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When was the last time you took a real vacation...not one where you're still answering emails? You started your business for freedom, but you still feel the urge to work, even when you're supposed to be spending time with your friends, your family, or just yourself.
The Streamlined Solopreneur is the podcast where solopreneurs learn to build simple business systems and automations that keep your business running — even when you're not at your desk.
I'm Joe Casabona. A few years ago, I was so overwhelmed by my solopreneur business that I had a panic attack. Today, I take 4–6 weeks off every year, worry-free. No team, no 60-hour weeks. Just systems and processes that do the heavy lifting.
On this podcast, you'll learn how to:
- Create playbooks and SOPs to make building systems easy
- Automate repetitive tasks with systems that don't break
- Use AI for grunt work (not creative work) to reclaim hours every week
- Capture every task and idea without relying on your memory
- Take real time off without your business falling apart
New episodes twice a week on solopreneur systems, business automation, and AI-powered productivity.
Free resource: Get the Solopreneur Systems Starter Kit. The 4 systems you need for a calmer business, plus the tools, automations, and AI prompts to get you started → https://streamlined.fm/kit
Subscribe to stop being the bottleneck in your own business.
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Friday wrap up on the Streamline Solopreneur, a
short episode where I talk about three things, what's on my mind this week, recommended
reading and something fun. This is the show to help you automate your business so
you can take time off where you free, and hopefully this curation will help you think
more about how you're spending your time.
I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and here's what's on my mind for July 10th, 2026. First
of all, you can tell I am not reporting from my normal recording space. I am in a
hotel room in Crystal Lake, Illinois for Max Stock, specifically ECAs creator, camp
Max stock edition. I spoke yesterday. It was wonderful.
I got to give a somewhat new talk and a new concept, and it seemed
really well received. So I am excited to,
workshop this a little more, especially since I will be speaking at several more
events this year. But that's
not what's on my mind. What's on my mind is Claude. One of the big things I've been
noticing recently is it really seems like Claude is winning the AI war, at least
among business owners and tech nerds. Yesterday, for example, I was one of many speakers
who talked about how we use AI in our system while still showing up for our audience
and our clients and customers. And
all of us mentioned Claude specifically. Nobody said, oh, I use chat GPT for this
and Gemini for that.
It's pretty much all Claude all the time, and I can't help but wonder if Claude has
like won the AI war, and I know that is a very,
crazy thing to say. We're still really early days, and
I have been,
a, a strong critic of most large language models and companies behind large language
models. They're all going for
IPOs, but as far as
performance goes,
Claude appears to be doing better than most. Now, Gemini is getting a boost right
in in iOS 27, but
as far as
anecdotally
who I, or, or the, the large language model, I see most people in my niche in my
space using it's Claude, and it makes sense. Claude is extremely capable as far as,
word calculators go.
fable, I am testing it out now and it's, I'm not gonna say it's like groundbreaking
or amazing.
it's, it's come up with a plan for me and we'll see how good that plan
is. But,
it also has,
in my experience, the strongest convictions to adhere to,
controls or rules.
my friend doc,
over at,
you know, doc Rock,
at Ecamm was explaining the difference to somebody and mentioned that like, Claude
is a constitutional model, which means it has a strong set of rules it tries to follow.
And I've noticed that, and that's one of the reasons that I have felt more comfortable
using Claude because even though,
you know, I, I never have it right, whole cloth for me, and
in times where I've asked it to, it says like, Hey, in your own rules you say I can't.
I like and appreciate that. I think it also connects to a lot more things during
my talk yesterday,
it was largely about automation and moving files around and having transcripts and
doing things like that. And
Claude Cowork is, is
the thing I, I might have recommended the most, right? It's really good, especially
for on device automations.
it kind of
bridges this gap
between on Demy device automations and web
automations, right? Where Zapier can't go into your computer and get something
Claude can,
and working with like shortcuts and Claude and Zapier, you can do a lot of really
interesting things. So
I don't know,
I'm not ready to say that Claude has won, but anecdotally I've been hearing a lot
more about Claude lately than chat GPT or Gemini or anything else. So that's the
one I use exclusively too. So the, you know, this could be a, was it a Dunning Kruger
effect where
I'm using it the most? And so I'm seeing it the most, but
I don't think that's the case.
