An Easier Way to Build Your Business

Hello from a cruise ship 🛳️ 👋

My wife Megan and I have been enjoying a much needed long weekend getaway.

I’m sitting here in a coffee shop on our final morning aboard the boat and I’m feeling energized to continue on my real world journey of life and career.

As I mentioned last week, the journey ahead especially for solopreneurs, is full of twists, turns, and uncharted territories.

This reality either scares the hell out of you or excites you - Or both.

Regardless, this makes for quite the mental and emotional rollercoaster which is draining no matter how you slice it. Which means that…

It’s a good idea to create space to recharge.

Whether that’s…

• time with friends

• Time alone

• Staying in bed

• Or traveling the world

The Hustle Culture is Real

The hustle culture is real.

Real bad.

Yes, there is absolutely a time and place for that but you can only do that for so long before you need a moment to breathe. And if you don’t you’ll crash n burn.

For me, if I go balls to the wall 7am-6:30pm, (then kids bedtime), 8pm-11pm, I’m fully whooped by the end of the week. Some can do more while others fall apart faster. To each their own.

If I have to do this, like let’s say leading up to a trip so that I can actually relax, then that’s fine. But it is not the ideal.

I didn’t take the leap of faith to become a full-time one-person so that I would be a slave to my own business. To repeat… Sometimes you gotta dig in and work more than you’d prefer so…

Make sure you’re building something that won’t need this level of energy continually with no end in sight.

If you’re gonna hustle hard in your business…

Hustle hard to build leverage.

Leverage Creates Winners

Leverage is the idea that over time your inputs decrease as your outputs increase.

Leverage means that you do something one time, and then it keeps working for you and helps you do more things with less effort. It's like using a seesaw to lift something heavy - you push down on one end and it makes the other end go up, lifting the heavy thing. With leverage, you do something once and it helps you do more things without having to work as hard.

For example, starting a podcast is a big undertaking in many cases.

Building systems and SOPs (aka Standard Operating Procedures) will ensure that even though there may be a lot of moving parts to write, record, produce, and distribute each episode, you have a pre-determined process that makes it way easier to get everything done and out the door.

I think podcasts are heavy on my brain right now cause I finally let myself buy the Rodecaster Pro 2! 🤩 I’m trying not to stare out the front window looking for that blue Amazon van. 😆

My justification for this purchase is that it will help me do more with less. The quality of these podcasts will hopefully go up while reducing the friction in my workflow - saving me time and energy to be utilized on other projects. Plus I’m thinking about bringing back my old podcast, “Which Way Now?!” in the coming months… I’ll keep ya posted of course.

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There are four types of leverage:

1. Capital: Money used to generate more money.

2. Labor: Hiring people to work for you, or building systems that do the work for you.

3. Product: Creating a product that can be sold many times without additional effort.

4. Code: Writing software that can be distributed at scale with no additional effort.

Note. I picked this concept up from Naval Ravikant.

And please remember, I’m no expert and I have a lot more room for improvement but…

Here’s how I’m currently using leverage in my business to help me increase output while reducing input.

1. Capital

   • I use a Chase Ink credit card for every single business item I purchase or use. I use this card at the gas station, to pay people, software, subscriptions, and the list goes on. If it’s business-related (even slightly) it goes on this card. What makes this a tool of leverage is that I get anywhere from 1%-5% cash back on every dollar I spend. I have to spend this money for my biz to operate regardless! Might as well offset the cost by a few bucks right? This is not rocket science, however, a lot of people hesitate to take advantage of this for whatever reason. And to clarify, I pay off the full balance every single month. This builds credit, meaning it’s easier for me to access larger sums of OPM (other people’s money, like the bank’s money) for big purchases or investments if/when needed. This is something I HIGHLY recommend. All you need is your EIN number and about 20mins to fill out the online application.

2. Labor

   • I currently have two people in my corner that help me out with running my one-person business. “Wait… Evan that means it’s not a one-person business. right?” Uhm… honestly I guess you can define it however you want. But to me (and many others), it’s a one-person biz if you don’t have employees. I have very very simple working agreements with these other independent business owners that have agreed to help me in certain areas of my business. Last October I found an awesome VA (virtual assistant) named Mars that has been the backbone of many things. From small client projects to social media post creation and scheduling, she’s been the sidekick to scatter-brained Evan over here. Her role has shifted over the months, but she’s the one who helps me get every single M&M out the doors, uploaded to Spotify, and posted on the articles section of my website. I use her skills in a part-time capacity and I’d be an overwhelmed, sad sack of Sh__t without her. Hi Mars 👋 I appreciate you!

   • I also have a video editor that I use on a project-to-project basis who has been responsible for all the youtube videos I’ve put out in the past 6-8 months or so. It’s casual and works pretty well for us. although I’m thinking about doubling down in this arena. I’ve been vlogging my daily life of me as a solopreneur for about a month now, with no way of editing and posting it. Keep an eye out. I’ll find a solution very soon and then you’ll have a whole other side of Evan to spy on. 👀

   • Under the labor, category would fall systems also. I don’t know where to begin with this. I have a system for my daily routines (for instance, I always write these in the morning or late at night), social media content creation and posting, podcast episode creation, invoicing clients, and handling payments, on and on and on. If you repeat a task often, it’s worth building a standard operating procedures document and using this as the rulebook for that system. Hint: this will greatly help you get some hired help up and running. Mars was able to jump right in when we started working together because of this.

3. Product

   • The concept is simple. Create something once that you can sell or distribute over and over again without any extra effort. This is the game that I’ve started to play since launching my course Simple Email Marketing back in the fall of last year. I’ve also mentioned more than a time or two, the Personal Branding Workshop that I’m currently developing. Links to my products are at the bottom of this email.

   • Whether it be courses, workshops, cohorts, masterminds, and so on. These allow you to keep generating revenue without having to always build something from scratch to sell again. The other huge upside is that with a digital product… There’s no need for inventory, warehousing space, or shipping and logistics agreements. This saves you a ton of money and headaches.

   • Subscription services (think Netflix) work great in this category too. This is something I’d love to incorporate as a revenue source for my business as well. We’ll see what the future holds!

Note… AI is creating HUGE leverage for one-person businesses. Don’t sleep on it. Once I’ve figured some more out, I’ll share my two cents on how you could use it too. I’m using it currently, but not to its full extent. We’ll circle back to this one. 😉

Hopefully, this gives you some ideas on how you can begin to build or optimize your business using several strategies of leverage.

Think to yourself…

• What kind of leverage am I using currently?

• Can I increase the impact of this leverage?

• What other types of leverage could I implement?

• Where do I want to be in 5 years, and which path increases the likelihood of success without burning out?

Cheers to building a business that helps you live the life you’ve always wanted.

Let’s build this thing together, and maybe we can cruise together soon!!?

at the port in Nassau, Bahamas

Til Next Time ✌️🙂

Ev