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*Formerly known as Solopreneur: The One-Person Business Podcast*
Welcome to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the weekly podcast that dives deep into the world of solopreneurship. Join us as we bring you insightful interviews with industry experts and successful solopreneurs who have mastered the art of running their own businesses.
Are you a solopreneur looking for guidance on how to attract clients? Or maybe you're searching for ways to stay motivated and overcome the challenges of working alone. Perhaps you're even struggling with the intricacies of taxes and financial management. No matter what obstacles you face, The Aspiring Solopreneur Podcast is here to provide you with the knowledge, inspiration, and practical advice you need.
In each episode, our hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries, sit down with a diverse range of guests, including seasoned solopreneurs, marketing gurus, financial experts, and productivity specialists. Together, they unpack the secrets to solo success, sharing their personal stories, strategies, and actionable tips.
Learn from those who have paved the way before you, as they reveal their tried-and-true methods for growing their company of one.
Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite Intro gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, be sure to check out LifeStarr Intro!
Access LifeStarr Intro: https://www.lifestarr.com/lifestarr-intro-for-solopreneurs
This podcast episode is being released in early October twenty twenty four. And just over a week ago, HubSpot hosted their massive annual conference that covered the latest trends and tactics in marketing, and AI. we had two people attend who are ready to give you the biggest takeaways from the event that applies specifically to solopreneurs. My cohost and founder of LifeStarr, Joe Rando, attended, and our very own George B Thomas not only attended but presented multiple times. So you have some very credible sources sharing their insights today.
Carly Ries:From groundbreaking strategies to fresh perspectives on automation, AI, and scaling small businesses, this episode is packed with golden nuggets for solopreneurs who wanna stay ahead of the curve. Whether you're looking for new ways to generate leads, streamline your processes, or take your customer experience to the next level, this episode has all of these for you. You're listening to the aspiring solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries and my cohost Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions.
Carly Ries:We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. You guys, I put this on a LinkedIn post last week about having FOMO about a conference. you know, nobody's ever like, oh, I'm so sad at missing these sessions or this or that. I was genuinely sad and I know it was my decision to not go. So The blame is not on either of you. It is on me.
Carly Ries:But I had genuine FOMO.
Joe Rando:I would too.
Carly Ries:I am so happy that you guys got to go, but also jealous. Again, my own decision. And before we hop in to your biggest takeaways for solopreneurs from Inbound, HubSpot's biggest conference that talks about marketing, sales, automation, all the big names in those fields are there, I just had to say, George, I told you I'd take any opportunity to do this today.
Carly Ries:But at the time of this recording
George B. Thomas:Oh Boy. It is George B. Thomas' birthday, But I will say happy birthday. And thank you for spending it with us today.
George B. Thomas:Aw, thank you! I appreciate it. I mean, there's no one else other than my family, because if this gets out to the public and they listen, other than my family, I would love to hang out with you folks during my birthday, so it's exciting.
Carly Ries:You guys got to hang out together in person. For those of you that don't know, Joe and I have worked together off and on since since 2016. I have never met you. George, you and I have been all of us have been working together for a few years now.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Carly Ries:I have never met you. It has to happen,
George B. Thomas:We gotta fix that. We gotta have, like, a Lifestar retreat or something at some point.
Joe Rando:I was just thinking of, Inbound San Francisco
George B. Thomas:There you go . Yes. I like that.
Carly Ries:Good segue into the topic for today. I wanna make sure we dive in.
Joe Rando:So Let's do it.
Carly Ries:Let's get at it. offline
Joe Rando:I'm just really psyched we didn't have to sing.
Carly Ries:Well, we have an event after this, and I might make you sing
Carly Ries:And bring out your electric guitar. But we talked about, a few of the things that were biggest takeaways for you offline. And so let's dive into the first one. You mentioned that a big focus was that AI is shifting from acceleration to transformation. Joe, why don't you kick things off?
Carly Ries:What do you think about that? George, I want to speak to you after.
