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This is the FlowFlex Skill Podcast, your field guide to the Solopreneur Operating System with author and coach Jennifer Britton.
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Daily steps plus consistent action equals momentum.
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That's Jennifer's mantra, and it starts right here, right now, with you.
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Let's get started.
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Hey and welcome back.
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It's Jennifer Britton, the creator of FlowFlex Scale.
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Thanks for joining us today.
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We've done some recent episodes on quarterly reset, on 90-day planning cycles.
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Today I thought I'd take it to a different area, although maybe you've heard me speak about this in the past, but really it's about activating AI as a strategic partner to help you build capacity rather than to just use it in a very ad hoc way.
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So as a solopreneur, my guess is that you are a one-person show or you have maybe a tight network of people who can help you scale your work.
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As a creative, as an author, many of you know my story that my books, my original work, starting with effective group coaching and from one to many, were used by the machines to learn about this thing called group coaching and team coaching.
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Five years ago, four years ago, really, when AI was starting, I couldn't understand why everyone sounded like me.
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And it became very clear that my work had been fed to the machines.
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Rather than sort of say, oh, I'm never going to use it, I decided, you know what, meet fire with fire.
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It's always been my way.
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And I doubled down and started experimenting with AI as a business partner.
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Because as some of you know, with my story, when I opened the doors here at Potentials Realized on April 2004, it wasn't about building a massive team.
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I loved leading teams when I worked for the United Nations.
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I loved being able to harness the capacities, the interesting synergies of people from all over the world with different technical abilities.
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And when I started this business, it wasn't about growing another big entity.
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It was really about being strategic and leveraging the tools that we had available.
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In 2004, April, we were one of the first virtual organizations, even pre-pandemic.
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I remember the month before the pandemic going into my local shopping mall and seeing someone at a store.
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And they said, Well, aren't you at work today?
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I said, No, I am.
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I just popped out.
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I'm just, you know, running in between meetings.
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Or they looked at me quizzically, like, really?
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You can work from home.
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Well, that was 2020 winter.
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We now know that you really can.
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And so whether it has been being an advocate for virtual or now being an advocate for AI-enabled small businesses, I think there's an opportunity for us to explore, take stock of, you know, what is important for you in this landscape of AI?
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How are you exploring it?
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How are you experimenting with it?
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And is there a way that it can actually create an advantage by augmenting and enhancing your capacity?
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Really, we don't want AI to replace our thinking.
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It really needs to expand our capacity.
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So most people right now are asking, what AI tool should I use?
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Should I be doing this?
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Should I be doing that?
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I'm not going to mention any of them.
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But I think the question is, what's going to best serve the purpose that you want to use it for?
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As a speaker, as a presenter, I've been using AI in some of our presentations for quite some time.
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I will name a few because I really like what they've created in our world.
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Two years ago, I jumped over into Napkin.
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Many of you use Napkin now as a design tool.
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Really loved how it helped me visualize very complex ideas for audiences.
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And that's actually been quite critical in getting this body of work, FlowFlex Scale Out, and my next book around the capacity guidebook.
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So with that, I want you to think about you know, what is something that would help you expand your reach?
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What is something that would actually help you communicate better or differently?
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As a business, people still do business with people, right?
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Think about the last experience you had with an AI agent.
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I personally had one on Friday, just a few days ago, where I arrived up north at the cottage, one of the few Fridays when I actually left the office at time.
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And I had planned to be able to do work all weekend.
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I was part of a hackathon for experienced design.
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And uh I turn on our system, turn on the power, everything else goes up except for the internet.
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So there I am on a Friday night, beautiful sunshine, but on a point of land with my cell phone trying to connect to the service provider to say our internet is down.
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All they could say to me is, your connection is not very clear.
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And I raised my phone a little bit higher to try and get that much more of a bar, but I share this because I had first been routed through not the human in the loop.
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I had been with an AI.
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And while it helped me problem solve, they couldn't also hear me very well.
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So AI strategically, it did get me into the service much faster than other times when I've been on hold for 45 minutes on that same point of land, but it didn't solve the entire issue.
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So I want I use this example to just help you think through where might you be able to use AI for some quick fixes, get some time and capacity off your shoulders.
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And where are you still needed?
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Right.
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When we are in moments of crisis, when we are in moments of pressure, I don't want to turn to an AI.
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I want to turn to a human.
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And people still buy because of human.
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We buy not because of the AI agent, we buy because we trust the business.
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We also buy because of the relationships, the connection, the community, hopefully the creativity that happens as well.
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So, invitation for you to really think about how you're utilizing AI right now, and maybe you'll stumble on this podcast years later.
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I do find it really interesting to go back and listen to my podcasts around remote work from 2019, pre-pandemic.
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The philosophy has remained the same, even though the world and the understanding of remote work has changed.
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I do feel at this point that having been a solopreneur for 23 years almost now, my my thinking might evolve further.
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But, you know, AI, definitely realized strategic partner.
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So this section is to get you thinking about how you might use AI to create some capacity for you and your business.
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Here's some ideas, jotted them down.
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Um, how might you use your AI partner as a brainstorming partner?
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Right?
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Creativity exists in constraints.
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Let's say that again.
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Creativity exists in constraints.
