Renee La Tour:
00:03
When I say freedom first principles, what I mean is, like, coming at everything that you do in life and business based on freedom first. And when I say freedom first, it's very general because it is. Everyone defines it differently. What does freedom mean to you?
Intro:
00:17
Welcome to the One Person Business podcast, the show for solopreneurs, consultants, and contractors who are ready to take charge of their business and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights, and insights, and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts, empowering you to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries.
Carly Ries:
00:47
Welcome to the 1 person business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries.
Joe Rando:
00:51
And I'm Joe Rando.
Carly Ries:
00:53
today, we're talking about a topic that I have spoken with so many of our community members about and, actually, people outside of our community, and that is burnout. It is something that I feel like all of us as solopreneurs have experienced. Some of us wear it as a badge of honor, like, working the 247 shift at their one person business. But, today, we're gonna talk about why maybe that's not the best thing and then how to overcome that with our guest today, Renee La Tour. She is the business strategist behind the ticket to freedom, just the name of that company, by the way, makes me happy, which is a program that helps solopreneurs remove themselves from the day to day of their business by leveraging AI, automation, and delegation.
Carly Ries:
01:35
She's a full time traveler and part time entrepreneur, my gal, and coining the term fancy nomad to describe her unique freedom first lifestyle. Renee, just going through your bio makes me so excited to talk to you, So welcome to the show.
Renee La Tour:
01:53
Thank you so much. It's so great to be with you, Carly. I love that introduction. So lovely. So welcoming.
Renee La Tour:
01:59
Great to see you too, Joe. Great to be here. I'm excited to be into it.
Carly Ries:
02:03
Yeah. This will be so great. I know I wanna talk about the why first. So like I was saying, some people kind of wear a badge of honor. I used to be that person that would be like, oh, I can't make it. I have a meeting.
Carly Ries:
02:13
Or, oh, I can't do that. I have to take the trash. whatever it is. And that isn't necessarily the best thing for a person or for their business in the long run.
Carly Ries:
02:24
So can you talk about why overworking and all that can be detrimental to a business?
Renee La Tour:
02:32
Yeah. Absolutely. And you're spot on. I think that there's a lot of rewiring, retraining, and adjustments culturally that need to be made around this whole, I'm busy, and, oh, look at me. I'm so busy and my schedule's jam packed, and I'm just such in demand.
Renee La Tour:
02:54
And it's fine for some people, again, whatever floats your boat. But the reality of it is, is that more is not more and less is more. And what I practice in my life, and what I've come to practice also in business and helping other people and being really an evangelist for freedom and an evangelist for this movement is essentialism and minimalism and really knowing what's important to you. Because a lot of people get it wrong. They think that when they hear minimalism, they think, oh, less things, less stuff.
Renee La Tour:
03:34
Yes. That's true, superficially. But when you think about and you really dig into minimalism and essentialism, and we can talk more about dissecting these words specifically, really comes down to what's important and doing more of what's important, what's a priority, and less of what's not. So even though it might feel a bit satisfying to say, I gotta take out the trash, and, oh, I have all these meetings, and I'm so in demand, and I'm so busy, and I'm running, running, running, going, going, going, You might feel really important. You might get little hits of dopamine.
Renee La Tour:
04:08
But in the long run, it isn't advantageous for you, your life, your family, your business. It actually is just running, running, running, running, running, running right into the ground. And we see it over and over again and it's something to be of major concern because health of, your your own personal health, like physical health, mental health. We have a huge mental health crisis that needs to be addressed. Health of our families, breaking down of family structure.
Renee La Tour:
04:39
And when I speak to not only mothers, but fathers as well. And so we're seeing this, restructure of culture. And I'm just gonna specifically talk, about and to Americans, we can't generally talk about it, we can get into it because it's quite fascinating. And, of course, being, nomadic, you see different cultures and how they interact with work, which is very interesting. We can dig into it because it well, we can go there if you guys want to.
Renee La Tour:
05:07
But just speaking of Americans and how we've gone about work, and now both genders, sexes, whatever, being in the workforce and also managing families and also managing your commitments to your friends and other things you wanna do. And, hey, maybe you also wanna travel. You wanna do all of these things and you wanna live a very full life, but something's got to give. And being busy and being run, run, run, and go, go, go and on the hamster wheel, really doesn't serve you. So in a nutshell, I think if we can unpack any of that, we can go any direction you wanna go.
Renee La Tour:
05:45
But in more reasons than not, no, it's not serving you and it's not going to grow your business. It might work short term, but there isn't sustainability there, especially not as a one person business if it's built on your back and you doing all of those things. So with all of that, I'll open it up to more questions and see where you guys wanna go with that.
Joe Rando:
06:11
Well, I just love how you mentioned dopamine because that's such a a good way to look at the problem because we sometimes and I've started a lot of businesses over the years, and we get into these things that we really like to do that are really, you know, fun or interesting. I always talk about making a website. Oh, I'm gonna make my website. But you haven't even thought through your business yet. You haven't figured out how to communicate it to your target customer.
Joe Rando:
06:35
And, you know, I used to have this memory of we're making a trade show booth for a new company, and we hadn't figured out everything yet. And we're trying to make this trade show booth, and it was lots of fun. But when we looked at the result, like, a year later, we're like, that was terrible. You know? Because we're busy doing the things that are fun and not focusing on the things that we really need to do that might be harder and produce less dopamine.
Joe Rando:
06:55
So that's a really great point.
Carly Ries:
06:57
Absolutely. And I am curious because you did say I'm gonna speak to Americans specifically, but that made me think that you're learning something when you're overseas or over the border or wherever then maybe you've learned that we can apply, in terms of, like, slowing down, avoiding burnout. What are some things you've learned from your travels that we could apply as Americans since when we're here, we're all kind of following each other's lead? So, Yeah. I'd love to hear some of these.
Renee La Tour:
07:24
Yeah. Why not? Because I think that, you know, I don't talk so much about being a digital nomad. I know you've in the introduction, I like to say the whole fancy nomad. It's kind of like a fun little thing to say.
Renee La Tour:
07:35
Because when I first started, living nomadically, I didn't really call myself a digital nomad. I didn't even know that was a thing. So I met other people and I was like, oh, okay. There's, like, a label and there's, this whole community around this. I get it now.
Renee La Tour:
07:50
But then I realized that there are some of us that live the nomadic life a little differently, and we travel a little slower. We are a bit more intentional. We really want to be in the culture. And this is something that has been very, very important to me. When I travel, I really want to live how the people live.
Renee La Tour:
08:10
And I go to really touristy places, for sure. Like, I'm in one right now. It's very touristy. And I'll be here short term, but I really like to stay long term in places where people are actually living a normal life so I can kind of really feel into that. So the the biggest comparisons and differences that I've noticed are people who are more well rounded and not driven so much by materialism.
Renee La Tour:
08:41
And now, again, it's kind of been interesting because as globalization happens and the onset of smartphones, people are being more and more introduced to western culture. And so they are chasing more of the physical, superficial, keeping up with the Joneses mentality. But if you go into cultures that aren't there yet, what you'll see is a slowness that has been incredible for me. And oddly enough, I spent, a lot of time in Asia. I was living in Malaysia for, like, a year.
Renee La Tour:
09:12
I was living in South Africa for, a year. But then being in Latin America this last year has really opened my eyes to the slowness that is more of a cultural norm. And the thing about slowness that I want to kind of, hone in on and a message that I've been shown reminded of is that you really do have to slow down and speed up. And I think that as Americans, we don't ever think about that. And it might kind of seem strange to hear, but it's very true.
Renee La Tour:
09:49
And when I see in other cultures, the fact that they're just so relaxed about things makes things easier. And when we apply that to business, for example, if something feels difficult, like you bringing up the trade show and, like, let's do the fun stuff. let's set up the website and do all the things get the dopamine hit and all that. Now we often wanna focus on kind of, those funner things, and then there's other people who are like, I don't wanna sell. I don't wanna send any cold DMs or because, yeah, it's not so fun.
Renee La Tour:
10:17
You know? It's kind of you have to might face rejection or whatever. Like, those things need to happen in your business. you need to do those things. You need to go into those dark caves.
Renee La Tour:
10:26
And if you just relaxed about it, you know, not really put too much weight on it and kind of just like, who cares? The person said no. Move on. It would be easier. So I think that one of the biggest things when
Renee La Tour:
10:41
some people might say, oh, you think about Europeans, and they take so much time off, and they take all of August off.
Renee La Tour:
10:47
And, like, oh, look at the, Italians. They just go and have, like, 3 hour lunches, and they're, having wine. I'm not talking about any of that because that's kind of superficial. I'm talking more about, how we feel and think about our work. And when we can slow down there, when we can really take a step back to say, why am I so tight about this?
Renee La Tour:
11:08
Why do I care so much about rejection? Why, is it so uncomfortable for me to send a couple cold DMs? Let me try it out. We just send a couple of DMs. See how that feels.
Renee La Tour:
11:18
Oh, that wasn't so bad. I could send a couple more and just relax about it. That's really what I'm talking about here. So, when I travel around, it's not so much of, like, what you see on the surface level and, oh, people are really enjoying their lives, but it's really when you dig in and you kind of really see how do they just carry themselves? How do they interact with each other? Latin Americans, for example, are very warm. They're very opening and welcoming, not only with, foreigners, but also with each other. You know, they're just kind of how you see them interact with one another. And so for me, when I kind of think about, well, how can we apply that to our businesses and how we interact with leads and potential clients and potential customers, what if we just relaxed a little bit? What if we just slowed down and we didn't put so much pressure on ourselves?
Carly Ries:
12:09
Well, it's so funny because Joe and I always say that our best ideas come from when we're on hikes or bike rides or, like, it's usually the best things that have happened for this business. That might be a generalization, but have been when we're not working. Like, they've happened during our off time. Joe, I think it's fair to say that. Right?
Joe Rando:
12:31
Well, I know that bike ride I did, last summer from, Amsterdam to Bruges. we came back with a lot from that one because you're on a bike 6, 7 hours a day, and just listening to what's going on and thinking, and it can really refocus. It can really refocus you.
Renee La Tour:
12:47
Absolutely.
Carly Ries:
12:49
Renee, let me ask you because all of this sounds wonderful and slowing down, I think, people can maybe start thinking about how they might be able to apply that. But a lot of times, people don't know they're burned out. They can't really differentiate between everyday stress, which you're gonna have stress in your job. Like, kind of you're gonna have stress in life. But how do you differentiate between normal stress and actual burnout?
Renee La Tour:
13:12
Yeah. This is a good question to unpack, and I would urge everyone to really have their own definitions for themselves because I am not a doctor or anything in the space. I don't play 1 on the Internet. So I'm not trying to, you know, give, information or insights that you should be getting from a psychologist or, a medical professional or anything of that nature. I think it's important to define what does stress actually mean to me?
Renee La Tour:
13:44
What does stress feel like in my body? What kind of thoughts am I having to make me feel like, hey. I feel stressed right now. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like, you know, I'm kind of up you know, again my back is up against a wall, or do I feel constricted in my chest?