Joe Rando:Well, this was Yamini Ragan, who's the CEO of HubSpot, making this claim that right now, we're working faster, getting more done with with AI. Right? So you need to write a blog and, you know, if you're smart, you're not letting AI write it for you, but maybe you're letting AI either review your blog or give you ideas for topics that you might write about you know, content you might write about the topic. And it's accelerating us, you're getting more work done in less time. But she's arguing that the next phase is gonna be actual transformation, and we'll dig in probably in more detail about those kinds of things.
Joe Rando:But AI is gonna start doing stuff for you. So I think in terms of, like, answering your emails or scheduling meetings and these kinds of things that are coming very quickly according to her. So it's really claiming that it's gonna be a different world, and I'd like George's take on it before I wax on.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I definitely think we are on the precipice of transformation and, Joe, I gotta be honest with you. When I was sitting there and listening to Yamini talk about this shift because we've, by the way, been accelerating our business with AI for a while now and to hear her talk about transformation, I actually started to think about the solopreneurs and the power in which is going to be in their hands moving forward.
George B. Thomas:And especially when I was watching Andy Petrie and he was releasing a couple products in particular. One, I thought about the solopreneurs when they were talking about the social media agent basically where and I mean, it's not just like it's smart enough to post for you but they were showing how it would know when to post based on the platform and what was popular before, so therefore, what to do in the future.
George B. Thomas:And for solopreneurs who are out there and they're strapped for time, Heck, I even know solopreneurs out there, Joe, that don't like social media and the thought of being able to have an agent that would do the social media for them is probably more exciting than the fact of how I nerd out about it. But this idea of adding to your team but still being a solopreneur because again, there's the social media agent. Another one that excited me especially for solopreneurs is the prospecting agent where it'll actually do some sales prospecting for you. Again, when we do things like success sessions or problem solvers here at LifeStarr, we're always hearing how generating leads or following up with leads is a pain point and so now we're moving into this transformational period that there's gonna be these agents, that solopreneurs who embrace the ability to transform their one person business, it doesn't have to be through humans, it can be through these agents that help assist them.
Carly Ries:So let me ask this. I wanna know if they addressed it when they were there. So we have solopreneurs of all types tuning in right now. What if they're like, but I'm a virtual assistant or but I offer people sales coordination and I do the prospecting for people? Like, should they be concerned, or can these still be tools just to enhance their business?
Joe Rando:They better be tools because it's gonna get very noisy with people that aren't putting a human around this technology, and it's gonna get very hard to get noticed compared to even what it is now because so many people are gonna be just spewing up stuff. And that was my next point on this topic is you're going to have to become really authentic, really be yourself, and learn how to put that out there using the AI to basically do your work for you in some ways, but not be you. George, I would think you would agree with that. Right?
George B. Thomas:I absolutely agree with that, Joe. Honestly, it was literally part of my talk that I did about AI and humanizing the future of content and your humanity and Carly I love the question because there's some fear narratives that are out there of like AI is going to take my job. Listen, AI cannot replace your creativity. AI cannot replace your strategy. AI cannot replace you and your empathy and the understanding of everything from micro internet actions to micro in real world actions that we pay attention to.
George B. Thomas:What it is, is it is a tool that can be used. So if you are somebody that does the prospecting for an organization well then you have an assistant assistant to the prospecting that you do streamlining your process. And I could just list more and more examples of how you can use that tool. And one of the things that really hit home with the folks that were in the audience is I said these words because again I'm not a big fan of fear. I'm a big fan of embracing change and acting upon it in the right way.
George B. Thomas:One of the things I said is you've never heard a construction worker complain about a hammer stealing their job or a surgeon complain about a scalpel stealing their job. So these marketers, these solopreneurs, these business owners, it's not a replacement for, it's a tool to augment and expand their capabilities over time.
Joe Rando:But it's gonna require some adaptation.
George B. Thomas:Oh, yes.
Joe Rando:The surgeons that didn't have scalpels, I'm not sure if that was a thing
Joe Rando:But well, the ones that operated with their hands, remember those? But anyway Back in the day. or, you know, before we had true hammers, I mean, let's think about something more real like, a bulldozer. Or a backhoe. You know, we did lots of construction without those, but when we developed those, new skills were required because the people that learned how to operate those machines became in demand. And it's no different now.
