The Successful Solopreneur
Welcome to The Successful Solopreneur podcast—a show created for everyday change makers ready to break free from the 9-to-5 grind and build a life on their own terms. I built my business from scratch, and I know what it takes to hit your first $100k. This podcast is your go-to resource if you’re tired of living by someone else’s rules and are eager to create work that fuels your passion, supports your family, and transforms lives.
Every week, we’ll dive into real strategies, share inspiring stories, and have candid conversations about overcoming self-sabotage, ditching trends, and embracing your unique gifts. We’ll explore how to live by the philosophy of “Less but Better”—focusing on what truly matters and building momentum with small, consistent wins. You’ll hear from guests who have mastered the art of discipline, purpose, and authenticity, and you’ll get actionable tips you can implement immediately.
If you’re ready to reclaim your power, prioritize values over impressions, and finally start living a life that makes you and your family proud, you’re in the right place. Tune in, feel heard, and let’s unlock your unfair advantage together—because your journey to success is one conversation away.
Intro music by IsMusic
The Successful Solopreneur
Your Environment Dictates Your Success, Not Your Goals
Your personality isn't permanent, but transformation requires more than just wishful thinking. In this thought-provoking exploration of personal evolution, I share a powerful morning revelation sparked by Dr. Benjamin Hardy's book that could be the missing key to your solopreneur success.
Have you ever wondered why, despite setting ambitious goals and consuming endless self-development content, you still struggle to make meaningful progress? The answer lies not in what you know, but in what surrounds you. When we decide to become solopreneurs, we fundamentally change the rules we must live by—yet most of us continue operating in environments designed for our past selves rather than our future identities.
This misalignment creates a constant battle between who you're trying to become and the subtle forces pulling you back to familiar patterns. Your environment—encompassing your physical spaces, relationships, consumption habits, entertainment choices, and everyday routines—has more power over your behavior than willpower ever will. As I share from my own transformational journey from addiction to entrepreneurship, the environments we inhabit either propel us forward or keep us tethered to outdated versions of ourselves.
The path forward begins with uncomfortably specific clarity about your year-end goals, followed by reverse-engineering the environmental conditions needed for someone who achieves such outcomes. Remember this truth: you don't rise to the level of your potential; you fall to the level of your standards—and your environment is the physical manifestation of those standards. If you're ready to transform not just your business but your identity, start by auditing what surrounds you and aligning just one element with the future you're determined to create.
Connect with Me
IG: @matthewpaetz
Click Here to Unlock Your Unfair Advantage
Welcome back to the Successful Solopreneur Podcast. My name is Matthew Pates and I'm actually really excited about today's conversation. It began this morning. So when I woke up this morning, I was going through my typical routine After I wake up. I get up around 6.30, and after the restroom I'll do my cold shower, coffee supplements and then stretching, and then, when I'm done with all of that, my favorite part of the morning begins, which is where I come in. I sit down at my desk and I pick up whatever book it is that I'm currently reading and I'll read for a little while and then I'll take notes or write on the things that inspire me.
Speaker 1:And this morning, instead of reading a book that I've not read before, I made the decision that I wanted to go back and start to go through some of the books that really made an impact on me that I've already read, because I was speaking to someone recently and they made a comment that really stuck, which is if you're someone that's constantly pursuing new information without implementation, then it's really just mental masturbation, and I didn't mean to make that rhyme, but that's literally what it is, and I'm someone who has been an avid reader for several years now. I mean, as I sit here, I probably would estimate I have somewhere between, you know, 120 or 130 books surrounding my desk. So I absolutely love to read, but I'm someone who often finishes a book and immediately jumps into the next one. And as much as I consume, I fail to implement a lot of the wisdom that I may have just consumed or read in the books that I finish. So I decided this morning I'm going to go back and I'm going to, you know, pick a book that calls to me and begin to reread or thumb through you know the pages that I've highlighted and earmarked and done all the things.
Speaker 1:And this morning I chose a book that I absolutely love, by an author Dr Benjamin Hardy. I've read many of his books, but the one that I picked up this morning is Personality Isn't Permanent and it's break free from self-limiting beliefs and rewrite your story. And this book is absolutely phenomenal to me. But what really stuck out was when I opened it and I came to a page where it talked about the myths of your personality, because personality is not permanent and many of us feel stuck in the ways that we are or who we believe ourselves to be, and when we're solopreneurs. You have committed to creating a life that is different, maybe vastly different than the one that you've been living, certainly was for me. Maybe vastly different than the one that you've been living Certainly was for me. And in this book.
