The Life-First Solopreneur

Most solopreneurs think PR means getting into Forbes. PR strategist Haley Raymond says that belief is exactly why so much publicity effort goes nowhere.

In this episode, Haley joins Carly and Joe to break down what public relations actually looks like for a business of one. She explains why the old "I only want someone with the best contacts" mindset is outdated, why a promise of guaranteed coverage is a red flag, and why your story and strategy now matter more than anyone's rolodex.

You will hear the two part question Haley asks every client before choosing a single channel, why legacy media still works beautifully for local businesses, and why niche podcasts and Substack often move the needle more than a mention on a national network. She also walks through the PESO model created by Gini Dietrich, a simple way to see your paid, earned, shared, and owned channels as one connected ecosystem instead of a pile of to-dos.

If you have ever landed a great feature and then heard crickets, Haley explains the promotion mistake almost everyone makes, plus how to track PR results without drowning in vanity metrics.

And for anyone who dreads social media, good news. You do not have to talk to a camera to build visibility.

What you will learn

• The PR advice Haley wishes people would retire
• How to pick channels when your time is the scarcest resource
• Why PR is a much bigger umbrella than media coverage
• When legacy media is worth it and when a niche podcast wins
• The PESO framework explained in plain language
• How to promote a feature without feeling gross about it
• Simple ways to tie visibility back to actual revenue
• The biggest mistake solopreneurs make doing PR alone
• A starting plan for solopreneurs with almost no budget

Chapters

00.01 The PR advice that makes Haley cringe
01.33 The intern who emailed a media contact list to the media
02.39 The first question to ask before choosing any channel
04.17 Why PR is much bigger than getting in the news
05.46 What to do if you genuinely hate social media
09.20 What legacy media actually means now
10.30 Local news versus niche podcasts for solopreneurs
3.09 The PESO framework explained
15.42 You landed the big feature and heard crickets
17.54 Measuring PR without chasing vanity metrics
20.30 The simple link trick that shows where leads come from
21.09 The biggest mistake solopreneurs make doing PR alone
22.49 First steps on a tiny budget
26.01 It's PR, not the ER
28.00 Where to find Haley

Connect with Haley Raymond
Website: haleyraymond.com
LinkedIn

If this episode helped, please leave a five-star review and share it with a friend who needs PR advice. Subscribe to The Life-First Solopreneur wherever you listen, including YouTube.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

A re-release of a popular episode from earlier this year!

If your solopreneur business feels like it's running you instead of the other way around, you've fallen into the Ownership Trap. In this episode, Carly and Joe break down the three root causes behind why so many solopreneurs end up building a business that controls their life rather than supports it.

In this episode:

• What the "Ownership Trap" is and why almost every solopreneur falls into it
• Why this is a design problem, not a motivation problem
• The 3 causes: No Design, No System, and No Plan to Evolve
• How to start viewing every business decision through a "Life First" lens
• Real stories from Joe and Carly about the mistakes they made, and what they learned

If you've been grinding away wondering why you left your 9-to-5 only to end up right back in the same trap, this episode is for you.

Life first. Then business.

Subscribe to The Life-First Solopreneur so you never miss an episode, and if this resonated, leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review. It helps more solopreneurs find the show!

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

What if your AI actually sounded like you? In this episode of The Life-First Solopreneur, our AI go-to guy, George B. Thomas of Sidekick Strategies, shows solopreneurs how he built Echo, an AI second brain loaded with his identity, stories, and core values. He also explains how he runs a team of AI agents in Grok Bot that drafts emails, schedules meetings, manages projects, and builds landing pages while he walks the dog.

Hosts Carly Ries and Joe Rando dig into what a second brain really is (spoiler, it's mostly folders and files), how to stay the human in the loop, and the simplest AI task you can hand off this week to start buying back your time.

In this episode, you'll learn

• What an AI second brain is and why solopreneurs should care
• Why feeding AI your identity, stories, and values beats writing better prompts
• How an AI agent team differs from typing questions into ChatGPT or Claude
• George's five-minute rule for deciding when to use an agent
• When to keep AI in draft mode and when to let it run on autopilot
• An easy email and calendar handoff you can set up this week
• The story behind "be a happy, helpful, humble human"

Connect with George

• Visit sidekickstrategies.com
• Find George B. Thomas on LinkedIn
• Email [email protected]
• Listen to the HubHeroes podcast and Beyond Your Default

Want to see Echo and George's agent dashboard in action? Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review, share it with a solopreneur friend who's curious about AI, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

In this episode, Joe Rando and Carly Ries officially draw a line in the sand. After nearly 300 episodes and hundreds of conversations with solopreneurs, they name the single insight that keeps showing up in every episode that lands differently: the Life-First Business. Joe and Carly explain why most solopreneurs unintentionally build a business that ends up owning them, why that happens by default and not by choice, and why the forces reshaping work right now make this the right moment to name it, claim it, and build a movement around it.