Renee La Tour:
14:03
Do I feel some kind of, you know, tightness? Does my body kinda feel tight and tense? Do I have headaches? like, those are really the questions that I would urge people to ask themselves to really define how how stress feels and because I think what happens is folks just kind of adopt someone else's opinion or thoughts or, medical definition without really checking in with themselves. So I just wanna set the baseline to start there.
Renee La Tour:
14:35
And then as far as being able to make the difference of well, is this just normal everyday stress? Because being a solopreneur, being a one person business, it's not for everybody, and not a lot of people can handle it. Because a lot of times you're gonna feel like you're on an island. A lot of times you're gonna feel like you're a freaking nutcase. And you're just bat shit crazy.
Renee La Tour:
14:57
And you have to be okay with that and be like, oh, no. I'm good. I got it under control. I'm relaxed and be able to self regulate and have tools in your toolbox to handle things that are gonna come up that a lot of people aren't gonna have to deal with. Like, this is just the reality as an employee where you have someone telling you what, when, where, and how.
Renee La Tour:
15:16
You're not gonna have to deal with the things that a solopreneur has to deal with or a one person business or someone who's kind of on their own. So having said all of that, knowing the difference comes down to, am I at a stage of uncharted territories? You know what I mean? Like, because we've all had situations where we can kind of go back to, hey, I dealt with that a year ago, or I dealt with something very similar to that. Maybe, the circumstances might look a little different, but at its core, it kinda feels the same.
Renee La Tour:
15:51
Again, going back to, how does this fill my body? How am I feeling? How am I thinking about this? Is this uncharted territories? What tools in my toolbox do I have where I can address this?
Renee La Tour:
16:03
What things have worked for me in the past? Or am I at a point where, like, I don't even know? I am at a place where I need to get help, and then that help could look different to different people. You know, if you have someone that you in your trusted circle, whether that be a significant other or a friend or, you know, a therapist or someone that you can call to kind of bounce that off with, kind of bounce how you're feeling or kinda talk it out, that's, where you really need to start. Because it's not I don't want anyone to feel like there's this pressure of, like, I need to know the difference. do I even know that I'm burnt out? It's, such a personal thing, that it's really more about just kind of having a point of reflection of how do I feel my body? What kind of thoughts am I having? Is this different or the same of what I've experienced in my past? Do I have anyone that I can reach out to?
Renee La Tour:
16:54
We all can. Again, I'm, like, ready to give the number to 1800 BetterHelp or something. But I know, Carly, maybe that does feels like it's not answering your question. But my point in saying all of this is it really comes down to you personally, like, taking personal accountability to say, how am I feeling right now, and what do I need? And do I have the tools?
Renee La Tour:
17:13
Because I have tools that I can tap into. I don't need to you know, I can label it burnout if I need to, but then it's like, alright. What am I gonna do about it? So you know, having the tools available to me or making those tools available to me is, the next step. Regardless of whatever you call it, I don't really care.
Carly Ries:
17:31
Yeah. Okay. Well, so you keep it saying it, tools and tools in the toolbox. So let's dive into that a little bit. What tools can people use to try to prevent burnout?
Carly Ries:
17:39
What can they do to get ahead of this? And even get time back in their week because I think people get burned out because they're just working around the clock. So what are some tools that you would recommend people have, to get ahead of it in the first place?
Renee La Tour:
17:53
Yeah. And because before, I didn't wanna get on a huge monologue here. But before, we get into, tools and tooling up your toolbox, because I really do believe in this and I use that verbiage on purpose, is I'm more interested in pre burnout. Because, again, like you said, early on in the show, people kinda wear this as a badge of honor, and, people wanna talk about their previous burnout, which is great for marketing because then people can relate to that. Like, oh, this person's really gone through the storm, and it's great.
Renee La Tour:
18:22
You know? But I really do want to get ahead of that curve because it's unnecessary. Like, we talked about, it's completely unnecessary to burn yourself out. And you'll know that when you just spend a little time with yourself to really dig into what's important to you. What is important to you?
Renee La Tour:
18:42
Not what your family has told you, not on how you were raised or how you were culturally brought up, but what do you want?
Renee La Tour:
18:52
What do you want your life to look like? How do you wanna interact with your family? How do you want your businesses to support that lifestyle?
Renee La Tour:
19:00
And really sit with that. Because I think too many times, too many people, the reason why they're running around and they're just can't really get a good grasp on things is because they don't have a sense of priorities. And they don't have a sense of priorities because they haven't identified what's really important to them. And when you start there and again, I know, like, this is why it is said over and over and over again to a cliche of, knowing your why, having a vision, knowing your mission is because the reason why there's all this scattering and clinging and all of this is because people don't know. And they haven't given themselves the space and the time to know that.
Renee La Tour:
19:43
So when you do, you're like, alright. I got it. I'm clear. I know my why. I know what I want.
Renee La Tour:
19:47
I know what I want my business. This is my goal. This is how I wanna interact with my family. Alright. Done.
Renee La Tour:
19:52
Did it. Moving on. How do I prioritize? And that's when all these things are coming in. Right?
Renee La Tour:
19:59
We're in the information age of, everything in the power of our hands. We can just have access to all the information. Nothing is sacred anymore. It's all there. What do I do with it?
Renee La Tour:
20:10
You know, there's like so many options. I can be on all these different social media platforms. I can grow my business in all these gazelle ways. There's this person telling me I can make, you know, 90,000,000 in 90 days. There's this person over here telling me I need to be on TikTok and do all the TikTok things.
Renee La Tour:
20:25
And, there are all these options. So what do I do? Right? So that's when, prioritizing comes into place. And really, again, kind of sitting down and saying, what's going to move the needle on where I want to go?
Renee La Tour:
20:40
What can I commit to? What can I say for the next 90 days? And this is something I preach over and over. If you can do it for the next 3 months, like, what in the next 90 days can I do on a consistent basis to see if this will work? You have to experiment.
Renee La Tour:
20:57
Again, going back to people who are taking the leap into this one person business, into the solopreneurship journey, you are taking the leap to say, I'm gonna experiment, and I'm gonna try things out and see what works and what doesn't work. So your willingness to be able to do that and grow a business that's gonna support the lifestyle you want takes a level of commitment and dedication to say, alright. I can give myself the next quarter to do this. I can give myself the next 90 days to see if this is gonna work. And that's why you really wanna prioritize and not try to do everything.
Renee La Tour:
21:32
You know, you're just gonna be doing a handful of things. And when things come into your world, information, opportunities, someone saying, hey, be on my podcast. Hey. Let's do this collaboration.
Renee La Tour:
21:46
Hey. Let's do this live. all of the things. It's just endless. No.
Renee La Tour:
21:51
I said I was gonna do this thing for 90 days. This is my priority. This is how I'm gonna be balanced in my life so that I have time for my kiddos, so that I have time for my family, so I have time for me, dancing and going to the beach or whatever. All other things I wanna be doing, this is how I'm gonna keep my priorities in check because I've committed to this experiment, you know, for this sprint of 90 days, and that's what I'm focused on. So, I'll go back to your toolbox question, but I just wanted to touch on that.
Renee La Tour:
22:21
It's very important. People are really overcomplicating this whole burnout conversation.
Joe Rando:
22:26
It's pretty easy to overcomplicate it these days, though. I mean, you pointed it out. Like, it's TikTok, and it's Instagram, and it's Facebook, and it's LinkedIn, and it's just on and on. And, you know, there's people telling you have to be on all the platforms. And do you really?
Renee La Tour:
22:42
No. They're trying to sell you something.
Carly Ries:
22:46
And that's just with social media. I mean, that's getting pulled in different directions just with one tiny aspect of marketing, not to mention everything else in your business and everything else in your life.
Renee La Tour:
22:58
That's right. That's right. Keeping it simple, like, simplify. I know it's, like, my answer to everything, and you know, I have conversations with my clients, and they're like, yeah. That's really simple.
Renee La Tour:
23:10
And I'm like, yeah. You do not need to overcomplicate it. You know? And anyone who's really trying to make it seem some kind of special secret magical sauce is kind of probably full of crap. I don't know.
Renee La Tour:
23:23
I don't know. I'm not gonna say anything bad about anything. But, it really is. It really comes down to us all reminding each other, of how simple life can be and how beautiful it can be and just knowing these are my priorities. This is what I'm gonna stick to.
Renee La Tour:
23:39
I'm gonna commit to this because these things are important to me, and just remind yourself of that every day, in and out. And then you're gonna you're gonna evaluate that. Every 90 days, you evaluate, how did it go? How did those experiments go? How did what's the ROI?
Renee La Tour:
23:55
What happened in the last 3 months? And if you can have that level of commitment and accountability, for yourself, you will see the momentum you want to see. You will move mountains in that way just by keeping it simple. Keeping your own focus. Because like you were saying, Joe, there are so many different ways you can be pulled if you allow it.
Renee La Tour:
24:18
So you really do have to captain your ship in that way.
Joe Rando:
24:22
I just wanna kind of, point out or enforce a point that you just made, which is you do these things, you focus, but you measure. Because if you don't know what worked, then it's hard to know how to make that adjustment going forward. so that idea of measuring, is so important. We just did one where we tried to increase the people who show up for our events versus those who registered, and we want to do it quickly. So we did, like, 4 different things, and it was amazing.
Joe Rando:
24:54
You know, we went from 30% attendance to 50%, but we don't really know why. What worked and what didn't, and it was worth doing because we can do all those things and just keep it going. But, it's
Joe Rando:
25:06
important to try to find a way to measure those things so you wind up not really clear what was good and what was bad.
Renee La Tour:
25:12
Right. And you bring up a good point like, just starting to measure. okay. So now you know that you had this increase, and now you're like, well, I don't know why. Well, what dials were you moving?
Renee La Tour:
25:22
Were you moving multi again, I really do look at business as experiments. Like, were you moving multiple dials at once? Can be a little tricky now to know what really moved the needle. So, you know, if you just really okay. There's one dial that I'm gonna turn up, and I'm gonna have the patience to know I'm running a marathon, not a sprint.
Renee La Tour:
25:41
So I'm gonna be like, alright. Let's dial that, see if that affected the numbers. Okay. It didn't. Now let's move another another dial.
Renee La Tour:
25:49
And you kind of are just working in a more calculated way instead of what I see solopreneurs often do again because it's difficult. You're not part of this big team of, really brainstorming, really hashing things out, is they're quick to throw every like, scrap everything and just start over again. Or, let's just revamp everything. And it's like, woah. Woah.
Renee La Tour:
26:10
Woah. Slow down. Slow down a little bit and just change one thing. Let's see if that makes a difference. Okay.
Renee La Tour:
26:16
Now we'll change the other thing. But changing 16 things at once, you're not gonna be able to measure and continue onward. So, yeah. I just thought I'd put a pin in that one, Joe, because you brought up a good point.
Joe Rando:
26:27
Yeah. And in our defense, we knew exactly what we were doing wrong, but we did it anyway because we wanted the attendance.
Carly Ries:
26:35
Yeah. There's the patience thing, the slowdown thing. Well, okay. So would now be a good time to dive into those tools?