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Creativity also exists in contrast, right?
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We gain insight when we see something different.
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And in fact, our brain craves novelty.
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Our brains craves something a little bit different.
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This is why habits are so hard to maintain, in part, right?
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It's not the only reason.
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But our brain is always seeking out something new.
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And so, can we use our AI partner to be that sparring partner, to be that person who never fatigues, that you can go to at two o'clock in the morning and say, hey, I have this idea.
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What do you think about this?
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Again, do the litmus test, do the test, do the pushback.
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Uh, as my AI partner knows, I always want to like have some pushback.
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I want to always do a pressure test on things.
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But brainstorming can be a great partner activity with AI.
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How about doing some research?
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Right now, there is a lot of hallucination, of course, that happens, but from a research perspective, there may be some heavy lifting if you are a solopreneur that your AI partner can do that you might have found would take weeks, months, or even years.
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I look at FlowFlex Scale, which is really the first book that I would say of mine that has come out in the era of AI enablement.
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It has helped me, AI has helped me validate things.
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It has helped me update some of the writing because again, FlowFlex Scale was originally written, as some of you may or may not know, back in 2020.
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It's gone through many different iterations.
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And I've been able since 2017 now, almost 10 years, to be able to coach people on this framework.
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It hasn't always been so simple, it hasn't always been so impactful.
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But after 10 years of taking what then was a very dense frame and distilling it down, it has become this fluid framework.
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And so as I picked up that earlier manuscript early in 2026, or actually last year at this time, it was last summer when I decided I wanted to move this body of work forward.
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I wanted to see how it could actually have some further magnification.
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And it's been great timing because so many people are leaving corporate or are being forced out of corporate and having to build their own businesses.
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So if that's you, I hope that you're enjoying this.
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And I'd love to hear from you.
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What would you like as future episodes?
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So back to AI for creativity and creating capacity, brainstorming, outlining research, maybe doing some planning.
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And it can also be used as a bit of a reflection tool.
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Just note, however, it is probably going to agree with you.
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So back to my earlier comment, I always want a pressure test.
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And that is a term I use.
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AI, let's pressure test this.
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And I may give it some, you know, frameworks or some guardrails or some like, let's like look at this through the lens of X or Y.
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That can really be a valuable piece as well.
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I want to make sure, though, in my world that I'm leaving time for the human experience.
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I'm not only an experienced designer, but I am an advocate for human-based connection.
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This is, in my mind, going to be the differentiator for businesses.
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While AI can speed us up, who can acknowledge, see, reward, inspire others?
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So we're not replacing relationships, we're not replacing coaching.
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Yes, AI coaches can track things in very, very different ways.
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However, is an AI really going to listen to you?
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Is it going to pick up on your emotion?
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Is it going to pick up on your pause?
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Time will have to see that.
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So as you go to think about how you might incorporate AI in different ways, here are a few questions to think about.
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Will this improve my quality?
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Will this allow me to do something faster?
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Will this take off my shoulders some tasks that I'm not great at?
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Now here's the thing.
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We want to be very clear on what we delegate and what the guardrails are.
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Another key question is will this create more capacity for me or for the business?
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So I hope that is useful.
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Those quick questions there.
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Does it finally help me add more value?
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Ask yourself, what are your partners paying you for?
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I refuse to go head to head with AI coaches.
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I've had a recent situation where I'm sure the work did not continue because they wanted an AI coach.
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That's not my value add.
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My value add is really helping teams and organizations build more capacity, whether they're building capacity along human lines, AI lines, or a duality of something in the middle.
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I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode.
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And so whether you're starting a new quarter, whether you're doing a midpoint reset, or integrating AI into your work, I hope that you remember that sustainable growth is not always about doing more.
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It's about being intentional.
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It's about activating that pull of your vision rather than having to push, push.
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It is, of course, about creating conditions for flow and using relationships and a team or partners to help you flex so that you can scale.
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Bigger is not always better.
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And there was a very famous German economist who was well known for his writing, small is beautiful.
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I think for those of us that continue to embrace solarpreneurship as the way to be, as the way to work, as the way to create value, small truly is beautiful.
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So with that, I hope you've enjoyed today's episode.
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Let us know how you're using AI.
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Let us know what tools you're enjoying.
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I think this is where it really is interesting when we get to go work with others to see how they're using AI in their business.
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As I shared at the beginning of today's episode, I recently was part of a hackathon, and it was great to be with some colleagues for a couple of hours every day over the weekend to see how they leverage their tools.
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Always something to learn because you know the world is always changing.
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So thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day.
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I'd love to invite you to like, comment, and share the podcast.
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And if you're near a bookstore or you want to learn more about FlowFlex Scale with some AI prompts, with some regular experiments, with some more detail around what we're talking about here, please pick up a copy.
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I'd really appreciate it.
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And better yet, why don't you bring it into your book club?
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With this book, I actually put book club questions at the back because I want groups of entrepreneurs, I want chambers of commerce, I want uh, you know, breakfast clubs to be talking about this, to be sharing notes, to be using this whole platform as a sparker because the world of solopreneurship can be lonely.
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And when we do create connection with others, that's where things really can take off.
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So thanks for spending time with me today.
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We'll see you soon on our next episode.
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Be well.