I hear
people outside my niche, like my wife and, and a lot of people,
who are maybe employed by another person or not running their own business, or not
technically savvy,
they use chat GPT, and that's probably because it's got,
you know, the biggest name recognition.
but
as far as capabilities go,
it seems that Claude is the most capable, right?
Alright, so that is what's on my mind.
recommended reading on the plane into Chicago,
which is
the major airport I flew into.
I finished reading The Odyssey, the Emily Wilson version. You can see it behind me
over here somewhere.
I really enjoyed it. I was excited to, I was really ho I had about a hundred pages
left
when I started my plane ride, and I was very dedicated to
finishing it, and I'm really glad I did.
it was a, a fun,
interesting read and, and just, it, it's my first time reading the Homeric poems
and
I'm really mad at myself for not reading them sooner, but I am glad as, you know,
I, I, I hear that people who have like a background in this
didn't really like Emily Wilson's version
or maybe it's just like
people have their opinions. I really enjoyed Emily Wilson's version. I felt like
it was not hard to understand. She provided a lot of context and a lot of additional,
notes and pronunciation guides, and it made,
it made it an easier read for a Normie like me. I'm very excited to see the movie.
I'm thinking about watching Troy before the movie comes out,
even though they're not related and they've got different directors and they're 20
years apart.
and Troy is, is from what I remember, largely based on the Ilead, right?
Brad Pitt played,
uh, Achilles, right? So,
and it was very focused on, on Troy, which
something I learned reading the Odyssey is that the Odyssey is not,
it's like what happened years after Troy with Odysseus trying to get home.
so anyway, I loved, I loved reading it. I'm very happy with my
current reading,
regime, I guess, of not really reading business books,
and reading things that maybe I should have read when I was younger. So strongly
recommend The Odyssey, the Emily Wilson version.
that is my recommended reading for this week, and if you take me up on that, it'll
probably take you a little longer than a week.
okay, now for something fun,
I was talking to my friend's son,
the first night of
the conference and he asked me, he's 18,
and he asked me, you know, what kind of music I I listen to and what I've been listening
to lately.
And I told him about my five CD Changer playlist.
And if you don't know about my five CD chair, uh, player Change List, play
five CD Changer playlist.
it's a really fun and kind of dumb concept.
it is a playlist that I have in Apple Music that is five albums and only five albums,
like the five cd,
changer Players of your,
and I have a few rules for this playlist. I cannot put it on shuffle.
I have to listen to,
the albums in order from where I start. So I can start at the first song of the second
album, but I have to listen to it through,
I, I can start, you know, at the first song of the last album, but I have to listen
to it through.
and so it's just a, a fun little,
having constraints like that
makes it, like,
it makes you think a little bit more about what you're gonna do. Like, am I gonna
wanna listen to this album in a, in
an hour, right? So stuff like that. So,
my five CD
Changer playlist,
for this week
is a lot of albums
from the summer of my youth
and then one that is not even remotely from the summer of my youth. So I thought
I would just tell you what's on mine and then something that maybe you can think
about is what would currently be on yours.
and I, I keep this updated
on my,
now page over at casabona.org/now.
but right now it is Sticks and Stones by Newfound Glory. 2002, I believe is when
that album came out. And it was a big part of my junior year summer,
uh, enema of the State by Blink 180 2 that came out in 1998,
uh, and was maybe my first like
summer teenager teen Angst album.
so Long Astoria by the Ataris that came out in 2003. And that was summer after my
senior year, the summer before college.
and I feel like it was very well timed
for that louder now by taking back Sunday. This was really spring into summer 2006,
so I was already in college and then the one that's not like the others, but I've
been really enjoying it. You seem pretty sad for a girl. So In Love by Olivia Rodrigo,
and the reason it I've been enjoying this album is because it has a really strong,
like
late eighties feel to it,
heavily influenced by the Cure.
Robert Smith is even on a song.
the song Expectations is very like,
techno, like eighties techno pop.
and it's just a very enjoyable album. Olivia Rodrigo, incredibly talented and,
I've been really enjoying that album.
so
that is my something fun for the week.
there's no automation of the week this week, but I will share a link to my slides
from the talk so you can kind of see what I talked about.
you can get my
solopreneur starter kit, which comes with a bunch automations, planners, AI swipe
files and prompts over at streamlined fm slash wrap.
So if you want to see more about what I'm doing, how I help solopreneurs, you can
head over to streamlined fm slash wrap. That's it for this episode of the Friday
Wrapup.
I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.