Key Points

• Most solopreneurs start by asking "what can I sell?" but the better starting point is designing the life you want the business to serve.
• Falling into The Ownership Trap isn't a character flaw. It happens by default when you say yes to revenue before you've designed the life around it.
• A Life-First Business is not about working less, it's about making conscious tradeoffs so the business gives you the freedom that actually matters to you.
• AI is reshaping the solopreneur landscape in two directions at once: pushing people out of traditional employment and empowering them to run a real business solo.
• The Life-First Movement is bigger than LifeStarr. If you're helping solopreneurs build businesses that serve their lives, Joe and Carly want to hear from you.

FAQs

What is a Life-First Business? A Life-First Business is one designed from the start to serve the life you want, not the other way around. Instead of building around your skills and seeing what life fits around the business, you begin with Step 0: defining what you want your life to look like. The business is then designed to support that.

Does Life-First mean working less or only part-time? No. A Life-First Business is not about working fewer hours or generating passive income from a beach. It's about making intentional tradeoffs, choosing the freedoms that matter most to you, and building a business that protects them, whatever that looks like for your life.

Why is this conversation happening now? Two forces are converging: AI is displacing or reshaping traditional jobs, pushing more people toward solopreneurship as a real option. At the same time, AI is giving solopreneurs the capability to run a serious business without a team. That combination makes this the right moment to define what a well-designed solo business actually looks like.

What is The Ownership Trap? The Ownership Trap is what happens when a solopreneur builds without a life plan (saying yes to whatever pays, running everything on memory and email, with no system and no plan to evolve). The business grows, but it starts running the person instead of the other way around.

What is the Life-First Movement? The Life-First Movement is the category of people, businesses, and ideas organized around one belief: the business exists to serve the life. Joe and Carly are building this movement at LifeStarr, but they're clear it's bigger than any one company. If you're working to help solopreneurs build businesses on their own terms, they want to connect.

Life First. Then Business.

Tired of being told you need to post three times a day to grow your business? This episode is your permission slip to stop.

Carly and Joe sit down with Polly Pollock, the creator of capacity-conscious marketing and founder of the Antisocial Marketing Kit. Polly runs a thriving business without an active social media presence, and she is here to show you how it is done.

In this conversation, Polly shares her journey with a late ADHD diagnosis and how it reshaped the way she runs her business. She breaks down why popular, trendy marketing advice leaves so many solopreneurs burned out, and she offers a real, step by step alternative built on visibility strategies like podcast guesting, guest teaching, and strategic partnerships.

You will learn:

• Why consistency does not mean showing up every single day
• How to time-block your marketing so it takes a few focused hours a week, not hours a day
• Why one signature offer beats a stack of five or six
• How to find where your ideal client actually spends their time
• A life first reminder to protect your weekends, your evenings, and your fun

If you have ever felt stuck in the noise of online business, this episode will help you free yourself from the marketing you hate and focus on what you love.

Grab Polly's free Antisocial Marketing Kit at antisocialkit.com.

Leave a five-star review, share this with a fellow solopreneur, and subscribe wherever you listen.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

Signing the wrong client can mean months, or years, of stress, churn, and heartburn. In this episode, Carly and Joe break down how to vet clients and contractors before you commit.

They cover why doing your homework upfront matters, how defining your business protects you from the wrong fit, and why personality can be just as important as the actual deliverables. You'll hear a clever way one consultant uses personality tests and questionnaires to gauge compatibility, why the gut check still reigns supreme, and the red flags that should make you pause. Think early freebie requests, panicky urgency, and how a prospect talks about past providers.

Plus, Joe shares one of the worst hiring mistakes of his career and the lesson that stuck with him ever since. Hint, watch how people treat the waiter.

If you want fewer bad-fit clients and more long-term relationships, this episode gives you the framework to get there.

Think being a solopreneur means doing everything yourself? Think again. In this episode, we sit down with Rachael Davila, a virtual assistant since 2005 and founder of Extra Hands! Virtual Assistance, to break down everything you need to know before hiring your first VA.

Rachael has seen both sides of the desk. She spent 16 years as a VA before hiring her own in 2021, and that experience gave her a fast education in why delegation feels so scary. We get into the real difference between "doers" and "collaborators," how to know which one your business actually needs, and why the cheapest VA is rarely the most affordable choice.

You will also hear when to bring on support (spoiler, before you are drowning), how to document your processes even if your brain does not work that way, and why a human VA still beats AI for relationship-driven businesses.