Joe Rando:It's not gonna take your job but it's gonna require you to adapt.
George B. Thomas:It's interesting, Joe, because when you say that, my brain goes to because we started this with like AI shifting from acceleration to transformation, what we're talking about here is transforming you, the human. Understanding what you need to become to be successful in this new world with these new tools. I love that mindset for solopreneurs moving forward. Absolutely.
Carly Ries:Well, I think we could talk about AI all day, you guys. So I want to go on to the next point that you really took away, which was the traditional growth strategies are dying. I would love to know what that means and what's replacing them.
Joe Rando:Do you wanna go, George? You want me to talk first?
George B. Thomas:I'll go with this one because here's the thing. As soon as you ask that question, I go to a session that I know Joe and I both were in, and it's a session where Marcus Sheridan was the speaker. He's spoken at InBound for years. He's famous for, they ask, you answer. He's famous for the big Five which is like cost, price versus best type of articles that you should be writing.
George B. Thomas:But when I sat in his session I started to get fired up because we really are in a world where traditional growth strategies, I'm gonna do blogging and everybody's gonna show up at my website because it's gonna be an SEO play, well Google's kinda changing the game and therefore you probably should too And what I love about this where the traditional growth strategy you're dying, every time something dies, something is born and even I have been kind of pushed out of my comfort zone because one of the things that Marcus was talking about is the sticky five and what the sticky five is, it's obviously a play off of his big five but it talked about short form video content. Now I as a marketer love to create video content but you know what I don't like to create? I don't like to create short form content because I'm not used to that method, I'm not used to that madness, that muscle memory isn't there for me because I've been creating video, long form video, tutorials, interviews since 2014 before video was even cool but I have to take some of my own advice from the thing that we just talked about.
George B. Thomas:It's time to transform George into somebody who gets the muscle memory of these short form videos. And by the way, this is only one example. There are so many things that you've historically done as a solopreneur to try to grow your business or things that you haven't done that you need to start doing? Like, again, let's just go back to this is a time of transformation based on things that used to work don't, and things that you thought wouldn't work probably do. Joe, what are your thoughts?
Joe Rando:Well, yeah. I agree with everything that you said. you know, the problem is that we always have this kind of view that if we can put some content out there, that people are gonna find us. And I know that's not as much of an expectation from solopreneurs because, we're not big companies. But still, there are a lot of solopreneurs that have managed to get in whatever niche they've picked noticed on Google.
Joe Rando:And the problem is now Google is gonna answer those queries with an answer instead of with a list. And, the way it was put that I thought was very eloquent is that Google search gives you a research project. I go in and I search Google, then I get a bunch of web pages. I gotta go in. I gotta dig in.
Joe Rando:Blah blah blah. now with the AI, it's giving you an answer that's going to be wrong sometimes because it is. I mean, AI is wrong sometimes. If you don't believe it, go in and ask it some questions and watch what comes back because it will hallucinate, just freely. So you gotta watch out for it.
Joe Rando:But regardless of the fact that it's not always accurate, people prefer it to the research project. Because you know why? Because people are lazy. And if you don't think people are lazy, I don't know what to tell you, but people are gonna go with the easier option. I'm no exception.
Joe Rando:And even though I know sometimes it's wrong. So that's kind of what's happening. And then you have to figure out what are your strategies in order to get around that. And the things you need to do are kinds of content that AI cannot kind of summarize and present.
Joe Rando:So if you've got a worksheet like I showed you guys today. I went in to AI. He said, write me code for HubSpot's CMS that will take this spreadsheet and put it into my into my web page. And I just basically had this little spreadsheet I made about calculating return on investment, And it created the code. I popped it in.
Joe Rando:Boom. There it is. What's Google AI gonna do with that? If I'm going, wait. What kind of return on investment can I get with a CRM?
