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What if you could save 12+ hours per week in your business? Being a solopreneur sometimes focuses too much on the “solo” part: doing all the jobs, figuring things out yourself, and spending too much time in your business. But we didn’t start out own solo business to spend all of our time at our desk.
We did it because we want freedom: to travel; to spend time with our family; to watch a movie in the middle of a week day. That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists.
Each week, host Joe Casabona talks about how you can build a better business through smarter systems and automated processes. He does this by bringing on expert guests, and sharing his own experience from years as a busy solopreneur parent — so that being a solopreneur feels…less solo.
With every episode, you'll get insights, great stories, and 1-3 actions you can take today to improve your business processes and spend your time the way you want.
I want to get to know you better.
One of my big goals for 2024 is to slightly change the direction of this show to make it more relevant to you, the listener. And while the goal and topics have changed through this show many times over the 400 plus episodes, I wanna take a moment to learn a little bit more about you, so that I can better tailor the content to help you win and achieve your goals.
So, if you would be so kind as to head over to [howibuilt.it/survey]. I have just a few short questions for you, and that will help me plan out the rest of 2024. Again, that's over at [howibuilt.it/survey]. Thanks so much.
The word control evokes various thoughts and emotions. Many of which are negative.
Control is often associated with an excessive desire to dominate or dictate every aspect of a situation.
The bad guys in movies and in real life desire control at almost any cost.
Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars said the only way to improve life in the galaxy was for him to seize control.
Thanos said, The only way to save the universe was to control the population by controlling the infinity stones.
Countless dictators and wannabe dictators have justified taking control because they're the only ones who can save us.
It sounds micromanaging, almost authoritarian when you say, “I want to be more controlling”.
But control at the right scale is super important. If you don't control your car, your bike, or some other vehicle, for example, you will end up hurting yourself or someone else.
In thinking about my yearly theme for 2024, a recent conversation I had with my therapist was top of mind. I told her I didn't feel like I was in control of anything. Not my health. Not my money. Not my time or my schedule. And that's why I decided that my 2024 yearly theme is the year of control.
Hey, everybody. And welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without spending too much time on it.
I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And each week, I bring you interviews and case studies on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management, and effective content creation. It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs. By the end of each episode, you'll have 1-3 takeaways you can implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business, or with your friends, your family, reading, or however you choose to spend your free time.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 400 of How I Built It. I'm gonna tell you about my yearly theme, which I'm super excited about. You can read a full length 2000 plus word article in the show notes at [[howibuilt.it/400]. I will talk about, you might be wondering, hey, the last episode from last year wasn't 399, and I'll talk about that more in the pro show where I will also talk about the yearly themes that didn't make the cut.
So, if you want to become a member and get access to ad free extended episodes of this podcast, as well as weekly newsletters for members only, you can head over to [howibuilt.it/join].
Starting this year, I'm also on Substack. So if you subscribe to stuff on Substack, you can subscribe over there or if you're listening in Apple Podcasts, you can subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts to again, get those ad-free extended episodes. But for now, let's get to the yearly theme.
As you'll see, when I grade 2023, The Year of Budgets, it was a pretty tough year. I don't think I fared well. When I watch my kids play Super Mario Brothers, the NES version, naturally, they just kind of mash buttons and wonder why they died.
2023 kind of felt like that for me. I wasn't doing a good job of controlling myself, which is why 2024 is the year of control. But first, let's look back at 2023.
So, in grading the year of budgets, I want to be straight up with you.
At the beginning of December, I would've called this theme a near complete failure. Sure, I read a couple of books like The Year of Less, and you need a Budget back in January, but I didn't really make appreciable moves until later in the year, much later in the year.
Honestly, I didn't find you need a budget to be all that helpful. It seems like all they're doing is selling you a subscription for an overly complicated system. A system that I think only works in the way it's intended when you don't have kids like most of those types of systems. But I also appreciate that I obsess over my finances more than most. And if you're not watching your finances like a hawk, the book is probably pretty helpful.
