You know what often gets lost between the “lifestyle freedom” dreams and the “I’m my own boss!” reality?

A tiny little thing called doing the work.

I discovered that early in my self-employment journey, when I wanted to be a writer. The only trouble was, I was a writer who did everything but write.

I watched a lot of bad television. I read a lot of advice about writing. I took some courses about writing.

But I did not write.

Call it willpower, or discipline, or even drive—whatever it was, I didn’t have it.

I’ve been fully self-employed and self-supporting since 2011. In that time, I’ve discovered that self-discipline isn’t something you’re born with (I wasn’t). It is something you can create for yourself, though.

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I used to work with a single mom. She had three kids all under 10, and their dad wasn’t around at all. She was on her own for juggling doctor appointments, school drop-offs and pick-ups, holiday pageants, birthday parties, and all the rest—all while working a full-time job.

I told her often that I didn’t know how she managed it all. I don’t know how any parent does, to be honest.

When I left that job to launch my own business, I discovered it wasn’t just parents who have a lot to manage. Entrepreneurs—especially of the solo variety—learn pretty quickly how to juggle their many responsibilities.

They also learn a few tricks to set themselves up for success. These are mine. They’re simple things, really. And they might just change your life.

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Have you ever looked at someone—Cal Newport, say, or Richard Branson—and wondered how they manage to get so much done? They have the same amount of time you do, with the same family and life obligations. One has a busy teaching schedule, publishes prolifically, and produces a weekly podcast. The other seems to always be diving into a new business adventure.

And you? Maybe you struggle to publish a single, weekly blog post, or you’ve been working on that course for months, and it feels like it will never be finished.

How do these prolific creators get it all done? I’d like to know, too.

I may not be as productive as Cal Newport or oversee as many companies as Richard Branson, but as a solopreneur, I have plenty on my plate. You do, too.

Right now, I have:

How do I manage all of that without dropping all the balls from time to time? I’ll tell you in this week’s episode of the Tiny Course Empire podcast.

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My only excuse is that I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I didn’t know that running a successful business required more than just a strong desire to escape my corporate cubicle. I didn’t know that turning my “hobby business” into a full-time income meant it would no longer have the laid-back feel of a hobby at all.

And I definitely didn’t know how much work I’d have to do inside my own brain before I could make the move from employee to freelancer to entrepreneur.

I learned a lot of lessons and made a lot of mistakes, so let’s talk about the four biggest ones on today’s episode. My hope is by sharing them with you, I can help you avoid taking the same pointless detours.

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When I was growing up, my dad had a favorite expression: When all else fails, read the directions.

For him, it was a tongue-in-cheek warning not to struggle needlessly when someone else had already laid out a plan I could follow.

I took it literally, and honestly, it’s served me well.

When I was brand new to business, I didn’t have the cash to buy courses or hire a coach. I barely had enough to pay for my website hosting and email platform. I also didn’t know how to do things like set up an email funnel or create and sell a digital product.

I took dad’s “advice” and got scrappy.

This is how I did it.

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It seems like a smart, even inevitable solution. If you want to grow your revenue, you have to create more products.

And it’s true. Sometimes.

Clothing manufacturers won’t get far selling the same styles year after year. Authors (with rare exception) can’t live on the earnings of a single book. Even theme parks rely on new attractions to keep customers coming back for more.

Maybe that’s why as course creators, we think our only option to grow is to create more. More courses, bigger membership, more coaching options.

What if doing more is actually bad for business though?

What if we’d be better served by scaling back and streamlining our offers, instead of creating more of them? What if we’d be more visible if we pared down our marketing only to those channels that attract our ideal customer?

Come to think of it, what if we narrowed our definition of what “ideal” even means?

What might that do for our business growth? Let’s find out in this episode of the Tiny Course Empire podcast.

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Business—and life in general—is filled with conflicting advice.

We hear about the latest and best email platform, only to be told a week later that this other one is better. A new social platform is suddenly everyone’s favorite hangout, when just last month they were raving about a different app.

Even business models are not immune. Are courses dead? Or are they making a comeback? Who even knows?

All this conflicting advice is bad for business, and in more ways than one. It keeps you stuck, never able to fully embrace any one strategy, to become proficient at it, to leverage it to its full capability. It’s a primary cause of shiny object syndrome, that well-known affliction that causes us to move quickly from one thing to the next, never gaining traction anywhere.

Short of unsubscribing from every business focused podcast and YouTube channel or moving to an off-grid cabin on a mountaintop, what else can you do to navigate through all of this conflicting advice?

I have some (hopefully non-conflicting) advice you can try.

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For all the systems and processes and funnels I’ve created to run my business, the one that rules them all might surprise you.

It’s not complicated. It’s not automated. It’s not even digital.

It’s a simple index card, and it runs my entire life. I’ll tell you all about it in this episode of the Tiny Course Empire podcast.

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I read a book that was written with AI, and I enjoyed it it. What’s more, I’m going to recommend that you read it, too.

There’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say. I’ve been actively avoiding tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and rolling my eyes at those who claim their “Brand New AI App Creates Best-Seller Quality AI Courses And Automated Course Websites

In Less Than 60 Seconds” (yes, that is a quote taken from an actual sales page).

So when I came across a discussion of how Clarke Ching wrote his latest book with the help of AI… well, you can imagine my thoughts about it.

But I’ve read another of his books. He’s smart and entertaining, and I knew he wouldn’t let any AI tool lessen his impact, so I was intrigued. After reading his latest book, “The Bottleneck Detective,” I knew I had to get him on the podcast to talk about his process. It’s not what you might think, and the results really do speak for themselves.

Clarke Ching is known professionally as “The Bottleneck Guy.” He’s an author, speaker, mentor, and consultant who specializes in helping busy leaders and their teams identify and overcome bottlenecks to improve productivity and reclaim their time.

I’m happy to have him join me on this episode for a behind-the-scenes look at how—and why—he worked with two popular AI tools to write his latest book.

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Visibility is a must in business. Without it, you can’t grow an audience, and without an audience, you’ll have no clients.

One of the best ways to be more visible is to get booked on podcasts. That lets you take advantage of the community someone else has built around your topic, so you can show up as the expert you are.

Getting interviewed on podcasts is something we talk about often in the Six-Figure Systems community, and the most common question I hear is, “How do I find shows to pitch?”

You can hire a podcast booking agency who will charge you thousands of dollars for a few interviews. You can work through a community matching platform and fill your days talking to new podcasters with few listeners.

Or you can take the advice of today’s guest, and get creative. With a 90% success rate on his interview pitches, the results speak for themselves.

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