Joe Rando:Your thing shows up. Now you're in. So that kind of strategy is the way people need to be thinking. But with AI and with your own insights into what the needs are of your industry, you can, win that battle but not by doing the same old thing.
George B. Thomas:See, and I think I wanna double down on this because another thing that Marcus was mentioning and definitely solopreneurs need to think about is this idea of we've historically created website pages, created content, whatever level you've done so that you could be found in Google but what are you doing right now to actually be found in AI? Like are you creating content in a way that you can educate the model? Because by the way even though it is a large language model it does not know everything. I literally opened up a free account because with a team's account in chat GPT, not to get too nerdy, your data doesn't get used to actually teach the model. I opened up a free account so that I could start putting content or having conversations with the AI model so it would start to learn about who is George B Thomas, the HubSpot expert?
George B. Thomas:What is the superhuman framework? Like, what are the sidekick strategy products and services? So, if you're not actively figuring out, how can I create content in a way that AI picks it up, therefore there's a link in a conversation with a human on the other side of the planet that goes back to my website, like these are the type of things we need to start to think about?
Carly Ries:Can you guys elaborate? Because the other points you two wanted to make were about how content still matters and AI is a copilot, and I feel like we have discussed that. But a question that I have based off what you were just saying is SEO, we all had rules that we could follow. Like, put it in the h one tag, do the meta description, blah blah blah blah blah. Where is AI pulling from? what are these optimization techniques that people should be focusing on? Because I now use ChatGPT more than Google, but I have no idea where the source is coming from. I'm not looking at the search engine results pages anymore. What do people need to be doing?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Joe, you wanna go?
Joe Rando:No. Ah, okay. I don't know the answer.
George B. Thomas:So here's the thing. What's funny, Carly, is you actually started out with, talking about a set of rules, and the funny thing is even back when you were paying attention to those rules, the cardinal rule that you should have been paying attention to, and I know you were by the way, I'm speaking more broadly to the audience, is that you were creating content that was for the humans. You were creating content for the searcher and the search engine. So yes, there was a set of rules that you knew you kind of had to pay attention to of like title length and meta description length and you knew that Google had the, this is what valuable content is and so you wanted to play by those rules. Listen, if you've been playing by those rules and creating content for humans and you know what valuable content is, creating that, it doesn't change.
George B. Thomas:It's just that now you're training the large language model to the content that you're creating, who you are. Think about things about what do I believe? what are my core values, how do I navigate the world and when you start to inject that in, all of a sudden it starts to show up in places. Here's the fun part and I don't have the link ready but maybe we can put it in the show notes. HubSpot literally came out with, do you remember their website grader where you could go and you could put your website in and then it'd give you the grade? They have an AI grader where you can go in and put your business and it'll tell you if it can find it in different AI systems or language or if you're prepped to be that.
George B. Thomas:So there's literally a tool already starting to be built. Obviously it's in its infancy, I would call it beta but still it should excite the crap out of business owners especially solopreneurs that at least there's a place I can go test if the things that I'm testing to get into these models is working or not and kind of pivot and transition as needed.
Carly Ries:And for anybody that's like, I don't wanna go look at back show notes, it's hubspot.com/AI-search-grader. Will be in the show notes but there it is as well.
Joe Rando:Hey. just a quick point on that, though. I wanna make one point. Regardless of all of this talk about AI and about this, Neil Patel, who is pretty much a leading authority on SEO, that's kind of what he built his business on, says that human generated content is right now getting 5.4 times more traffic than AI generated content. So going back to that, yeah, AI is a thing. You need to understand it.
Joe Rando:But that human purely human generated traffic, is only about 12% of all content being created now, gets 5.4 times more traffic. So that's where your opportunities open up. There's more stuff, more and more stuff.
Joe Rando:But if you do it you know, if you can become somebody that, can represent your own real self and put out that content from you, you're gonna have that chance even with all this extra content of getting that lift of up to 5.4% times because it's generated by you and not an AI.
George B. Thomas:Joe, I love a couple things. One that you named Neil, two that you put in some stats there, and three that you talked about fully human. Like, there is something special when whether it's in real life, your blog or whatever, if you can show up as a whole human. I usually throw another word in there but I don't like to curse on podcasts. But if you can, show up as a whole human.