Anyway, with that sidebar out of the way, let's look at what my main tenants for the year of budgets were.
1. Stop frivolously spending money, especially when it's scarce by creating real budgets.
2. Properly spend other things of limited quantities, like time and patience by budgeting my own time and creating better systems.
So how did I do? Well, I have a scorecard and you can take a look at that. It'll be In the show notes, but I'll just kind of run through that scorecard really quick. As a reminder, if you're looking at the graphic, a white checkbox or the green checkbox is done, X is not done, and then that traffic light is half done.
So, here were my actions.
Make a list of places I spend money and time. Check.
Create budgets for common spending, like groceries, outings, and childcare. I'm giving that half done. I didn't go all the way here, but I did create some crucial budgets.
Create time budgets for work and personal time. That's also half .
Time track. Check.
Stop spending my time where I don't need to. I'm gonna call that half done, but it's, it's really like a quarter done.
Practice Emotional budgeting through mindfulness exercises, that's not done.
Properly budget my energy by really understanding my green, yellow, and red zones. This is a reference to a Kerry NH book I'm a big fan of, and that's not done either. Maybe that's half done.
So those were my actions.
And then for goals:
Put more money into savings. Check.
Work on the things I need to work on. That's half done.
Be more patient. I'm calling that not done.
Be in the moment. Half done
Create a budget to spend time with people so I don't feel so lonely all the time.That's a really sad way of putting it, but I was very lonely at the end of 2022. That was not done.
Lose weight. Not done.
Sleep more. Check.
Have more energy. Half done.
So, if we make the half done half points, it looks like I have a score of seven out of 15. Less than 50% would be a failure in school. Luckily, I'm not in school.
See, the great thing about a yearly theme is that it gives you the full year to make changes and better choices based on the theme. It's not necessarily about specific goals or streaks. A yearly theme is the anti New Year's resolution, which means that if you fail in January, you don't fail for the whole year. It's about making good long-term changes. And in the past six weeks, I've lived my yearly theme better than I did the previous 46 weeks.
What did I do? Let's look at the financial stuff first.
1. I eliminated a large portion of my credit card debt and moved the rest of it to an 18 month zero APR account. I will pay off the card in less time than that.
2. We also set up a reserve savings account for money, for vacations and other events so that we'd use our credit cards less. In fact, for the first time in a long time, we didn't use our credit cards at all during the holidays.
3. We moved 99.9% of all of our expenses off of our credit cards, which means we're not using them for anything at all anymore, except the Apple card for App Store purchases at this point.
4. My business is getting the same treatment as far as debt goes. I moved money to a lower interest APR and I'm aggressively paying that off.
Going into 2024, I'm very pleased with where the family and business finances are. I feel like I have the best handle on my finances since having kids. And looking at just those changes, the year of budgets would be a raging success.
So here's what I did on the personal budgets side of things.
1. I started better help again. My wife said very bluntly in July that “I needed to talk to someone”. And so I signed up for better help that night, and it's been a Godsend. Thanks to that. I've learned a number of things about myself, such as that I am a highly sensitive person and subject to overstimulation. Knowing that I've implemented techniques to help mitigate some of the issues that arise with being overstimulated, I do a shutdown routine every day after work so that I'm not thinking about work, for example.
2. I'm also spending more time listening to nothing or white noise. This helps me focus and again, not have too many things happening at once. I would listen to podcasts while cooking dinner while my kids were screaming, and then wonder why I'm overstimulated. And just eliminating one of those stimulants has really helped.
3. I am time tracking properly. I'll outline my strategy more for my members in a separate video and post. But I'm using Timey, an app that sits on top of one that I covered in my Favorites of 2023 blog posts. And I'm using the Focus app on the Mac to help me be less distracted when I'm working.
On my phone, I'm using an app called Screen Time Plus to remain more engaged with my family and friends. This actually blocks websites and apps a lot better. Then the screen time feature on iOS.
I've also deleted all social media apps except Instagram. And that's probably next despite how good parent Instagram is.