Carly Ries:
26:42
Do you feel like we're in the right frame. Go for it.
Renee La Tour:
26:45
No. So tools alright. tool is everything. Right? 1000 and 100 of tools.
Renee La Tour:
26:50
Let's talk about something in particular. Kind of going back to defining stress. Like, it could be from you. It could be a client. It could be whatever.
Renee La Tour:
27:01
Give me some examples. What is someone dealing with? Like, I don't know. I'm just kinda thinking maybe we should talk about, a real life example. Like, what is going on and what needs to be addressed, and then we can just kinda shoot around some tool ideas that maybe somebody could use in a practical sense.
Joe Rando:
27:18
I mean, I'm not sure what would be a good example. I mean, one of the things that stresses me right now is improving SEO. I don't know if it's a good topic for this, and we can cut this if it's not. But, you know, that's one of the things that's got me, you know, instead of being kind of stressed, excited, I'm stressed like annoyed.
Renee La Tour:
27:40
Yeah. Okay. So first, let's unpack it a little bit. I think this is a great example.
Renee La Tour:
27:45
So stressed out about improving SEO. What's the goal here? What's the goal with improving SEO?
Joe Rando:
27:52
Well, I mean, the goal is to show up on the first page of Google search. Because we are doing a lot for solopreneurs and a lot more than a lot of the pages that are showing up on the top. And, you know, it's still a mystery to me as hard as I've worked on it, why we're not getting, better results in terms of showing up.
Renee La Tour:
28:10
Okay. So knowing you wanna be on the first page of Google so that people can find you when they're searching for solopreneur resources.
Joe Rando:
28:25
Yeah. Solopreneur resources. We are first for solopreneur community.
Renee La Tour:
28:30
Okay. So alright. Now this is getting good. Alright. So you're number 1 for solopreneur community.
Renee La Tour:
28:36
Now, I know that the app is for task management for solopreneurs.
Joe Rando:
28:42
But the app isn't released yet, so we're not really trying to rank for that. We're holding back because that's that's just going into beta.
Renee La Tour:
28:49
Okay. so you're wanting to rank for other topics outside of solopreneur community?
Carly Ries:
28:56
So, basically, we're a place where solopreneurs can go to get educated, get the resources they need to grow their business, get the motivation to meet other solopreneurs going through everything. There are blogs, podcasts, courses will be coming up, speaking events. We have guest speakers come once every 6 weeks to give, it's a micro event to give presentations. We have all these things for the business aside from the app.
Carly Ries:
29:20
The app will be coming, hopefully, shortly, but we're just a go to resource for solopreneurs looking to grow their business, and while also living the life that they want to live. So the SEO thing has been mind boggling because I'm in marketing, so I focus on SEO. Joe has given a lot of time and attention to this, and we have another marketer on our team, who's also a contractor who is very well known in the space of marketing and great at what he does for SEO, and yet the needle still isn't moving. So it's just a frustration knowing that we have knowledgeable people on the topic, and yet it's not moving.
Renee La Tour:
30:00
Yeah. And people who know SEO and you having this, solopreneur hub, if you will, with everything solopreneur, wanting to be the number 1 in solopreneur community, which you are,
Renee La Tour:
30:15
just so I have a little more context, like you said, we might cut this out, but this is good. I really love doing this kind of stuff because it's like, let's get down to the meat and potatoes of it. What are some of the other topics you guys are trying to rank for in SEO?
Joe Rando:
30:26
Well, interestingly, I just checked it. One of the ones we were working on was solopreneur events, and we just made it to number 3, which wasn't happening a few weeks ago. And so that's cool. So I'm less stressed now. But, yeah, what else, Carly?
Joe Rando:
30:40
We've been trying to rank for just the word solopreneur.
Carly Ries:
30:43
Yeah. And solopreneur is tough. I mean, obviously, that's our ultimate goal. We're kinda like Joe threw out the analogy of, like, HubSpot and Inbound marketing, content marketing back in the 2000 early 2000 teens. The content marketing wasn't really a term yet.
Carly Ries:
30:58
And then they helped grow. They helped coin the term inbound marketing and all of that. And solopreneur is obviously a phrase that people are kind of aware of, but it is a really mainstream. So we wanted to, get it from the beginning so that eventually we're the go to resource for when somebody types in solopreneur. but right now, solopreneur resources, solopreneur tools, how to grow a business as a solopreneur, things like that.
Renee La Tour:
31:22
Yeah. And like Joe was saying, you guys are already number 3, for the other topics. So I mean, this is like, you guys take this how you will, but I'm like, wait. You guys are on the right track. You're already number 1 for 1 keyword.
Renee La Tour:
31:36
You're already number 3 on the other that you didn't realize with just right now. Are you really celebrating enough? Are you really saying, hey, we're doing the work. We're doing the right things. We're figuring it out.
Renee La Tour:
31:49
And I think that has been the biggest thing when it comes to, the stress, burnout, all this pressure. The pressure that we put on ourselves is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I think it's important to have people in your corner who are gonna call you out on it and remind you and remind yourself. I remind myself every day, damn near, that I am figuring it out.
Renee La Tour:
32:17
I'm not, like, I have to figure this out. I have to get this done. I need to be, I'm figuring it out. I am figuring it out. This is a push process.
Renee La Tour:
32:29
This is a evolution process, not a pressure process. for me, the image I often remind myself is of, being in a pressure cooker. And, , you're kind of, putting all of this weight on yourself, and it's completely unnecessary and completely unhelpful. And if you feel like I'm stressed about this because I'm beginning this out, we got smart people on the team. what is going on?
Renee La Tour:
32:53
But going back to our original kind of, like the tools are endless like, giving yourself space. You let it be meditation.
Joe Rando:
33:03
I just wanna say something. I'm gonna break the 4th wall here a little bit on the podcast. But all of you solopreneurs out there, listen to what she's saying. If you do, you won't end up with all this gray hair. You will you will not.
Joe Rando:
33:15
You will do better. So listen to her.
Renee La Tour:
33:18
Joe's got gray hair, but it looks good. It's like that what do they call it? Like a gray what do they call it? Gray fox? I don't remember.
Joe Rando:
33:25
Oh, silver fox? That's what they call it
Renee La Tour:
33:30
So if it looks good on you, go with it. Yeah. So it's like, you know, the tools, it's not much more of the tools. You do what feels good to you. Do what fits you.
Renee La Tour:
33:41
You know? tools could be for anybody. for me, I'm dancing every morning, and that's a way that, for me, I can practice just being in my body, just kind of letting loose. Again, letting go of the tension of any kind of, stress that I might be carrying around. I just wanna dance.
Renee La Tour:
33:56
I just wanna, like, let it go, let the energy go. It works for me. Would I tell everyone that they need to dance, that that needs to be a tool in their toolbox? No. I don't it's not for everybody. So it's not necessarily, like, okay, this is the thing. It's more about, catching yourself, oh, I am putting a lot of pressure on myself for something that I actually am figuring out, something that I actually am making movement on. And what happens is people will stop themselves getting their own damn way to think that they're not doing it right or they should stop doing what they're doing or maybe I should fire that marketing expert that I thought was great because things aren't happening fast enough.
Joe Rando:
34:42
Don't worry, Carly.
Renee La Tour:
34:46
Oh, that's great. But no. Because it's like you stop.
Renee La Tour:
34:50
You're it's like you know the analogy. Like, people are stopping right before they get to the finish line, and I've been there too. and then I look back, and I'm like, man, if I would've stopped in that darkest before the dawn, I wouldn't even experience what I'm experiencing. So it's just, the knowing that, like, I am figuring this out. I don't have to have it figured out.
Renee La Tour:
35:13
I'm gonna never have it figured out. Right? I feel like the wisest people among us know it's not gonna always be there will always be something challenging you. There will always be something that will stress you out if you let it. But instead, release that pressure.
Renee La Tour:
35:29
Don't put yourself in a pressure cooker because it's completely unnecessary. Just let that out. Just say, hey. I'm figuring it out. I got this.
Renee La Tour:
35:37
I'm figuring it out.
Carly Ries:
35:39
I think another stressor for solopreneurs, and I think this is the stress that I have too sometimes is I know what I need to be doing, but there really just aren't enough hours in the day to get all of it done. I think a lot of people if it's still approved or not, I think that's a big thing is, just making those priorities. But I think a big part of that is also there's a lot of time wasters that don't people don't realize they're doing. These handy dandy things are, a big part of it for people or social media checking. What are some other ways people can save time so, so they can get the time back, relax a little bit more?
Carly Ries:
36:13
Do you notice a commonality with those?
Renee La Tour:
36:17
Yeah. And I'm going to get really extreme, and I know I say this to some people and they kind of roll their eyes, like, easy for you to say or whatever. But, no. I see this time and time again.
Renee La Tour:
36:28
The more disciplined you can be, the more time freedom you will have. So when it comes to these damn things, okay, I am a bit of extreme. I haven't had notifications on my phone in years. I practice digital detoxes, where I'll take a whole day off of screens just to give my whole system a break. I think that we, as adults, need to be leading by example on how to manage this, technical technological age that we're in and always being on and setting an expectation of always being on.
Renee La Tour:
37:10
I don't do any of the wearable stuff. I have a watch that I use sometimes if I wanna measure my sleep or whatever, but I try to just not have it, on if I don't need it. If you can turn off as much notifications as possible and remind yourself that it's completely unnecessary. You don't need to get to Slack right away. Very few things are urgent.
Renee La Tour:
37:32
None of us are working in the ER. No one's life is on the line. And for anyone who has, wife, husband, children, kids' schools, all those things, those can be set up on your phone as, exemptions. So if you have your phone on do not disturb, if you have everything turned off, you will still get those notifications. So you don't have to worry about, like, oh my god.
Renee La Tour:
37:55
What about my child? Or what about my husband? Or whatever. If I have my phone on do not disturb, which I do all day long, my calls to my from my partners still come in. So you're good.
Renee La Tour:
38:04
There's a way that you can do this. It sounds really extreme to people, but it's really not. I feel like the fact that people's phones are pinging, and I go out in public and I'm hearing people's phones pinging, it drives me nuts because it's just like, oh my god. I can't imagine having that pinging, pinging, pinging.
Renee La Tour:
38:24
It's a constant distraction, and our brains aren't wired for that. So if you can have your phone on silent, if you can have, your notifications and again, you can set it up just kinda starting off, maybe just eliminating a few notifications, you know, just starting with the social media notifications. That kinda thing, I I really do feel it might sound simple, but it's just moving mountains. So I would say, to answer your question on is there, a calm theme, myself and people closest to me and people that I work with, the biggest reason why we all have more time than most people is because we don't engage in any of it. So I don't get any notifications.
Renee La Tour:
39:06
I don't have a bunch of notifications going off on my screen right now. I'm here with you guys. You get all my energy right now, and it's the same when I'm with my loved ones. So when I'm at dinner, I'm not looking on my phone. I'm with them.
Renee La Tour:
39:18
And it's really about being present. And, you know, you can decide. Do you wanna be in control of your life, or do you want this thing to control your life?