Speaker 1:I opened to page 41 at random, and I have here highlighted four points that he makes about the reason most of us stay stuck in patterns that don't serve our future, our goals, our desires. So I'm going to read it off here and then I'm going to share a little bit about what I wrote this morning. And my intention for today is that you walk away not with just some ahas, but you walk away with a clear next step and what you should be focusing on if you are going to become the kind of person that achieves the goals that you have, and I mean this literally. You know this is a huge part of the transformation that I've had to make and I'm still making. So what we're going to talk about in the rest of this episode is going to, you know, has the potential, quite literally, could be the key to completely transforming transforming not just your business, but your life, your health, your relationships, quite literally everything. So I'm going to read here what I highlighted.
Speaker 1:It said there are four deeper reasons which keep people stuck in patterns, and what he's talking about are the patterns of self-sabotage, the patterns of limiting beliefs, the patterns of feeling stuck and incapable and all of this stuff, these patterns of maybe not feeling enough. These are the patterns that Dr Hardy are talking about, and the points here are first, they continue to be defined by past traumas that have not been reframed. They have an identity narrative based on the past, not the future. All of these are huge, but that's going to play a key in what we talk about today. So I'll say it again they have an identity narrative, right, the story you're telling yourself that is based on your past, not your future. And then, third, their subconscious keeps them consistent with their former self and emotions. Again, their subconscious keeps them consistent with their former self and emotions. Right, because, again, one of the greatest addictions to a human is our identity, our sense of self, who we believe ourselves to be. Right, we'll do anything to protect this subconscious narrative, right? And it's often a direct conflict, and, dare I say, always in direct conflict, with your potential and who you ultimately decide you want to become. And then the fourth one. The fourth is what we're going to dive deep into today. The fourth says they have an environment that's supporting their current rather than their future identity. So I'll say it again you have an environment that's supporting your current rather than your future identities. So here's the theme of today's conversation.
Speaker 1:When you decided to become a solopreneur, you changed the rules that you must live by, you changed the standards in which you must operate, and it's very likely that you did this without even realizing it, right. Most of us change our goals, right, but we stay committed to the rules of our former selves, right? For example, if you know a little bit about my story, you know part of it was that I used to be addicted to cocaine. I used to, you know, obviously, party a lot, spend a lot of time in bars and nightclubs and all this kind of stuff, so drinking drugs, all these things. And you know, at the time, the goal and this was subconscious, but in reflection, the goal was to escape. Subconscious, but in reflection, the goal was to escape. I was suffering in many ways, mostly from previous traumas that I had endured, mostly from childhood, and I was subconsciously committed to escaping these pains, the shame, and the way that I was doing that was through drugs and alcohol and promiscuous relationships. So those were the rules that I was living by. The goal was to escape. So the rules and the standards were drugs, alcohol and promiscuous lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Now, when not just when I decided to become a solopreneur or become a coach full time and work in the trauma space and all that, but also when I fell in love with my fiance you know we met, you know the rules changed my life. I wanted to commit to being a great partner, a committed partner, a healthy partner, not just physically but emotionally. And when the rules changed, the standards I was living in, I was living by, had to change as well. The environments in which I was spending my time had to change because the rules, the goal, had changed. And the same is true for your business. When you decided to become a solopreneur and create a business that was ultimately going to change your life, you changed the rules. Therefore, you must change your environments.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to read a little bit about what I was writing this morning and we're going to break this down. So here we go when you change the goal, you change the rules. As a solopreneur, you've changed the rules of your life. You've made the decision to build something from the ground up that will completely change not just yours but the futures of all who rely on you. That piece is key. When you decided to start your own business, I am certain that a core reason was you wanted to make a change in your life. You wanted to improve your life and the lives of those who you love, the lives of those who depend on you.
Speaker 1:So the challenge is as we've already talked about many times on the show and in my newsletters and if we've been working together, you certainly heard us talk about this the hardest part of becoming a successful solopreneur isn't the business right, it's not all the tasks that you must do the marketing, the accounting, the admin, the funnels, the copywriting, all that stuff right? Hell, we didn't even talk about the coaching or whatever service it is that you provide, right. But the hardest part of becoming a successful solopreneur Is you Right, because you are going to be in direct contact I'm sorry, direct contact with all of your doubts, your insecurities, limiting beliefs and the patterns of protection. Your insecurities, limiting beliefs and the patterns of protection right. Specifically, protecting the former identity, aka self-sabotage, right. The hardest transformation you're going to have to make has nothing to do with business, but has everything to do with who you believe yourself to be right, and becoming the kind of person who achieves the goals that you have set is really what this journey is all about. Your business is a catalyst to becoming that person.
