonna do it. Shit. All right, yeah, fine. All right, we'll continue. All right, back on everybody. Keep listening. So the yeah, but the the the fact is that probably will happen, but you know, the that's not 99.999% of everybody. That's gonna be the the unicorn. And I don't have a, you know, there's plenty of people that want to chase the unicorns, and I get it, and it's fun and exciting. But, you know, there's just a lot of people out there that, you know, just want to have a business that fundamentally serves

Life First Business Design

SPEAKER_00 19:38

their life, right? So kind of what I did when I started the real estate development business, I wanted to be around, you know, have some time with my kids, have some time with my wife, you know, be able to take a nice vacation, make enough money to be comfortable, um, without, you know, I didn't, I wasn't trying to become, you know, Warren Buffett or or Bill Gates or whatever. So the idea here is if you're starting a one-person business, for the most part, if you're not doing it only to uh, you know, bootstrap your way into it into an employee-based business when you grow enough, if you're really planning on staying one person, you're not doing it to scale, you know, at all costs. You're not trying to become massively big. Scaling can't be your first consideration. Or why are you giving up employees? Those are your best scaling tools or employees. I know they're difficult, you said, you know, before we started, but um they nothing scales like having employees. So if you're not gonna have employees, hey Joe, quick update.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Uh, you said they're difficult when I started, uh, when we started the podcast. Uh we're still in the podcast. They're still difficult. Just quick update.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

They've probably gotten more difficult in just the time we've been together. I'm afraid, but I I put it on do not disturb.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Yeah, it's it's hard. I mean, it's hard. Employees are hard. You know, they there's a lot of challenges with employees. And I I, you know, I do have employee-based businesses. Um, I've had them in the past. Um, I still have one small one now. But um, but the fact is that that um these people are choosing not to have employees, which means they're doing this for some other reason than than scaling at all costs. If they're sane. So, what's the reason? Well, I think it depends on who you are and what you want. So we uh I think most entrepreneurs say, well, I'm gonna escape this corporate, you know, this corporate zoo. Um, you know, the the the situation in corporate is not tenable to me, and I want to go out and I want to solve that by starting my own one-person business. But what do they do? They start off by looking, well, what are my skills? And I'll how do I build a business around my skills? And yet the goal was to build a life, a business that serves the life, but they never define the life they want. And they never design the business to meet the needs of that particular life. So you wind up basically building yourself a job. And I did that with this, you know, with my my um software company. I built a job that made me miss corporate. I mean, corporate was better than that job was that I built with that company. So you really need to think in terms of we call it the ownership trap, right? You're you're you're in a situation where you've now built this business, you own it, it's your baby, and heck, it's just not fun. And so what we've done is we've stepped back and we've developed uh a process for building a one-person business where you start off with the life design and then ways to design the business to meet those goals that you have. And you know, some people, it's they want to be able to work from anywhere. And we have people that every time we talk to them, they come on an event, they're in some part of a different part of the world, right? That's what they wanted. They built the business to do that, they're happy, they did it. Some people want to be able to just get to their kids' games or they want to be able to golf when the weather's nice. Um, some people, you know, really do want to make a lot of money, but they don't want to deal with employees. And they want to do the you know work with the people they want to work with, you can do that. You might be working 70 hours a week, but that's okay with them. So we we've built a process for kind of helping people define what they want, then build the business around the life. And then there's other aspects to this we can talk about later, but there's you know, then there's the other mistakes that people make as they're running a business and not doing the things that need to be done to keep it, kind of keep the machine doing what it's supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

So as you're helping solopreneurs, what what are some of the ones? Uh what's an example of one? Give us some good examples of people who are making it, not to the billion-dollar level, not yet. Yeah. I get that.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, I mean, look, we we mainly serve, we we focus on kind of service-based solopreneurs, people that have a skill and are bringing that skill to um people that need what they do. And they could be anything from a life coach, you know, there's a uh a guy that's very involved, a guy named Jeff Stevens, who's an Excel expert. And businesses, they either need Excel spreadsheets, they have these Excel spreadsheets from hell that they they need to, you know, to be working for their business. And this guy is just a wizard and comes in and he does more than that. He does a lot of data stuff, but he'll just take these problems that people have with these headache systems, and you'll see for small and medium businesses, and he and he makes it into a system that works smoothly for him. And he does great. And the people that he does it for are really happy. Um, we have one guy, you know, like I said, mostly it's service-based. We have one guy that that um creates, you know, software apps for people using this low-code, no-code technology that's come out now. And um, you know, I good Lord, there's just there's just hundreds, one one woman uh grows microgreens and sell them to local restaurants. She knows how to make these microgreens. I guess the restaurants love them, and she just goes and sells them to the high-end restaurants and makes a living doing that. You know, I mean, it's all over the board.