Joe Rando:
39:27
If anybody wonders whether this is really a good way to get more time back, look at that. If you have an iPhone, look at that screen report. End of the week. Every Sunday, I think it comes in. It's astonishing.
Joe Rando:
39:38
You know? Take a good look at that, and I'm right with you on the notifications. I have a bunch on right now, and I, actually, am leaving them because I wanna do, a blog about deleting all the notifications and measuring what it does to my life. And I just haven't started that one yet, but, it is incredibly distracting.
Carly Ries:
40:01
Well, so let me also ask you this. so that removes, more distractions. But there are other ways to streamline your business so that you can free up more time and not necessarily be the bottleneck on a lot of things that need to get done. What are your recommendations? Do you have any systems, processes, anything like that to help people get that time back to decrease the burnout risk?
Renee La Tour:
40:23
Yeah. Absolutely. So the one thing that I'm cautious of, and I wanna, again, I wanna make sure we give your listeners practical things that they can do. And some people just kinda want, let me start time blocking. Let me start, doing productivity hacks and stuff like that.
Renee La Tour:
40:40
It's like, no. Because there's really not a one size fits all. Again, it goes back to, kind of experiment. Experiment with different things and see what could work for you. You're not going to make time that doesn't happen.
Renee La Tour:
40:54
You know, we all have the whole 24 hours in one day. really, I know I might sound like a broken record at this point, it comes down to your priorities. Because if you're saying yes to all of these things and all of the things that are coming in, it's gonna be impossible to really be present where you wanna be present, to really move things forward in your business. So when it comes to your business specifically and being able to remove yourself as a bottleneck, because that's the biggest thing I help people with is, like, alright. You have this one person business, but if you really wanna scale, it needs to be a little bigger than you.
Renee La Tour:
41:32
It has to go from being your baby to being an asset. So the first thing there is just kind of readjusting your your reference point and your mindset of building out a machine and getting things out of your head and into the physical practical world. So, really, that just comes down to standard operating procedures, which are not sexy to anybody else but me. I'm the only person on the planet who, like, peeks out to it and, loves it.
Joe Rando:
42:01
That is not true.
Renee La Tour:
42:02
You too?
Joe Rando:
42:04
Well, that's what the whole idea behind the app is. Getting it out of your head and into a process.
Renee La Tour:
42:10
There you go. And that's it. Like, guys everyone knows all of this. Right? And we have to remind you, like, this is how simple it is.
Renee La Tour:
42:17
There's no magic bullet here, guys. It's really just alright. All this stuff is in my head. I know I'm just kind of, running around and but once I take a step back, again, have the space, prioritize so I can open up more time, remove distractions so I can open up even more time. Okay.
Renee La Tour:
42:38
The first thing I'm gonna do with that extra time is start building out machines, is start building out the systems. And people complicate, what are systems? systems is just documenting how you do the thing. So that's as simple as it is. don't make it more complicated than this is how we do x.
Renee La Tour:
42:56
Say, for example, this is how we do sales. This is our sales system. It's now documented so that anyone can look at this and know, oh, this is how Renee does sales. So if Renee was to fall off a cliff or whatever, we know the system.
Renee La Tour:
43:10
And now that we have the system documented, doesn't matter, it could be a lone video, it could be a Google doc, that does not matter. It's documented. Now we can figure out how to make it better. But you can't figure out how to make that system more efficient and more, systemized without first looking at it.
Renee La Tour:
43:28
And I think that's a lot of the gap like, you need to look at your business in order to do that. You have to be able to physically, like, have something that you could show another person, you know, that it could actually be looked at.
Joe Rando:
43:41
And that's the first step in actually maybe offloading it to a contractor.
Renee La Tour:
43:46
There you go. That is the first step.
Joe Rando:
43:47
Which is really amazing when somebody else does it. You don't have to do it anymore. You can focus on something that maybe you're better at or, you know, can be make more money doing or like to do more instead of something that maybe you don't necessarily wanna do.
Renee La Tour:
44:03
Yeah. There you go. And I think that so I'll just say one thing here. Otherwise, I'll just start talking about SOPs this whole time, is don't feel like you need to have, all of these processes, these systems mapped out before you even hire someone else. You don't.
Renee La Tour:
44:20
So you just need to again, it's the perspective shift of, like, I'm building out an asset. I'm building out a machine. I'm building out, systems that someone else can come into and help me so that I can step away, so I can remove myself as the bottleneck, so that I can take some time off, like, completely off, like, off the grid off, and still have my business running, generating income, getting money into my bank account without me having to do anything. that is a real possibility. Again, I'm not saying, you just click a couple buttons
Renee La Tour:
44:47
and you're good. No. Just click a couple buttons and you're good. No. Like, you can actually build it out to be that way and to support you and your life in that way and have real longevity, but it starts with you just making the decision and the perception shift of, okay, this is gonna be bigger than me.
Renee La Tour:
45:08
I'm cool with that. I'm comfortable with kind of, letting go a little bit. And then if that's inviting someone else in, they can help put together those SOPs. They can help just see you getting on a a Zoom call, recording the Zoom call, and now that's your rough SOP, just teaching them what you're doing.
Renee La Tour:
45:26
Right? You don't have to make it complicated. Doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to use all the AI tools. You can just really rough and dirty get started by just bringing someone on board and saying, alright.
Renee La Tour:
45:38
This is how I'm doing what I'm doing. Now we're creating SOPs together.
Carly Ries:
45:42
Love, love, love this. So I'm curious because you put freedom first. Isn't a lot of your, verbiage on, LinkedIn and everything into how you speak? And with all of this, I think people are gonna listen to this episode and be like, wow. Like, I can free up time.
Carly Ries:
46:00
I can regain all of this. was it freedom first principles?
Carly Ries:
46:06
How do those tie into all this, and what exactly are they?
Renee La Tour:
46:09
Yeah. And, you know, it is funny because, Carly, you know more about marketing than I do. freedom first principles sounds really good. And when I say freedom first principles, what I mean is, like, coming at everything that you do in life and business based on freedom first. And when I say freedom first, it's very general because it is.
Renee La Tour:
46:30
Everyone defines it differently. What does freedom mean to you? And so once you answer that question, well, what does freedom mean to me? And most people are like, well, I just want, you know, autonomy. I wanna be able to when, where, how, and what.
Renee La Tour:
46:42
I wanna be able to, you know, like you're saying, go on a walk with my daughter. Like, that's freedom to me. Or, I wanna be able to just buy whatever and not care about the price tag. Like, that's freedom to me. And once you have defined that, then you use those set of principles to run your life.
Renee La Tour:
46:58
And that's as simple as it is. You know, it really comes down to the simplicity of how do I wanna live a full and free life, and how can I bake that into everything that I do? So, for me, like, those freedom freedom first principles is instead of what we've been culturally adopted as being acceptable, maybe that's like, well, hey, you know, we gotta make money, you know, the money first. Or, like, hey. health is number 1.
Renee La Tour:
47:34
Hey. You know, faith first. Family first. you hear all of these. Right? there are these sayings that are just, like, freedom first. So it's like all this first, this first, this first, that first. Well, for me, I'm like, well, why don't you just start with freedom first? Like, if you start with freedom first, knowing, okay. what does freedom feel like to me? What does that look like? What does that how do I interact with my life if I lived as a freedom first person? And then that just is the guiding light for how you carry yourself because that really is your business, especially true for, one person businesses. Your business is just a reflection of how you carry yourself.
Carly Ries:
48:13
Yep. Great great point. Well, so the thing I got from this whole episode is it doesn't have to be so complicated and get back to the basics. it's moral of story is clear debts, and let's think through this and get back to the why.
Joe Rando:
48:33
And I would add think clearly. It's gotta think clearly vibe on the whole thing. let's focus in on what's really important. Think clearly about what we need to really care about and really put our energy into so we're not overwhelmed. That's kinda where I came from this.
Carly Ries:
48:46
Yeah. it really can be simple, and this is just such a good reminder of that. And, Renee, you spend all well, not all your time. You have a lot of free time.
Carly Ries:
48:56
Not free time. That makes it sound like you don't do anything, but you have a lot of your freedom first time. But but when you are working, you spend your time helping people find this freedom. So I want to know what is your favorite quote about success?
Renee La Tour:
49:11
You know what's so funny, Carly? You might have to cut this from the show. You sent me your questions and I deliberately did look them over because to be respectful to you guys, I did look them over. But I specifically don't, dig into them because I want an organic conversation, and I really wanna speak from my heart.
Renee La Tour:
49:28
Otherwise, I'll get so much in my head, and I'll be like, I'm gonna say this exact quote. But it was the one question that I was like, well, I'd better have a freaking quote. Oh, you know, like a penny banger. And then now, I'm just like, well, now the quote escapes me.
Renee La Tour:
49:44
But, no, I have a lot of great quotes that I love. One of my favorites, and I don't know that some people might not might say, well, it has nothing to do with success. It is, Victor Franco's quote, and he says, you have 2 choices at any point. Either you can step back into comfort or you can step forward. And the back is into safety.
Renee La Tour:
50:13
Like, I feel safe. I feel comfortable. This is what I know. Is it where you can step forward into growth? And the growth is scary.
Renee La Tour:
50:20
It's not always fun. It's sometimes feels reckless. It feels really risky. It feels like I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what anybody is gonna think about this.
Renee La Tour:
50:30
This is a mess. This is not fun. But it is where the growth is. And I really do believe that for myself. I believe that with everyone I encounter that if we keep keep stepping forward into growth, it'll be a reflection of your life and your business will reflect that growth if you just keep stepping forward, keep going into those dark caves.
Renee La Tour:
50:53
Now I'm going into another quote, Joseph Campbell on the the dark cave is where the gold is. It's something along those lines. It's another one of my favorites. This is just things that I remind myself of, but I completely butcher everyone's quotes anyways. So that's good.
Carly Ries:
51:07
We got the gist of it and nothing we can't Google after to see what the actual quote is. Well, Renee, I have so enjoyed this episode. I definitely needed this as a reminder. I think our listeners will appreciate it as well. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your business?
Renee La Tour:
51:26
Yeah. So I do hang out on LinkedIn. I met you beautiful people there. So really grateful for meeting you all.
Renee La Tour:
51:33
And anyone else who's a one person business solopreneur, I'm here for it. I'm here for the movement. And, yeah. Hanging out on LinkedIn. You can find me there, and my DMs are open.
Renee La Tour:
51:43
I'm really, happy and eager to have conversations to help people through. And, like, you guys also, we're all part of this movement of, knowing you're not on an island. You can reach out for help, and people are very generous and open more than you think
Carly Ries:
51:59
Absolutely. And we will include the LinkedIn link, in our show notes. But this has been so great. We so appreciate having you on this show.
Carly Ries:
52:08
We'd love for you to come back anytime. And, listeners, if you enjoyed this, which hopefully you did, be sure to listen to more content like this on upcoming episodes, or you can listen to previous episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts. And be sure to subscribe either there, wherever it is you listen, or on YouTube. And we will see you next week.
Closing:
52:29
You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.