George B. Thomas:Here's the thing. One of the things that we taught again in our session was how you can actually bookmark your human or bookend bookend your humanity but still put AI to work. And what I'm talking about is any solopreneur that's listening to this right now needs to realize that the mindset should be human powered AI assisted. So bookend on the left side, I need to do research. I wanna know some topics I could talk about.
George B. Thomas:I'm tired of having writing blocks so let me get a starting point. Bookend. I don't need by the way AI to be a writer. I just need AI to be the typist, the fastest typist for $20 a month humanly possible cause it's gonna be my human creativity, it's gonna be my human direction, it's gonna be my human strategy. Solopreneurs, it's gonna be your creativity, strategy, direction.
George B. Thomas:And then the right end bookmark is now there's a checklist. By the way, we literally gave this checklist away for free for anybody who attended the Inbound session, but I wanna give it away for free for any solopreneur that wants it. You can go to sidekickstrategies.com/inbound24 and you can get the AI toolkit where we talked about this checklist and the five things you need to do in the exact order you need to do it so that you're spitting out a human piece of content even though it was AI assisted.
Carly Ries:Oh, I love that. George, I feel like you were made for the AI era because your bread and butter is human first.
George B. Thomas:Oh, I've been talking about the humans for forever!
Carly Ries:This is your thing. I mean, I feel like you've always had a spot in the spotlight. I don't know. That's good. Haven't said that yet.
Carly Ries:But you know what I mean. But now is like really your time to shine because George has always been known to put humans first. No matter what best practices come and go, it's human first and foremost. So congratulations, George. You predicted the future.
George B. Thomas:Listen. God has a plan. I'm just along for the ride, but I am having fun because I agree with you, Carly. It feels like there's this thing that is just happening around what we've built our personal brand around, the humans, what's happening with AI and technology and what's actually gonna win moving forward.
George B. Thomas:We're in a really good place, so thanks for noticing that.
Carly Ries:Yeah. Well, and to tie all of that back together, so obviously, we've been talking about humanization, personalization. One thing that we mentioned offline was that podcasts and newsletters thrive on personalization. I wanna talk about those two things specifically.
Carly Ries:Can you guys dive into that a little bit?
Joe Rando:Sure. Well, I went to the session with, John Lee Dumas and Alex Lieberman. Alex Lieberman cofounded the morning brew, which I think it has, like, four and a half million subscribers to the newsletter. And John Lee Dumas has one of the most popular podcasts called Entrepreneurs on Fire. And they obviously are experts in these things. basically, let's start with the podcasts. John Lee Dumas' podcast was he interviews entrepreneurs. And he said that today, interview format podcasts are not the way to go. He said the data is not pointing there.
Joe Rando:The way to go now if you're trying to launch a podcast is to focus on finding he said, find 50 problems that your target customer has and then do short episodes addressing and solving individual problems.
Joe Rando:And, the more niche, the better. So that was his advice. Just make these short episodes addressing a problem. That's what's getting traction. He also said to, look at YouTube as a podcast outlet because some podcasts are growing faster on YouTube than they are on the podcast platforms.
Joe Rando:So that was an interesting piece of advice. With respect to newsletters, kind of similar. You know, basically, Alex Lieberman said that you want to really niche down. So he said this is really nichey just you know, he used the word weird. weird newsletters on these specific topics. he didn't list any examples that I can remember, but, it could be something like, people who collect, matchbox cars of Volkswagens or something.
Joe Rando:The more the niche, the more likely you are to get some traction, and that's what's really growing right now. And he's just really saying that, this idea of keeping it really, really focused is the only way to get noticed. He said, to think about things like either doing news or analysis or, possibly, some other kinds of insights to give people something. But what he said was whatever you choose to do, try to be indispensable because that's the secret to growing a newsletter.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Couple of things on that, Joe. First of all, how did you know that I collect matchbox cars of Volkswagens? That's really weird that you picked that out.