Speaker 1:So becoming a successful solopreneur is a game of personal transformation. You must become the kind of person who succeeds and who lives by standards and values. You must become clear on what the standards and values you live by are or will be. So, if you think about this, your standards and your values they're essentially the rules that you're living your life by. In order to become great at any game, you must understand the rules first and foremost. Most of us are operating in a life where we're not clear on the rules we're living by, which is why we feel like victims, we feel out of control, we feel uncertain, we feel unclear, confused all of these things not because we don't have goals, desires and visions, but because we are often unaware of the unconscious rules that we're living our lives by that are governing our behavior. So you must become first clear on what those standards and values are, because when you decided to start your business, you changed the goals you have by changing your goals. I'm sorry. You changed the rules you have by changing your goals. Right, you changed the rules of the game that you're playing.
Speaker 1:And today I wanna talk about the one area that you have total control over, despite how it might feel you have total control over and you, it might feel you have total control over, and you will have and will have the greatest impact on how you show up in your business and, ultimately, in your life. Right, this one area, this one thing completely transforms the way that you behave and operate in life, and, in some cases, in small ways, immediately, but in reality, over time. Right, and that one thing is your environment. Right Now, your environment consists of many things, such as the spaces you live in, work in, the people you hang out with, the entertainment you consume, the food you eat, the things you drink, what you read, the clothes you wear, the things you listen to and the people you hang out with, and many more. And I imagine that you're in a current environment, the collection of all the things I just mentioned. That likely represents who you were, not who you're becoming.
Speaker 1:Perhaps, in some cases, you've begun to make the change, change the relationships, the things you consume. Clearly, you listen to a podcast like this, and I imagine it's not your first or your only so you've likely already begun making some of these changes, whether it was conscious or otherwise. So you've likely already begun making some of these changes, whether it was conscious or otherwise. But I'm willing to guarantee that if you are struggling to succeed, if you are struggling to really make the breakthroughs that you desire and you've been at this for a little while it is likely that there are key elements of your environment that have not evolved to match your goals, right, but they still are things that are representing or rooted in your past, right. So this is the greatest mistake that most of us make as solopreneurs.
Speaker 1:Again, the struggle as a solopreneur is you're often in isolation. You're doing these things alone, especially in the beginning, right. You're inside of your own head. You don't have people to bounce ideas off of. That maybe understand what you're doing or what you want to accomplish or why it's so important to you, right? Because, as a solopreneur, we are often the black sheep, the outliers, the different ones in our family, right, and our friend groups and our communities. We're often the ones that break the mold, do things differently, go against the grain, swim upstream all of these metaphors and analogies, right, but it's true, we operate differently. We are committed to creating a life that looks different than the average person around us. Or the quote unquote, normal, right. So you know, we're the ones who made the courageous decision to create something in spite of the odds, right, and create something that's on our own terms. We live a life by our own rules, right.
Speaker 1:But to do this and to prove not just to ourselves but to everyone around us, we must become ruthlessly committed to transforming our environments to make sure they match our goals, instead of trying to create this new life, this successful business, inside of an environment that matches our past. So, for example, when I decided that I wanted to become a healthy partner to Allison when we met, I had to change my environment. I had to change the people I was hanging out with, right, because I couldn't continue to hang out in places that I was doing drugs and drinking, and you know meeting, you know random, you know people and all these things. So when I changed the goal, I had to change the environment. My goal became something much more fulfilling and meaningful, but I had to first go through the challenge and the emotional and sometimes literal pain of recovery, right, of healing. And we must do the same even if your environment isn't as toxic as the one that I was living in, right? So how do we do this?
Speaker 1:Right, most people wait until tragedy strikes or some, you know, extremely challenging and unnecessary circumstance arise. You know that forces them immediately to change, because they quite literally are, you know, backs against the wall, they've hit rock bottom. You know they have to make a change. They've got a diagnosis, they had an accident, they lost someone they care about. These major events often spark immediate and drastic change and you'll notice, those people change their environments, the things they're doing, who they're hanging out with, what they're reading, what they're consuming, what they're eating, drinking, etc.
Speaker 1:But one of the most difficult things for any of us to do is to make those changes before disaster strikes, before it's too late or we have to. Right, to consciously choose, uh, to change and transform is going to be very painful, emotionally right, mentally, in some cases, physically right. So how do we do this? Um, it's going to sound much easier than it is, as most things do. But if you choose to commit to one of these, just one of these, and begin to stack. From there, you will begin to understand the power that your environment has on everything that you have, what you have and, ultimately, what you create.
Speaker 1:So what we first need to do. If you listen to the show, you've heard me talk about this in other contexts, but it is imperative. You first must define a clear and specific goal that you want to accomplish by the end of this year and I say that with intention right, because it's achievable, it's close enough that it's real, but far enough away that you have time to make the changes right. So you must be uncomfortably clear on the specific goal you need to accomplish by the end of this year in order to feel like a success, in order to feel like your business is moving in the right direction, your life, your relationships, your health are moving in the right direction. One clear, specific goal, because that goal is going to dictate the rules, right, and so when we're clear on this goal, then the key is to reverse, engineer this goal and identify the key characteristics of the kind of person who accomplishes such a thing.