00:03
When I say freedom first principles, what I mean is, like, coming at everything that you do in life and business based on freedom first. And when I say freedom first, it's very general because it is. Everyone defines it differently. What does freedom mean to you?
Intro:
00:17
Welcome to the One Person Business podcast, the show for solopreneurs, consultants, and contractors who are ready to take charge of their business and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights, and insights, and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts, empowering you to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries.
Carly Ries:
00:47
Welcome to the 1 person business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries.
Joe Rando:
00:51
And I'm Joe Rando.
Carly Ries:
00:53
today, we're talking about a topic that I have spoken with so many of our community members about and, actually, people outside of our community, and that is burnout. It is something that I feel like all of us as solopreneurs have experienced. Some of us wear it as a badge of honor, like, working the 247 shift at their one person business. But, today, we're gonna talk about why maybe that's not the best thing and then how to overcome that with our guest today, Renee La Tour. She is the business strategist behind the ticket to freedom, just the name of that company, by the way, makes me happy, which is a program that helps solopreneurs remove themselves from the day to day of their business by leveraging AI, automation, and delegation.
Carly Ries:
01:35
She's a full time traveler and part time entrepreneur, my gal, and coining the term fancy nomad to describe her unique freedom first lifestyle. Renee, just going through your bio makes me so excited to talk to you, So welcome to the show.
Renee La Tour:
01:53
Thank you so much. It's so great to be with you, Carly. I love that introduction. So lovely. So welcoming.
Renee La Tour:
01:59
Great to see you too, Joe. Great to be here. I'm excited to be into it.
Carly Ries:
02:03
Yeah. This will be so great. I know I wanna talk about the why first. So like I was saying, some people kind of wear a badge of honor. I used to be that person that would be like, oh, I can't make it. I have a meeting.
Carly Ries:
02:13
Or, oh, I can't do that. I have to take the trash. whatever it is. And that isn't necessarily the best thing for a person or for their business in the long run.
Carly Ries:
02:24
So can you talk about why overworking and all that can be detrimental to a business?
Renee La Tour:
02:32
Yeah. Absolutely. And you're spot on. I think that there's a lot of rewiring, retraining, and adjustments culturally that need to be made around this whole, I'm busy, and, oh, look at me. I'm so busy and my schedule's jam packed, and I'm just such in demand.
Renee La Tour:
02:54
And it's fine for some people, again, whatever floats your boat. But the reality of it is, is that more is not more and less is more. And what I practice in my life, and what I've come to practice also in business and helping other people and being really an evangelist for freedom and an evangelist for this movement is essentialism and minimalism and really knowing what's important to you. Because a lot of people get it wrong. They think that when they hear minimalism, they think, oh, less things, less stuff.
Renee La Tour:
03:34
Yes. That's true, superficially. But when you think about and you really dig into minimalism and essentialism, and we can talk more about dissecting these words specifically, really comes down to what's important and doing more of what's important, what's a priority, and less of what's not. So even though it might feel a bit satisfying to say, I gotta take out the trash, and, oh, I have all these meetings, and I'm so in demand, and I'm so busy, and I'm running, running, running, going, going, going, You might feel really important. You might get little hits of dopamine.
Renee La Tour:
04:08
But in the long run, it isn't advantageous for you, your life, your family, your business. It actually is just running, running, running, running, running, running right into the ground. And we see it over and over again and it's something to be of major concern because health of, your your own personal health, like physical health, mental health. We have a huge mental health crisis that needs to be addressed. Health of our families, breaking down of family structure.
Renee La Tour:
04:39
And when I speak to not only mothers, but fathers as well. And so we're seeing this, restructure of culture. And I'm just gonna specifically talk, about and to Americans, we can't generally talk about it, we can get into it because it's quite fascinating. And, of course, being, nomadic, you see different cultures and how they interact with work, which is very interesting. We can dig into it because it well, we can go there if you guys want to.
Renee La Tour:
05:07
But just speaking of Americans and how we've gone about work, and now both genders, sexes, whatever, being in the workforce and also managing families and also managing your commitments to your friends and other things you wanna do. And, hey, maybe you also wanna travel. You wanna do all of these things and you wanna live a very full life, but something's got to give. And being busy and being run, run, run, and go, go, go and on the hamster wheel, really doesn't serve you. So in a nutshell, I think if we can unpack any of that, we can go any direction you wanna go.
Renee La Tour:
05:45
But in more reasons than not, no, it's not serving you and it's not going to grow your business. It might work short term, but there isn't sustainability there, especially not as a one person business if it's built on your back and you doing all of those things. So with all of that, I'll open it up to more questions and see where you guys wanna go with that.
Joe Rando:
06:11
Well, I just love how you mentioned dopamine because that's such a a good way to look at the problem because we sometimes and I've started a lot of businesses over the years, and we get into these things that we really like to do that are really, you know, fun or interesting. I always talk about making a website. Oh, I'm gonna make my website. But you haven't even thought through your business yet. You haven't figured out how to communicate it to your target customer.
Joe Rando:
06:35
And, you know, I used to have this memory of we're making a trade show booth for a new company, and we hadn't figured out everything yet. And we're trying to make this trade show booth, and it was lots of fun. But when we looked at the result, like, a year later, we're like, that was terrible. You know? Because we're busy doing the things that are fun and not focusing on the things that we really need to do that might be harder and produce less dopamine.
Joe Rando:
06:55
So that's a really great point.
Carly Ries:
06:57
Absolutely. And I am curious because you did say I'm gonna speak to Americans specifically, but that made me think that you're learning something when you're overseas or over the border or wherever then maybe you've learned that we can apply, in terms of, like, slowing down, avoiding burnout. What are some things you've learned from your travels that we could apply as Americans since when we're here, we're all kind of following each other's lead? So, Yeah. I'd love to hear some of these.
Renee La Tour:
07:24
Yeah. Why not? Because I think that, you know, I don't talk so much about being a digital nomad. I know you've in the introduction, I like to say the whole fancy nomad. It's kind of like a fun little thing to say.
Renee La Tour:
07:35
Because when I first started, living nomadically, I didn't really call myself a digital nomad. I didn't even know that was a thing. So I met other people and I was like, oh, okay. There's, like, a label and there's, this whole community around this. I get it now.
Renee La Tour:
07:50
But then I realized that there are some of us that live the nomadic life a little differently, and we travel a little slower. We are a bit more intentional. We really want to be in the culture. And this is something that has been very, very important to me. When I travel, I really want to live how the people live.
Renee La Tour:
08:10
And I go to really touristy places, for sure. Like, I'm in one right now. It's very touristy. And I'll be here short term, but I really like to stay long term in places where people are actually living a normal life so I can kind of really feel into that. So the the biggest comparisons and differences that I've noticed are people who are more well rounded and not driven so much by materialism.
Renee La Tour:
08:41
And now, again, it's kind of been interesting because as globalization happens and the onset of smartphones, people are being more and more introduced to western culture. And so they are chasing more of the physical, superficial, keeping up with the Joneses mentality. But if you go into cultures that aren't there yet, what you'll see is a slowness that has been incredible for me. And oddly enough, I spent, a lot of time in Asia. I was living in Malaysia for, like, a year.
Renee La Tour:
09:12
I was living in South Africa for, a year. But then being in Latin America this last year has really opened my eyes to the slowness that is more of a cultural norm. And the thing about slowness that I want to kind of, hone in on and a message that I've been shown reminded of is that you really do have to slow down and speed up. And I think that as Americans, we don't ever think about that. And it might kind of seem strange to hear, but it's very true.
Renee La Tour:
09:49
And when I see in other cultures, the fact that they're just so relaxed about things makes things easier. And when we apply that to business, for example, if something feels difficult, like you bringing up the trade show and, like, let's do the fun stuff. let's set up the website and do all the things get the dopamine hit and all that. Now we often wanna focus on kind of, those funner things, and then there's other people who are like, I don't wanna sell. I don't wanna send any cold DMs or because, yeah, it's not so fun.
Renee La Tour:
10:17
You know? It's kind of you have to might face rejection or whatever. Like, those things need to happen in your business. you need to do those things. You need to go into those dark caves.
Renee La Tour:
10:26
And if you just relaxed about it, you know, not really put too much weight on it and kind of just like, who cares? The person said no. Move on. It would be easier. So I think that one of the biggest things when
Renee La Tour:
10:41
some people might say, oh, you think about Europeans, and they take so much time off, and they take all of August off.
Renee La Tour:
10:47
And, like, oh, look at the, Italians. They just go and have, like, 3 hour lunches, and they're, having wine. I'm not talking about any of that because that's kind of superficial. I'm talking more about, how we feel and think about our work. And when we can slow down there, when we can really take a step back to say, why am I so tight about this?
Renee La Tour:
11:08
Why do I care so much about rejection? Why, is it so uncomfortable for me to send a couple cold DMs? Let me try it out. We just send a couple of DMs. See how that feels.
Renee La Tour:
11:18
Oh, that wasn't so bad. I could send a couple more and just relax about it. That's really what I'm talking about here. So, when I travel around, it's not so much of, like, what you see on the surface level and, oh, people are really enjoying their lives, but it's really when you dig in and you kind of really see how do they just carry themselves? How do they interact with each other? Latin Americans, for example, are very warm. They're very opening and welcoming, not only with, foreigners, but also with each other. You know, they're just kind of how you see them interact with one another. And so for me, when I kind of think about, well, how can we apply that to our businesses and how we interact with leads and potential clients and potential customers, what if we just relaxed a little bit? What if we just slowed down and we didn't put so much pressure on ourselves?
Carly Ries:
12:09
Well, it's so funny because Joe and I always say that our best ideas come from when we're on hikes or bike rides or, like, it's usually the best things that have happened for this business. That might be a generalization, but have been when we're not working. Like, they've happened during our off time. Joe, I think it's fair to say that. Right?
Joe Rando:
12:31
Well, I know that bike ride I did, last summer from, Amsterdam to Bruges. we came back with a lot from that one because you're on a bike 6, 7 hours a day, and just listening to what's going on and thinking, and it can really refocus. It can really refocus you.
Renee La Tour:
12:47
Absolutely.
Carly Ries:
12:49
Renee, let me ask you because all of this sounds wonderful and slowing down, I think, people can maybe start thinking about how they might be able to apply that. But a lot of times, people don't know they're burned out. They can't really differentiate between everyday stress, which you're gonna have stress in your job. Like, kind of you're gonna have stress in life. But how do you differentiate between normal stress and actual burnout?
Renee La Tour:
13:12
Yeah. This is a good question to unpack, and I would urge everyone to really have their own definitions for themselves because I am not a doctor or anything in the space. I don't play 1 on the Internet. So I'm not trying to, you know, give, information or insights that you should be getting from a psychologist or, a medical professional or anything of that nature. I think it's important to define what does stress actually mean to me?
Renee La Tour:
13:44
What does stress feel like in my body? What kind of thoughts am I having to make me feel like, hey. I feel stressed right now. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like, you know, I'm kind of up you know, again my back is up against a wall, or do I feel constricted in my chest?