Joe Rando:You're joking.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I am joking.
Joe Rando:That would have been so cool.
George B. Thomas:funny If I just pulled one up and put it in camera shot. people are like, oh my gosh. But but here's the funny thing. You went to the session.
George B. Thomas:I actually had a chance to sit in the thirty minute q and a that they had after the session, And there's a couple of things that I just wanna hit upon especially for solopreneurs who are watching or listening to this. One thing, Joey, you mentioned focus. Yes. Like focus, focus, focus. The thing that I really took out of the q and a though was also consistency. People are creatures of habit. so the newsletter goes out a certain day at a certain time, the podcast happens at a certain day at a certain time but also this idea of becoming an expert consistently. And what I mean by that is John Lee Dumas, and again Entrepreneur on Fire is a great podcast, but what was crazy is he did it as a daily podcast. And so he was telling the story about how for most mere mortal humans, solopreneurs, they're gonna start a podcast and maybe it is a short form video answering questions like you said, Joe, and they're gonna do one of those episodes a week. And for them to get to a 100 episodes, it's gonna take them, well, let's just say a while.
George B. Thomas:For John because he was doing it daily he got to a 100 episodes in a hundred days which means he went from sucking because by the way when you start a newsletter, when you start a podcast it might have to suck at first but it can get better over time. So iteration. Right? Focus, consistency, iteration to get it where it needs to go. But because he did a 100 or the daily episodes in a hundred days, it was like from crappy to great.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. so I want solopreneurs to think about a, like do you even have these things that we're talking about? And if not, why not? And when you get started, at what rate should you maybe start doing them so that you can get better at them quickly and then go back or fall back to a regular cadence of what you want to do? Just some things to think about.
George B. Thomas:It was very intriguing to me that q and a session with those two.
Joe Rando:And, on that, when he started his podcast speaking of that niching down, there were other interview shows with entrepreneurs going on at the time.
Carly Ries:Yep.
Joe Rando:But they were weekly or biweekly and he was the only one that did it daily seven days a week. He had a podcast seven days a week. And they were there was a subset of the audience that wanted one every day instead of waiting a week, and that got him at notice. So his thing wasn't, oh, I'm doing something different in the sense of the content as much as it was I'm doing something different in terms of the frequency.
Joe Rando:So there are a bunch of different ways to kind of, focus your offering. And I would imagine it's the same for newsletters. So yeah.
Joe Rando:Cool stuff.
Carly Ries:Oh, you guys, so I'm taking so many notes mentally right now. Luckily, this is all recorded because it's a podcast, and I can totally see it as many times as I want. But is there anything we haven't touched on that you would want our listeners to know that you learned about at Inbound?
George B. Thomas:So this isn't gonna be shocking or as shocking as it could have been since Carly was like, George, you've always been about the humans. But the thing that I learned this year was it really is all about the humans. I had the pleasure to actually speak five times this year at Inbound, and I don't say that being braggadocious, I say that humbly, but what that means is there were humans in an audience, there were humans that I was walking around with, there were humans that I talked to. I think there was like 12,000 or I don't know, there was a lot of humans but it's all about the humans. But in particular I wanna pull out one story and I wanna pull this story out because I want the solopreneurs to know that sometimes it makes sense to invest in yourself, sometimes it makes sense for you to go to an event even though you might be stretching budgetary means to get there because I was able to bring my sidekick and I don't mean my wife because my wife was there too and she's my lifelong sidekick. But I was able to bring my sidekick, Jorge.
George B. Thomas:We flew him in from Mexico, he came to the Inbound event and after the event was over, we had a chance to sit down and eat dinner, my wife, him and I and we're sitting there talking and I say, hey, what do you think about oh, at first it was overwhelming but it's great and I love the people and I love the learning and all the things that he loved about it and then I asked him this question, I said, Jorge, so now that you've been at Inbound, what's your next dream? And he goes, oh I just want you to realize because I've come to Inbound I believe I can dream. And I was like, oh my gosh, like I just got goosebumps. To understand that an event, three days, could dramatically change his life, his outlook, perspective of who he was, who he could be on the planet, if I could wave a magic wand, every solopreneur watching this or listening to this, I'd wave a magic wand that they could hit an event and then have a belief in themselves and a belief in their future that they didn't have before that event occurred.
