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
The Secret to Success: Stop Taking it Personally
Have you ever wondered why some coaches thrive while others with equal talent struggle? The answer might surprise you. During a recent interview with my mentor Will Schiller for the Successful Solopreneur Summit, he revealed the single most important factor that determines a coach's long-term success—and it's not skill, followers, or even your network.
After a decade in the industry, Will has observed that emotional maturity—specifically, the ability to not take business outcomes personally—separates thriving coaches from those who remain stuck. When we interpret unsubscribes, low engagement, or client rejection as personal failures rather than business data points, we create an exhausting internal battlefield. This emotional pattern prevents talented professionals from scaling their impact, regardless of how capable they are of helping others.
This insight hit close to home. Looking at my workspace filled with notebooks containing years of unrealized ideas and innovations, I see the tangible evidence of how taking things personally has limited my creative output. As solopreneurs working in isolation, we're particularly vulnerable to self-doubt and insecurities without daily team interaction to provide perspective.
For those struggling with this pattern, I recommend Dr. Michael Gervais's work on "FOPO" (Fear of Other People's Opinions). As a high-performance psychologist who coaches elite athletes, his book "The First Rule of Mastery" provides practical strategies for separating business outcomes from personal identity. Breaking free from taking things personally may be the most important psychological shift you can make as an entrepreneur.
Are you ready to stop letting the fear of judgment hold back your business potential? Consider how differently you might approach your work if rejection no longer felt like a personal attack. Your best ideas deserve to see the light of day.
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IG: @matthewpaetz
Click Here to Unlock Your Unfair Advantage
So about 30 minutes ago I just wrapped up the latest interview for the Successful Solopreneur Summit and it was with a close friend and mentor of mine, will Schiller. He and I have known each other for probably about seven years and Will has been a not just a probably the main reason that I've been able to create the longevity that I have, both in his advice and support and in our collaborations. But it was something that came up in our interview today that I just had to hop on here and talk about because it deeply resonates with me and I imagine it will for you as well. So Will was talking about, in his over a decade of experience, the one factor that determined how well a coach would eventually, how well the coach's business would eventually become, how successful they would become. To say it more simply, and it wasn't skill, it wasn't followers, it wasn't money or network yes, all of those things are important and assuming you have the skill, or you're developing a skill, to get people real results right, because we often we talked a lot about integrity and authenticity and you know, being able to prove that you are able to get results. But it was something else that he said was the number one determining factor of how well a coach would do in business and it has certainly been the one thing that I have struggled with personally ever since I began as a coach as well and it's whether or not a coach is able to grow beyond mature, beyond taking every business result personal. It was how personal someone took the feedback. How personal someone took the unsubscribes from their newsletters. How personal someone took the lack of engagement their post may have.
Speaker 1:If you are someone who is struggling with taking things personally, you are never going to mature in business beyond that first stage, that stage where you know you're good enough, you're capable enough, you're smart enough to get hundreds, thousands, however many people legitimate results. Because if you are not capable of moving through that emotional challenge right To no longer take things personally, you are going to suffer in business. It is going to feel like an all-out war, day in and day out, no matter how much money you make. And I can tell you firsthand this has been my uphill battle not taking things personally and it's something I come in contact with still to this day. It's the reason I've started things and stopped things. It's the reason I've, you know, had really great ideas, so I think and never launched them right. It's the reason why I have notebooks I mean, I'm looking at probably 12 to 15 separate notebooks in front of me, all with years and years and years of notes of exercises and business ideas and workshops and all the things that you've never seen because I struggle with taking things personally and I want to offer a resource If you're someone that this is resonating with right now.
Speaker 1:There's a book that I've recently read that I absolutely love, and it's one that I often go back to time and time again. It is written by Dr Michael Gervais, and he is a leading expert in high performance. He works a lot with professional athletes at the highest, highest, highest level in working with their mindset, working with their confidence, working with their identity, really and he wrote a paper for the Harvard Business Review that got the most downloads than any other paper on the platform hands down, and that topic was about something he coined called FOPO. There's FOMO fear of missing out and then there's FOPO fear of other people's opinions and he wrote a book called the First Rule of Mastery Stop worrying about what other people think of you as the first rule of mastery, and it applies perfectly to what we're talking about If you're going to succeed in business, and this is really important for the solopreneur, because you are often in isolation, you are often working alone, which makes you extremely susceptible to your self-doubts, your fears, your insecurities and your blind spots right, which is why it takes so long for us to move beyond that stage.
Speaker 1:If that's what we desire, but it is resonating with you, I'm going to strongly encourage you I'll link it to the show notes to pick up the book, the first rule of mastery, to begin understanding the strategies and the techniques of how to begin to no longer take things as personally, so that you can actually create what you're capable of.