4. And finally, earlier this year, I got properly diagnosed with Sleep Apnea. Something I know I've had for a long time. The proper diagnosis means that I got a CPAP machine, which means that I'm sleeping much better as well. And that was one of my big goals, to sleep more.
All of this makes The Year of Budget sound like it was a big success. And it's true. There are a bunch of wins here. But on top of basically sprinting to the finish line as far as actually following the theme, I think there were a few crucial misses. I didn't make more time for friends. Not that I made less time either, but I didn't make more time for friends. I was still on my phone way too much.
And earlier in this episode, I mentioned that this year was tough. I was sick a lot more than usual. The first half of the year got me thinking that I should fold my business and find a “real job". And I put way too much of my business expenses on my credit cards hoping that spending money would fix my problems. So I can't really give the year high marks. The overall grade is a C+.
While the back half of the year was much better for my business, and I'm finally seeing good traction in my transition from Web Developer to Podcast coach, it was still a very stressful year where I lost the thread on my yearly theme. If I hadn't, “remembered my theme in the past six weeks” it would've been an utter failure. But because I made such great strides, I'm at least gonna give myself a slightly above average grade. And hey, it's live and learn, right? I'm gonna take those lessons and move them into this year's theme which we'll get to after a word from our sponsors.
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Hey, there. One of my goals in life is to help busy solopreneurs and creators like yourself win back your time and spend less time in your business. It took three kids and a global pandemic for me to understand the power of using my time wisely. And I wanna make sure that you don't need to go through the same thing I went through.
That's why I want to tell you about my membership. If you want more insights into how creators build their businesses, more automation tutorials and templates, and even more great content, you should become a member. You'll get ad free extended versions of this podcast, access to my Automations library, my Friday members only newsletter called the Automated Solopreneur, Livestream Archives and more. All of that for less than two cups of coffee from Starbucks.
So if you want to win back your time and get even more insights into how creators build their business, head on over to [casabona.org/join] and sign up today. You won't regret it.
Okay, and we're back. So, 2024 is The Year of Control.
As I reflect on The Year of Budgets, I can't help but think, control is the next logical step. If budgets are about understanding how you spend your time, money and energy, control is about implementing those budgets. After all, a budget is pointless if you don't follow it. And following it means exercising self-control.
So what's this yearly theme about? I'm going to take control of what I can and let go of the things I can't take control of. It sounds pretty simple, right? Except I have a hard time letting go of things, especially if there's some injustice attached.
‘
If you are the person who is leaving your dog's poop in my trash cans, I will find you. But that is the healthy side of control, right? It's the idea that I know I can't control everything and trying is a waste of time and energy. It distracts me from the things that matter most. And while it was a joke about the dog poop, someone does put their bagged dog poop in my trash can and it bothers me, and there's probably no way, unless I set up a camera and watch it all the time. That I'm gonna figure out who it is.
Does it really affect my life that much? Am I diving into my trash can? Does my trash can smell like dog poop all the time? Not really If I didn't happen to see it by looking directly into my trash can, I wouldn't have seen it. And so while it's annoying, it's not something that should take all of my energy. It's something I can't control. And even if this person is a dick, I can't do anything about that and I shouldn't be spending my time on it.
Now, what finally drove me to choose this theme was the Cortex yearly theme episode where CGP Grey makes two points that really resonated with me. The first was letting go of who we thought we used to be. And the second is the missing middle.
Let's cover the missing middle first 'cause this is really interesting. I strongly encourage that you listen to the entire episode, but the missing middle conversation starts at the 54 minute mark. I'll link to that episode in the show notes.
With a little help from ChatGPT, that conversation can be succinctly summarized as such. The missing middle refers to the phenomenon in economics and content creation where mid-range products or content become less prevalent over time leading to polarization towards high or low extremes. Grey observes this trend along two axises or axes in content creation. High effort versus low effort, and long versus short content.
As a result, attention and viewership increasingly concentrates on content creators who aligned with these extremes, affecting the allocation of audience attention in the digital space.