Speaker 1:If your goal is to complete a marathon, right, a literal marathon that goal is going to determine the rules you must begin living by. The food you must be eating, the training you must do, the sleep. All of the things revolve around this one goal, right. So the same is true in your business. Once you get clear on the goal, the specific goal you must accomplish, that goal determines the rules and the standards that you must begin living by, starting with your environment. And then we must begin to design your environment to match this future self, to match the person that accomplishes this goal, the person you will be a year from now, because that person, if you're committed to this, will be different than the one that's listening to this today. So what this means is we must begin auditing and I mean honestly, ruthlessly auditing your physical space, the environments in which you live, right Work, et cetera, what you consume this is a major one what it is that you consume on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:These things include what you're eating you are what you eat, what you're drinking, the entertainment that you're engaging in, what kind of movie shows like, for example, I used to love watching true crime, and I still do, and it's still still get me every now and again. I'll get hooked on something, but what I began to realize is when I'm consuming true crime mostly stories about murder I'm consuming that energy, that anxiety, that fear, that energy, that anxiety, that fear. And I would find that, you know, once I got done listening to or watching any of those stories, man, it was heavy, right, I'd walk away and was devastated and you know, just low energy, low motivation, all these kinds of things, right, and I found that I had to begin eliminating, you know, those shows and those podcasts, because it was completely destroying the energy that I needed to really show up to the goals that I have as a solopreneur and a husband and, you know, future father and all these kind of things, because I needed that energy in order to achieve the difficult things that I've set out for myself, right, the transformation that I have committed to. So, what you choose to entertain yourself with matters, right, and it's not just television, but the biggest one in our modern world is social media. You know, what are you consuming on social media every single day? Or the news is a big one what are you consuming every single day? You have to ruthlessly audit these things for your energy, right, because they will determine the way you view the world, the way you view yourself, which ultimately determines the way that you show up right, the way you treat yourself and others and your business and your people and your kids and your spouse and all the things right. And this is going to be difficult, because what this means is, when we change these things, we're going to begin changing the dynamics of the relationships that we have, because most of your relationships are currently rooted in who you were. Right.
Speaker 1:I can say this for sure as someone that's moved away. You know away from home, across country, lived in. You know various countries and all these different things. When I go back home, you know it's impossible to ignore the differences between me and the people that I used to spend all my time with and was raised around. And this is no judgment, but our goals are different. Our views on the world are different.
Speaker 1:Therefore, how we operate is different, and what I found is that most people spend their lives committed to people that have familiar paths, instead of identifying people and courageously putting yourselves in environments around those who have a similar future. And that's ultimately what we're talking about today, because it's the conversations that you're in, it's the like I said, the things that you eat, and the ideas and the projects and all the things will change when you start to spend your time with people who have a similar future that you desire. When I started running trail runs and marathons, when I started spending my time around people who were runners, my habits began to change, right, certainly much different than those that I used to hang out with in the bars and nightclubs, right? So understand and it might feel like I'm beating a dead horse here but it's imperative that you get clear on what you want to accomplish reverse, reverse, engineer, right, the characteristics and the environments and the forms of entertainment and the foods and the conversations and the books and the podcasts and all the things that that person, or those people who accomplish those types of things, spend their time doing. And so it's not about wanting what people have. It's about identifying what they did to create it.
Speaker 1:Don't desire the things, desire to become the kind of person and do the work that they did to get there. So, again, you may need to spend time in places that people you look up to go. Read the books those people read, listen to the podcasts those people are listening to or are on, but if you're ever going to become the kind of person who succeeds at their goals. You must become the kind of person who intentionally creates their environment to match the goals they have, instead of the past they had. Right, because here's the truth you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your environment. You fall to the level of your environment. And another way to say that is you don't rise to the level of your potential, you fall to the level of your standards, and your environment is a direct reflection of your unconscious standards.
Speaker 1:So I'll leave you with this exercise, this homework.
Speaker 1:I want you to identify one area of your life, one it could be the space you sit down and work, the book you're reading, the podcast that you're listening to.
Speaker 1:Obviously, if you're listening to this one, that's certain you're listening to. Obviously, if you're listening to this one, it's certain you're listening to others as well that are supportive of your future. But I want you to identify one thing, perhaps it's the relationship you have to social media, and I want you to identify how would the person of your future, the person that accomplishes the goal that you have set for one year from today, how would that person interact with this thing? What is the relationship that person would have with their social media, with what they eat, with who they hang out with, with where they work. And I would need you not for me, but for you and all of the people that rely on you, all the people that are looking up to you to decide to raise your standards to match your potential, your potential. With that, I want to say I hope you have an amazing day and until next time, I look forward to seeing you on the other side of your future.