SPEAKER_04 24:47

But it's interesting to me. So you've talked about the fact that somebody can come to you who has an entrepreneurial spirit, they don't know what they want to do. I mean, that's actually almost an ideal client for you because you can help you can help them figure out what to do.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, I mean, we we we help people figure out what to do, but usually they have an idea. You know, I have a skill at this or a passion for that. And you know, one of the things that we we try to get people to understand is that um, I mean, I've you've probably heard of Ikigai, right? No, nope, nope. Okay, well, Ikigai is this thing that, you know, if you Google it, uh, it's all over the internet, and it's there's this, it's this Japanese concept that really isn't a Japanese concept, it's a Venn diagram. And the Venn diagram talks about you find the things that you're good at, that you're passionate about, oh, that people are willing, that people need and people are willing to pay for. And that intersection is what you should do.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

I didn't know what it was called.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah, and so it's just icky guy, yeah. It's it and it's the Japanese word ikigai just kind of means m reason for being.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

And some I'm trying to spell that in my head.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

I was actually

Why Ikigai Can Still Fail

SPEAKER_00 25:54

I K I G A I.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

So we were I K-I-G-I-K-I.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

We are I uh G U I. Like the icky guy.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Icky guy, yeah. Yeah, you're like the uh the old man at the bar, you know, sitting over there at the college place in the corner with his friends. I'm just thinking hypothetically, Alan, and he's the icky guy. Hey, what's that what's that dirty old man doing over the corner? Icky guy. That's the guy I was thinking of.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

But the but the but the problem with that guy the problem the problem with icky guy is that like I if I did icky guy and I went through and looked at that that my nature and what I'm about, right? I would be, I mean, I am in I am in flow, I am in the zone when I'm programming a computer. I can I would get up at six o'clock in the morning and then it would be midnight. And you know, and and so that's something that I obviously am passionate about. People will pay me for that. The world needs computer programs. And um what did I leave out here? Um I'm good, I was pretty good at it. You know, I wasn't the best in the world, but I was good at it. So there's my icky guy. All four of those are met, right? But I didn't have a wife, right? Right. I mean, I would I'd be divorced, my kids wouldn't talk to me if I I gave it up in 1993 for the same reason a lot of people give up cocaine. So icky guy doesn't really work. You know, I was an addict to this thing, and that's not healthy. So you have to kind of say, what do I want my life to look like? And maybe I can't follow my biggest passion. Maybe I have to follow something else that you know I I like or I'm good at uh and I don't mind doing.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

