Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Overwhelmed? Feel like your business can't run for a day without you? You're not alone.
When you're a solo business owner, everything ends up depending on you. You're the only one who can do the work, answer the email, keep the plates spinning. So you're on the hook every day: nights, weekends, even the vacations you do manage to take. The overwhelm never really lifts.
But being a solopreneur doesn't have to mean doing it all yourself. With the right systems, parts of your business can run without you. That's what gets you your time back, and gives you the freedom to take a real break. And the freedom to do the work you actually want instead of the work you feel stuck doing.
Joe Casabona learned this the hard way. He went from so overwhelmed he had a panic attack to taking 4–6 weeks off a year, worry-free, and he's helped hundreds of solopreneurs build systems that give them their time back.
Every week, one clear idea to help you get your time back without hiring a team...or selling your soul to AI. Start listening, then grab the free newsletter at https://streamlinedsolopreneur.com.
Joe Casabona: I got into computers at an early age by 90 standards. At 10, I was using my dad’s work laptop. By 12, I fixed my first problem. And by 14, I was making money by creating mixed CDs. See, I was one of the first people in my school to have a CD burner. Lucky me. At 15, I made my first real website. My friends were making band sites. This was before myspace, and I was fascinated. Then my parents came to me and said that they needed one. I was hesitant at first. I had never made a website before. But then they offered to pay me. And I was in. I started first by asking my friends how they made their websites, and they told me they were using this website called GeoCities and a program called Microsoft frontpage.
If you’re cringing at this point, cut me a little bit of slack. It was 200,1 and I was in high school. So I did the same thing, and I was hooked. I loved flexing my creative and logical sides, and I loved making something that people actually used. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
As I refined my skills, I got real hosting. I used notepad ++ to write code HTML and CSS, and then later PHP. And I read blogs a lot. I talked to people, and I looked at other websites. I kept asking myself the same question. How did you build that?
Today In 2016, a full 15 years since I started, it’s easier than ever to answer that question. There are websites like CodePen that shows you the code on one side, and then a live demo right next to it. There are websites like GitHub where people can upload whatever they want, and then you can download the code and play with it, or even make changes to it. But still, you can’t look at a website and see all there is to know about it. There’s not a magic download button for everything. There are still lessons learned from the project. They’re making everything fit. So it works really nicely. And then there’s getting people to visit and use the site.
In this podcast, I talk to business owners, designers, developers, and makers. I asked them the same question that I was asking 15 years ago. How did you build that? And they’re gracious enough to share their secrets. So when the first episode launches in late August of 2016, tune in, I plan to learn a lot and I hope you do too.