Whether you are curious, overwhelmed, or somewhere in between, this conversation will help you delegate with confidence.

What you will learn

• The difference between a doer VA and a collaborator VA
• The signals that tell you it is time to hire
• Why cheaper VAs can cost you more
• How to find and vet the right-fit VA at any budget
• When a human VA beats AI (and when it does not)
• Rachael's life-first advice: start small and build trust

Learn more about Rachael at extrahandsva.com and check out her podcast Hey! Do I Need a VA?

Enjoy the show? Leave us a five-star review and share this episode with a fellow solopreneur who needs it.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

Every solopreneur eventually meets the client who pays the bills but crushes the soul. The one who calls at odd hours, ignores your boundaries, pays late, and somehow still feels impossible to let go of because the money is good.

In this episode, Carly and Joe tackle one of the hardest parts of running a life-first business, walking away from a client you cannot afford to lose. They explain why the difficult client is not always the mean one, sometimes it is the perfectly nice person who has pulled your business away from its core.

You will learn how to do the real math on what a problem client is actually costing you per hour, why communicating your boundaries comes before firing anyone, and how raising your rates can either fix the relationship or end it cleanly. Carly and Joe also share why keeping things professional matters more than venting, how to give enough notice so you never leave someone in a lurch, and what to do with your freed-up time once the client is gone.

Whether that client is your only client or the one funding your vacations, this conversation gives you a clear, calm path out. Your paycheck and your peace of mind do not have to be at war.

Leave a five-star review, share this with a fellow solopreneur, and subscribe wherever you listen, including YouTube.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

Warren Kornblum spent decades inside some of the biggest brands in retail, including Toys R Us across 27 countries, and he is convinced the solopreneur holds an advantage the giants would kill for. In this episode, Warren joins Carly and Joe to break down what really builds a brand when you are a business of one.

Warren makes the case that branding was never about technology, reach, or advertising. It is about the customer, and solopreneurs are uniquely positioned to keep that focus razor sharp. He introduces his idea of the brand stand, the promise your business makes and keeps, and explains why a relationship will always beat a transaction.

You will also hear why chasing followers and views can quietly work against you, the difference between share of mind and share of heart, and the danger of using AI to do the personal work that actually earns trust. Warren keeps it refreshingly real, and by the end you will have one simple thing you can start doing this week.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why the solopreneur has a branding advantage over billion-dollar companies
• What a brand stand is and how to build one that does not collapse into performance
• The difference between share of mind and share of heart
• Why vanity metrics mislead you and what to measure instead
• How to earn trust without selling your soul for likes
• Where solopreneurs most often overpromise and underdeliver

Whether you are just starting or years into building your business of one, this conversation will change how you think about your brand.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

Are you building a business on your own and feeling like you’re going it alone? That stops today. LifeStarr Intro is a free, forever membership built especially for solopreneurs who want real support, real resources, and real community.

When you join LifeStarr Intro, you unlock:

• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
• The LifeStarr productivity app (coming soon), built to support your workflow using GTD principles (that’s Tasks, Projects, Inbox that works)
• Live problem-solving meetups, expert sessions and strategies...and you don’t pay a thing

Total value: $65/month. Your cost? Zero.

👉 Ready to stop struggling solo and build a business that works for you?

Join LifeStarr Intro for Free

You've been told you need to become a full-time content creator to grow your business. Post every day. Fight the algorithm. Do the newest TikTok dance. But what if you hate social media, and still need leads?

In this episode, Carly and Joe break down practical lead generation strategies for solopreneurs who don't want to build an audience on social media. From leveraging your existing network to borrowing other people's audiences to building a referral system that actually works, these are relationship-first approaches that replace the pressure to go viral with something that feels a lot more real.

Whether you're leaving corporate and dreading the "you need to be on social media" advice, or you've been solo for a while and want alternatives to the content hamster wheel, this episode is for you.

Key topics covered:

• Why solopreneurs don't need a massive social media following to generate leads
• How to use social media for relationship-building without posting or broadcasting
• Using LinkedIn for direct outreach and genuine connection (not selling)
• Tapping your existing network (past coworkers, vendors, clients, friends, and family) as your first lead generation pipeline
• The simple outreach message that lets people know what you do without being pushy
• Borrowing audiences through podcast guesting, webinars, guest articles, and PR
• How to build a referral system instead of hoping word-of-mouth happens on its own
• Book recommendation: The Referral Engine by John Jantsch

Memorable Takeaway

Relationships, reputation, referrals...everything you do should go back to human connection and trust.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• The Referral Engine by John Jantsch
• LifeStarr Community 
• Alex Hormozi's YouTube channel