I mean, it's just it's really important to really have a big different mindset because we've all been raised with, you know, follow your passion and then you'll, you know, success will come. But you're saying your passion may lead you into a a solopreneur situation that could be just, you know, insufferable.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah, I mean, I and even a job, it could be a job or, you know, a an uh, you know, a lot of people, you know, I always remember going back, um, this is going back to the 80s when when Dell was relatively new and Dell Dell was massively growing in those days. And and there was some guy, and he he was some execut that high up in Dell, and he came in and he was he was rallying the troops to work because they, you know, whatever, and he was bragging about the fact that his son was born six weeks ago and he hadn't seen him yet. Oh you know, you know, and I'm just like, this is and I mean that was the ethos, that was that was bragging in the 80s, you know. And it's so opposite that now. And I just all I'm saying is that you know, if you if you care, if you want to become, you know, Elon Musker or or Mark Zuckerberg, great, go do it. But for most people, they they kind of want to have uh a life, they want to have something about their life that they like living. And, you know, it has to start there. It has to start by defining what that life should look like before you start designing the business that you want to start.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Yeah, I think that's a hard one though, Joe. I uh because you know, when I think about back to why did I start my business, I had left the corporate world. Um, and I, you know, I had had it, but I was I had that job. I was making bucku bucks, corner office, parking spot, you know, the whole thing, making a lot. And I said, no, that's it. And my wife's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, right? We've got kids in private school, we're in a gated country club community. Uh, you can't just give this up. I'm like, no, no, I gotta do this. And so I I took the time, and uh, you had mentioned the corporate zoo, which is why Alan and I did the old homage here, because I have my book called From the Zoo to the Wild, uh, which is the book I wrote. And I said, No, I'm gonna go out there and make this happen. Uh, of course, I started in 2008, uh, when the recession started, uh, and I started a handyman business, which sounds great on paper, but let me tell you how bad it sucked for three years. And so as you as you do that, you you're you're right, you're trying to design your life and do that. I mean, I made no bones about it. My why when I started was to make a lot of money, to supplant my income. My why was not to spend more time with my kids. I'm I'm I'm gonna say this now. Now, the outcome was, and the truth of the matter was, I did. I became, instead of Mr. Third Inning, I became the coach of their teams. I coached them in basketball, I coached them in baseball, softball, I know I watched them in tennis, couldn't coach them, which is why I think they excelled at that sport. So I stayed away from them. But, you know, so when you talk about that, it you can design your why, and that's what I'm getting at, is it's hard to say it, uh, especially when you're thinking about you know paying bills. And that's why when I talk to young entrepreneurs, especially or want to be entrepreneurs, is that go ahead and start it early because you got nothing to lose, man. I mean, seriously, you'll get back on your feet. You don't have what I had at the time. You know, I had two mortgages, I had two houses, I had kids in private school. We we had a lot of stuff going on. So the bet was boy, Chris, you better do really well. Now, my wife had a great job as well, but we were basically not only having our income, we are basically uh three-quartering our income is how bad it's right.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah. I mean, but you know, you your why at that point was you had to get away from corporate and you needed to make money enough money to offset that. And you know, and then you it sounds like you re-evaluated your you know your goals, you know, and said, okay, I want to be able to coach my kids. And you may you adjusted the business to allow you to do that. It's what I think you're saying to me, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Well, that wasn't the way I got into it, but I would tell you, that's one of the things now, of course, the Simon Cynic and the why. That's why I tell people my why has evolved so much over the years. Um, especially, you know, we're you know, we're not just talking about solopreneurs, but it's anything. You know, uh now it's uh I'd love to empower my team, my 32 head, I mean employees, beautiful, beautiful employees, um, to empower them to make great decisions uh and and to do things and to help us all propel to have the lifestyle that they want. And I've got not only 32 employees, I got 32 families that I think about um because many of them do have families, and we're trying to continue to grow in a in a very competitive marketplace that we're all in. And so I think the why changes a lot for us. Uh but thinking about that lifestyle, it it's a hard conversation, and it's definitely one where you sit back. It doesn't happen on Monday morning when you're fighting fires, it happens uh at a certain time when you you got some time to get in the flow, right? Oh sorry, so you gotta be in the flow. You gotta you gotta, I mean, yeah, six minute question. Yeah, but I'm coming to the end, Alan. Flow. I need flow, Alan. And then I'm talking about in the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

The the thing that I think it comes down to is like if you look at my example, right? And I, you know, I had a business that I really liked. It was, you know, I learned the the power of recurring revenue from the real estate from the shopping center business, right? Every month you got that rent check. And I said, this is great, right? So I I do all this hard work, and then it's just money coming in, and and and I I just love that model. And then it was like, well, let's build this software and bang our heads against the walls for you know a year and a half and build the software, and then we'll just have people license it and pay us every year. And I said, Great model. And it and it was, and it would have worked out, um, except for the darn internet. But when I made that decision to go to a service business, I had I looked and said, well, what did I do this for? I did this because I wanted to be able to be at home with my my wife and kids for dinner and and that kind of thing. If I had had that at front front of top of mind, I probably would have said, I let's just let's just give it up, give it up, you know, let's just not move on. But instead,

Recurring Revenue And Hard Pivots

SPEAKER_00 33:37

I I you know basically put myself through uh b three years of pretty hellish life trying to keep that that thing going. And you know, like I said, there was a little bit of the rest of the story, so we shut it down. Um three years, four years later, um it was clear that stores weren't going away. We rebooted it, became a company called Trade Area Systems, and we sold that uh to a uh British private equity company in 2020 for a very nice um deal. So it it did work out in the end, but um a lot of pain in the middle. So that kind of stuff, uh you know, if if you have that map of what you want, you can make better decisions about which way you want to go in your business.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