Renee La Tour:
14:03
Do I feel some kind of, you know, tightness? Does my body kinda feel tight and tense? Do I have headaches? like, those are really the questions that I would urge people to ask themselves to really define how how stress feels and because I think what happens is folks just kind of adopt someone else's opinion or thoughts or, medical definition without really checking in with themselves. So I just wanna set the baseline to start there.
Renee La Tour:
14:35
And then as far as being able to make the difference of well, is this just normal everyday stress? Because being a solopreneur, being a one person business, it's not for everybody, and not a lot of people can handle it. Because a lot of times you're gonna feel like you're on an island. A lot of times you're gonna feel like you're a freaking nutcase. And you're just bat shit crazy.
Renee La Tour:
14:57
And you have to be okay with that and be like, oh, no. I'm good. I got it under control. I'm relaxed and be able to self regulate and have tools in your toolbox to handle things that are gonna come up that a lot of people aren't gonna have to deal with. Like, this is just the reality as an employee where you have someone telling you what, when, where, and how.
Renee La Tour:
15:16
You're not gonna have to deal with the things that a solopreneur has to deal with or a one person business or someone who's kind of on their own. So having said all of that, knowing the difference comes down to, am I at a stage of uncharted territories? You know what I mean? Like, because we've all had situations where we can kind of go back to, hey, I dealt with that a year ago, or I dealt with something very similar to that. Maybe, the circumstances might look a little different, but at its core, it kinda feels the same.
Renee La Tour:
15:51
Again, going back to, how does this fill my body? How am I feeling? How am I thinking about this? Is this uncharted territories? What tools in my toolbox do I have where I can address this?
Renee La Tour:
16:03
What things have worked for me in the past? Or am I at a point where, like, I don't even know? I am at a place where I need to get help, and then that help could look different to different people. You know, if you have someone that you in your trusted circle, whether that be a significant other or a friend or, you know, a therapist or someone that you can call to kind of bounce that off with, kind of bounce how you're feeling or kinda talk it out, that's, where you really need to start. Because it's not I don't want anyone to feel like there's this pressure of, like, I need to know the difference. do I even know that I'm burnt out? It's, such a personal thing, that it's really more about just kind of having a point of reflection of how do I feel my body? What kind of thoughts am I having? Is this different or the same of what I've experienced in my past? Do I have anyone that I can reach out to?
Renee La Tour:
16:54
We all can. Again, I'm, like, ready to give the number to 1800 BetterHelp or something. But I know, Carly, maybe that does feels like it's not answering your question. But my point in saying all of this is it really comes down to you personally, like, taking personal accountability to say, how am I feeling right now, and what do I need? And do I have the tools?
Renee La Tour:
17:13
Because I have tools that I can tap into. I don't need to you know, I can label it burnout if I need to, but then it's like, alright. What am I gonna do about it? So you know, having the tools available to me or making those tools available to me is, the next step. Regardless of whatever you call it, I don't really care.
Carly Ries:
17:31
Yeah. Okay. Well, so you keep it saying it, tools and tools in the toolbox. So let's dive into that a little bit. What tools can people use to try to prevent burnout?
Carly Ries:
17:39
What can they do to get ahead of this? And even get time back in their week because I think people get burned out because they're just working around the clock. So what are some tools that you would recommend people have, to get ahead of it in the first place?
Renee La Tour:
17:53
Yeah. And because before, I didn't wanna get on a huge monologue here. But before, we get into, tools and tooling up your toolbox, because I really do believe in this and I use that verbiage on purpose, is I'm more interested in pre burnout. Because, again, like you said, early on in the show, people kinda wear this as a badge of honor, and, people wanna talk about their previous burnout, which is great for marketing because then people can relate to that. Like, oh, this person's really gone through the storm, and it's great.
Renee La Tour:
18:22
You know? But I really do want to get ahead of that curve because it's unnecessary. Like, we talked about, it's completely unnecessary to burn yourself out. And you'll know that when you just spend a little time with yourself to really dig into what's important to you. What is important to you?
Renee La Tour:
18:42
Not what your family has told you, not on how you were raised or how you were culturally brought up, but what do you want?
Renee La Tour:
18:52
What do you want your life to look like? How do you wanna interact with your family? How do you want your businesses to support that lifestyle?
Renee La Tour:
19:00
And really sit with that. Because I think too many times, too many people, the reason why they're running around and they're just can't really get a good grasp on things is because they don't have a sense of priorities. And they don't have a sense of priorities because they haven't identified what's really important to them. And when you start there and again, I know, like, this is why it is said over and over and over again to a cliche of, knowing your why, having a vision, knowing your mission is because the reason why there's all this scattering and clinging and all of this is because people don't know. And they haven't given themselves the space and the time to know that.
Renee La Tour:
19:43
So when you do, you're like, alright. I got it. I'm clear. I know my why. I know what I want.
Renee La Tour:
19:47
I know what I want my business. This is my goal. This is how I wanna interact with my family. Alright. Done.
Renee La Tour:
19:52
Did it. Moving on. How do I prioritize? And that's when all these things are coming in. Right?
Renee La Tour:
19:59
We're in the information age of, everything in the power of our hands. We can just have access to all the information. Nothing is sacred anymore. It's all there. What do I do with it?
Renee La Tour:
20:10
You know, there's like so many options. I can be on all these different social media platforms. I can grow my business in all these gazelle ways. There's this person telling me I can make, you know, 90,000,000 in 90 days. There's this person over here telling me I need to be on TikTok and do all the TikTok things.
Renee La Tour:
20:25
And, there are all these options. So what do I do? Right? So that's when, prioritizing comes into place. And really, again, kind of sitting down and saying, what's going to move the needle on where I want to go?
Renee La Tour:
20:40
What can I commit to? What can I say for the next 90 days? And this is something I preach over and over. If you can do it for the next 3 months, like, what in the next 90 days can I do on a consistent basis to see if this will work? You have to experiment.
Renee La Tour:
20:57
Again, going back to people who are taking the leap into this one person business, into the solopreneurship journey, you are taking the leap to say, I'm gonna experiment, and I'm gonna try things out and see what works and what doesn't work. So your willingness to be able to do that and grow a business that's gonna support the lifestyle you want takes a level of commitment and dedication to say, alright. I can give myself the next quarter to do this. I can give myself the next 90 days to see if this is gonna work. And that's why you really wanna prioritize and not try to do everything.
Renee La Tour:
21:32
You know, you're just gonna be doing a handful of things. And when things come into your world, information, opportunities, someone saying, hey, be on my podcast. Hey. Let's do this collaboration.
Renee La Tour:
21:46
Hey. Let's do this live. all of the things. It's just endless. No.
Renee La Tour:
21:51
I said I was gonna do this thing for 90 days. This is my priority. This is how I'm gonna be balanced in my life so that I have time for my kiddos, so that I have time for my family, so I have time for me, dancing and going to the beach or whatever. All other things I wanna be doing, this is how I'm gonna keep my priorities in check because I've committed to this experiment, you know, for this sprint of 90 days, and that's what I'm focused on. So, I'll go back to your toolbox question, but I just wanted to touch on that.
Renee La Tour:
22:21
It's very important. People are really overcomplicating this whole burnout conversation.
Joe Rando:
22:26
It's pretty easy to overcomplicate it these days, though. I mean, you pointed it out. Like, it's TikTok, and it's Instagram, and it's Facebook, and it's LinkedIn, and it's just on and on. And, you know, there's people telling you have to be on all the platforms. And do you really?
Renee La Tour:
22:42
No. They're trying to sell you something.
Carly Ries:
22:46
And that's just with social media. I mean, that's getting pulled in different directions just with one tiny aspect of marketing, not to mention everything else in your business and everything else in your life.
Renee La Tour:
22:58
That's right. That's right. Keeping it simple, like, simplify. I know it's, like, my answer to everything, and you know, I have conversations with my clients, and they're like, yeah. That's really simple.
Renee La Tour:
23:10
And I'm like, yeah. You do not need to overcomplicate it. You know? And anyone who's really trying to make it seem some kind of special secret magical sauce is kind of probably full of crap. I don't know.
Renee La Tour:
23:23
I don't know. I'm not gonna say anything bad about anything. But, it really is. It really comes down to us all reminding each other, of how simple life can be and how beautiful it can be and just knowing these are my priorities. This is what I'm gonna stick to.
Renee La Tour:
23:39
I'm gonna commit to this because these things are important to me, and just remind yourself of that every day, in and out. And then you're gonna you're gonna evaluate that. Every 90 days, you evaluate, how did it go? How did those experiments go? How did what's the ROI?
Renee La Tour:
23:55
What happened in the last 3 months? And if you can have that level of commitment and accountability, for yourself, you will see the momentum you want to see. You will move mountains in that way just by keeping it simple. Keeping your own focus. Because like you were saying, Joe, there are so many different ways you can be pulled if you allow it.
Renee La Tour:
24:18
So you really do have to captain your ship in that way.
Joe Rando:
24:22
I just wanna kind of, point out or enforce a point that you just made, which is you do these things, you focus, but you measure. Because if you don't know what worked, then it's hard to know how to make that adjustment going forward. so that idea of measuring, is so important. We just did one where we tried to increase the people who show up for our events versus those who registered, and we want to do it quickly. So we did, like, 4 different things, and it was amazing.
Joe Rando:
24:54
You know, we went from 30% attendance to 50%, but we don't really know why. What worked and what didn't, and it was worth doing because we can do all those things and just keep it going. But, it's
Joe Rando:
25:06
important to try to find a way to measure those things so you wind up not really clear what was good and what was bad.
Renee La Tour:
25:12
Right. And you bring up a good point like, just starting to measure. okay. So now you know that you had this increase, and now you're like, well, I don't know why. Well, what dials were you moving?
Renee La Tour:
25:22
Were you moving multi again, I really do look at business as experiments. Like, were you moving multiple dials at once? Can be a little tricky now to know what really moved the needle. So, you know, if you just really okay. There's one dial that I'm gonna turn up, and I'm gonna have the patience to know I'm running a marathon, not a sprint.
Renee La Tour:
25:41
So I'm gonna be like, alright. Let's dial that, see if that affected the numbers. Okay. It didn't. Now let's move another another dial.
Renee La Tour:
25:49
And you kind of are just working in a more calculated way instead of what I see solopreneurs often do again because it's difficult. You're not part of this big team of, really brainstorming, really hashing things out, is they're quick to throw every like, scrap everything and just start over again. Or, let's just revamp everything. And it's like, woah. Woah.
Renee La Tour:
26:10
Woah. Slow down. Slow down a little bit and just change one thing. Let's see if that makes a difference. Okay.
Renee La Tour:
26:16
Now we'll change the other thing. But changing 16 things at once, you're not gonna be able to measure and continue onward. So, yeah. I just thought I'd put a pin in that one, Joe, because you brought up a good point.
Joe Rando:
26:27
Yeah. And in our defense, we knew exactly what we were doing wrong, but we did it anyway because we wanted the attendance.
Carly Ries:
26:35
Yeah. There's the patience thing, the slowdown thing. Well, okay. So would now be a good time to dive into those tools?