George B. Thomas:And for us, many times for me that's been Inbound and so that for me again, it's all about the humans and it's all about going back to our first thing, it's about the transformation of the humans through the time spent in an educational situation.
Carly Ries:George, I don't know if you saw me shaking my head when you teed up that story because you told me that story a few days ago. I got teary eyed on that call and when I was shaking my head, I started welling up again. I was like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna cry on camera during our podcast. I just love that.
Carly Ries:And for listeners, Jorge is the best human being ever. We adore him, so shout out to Jorge. Joe, your turn to top that story.
Joe Rando:Yeah. I really should have gone first. I don't have anything to compete with that. I will say that I think there are a lot of other things that I learned there.
Joe Rando:I come out of this so pumped up. And then Monday morning, I have this kind of weird state that I'm, you know, now realizing how hard it's gonna be to implement all these great ideas. So it's a little bit of you know, bittersweet. But, yeah, I get very inspired there as well. I think my thing was, you know, just good old fun was getting to meet in person Nancy Harhut and Jay Schwedelson, two people that have been on the podcast, two people that I love talking to, communicating with on LinkedIn and any chance I get.
Joe Rando:So that was just great to kinda meet them in person. But, yeah, I got nothing to top the Jorge story. But I agree. Jorge is a fine human being and also one of the most decorated
Carly Ries:Yeah.
Joe Rando:HubSpot certification people on the planet as far as I can tell.
George B. Thomas:It's funny. I really wasn't trying to make it a competition. But yeah. But Jorge, 50. 50 HubSpot certifications, which is crazy. again, solopreneurs, it is about what you do in your business to impact those that you serve and you have the abilities to do what we've talked about today. You have this new world that is AI assisted, you, the human powered, that you can have these successes. You can do these things that maybe once before you couldn't do.
Carly Ries:And George, I could not wrap up this episode better. That was the perfect way to end this show, so inspiring. I have loved everything you both have said today, both from an educational standpoint, but now I'm gonna be signing off and like, I can do this. I have I have the knowledge. I have the tools. bring it on AI. Bring it on competition. Let's roll. I just appreciate both of you. Joe, it looks like you wanna say something really quick.
Joe Rando:Just if people are inspired, you know, join us, at lifestarr.com. Come in. You know, the the solo suite intro is free. We've got events where we network and get together.
Joe Rando:We've got a community that we can chat on anytime we want. So if this is inspiring, interact with us. We can share more ideas. We can get ideas from you. I just wanna say that because that's really where the rubber meets the road on this stuff.
Carly Ries:Yes. I agree. And people not looking at the show notes, it's lifestarr.com, but all of that will be in the show notes as well. George, it's so funny. We have all these guests that come on, and we really enjoy these interviews, and they're wonderful, wonderful people. But it's so nice to hang out with you two even though we spoke literally an hour ago in a separate meeting. I just like hanging with you guys.
Carly Ries:So bring on 2025, San Francisco
George B. Thomas:Let's go.
Carly Ries:Three of us will go and be like, we are the three best friends that anybody can have, and we'll just go in skipping. So can't wait for it. I guess I'm gonna do the show there instead of on the high note that George left it
Joe Rando:Image of all of us skipping. Okay.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I like that. We definitely need to have a videographer that can videotape us skipping into Inbound 2025 together. That would be awesome.
Carly Ries:When they do the big, yay, and they jump in the air.
Joe Rando:Yeah. We're bringing Cian. Cian's coming along.
Carly Ries:Cian is our editor. You will hear this, so that's happening. But the way I actually have to end this show is, listeners, this has been great for us. We hope it was just as great for you. We would love that five star review.
Carly Ries:We would love the subscription on YouTube, any of your podcast platforms. Please show your love. We so appreciate it. Otherwise, we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. Take care. 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.
Carly Ries:Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.