So, Joe, I'm gonna ask this question because uh, well, I'm essentially a solopreneur. I've got a business partner, but I'm in commercial real estate and we can scale, we can choose to scale, but also just the pace of our business. I can take a vacation and you know, and I've got a partner that covers me. But just in general, I always think of solopreneurs as somebody who just isn't ready to scale yet, or it's a side hustle, unless unless you're a writer or something. But let you know, you're talking about service business solopreneur, you've written a book, and somebody who just doesn't want to scale, they don't want to deal with employees. And I'm just trying to think through things like how do you take a vacation? How do you handle the phones when you're out? Let's say you're a plumber. What happens if you're sick? I mean, are those resources that you're helping people think through?

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Well, again, I don't, we don't have any plumbers, but I mean, that's a that's a different kind of solo business. Um, if it's a solo business. Um, I mean, I know that a lot of plumbers that are solo basically partner up with other solo plumbers and cover for each other and that kind of thing. Um, but you know, the people that we're we're helping, a lot of them, you know, they have maybe 10 clients. Um, and they just basically say, you know, I'm not uh if they're let's just let's just hypothetically say we're talking about a life coach. We've got a bunch of those. Um and they just say, look, you know, I'm going on vacation for two weeks, uh, you know, not gonna have any sessions for two weeks, I'll be back. And, you know, they plan it in that way. Um, you know, if we help them find ways to kind of value their their um product offerings in such a way that they can make more than they usually think they can, because a lot of times solopreneurs underprice. They just look at, oh, well, how much, how many hours is that gonna take? What should I make an hour? It's like, you know, you gotta we had one the other one guy the other day, and he made $500 on this work that he did, and he realized afterwards that he saved the company a a $4,000, $400,000 loss. And by what he did, he basically salvaged some some software that they had invested in building, and he came in and with $500 worth of time, solved the issues and and got it running. He said, I could have charged five grand and they wouldn't have blinked. You know, but this is the kind of thing that a lot of solopreneurs do in the beginning. But, you know, so yeah, I mean, you know, you have to figure out how you're gonna do it, but um, you know, there are certain businesses that aren't gonna work as a solopreneur. You know, you're not gonna be a solopreneur, um I don't know. I guess you could be a solopreneur dentist, but then you've got to have another dentist to cover for you when you're gone. If you're sitting with a plumber, electrician, you know, and that's that's fine. I like I said, we don't deal with those kinds of people because they just have other places that they go. Um, but you know, if you're if you're talking about somebody that's uh, you know, there's a lot of people that we have that help people with their careers, you know, career counseling, career coaching, and that kind of thing. You can take off for two weeks and nobody's gonna die. You know, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

No toilet's gonna get clogged, no apartment's gonna get uh washed out. Uh again, Home Services reference. But uh, you know, one thing I noticed about your solo predictor for dummies book is that um you're clearly very sharp because you put Carly on the face of it.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yeah, well, Carly, you know, Carly's a millennial, and I am, you know, I'm a boomer. And uh, you know, it's one of those things where um, you know, people, if I get people in here my age, they're not gonna be in very long, are they? There you go. You're looking for longevity. I love it. Play into the and Carly, Carly is fantastic. I don't know if you've ever heard our podcast. It's called The Aspiring Solopreneur, and she's the brains behind it. She's the you know, I just I'm the peanut gallery. I just chime in with with questions and clarifications, and she runs the whole thing, and it's you know, it's really does a great job with it. But um, you know, so I I don't have any problem putting her front and center when when it's appropriate. And sometimes it's my turn to be front and center, you know. If they if gray hair is required, I I can step up and take it. You can provide it. Yeah, you know what?