Carly Ries:
26:42
Do you feel like we're in the right frame. Go for it.
Renee La Tour:
26:45
No. So tools alright. tool is everything. Right? 1000 and 100 of tools.
Renee La Tour:
26:50
Let's talk about something in particular. Kind of going back to defining stress. Like, it could be from you. It could be a client. It could be whatever.
Renee La Tour:
27:01
Give me some examples. What is someone dealing with? Like, I don't know. I'm just kinda thinking maybe we should talk about, a real life example. Like, what is going on and what needs to be addressed, and then we can just kinda shoot around some tool ideas that maybe somebody could use in a practical sense.
Joe Rando:
27:18
I mean, I'm not sure what would be a good example. I mean, one of the things that stresses me right now is improving SEO. I don't know if it's a good topic for this, and we can cut this if it's not. But, you know, that's one of the things that's got me, you know, instead of being kind of stressed, excited, I'm stressed like annoyed.
Renee La Tour:
27:40
Yeah. Okay. So first, let's unpack it a little bit. I think this is a great example.
Renee La Tour:
27:45
So stressed out about improving SEO. What's the goal here? What's the goal with improving SEO?
Joe Rando:
27:52
Well, I mean, the goal is to show up on the first page of Google search. Because we are doing a lot for solopreneurs and a lot more than a lot of the pages that are showing up on the top. And, you know, it's still a mystery to me as hard as I've worked on it, why we're not getting, better results in terms of showing up.
Renee La Tour:
28:10
Okay. So knowing you wanna be on the first page of Google so that people can find you when they're searching for solopreneur resources.
Joe Rando:
28:25
Yeah. Solopreneur resources. We are first for solopreneur community.
Renee La Tour:
28:30
Okay. So alright. Now this is getting good. Alright. So you're number 1 for solopreneur community.
Renee La Tour:
28:36
Now, I know that the app is for task management for solopreneurs.
Joe Rando:
28:42
But the app isn't released yet, so we're not really trying to rank for that. We're holding back because that's that's just going into beta.
Renee La Tour:
28:49
Okay. so you're wanting to rank for other topics outside of solopreneur community?
Carly Ries:
28:56
So, basically, we're a place where solopreneurs can go to get educated, get the resources they need to grow their business, get the motivation to meet other solopreneurs going through everything. There are blogs, podcasts, courses will be coming up, speaking events. We have guest speakers come once every 6 weeks to give, it's a micro event to give presentations. We have all these things for the business aside from the app.
Carly Ries:
29:20
The app will be coming, hopefully, shortly, but we're just a go to resource for solopreneurs looking to grow their business, and while also living the life that they want to live. So the SEO thing has been mind boggling because I'm in marketing, so I focus on SEO. Joe has given a lot of time and attention to this, and we have another marketer on our team, who's also a contractor who is very well known in the space of marketing and great at what he does for SEO, and yet the needle still isn't moving. So it's just a frustration knowing that we have knowledgeable people on the topic, and yet it's not moving.
Renee La Tour:
30:00
Yeah. And people who know SEO and you having this, solopreneur hub, if you will, with everything solopreneur, wanting to be the number 1 in solopreneur community, which you are,
Renee La Tour:
30:15
just so I have a little more context, like you said, we might cut this out, but this is good. I really love doing this kind of stuff because it's like, let's get down to the meat and potatoes of it. What are some of the other topics you guys are trying to rank for in SEO?
Joe Rando:
30:26
Well, interestingly, I just checked it. One of the ones we were working on was solopreneur events, and we just made it to number 3, which wasn't happening a few weeks ago. And so that's cool. So I'm less stressed now. But, yeah, what else, Carly?
Joe Rando:
30:40
We've been trying to rank for just the word solopreneur.
Carly Ries:
30:43
Yeah. And solopreneur is tough. I mean, obviously, that's our ultimate goal. We're kinda like Joe threw out the analogy of, like, HubSpot and Inbound marketing, content marketing back in the 2000 early 2000 teens. The content marketing wasn't really a term yet.
Carly Ries:
30:58
And then they helped grow. They helped coin the term inbound marketing and all of that. And solopreneur is obviously a phrase that people are kind of aware of, but it is a really mainstream. So we wanted to, get it from the beginning so that eventually we're the go to resource for when somebody types in solopreneur. but right now, solopreneur resources, solopreneur tools, how to grow a business as a solopreneur, things like that.
Renee La Tour:
31:22
Yeah. And like Joe was saying, you guys are already number 3, for the other topics. So I mean, this is like, you guys take this how you will, but I'm like, wait. You guys are on the right track. You're already number 1 for 1 keyword.
Renee La Tour:
31:36
You're already number 3 on the other that you didn't realize with just right now. Are you really celebrating enough? Are you really saying, hey, we're doing the work. We're doing the right things. We're figuring it out.
Renee La Tour:
31:49
And I think that has been the biggest thing when it comes to, the stress, burnout, all this pressure. The pressure that we put on ourselves is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I think it's important to have people in your corner who are gonna call you out on it and remind you and remind yourself. I remind myself every day, damn near, that I am figuring it out.
Renee La Tour:
32:17
I'm not, like, I have to figure this out. I have to get this done. I need to be, I'm figuring it out. I am figuring it out. This is a push process.
Renee La Tour:
32:29
This is a evolution process, not a pressure process. for me, the image I often remind myself is of, being in a pressure cooker. And, , you're kind of, putting all of this weight on yourself, and it's completely unnecessary and completely unhelpful. And if you feel like I'm stressed about this because I'm beginning this out, we got smart people on the team. what is going on?
Renee La Tour:
32:53
But going back to our original kind of, like the tools are endless like, giving yourself space. You let it be meditation.
Joe Rando:
33:03
I just wanna say something. I'm gonna break the 4th wall here a little bit on the podcast. But all of you solopreneurs out there, listen to what she's saying. If you do, you won't end up with all this gray hair. You will you will not.
Joe Rando:
33:15
You will do better. So listen to her.
Renee La Tour:
33:18
Joe's got gray hair, but it looks good. It's like that what do they call it? Like a gray what do they call it? Gray fox? I don't remember.
Joe Rando:
33:25
Oh, silver fox? That's what they call it
Renee La Tour:
33:30
So if it looks good on you, go with it. Yeah. So it's like, you know, the tools, it's not much more of the tools. You do what feels good to you. Do what fits you.
Renee La Tour:
33:41
You know? tools could be for anybody. for me, I'm dancing every morning, and that's a way that, for me, I can practice just being in my body, just kind of letting loose. Again, letting go of the tension of any kind of, stress that I might be carrying around. I just wanna dance.
Renee La Tour:
33:56
I just wanna, like, let it go, let the energy go. It works for me. Would I tell everyone that they need to dance, that that needs to be a tool in their toolbox? No. I don't it's not for everybody. So it's not necessarily, like, okay, this is the thing. It's more about, catching yourself, oh, I am putting a lot of pressure on myself for something that I actually am figuring out, something that I actually am making movement on. And what happens is people will stop themselves getting their own damn way to think that they're not doing it right or they should stop doing what they're doing or maybe I should fire that marketing expert that I thought was great because things aren't happening fast enough.
Joe Rando:
34:42
Don't worry, Carly.
Renee La Tour:
34:46
Oh, that's great. But no. Because it's like you stop.
Renee La Tour:
34:50
You're it's like you know the analogy. Like, people are stopping right before they get to the finish line, and I've been there too. and then I look back, and I'm like, man, if I would've stopped in that darkest before the dawn, I wouldn't even experience what I'm experiencing. So it's just, the knowing that, like, I am figuring this out. I don't have to have it figured out.
Renee La Tour:
35:13
I'm gonna never have it figured out. Right? I feel like the wisest people among us know it's not gonna always be there will always be something challenging you. There will always be something that will stress you out if you let it. But instead, release that pressure.
Renee La Tour:
35:29
Don't put yourself in a pressure cooker because it's completely unnecessary. Just let that out. Just say, hey. I'm figuring it out. I got this.
Renee La Tour:
35:37
I'm figuring it out.
Carly Ries:
35:39
I think another stressor for solopreneurs, and I think this is the stress that I have too sometimes is I know what I need to be doing, but there really just aren't enough hours in the day to get all of it done. I think a lot of people if it's still approved or not, I think that's a big thing is, just making those priorities. But I think a big part of that is also there's a lot of time wasters that don't people don't realize they're doing. These handy dandy things are, a big part of it for people or social media checking. What are some other ways people can save time so, so they can get the time back, relax a little bit more?
Carly Ries:
36:13
Do you notice a commonality with those?
Renee La Tour:
36:17
Yeah. And I'm going to get really extreme, and I know I say this to some people and they kind of roll their eyes, like, easy for you to say or whatever. But, no. I see this time and time again.
Renee La Tour:
36:28
The more disciplined you can be, the more time freedom you will have. So when it comes to these damn things, okay, I am a bit of extreme. I haven't had notifications on my phone in years. I practice digital detoxes, where I'll take a whole day off of screens just to give my whole system a break. I think that we, as adults, need to be leading by example on how to manage this, technical technological age that we're in and always being on and setting an expectation of always being on.
Renee La Tour:
37:10
I don't do any of the wearable stuff. I have a watch that I use sometimes if I wanna measure my sleep or whatever, but I try to just not have it, on if I don't need it. If you can turn off as much notifications as possible and remind yourself that it's completely unnecessary. You don't need to get to Slack right away. Very few things are urgent.
Renee La Tour:
37:32
None of us are working in the ER. No one's life is on the line. And for anyone who has, wife, husband, children, kids' schools, all those things, those can be set up on your phone as, exemptions. So if you have your phone on do not disturb, if you have everything turned off, you will still get those notifications. So you don't have to worry about, like, oh my god.
Renee La Tour:
37:55
What about my child? Or what about my husband? Or whatever. If I have my phone on do not disturb, which I do all day long, my calls to my from my partners still come in. So you're good.
Renee La Tour:
38:04
There's a way that you can do this. It sounds really extreme to people, but it's really not. I feel like the fact that people's phones are pinging, and I go out in public and I'm hearing people's phones pinging, it drives me nuts because it's just like, oh my god. I can't imagine having that pinging, pinging, pinging.
Renee La Tour:
38:24
It's a constant distraction, and our brains aren't wired for that. So if you can have your phone on silent, if you can have, your notifications and again, you can set it up just kinda starting off, maybe just eliminating a few notifications, you know, just starting with the social media notifications. That kinda thing, I I really do feel it might sound simple, but it's just moving mountains. So I would say, to answer your question on is there, a calm theme, myself and people closest to me and people that I work with, the biggest reason why we all have more time than most people is because we don't engage in any of it. So I don't get any notifications.
Renee La Tour:
39:06
I don't have a bunch of notifications going off on my screen right now. I'm here with you guys. You get all my energy right now, and it's the same when I'm with my loved ones. So when I'm at dinner, I'm not looking on my phone. I'm with them.
Renee La Tour:
39:18
And it's really about being present. And, you know, you can decide. Do you wanna be in control of your life, or do you want this thing to control your life?