The conclusion is diversifying your platforms is even more important going into 2024. Relying on an algorithm is not good enough to build a business on. I don't think relying on an algorithm is particularly good for my personal life either. I feel like I let social media control my actions too much. I say things like, I need it for my business, and this person is wrong, and I need to tell them as much. It's unhealthy, and it's not correct. It's bad. I know that now, after many hours wasted on these thoughts. In fact, there are a number of personal traits that have changed about me over the last several years, which brings me to the first point that Grey made.
Here's the quote from around the 30 minute mark in that same episode: “Understanding yourself is surprisingly hard to do sometimes, and you really need to spend mental effort on really understanding what you're like. Keeping in mind that your brain is also just delighted to trick you about what you really are like.”
Something has totally changed with me. And I was slow to recognize it. Grey recognized something about himself in this example. In the bigger context of this quote, It's about when he best exercises, and he decided to let go of who he thought he was. This is a really important aspect of control because if you don't understand who you are, you are not in control and you're probably just fighting yourself. If you tell yourself that you are a morning person because all of the gurus tell you that you need to work at 5:00 AM but you really work best at night, you are not in control because you don't understand that about yourself. You're letting somebody else control your actions based on who they are or more likely who they say they are on the internet.
Conversely, if I tell myself that mornings are when I'm most productive, which is true, I believe, and my morning gets blown up, for some reason, that kills the rest of my day. If I have an unproductive morning, I have an unproductive day. But what if I actually learn through this theme that it's not about the time of day? Maybe it's about some other factor that's within my control, like distractions or meetings or location.
So how does this theme translate into actions and goals?
The yearly theme is not necessarily about specific goals or metrics, but I do need to have some of those in place. Otherwise, it's just gonna be like a big theory and I'm never going to implement it.
So here are my initial thoughts:.
1. Control my impulses. Impulses to eat poorly. Reach for my phone when I'm bored or stressed. Lash out when I'm angry and more.
2. Gain more control over my schedule. There are several non-negotiables in my schedule, like school drop off and pickup, for example. But there are lots of times where I prioritize someone else's schedule over mine because I feel like that's gonna be beneficial to my business or my personal life or something like that. I need to stop doing that.
3. Improve my health. I used to think that if I didn't have an hour to work out, I can't work out. But I can make the time to work out, even if it's just playing the drums or using my desk treadmill. The mindset shift will help me make fewer excuses. If I'm just scrolling in front of my computer, I can pull out that desk treadmill and get a 20 minute walk-in.
4. Control my temper. Most people don't know this, but I can have a bad temper sometimes. inconsiderate people piss me off and I get unreasonably mad, but there's nothing I can do about them. So I need to find ways to let that stuff go. Some of what I've done in the year of budgets will help me with this. Time Tracking helps me understand where I spend my time. Doing a shutdown routine helps me control my workday instead of letting it control me by leaking into my personal life and my evenings with my family.
But the actual actions need to be derived from four big questions I'm going to ask myself throughout the year.
1. Who did I think I was?
2. What needs to happen to make me feel in control?
3. What do I need to let go of?
4. What distractions are making me lose the control I do have.
The first couple of months of this year will be reflection. Then I'll take action, figure out what works and repeat the process. I suspect I will ask these questions quarterly. In the meantime, I will continue to time track, manage my money and work with my therapist.
But that's it for my yearly theme of 2024, The Year of Control.
What do you think? Let me know. You can provide feedback at [howibuilt.it/feedback]. That will also be over at the show notes at [howibuilt.it/400].
400 episodes is a huge deal and I really want to thank you, the listeners for your continued support over the years as well as the sponsors who have helped me make this content happen because I gotta say, if I was just spinning my wheels and I wasn't getting such great feedback and great guests and financial support, I don't think I would've made it to 400 episodes. So, thank you so much. A great way to kick off 2024.
If you want to get ad free extended versions of this episode and every episode, you can head over to [howibuilt.it/join]. It will have links for you to subscribe on whatever platform you are most comfortable subscribing on.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. Get out there, and build something.