SPEAKER_02 38:30

No hair is uh required. Ellen and I can definitely step in for you and help you out with that. But uh I did want to push that out a little bit. So LifeStar is what you do. That's Lifestar with two R's. Why two R's, by the way?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Um, because I don't want to be confused with the Medivac Helicopter Company. Um you still get those calls though, don't you? And and the and the person that owns the the uh lifestar.com with one R um wasn't selling. And then I the more I thought about it, the more I I realized I could kind of use that. I mean, the company is actually called Workstar and with two R's. And um, so I just uh I just feel like it's a good branding opportunity because we've got a lot of other ideas to you know expand this beyond just the solopreneur world later and look at small and medium business and that kind of thing. So I mean our big play here, uh there's two big I mean we've got a whole bunch of education, we've got you know, courses and classes and and uh but we've got two big things. We've got an app designed for solopreneurs. Um basically it's kind of like um,

LifeStar Tools And How To Join

SPEAKER_00 39:36

you know, a task management tool like Asana or Trello, I mean Asana or um um I'm blanking on the other one, but um meets Facebook meets uh email client. So it lets you manage all of the things you're doing, lets you work with anybody else that wants to use the app because there's a free version of it, a light version that's free. And if they don't want to use the app, it just uses email to communicate with them. So you can be working, you know, you've got this project you're working on, you go in and add a file to the project, it will automatically email the file to the person that that job is assigned to. You can, you know, all of your emails when they come in get associated with the the project or the task that they're associated that they should be. Uh there's a whole bunch of um AI stuff that we're building into it. And um, I actually got patents going back to 2019 for AI. So we've got, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff there. And then we've got an AI system that's actually like a solarprinter coach. So it's basically all the stuff that Carly and I have written on it's it's um I think it's like a million words, maybe more than a million words of content. And you can talk to it. You can just talk to it and ask it questions, and it'll give you business advice. And it's pretty darn good. I mean, I I like the answers it gives. And people are using it to basically get help with their business and not have to pay a coach. And uh, you know, because uh the it's it's really uh affordable compared to a one-on-one coach.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

And going back to it again, how do I get a hold of that? You can look at it where?

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Um, well, it's it's uh it's it's a paid tier. I mean, I'll I'll let you take a peek at it, but um, it's it's a paid tier, which closed right now. We're gonna reopen soon. Um, but you know, we take we only let a certain number of people in at a time, and we we filled our cohort for now, and we'll be opening up again soon. Um, but uh yeah, I I I think offline I can get you in there to show you what it's like. Oh, no, I meant for our audience.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

How could they go find, you know, go back to the code?

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Oh, oh, sorry. So yeah, all the what they want to do is they want to go to lifestyle.com, star is two ours, uh, slash intro. And sign up for intro, and then um you'll be that's our free tier. It's got the community, um, it's got a you know, uh free events. We have two free solar printer events a month. There's a weekly event that we have uh if they want to come to that. And so there's just all kinds of stuff for solarprint, it's all free, free forever. And then they'll get notified if they want to up to the you know, and also give them a free version of the app when we release it. And then it'll also uh give you'll get notified if they want to go to the paid tier, um, if they want. And uh, so that's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

Nice. LifeStar2Rs.com. We got Joe Rando. He's not Rando, man, he's bringing it home for us. He's making it happen. Him and Carly have come up with a book. I mean, anybody's got a book called and they make it solopreneur business for dummies. I mean, come on, that's solid work right there. As a solopreneur, we all feel uh isolated. You know that. I mean, I guess I would know that, but still, it's lonely at the top, it's lonely by yourself. I have actually worked with uh somebody you mentioned, uh, was we have somebody help us with our Excel spreadsheets at our office, and he is a solopreneur. He designed his lifestyle around what he can do because he is excellent at Excel. We both came from the same consulting company, Accenture, way back in the day. He still helps us with our crazy ass Excel spreadsheets I have to do to make my payroll work. But it's a great business, it's a great model. This is a great episode. Let's go figure it out. Uh, one more time, Joe. Where's your podcast everybody else can go listen to?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

It's called The Aspiring Solopreneur. And uh, you can get it on any podcast platform and YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

And Joe and Carly have the same banter that Alan and I do. Let's go, baby. It's the best time ever. Joe Rando got a full head of hair. We're not jealous, Alan. Not jealous at all. At all. I mean, for the love of God, you would think that I would have had just some hair. I mean, come on, what happened? All right, guys. It's been another great episode where you guys figure out what's going on in the world. You found another podcast. Let's keep not making those same mistakes. Don't do something the same way you did it last week. Do something different. Make it shake it. Let's go make it happen. Let's get up that mountaintop. Don't get those pitfalls. Let's go make some money. Get out of here. We got to make some money. Cheers, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Small Business Department. Remember, positive attitude will help you achieve that higher altitude you're looking for small business competition. Until next time, we can wait.