Joe Rando:
39:27
If anybody wonders whether this is really a good way to get more time back, look at that. If you have an iPhone, look at that screen report. End of the week. Every Sunday, I think it comes in. It's astonishing.
Joe Rando:
39:38
You know? Take a good look at that, and I'm right with you on the notifications. I have a bunch on right now, and I, actually, am leaving them because I wanna do, a blog about deleting all the notifications and measuring what it does to my life. And I just haven't started that one yet, but, it is incredibly distracting.
Carly Ries:
40:01
Well, so let me also ask you this. so that removes, more distractions. But there are other ways to streamline your business so that you can free up more time and not necessarily be the bottleneck on a lot of things that need to get done. What are your recommendations? Do you have any systems, processes, anything like that to help people get that time back to decrease the burnout risk?
Renee La Tour:
40:23
Yeah. Absolutely. So the one thing that I'm cautious of, and I wanna, again, I wanna make sure we give your listeners practical things that they can do. And some people just kinda want, let me start time blocking. Let me start, doing productivity hacks and stuff like that.
Renee La Tour:
40:40
It's like, no. Because there's really not a one size fits all. Again, it goes back to, kind of experiment. Experiment with different things and see what could work for you. You're not going to make time that doesn't happen.
Renee La Tour:
40:54
You know, we all have the whole 24 hours in one day. really, I know I might sound like a broken record at this point, it comes down to your priorities. Because if you're saying yes to all of these things and all of the things that are coming in, it's gonna be impossible to really be present where you wanna be present, to really move things forward in your business. So when it comes to your business specifically and being able to remove yourself as a bottleneck, because that's the biggest thing I help people with is, like, alright. You have this one person business, but if you really wanna scale, it needs to be a little bigger than you.
Renee La Tour:
41:32
It has to go from being your baby to being an asset. So the first thing there is just kind of readjusting your your reference point and your mindset of building out a machine and getting things out of your head and into the physical practical world. So, really, that just comes down to standard operating procedures, which are not sexy to anybody else but me. I'm the only person on the planet who, like, peeks out to it and, loves it.
Joe Rando:
42:01
That is not true.
Renee La Tour:
42:02
You too?
Joe Rando:
42:04
Well, that's what the whole idea behind the app is. Getting it out of your head and into a process.
Renee La Tour:
42:10
There you go. And that's it. Like, guys everyone knows all of this. Right? And we have to remind you, like, this is how simple it is.
Renee La Tour:
42:17
There's no magic bullet here, guys. It's really just alright. All this stuff is in my head. I know I'm just kind of, running around and but once I take a step back, again, have the space, prioritize so I can open up more time, remove distractions so I can open up even more time. Okay.
Renee La Tour:
42:38
The first thing I'm gonna do with that extra time is start building out machines, is start building out the systems. And people complicate, what are systems? systems is just documenting how you do the thing. So that's as simple as it is. don't make it more complicated than this is how we do x.
Renee La Tour:
42:56
Say, for example, this is how we do sales. This is our sales system. It's now documented so that anyone can look at this and know, oh, this is how Renee does sales. So if Renee was to fall off a cliff or whatever, we know the system.
Renee La Tour:
43:10
And now that we have the system documented, doesn't matter, it could be a lone video, it could be a Google doc, that does not matter. It's documented. Now we can figure out how to make it better. But you can't figure out how to make that system more efficient and more, systemized without first looking at it.
Renee La Tour:
43:28
And I think that's a lot of the gap like, you need to look at your business in order to do that. You have to be able to physically, like, have something that you could show another person, you know, that it could actually be looked at.
Joe Rando:
43:41
And that's the first step in actually maybe offloading it to a contractor.
Renee La Tour:
43:46
There you go. That is the first step.
Joe Rando:
43:47
Which is really amazing when somebody else does it. You don't have to do it anymore. You can focus on something that maybe you're better at or, you know, can be make more money doing or like to do more instead of something that maybe you don't necessarily wanna do.
Renee La Tour:
44:03
Yeah. There you go. And I think that so I'll just say one thing here. Otherwise, I'll just start talking about SOPs this whole time, is don't feel like you need to have, all of these processes, these systems mapped out before you even hire someone else. You don't.
Renee La Tour:
44:20
So you just need to again, it's the perspective shift of, like, I'm building out an asset. I'm building out a machine. I'm building out, systems that someone else can come into and help me so that I can step away, so I can remove myself as the bottleneck, so that I can take some time off, like, completely off, like, off the grid off, and still have my business running, generating income, getting money into my bank account without me having to do anything. that is a real possibility. Again, I'm not saying, you just click a couple buttons
Renee La Tour:
44:47
and you're good. No. Just click a couple buttons and you're good. No. Like, you can actually build it out to be that way and to support you and your life in that way and have real longevity, but it starts with you just making the decision and the perception shift of, okay, this is gonna be bigger than me.
Renee La Tour:
45:08
I'm cool with that. I'm comfortable with kind of, letting go a little bit. And then if that's inviting someone else in, they can help put together those SOPs. They can help just see you getting on a a Zoom call, recording the Zoom call, and now that's your rough SOP, just teaching them what you're doing.
Renee La Tour:
45:26
Right? You don't have to make it complicated. Doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to use all the AI tools. You can just really rough and dirty get started by just bringing someone on board and saying, alright.
Renee La Tour:
45:38
This is how I'm doing what I'm doing. Now we're creating SOPs together.
Carly Ries:
45:42
Love, love, love this. So I'm curious because you put freedom first. Isn't a lot of your, verbiage on, LinkedIn and everything into how you speak? And with all of this, I think people are gonna listen to this episode and be like, wow. Like, I can free up time.
Carly Ries:
46:00
I can regain all of this. was it freedom first principles?
Carly Ries:
46:06
How do those tie into all this, and what exactly are they?
Renee La Tour:
46:09
Yeah. And, you know, it is funny because, Carly, you know more about marketing than I do. freedom first principles sounds really good. And when I say freedom first principles, what I mean is, like, coming at everything that you do in life and business based on freedom first. And when I say freedom first, it's very general because it is.
Renee La Tour:
46:30
Everyone defines it differently. What does freedom mean to you? And so once you answer that question, well, what does freedom mean to me? And most people are like, well, I just want, you know, autonomy. I wanna be able to when, where, how, and what.
Renee La Tour:
46:42
I wanna be able to, you know, like you're saying, go on a walk with my daughter. Like, that's freedom to me. Or, I wanna be able to just buy whatever and not care about the price tag. Like, that's freedom to me. And once you have defined that, then you use those set of principles to run your life.
Renee La Tour:
46:58
And that's as simple as it is. You know, it really comes down to the simplicity of how do I wanna live a full and free life, and how can I bake that into everything that I do? So, for me, like, those freedom freedom first principles is instead of what we've been culturally adopted as being acceptable, maybe that's like, well, hey, you know, we gotta make money, you know, the money first. Or, like, hey. health is number 1.
Renee La Tour:
47:34
Hey. You know, faith first. Family first. you hear all of these. Right? there are these sayings that are just, like, freedom first. So it's like all this first, this first, this first, that first. Well, for me, I'm like, well, why don't you just start with freedom first? Like, if you start with freedom first, knowing, okay. what does freedom feel like to me? What does that look like? What does that how do I interact with my life if I lived as a freedom first person? And then that just is the guiding light for how you carry yourself because that really is your business, especially true for, one person businesses. Your business is just a reflection of how you carry yourself.
Carly Ries:
48:13
Yep. Great great point. Well, so the thing I got from this whole episode is it doesn't have to be so complicated and get back to the basics. it's moral of story is clear debts, and let's think through this and get back to the why.
Joe Rando:
48:33
And I would add think clearly. It's gotta think clearly vibe on the whole thing. let's focus in on what's really important. Think clearly about what we need to really care about and really put our energy into so we're not overwhelmed. That's kinda where I came from this.
Carly Ries:
48:46
Yeah. it really can be simple, and this is just such a good reminder of that. And, Renee, you spend all well, not all your time. You have a lot of free time.
Carly Ries:
48:56
Not free time. That makes it sound like you don't do anything, but you have a lot of your freedom first time. But but when you are working, you spend your time helping people find this freedom. So I want to know what is your favorite quote about success?
Renee La Tour:
49:11
You know what's so funny, Carly? You might have to cut this from the show. You sent me your questions and I deliberately did look them over because to be respectful to you guys, I did look them over. But I specifically don't, dig into them because I want an organic conversation, and I really wanna speak from my heart.
Renee La Tour:
49:28
Otherwise, I'll get so much in my head, and I'll be like, I'm gonna say this exact quote. But it was the one question that I was like, well, I'd better have a freaking quote. Oh, you know, like a penny banger. And then now, I'm just like, well, now the quote escapes me.
Renee La Tour:
49:44
But, no, I have a lot of great quotes that I love. One of my favorites, and I don't know that some people might not might say, well, it has nothing to do with success. It is, Victor Franco's quote, and he says, you have 2 choices at any point. Either you can step back into comfort or you can step forward. And the back is into safety.
Renee La Tour:
50:13
Like, I feel safe. I feel comfortable. This is what I know. Is it where you can step forward into growth? And the growth is scary.
Renee La Tour:
50:20
It's not always fun. It's sometimes feels reckless. It feels really risky. It feels like I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what anybody is gonna think about this.
Renee La Tour:
50:30
This is a mess. This is not fun. But it is where the growth is. And I really do believe that for myself. I believe that with everyone I encounter that if we keep keep stepping forward into growth, it'll be a reflection of your life and your business will reflect that growth if you just keep stepping forward, keep going into those dark caves.
Renee La Tour:
50:53
Now I'm going into another quote, Joseph Campbell on the the dark cave is where the gold is. It's something along those lines. It's another one of my favorites. This is just things that I remind myself of, but I completely butcher everyone's quotes anyways. So that's good.
Carly Ries:
51:07
We got the gist of it and nothing we can't Google after to see what the actual quote is. Well, Renee, I have so enjoyed this episode. I definitely needed this as a reminder. I think our listeners will appreciate it as well. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your business?
Renee La Tour:
51:26
Yeah. So I do hang out on LinkedIn. I met you beautiful people there. So really grateful for meeting you all.
Renee La Tour:
51:33
And anyone else who's a one person business solopreneur, I'm here for it. I'm here for the movement. And, yeah. Hanging out on LinkedIn. You can find me there, and my DMs are open.
Renee La Tour:
51:43
I'm really, happy and eager to have conversations to help people through. And, like, you guys also, we're all part of this movement of, knowing you're not on an island. You can reach out for help, and people are very generous and open more than you think
Carly Ries:
51:59
Absolutely. And we will include the LinkedIn link, in our show notes. But this has been so great. We so appreciate having you on this show.
Carly Ries:
52:08
We'd love for you to come back anytime. And, listeners, if you enjoyed this, which hopefully you did, be sure to listen to more content like this on upcoming episodes, or you can listen to previous episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts. And be sure to subscribe either there, wherever it is you listen, or on YouTube. And we will see you next week.
Closing:
52:29
You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.
