Becoming an entrepreneur takes grit.
Deciding to do it solo takes courage.
This is 1,000 Routes, the podcast where we explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Erica Schneider [00:00:00]:
if I'm able to do this as a side hustle, like, I wonder what I could do if I was doing this alone. Like I kind of need to follow that curiosity.
Nick Bennett [00:00:12]:
This is 1000 Routes. Every episode, a solopreneur shares how they're building, what they're building. We'll hear all about how they've made the bet on themselves, the uncommon route that they're taking to build a business that serves their life, and the reality of building a business of one. I'm your host, Nick Bennett. Before we get started, I'm excited to share a new program that I've been working on called Full Stack Solopreneur in partnership with my friend and legendary entrepreneur, Erica Schneider. Now, unlike other programs, Full Stack Solopreneur is a hybrid digital program for independent professionals who are too far along for another course to be really all that helpful, but not far enough to invest in a private coaching or consulting service. In here, you'll gain access to both the full curriculum and monthly group coaching clinics to teach you how to create a legendary niche offer, how to build a content engine, and how to sell like a human. You can learn more@fullstacksolo.com that's FullStack s o l o dot com.
Nick Bennett [00:01:12]:
Erica, I'm excited for this one because you and I are like new friends. We just. We met for the first time. We're real fresh on, like, the face to face stuff. But I've been familiar with your work for a few months. I was thinking back to this as I was prepping for this conversation, and I was thinking, we crossed paths in this Slack community and it became abundantly clear to me that I have been living under a rock. Because you produce, like, a furious amount of content. I think you put out more in a week than I have in the last year.
Nick Bennett [00:01:51]:
As someone who struggles to find the words and they just seem to not. Like the fingers won't type most of the time. The face does the talking, but the fingers don't do the typing. So someone who can do all the typing, where do you find the words?
Erica Schneider [00:02:05]:
I think I've always had the words, which is kind of lucky, I suppose. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. It started with my mom giving me, like, really weird poems in my birthday cards from, like, a young age that she still does to this day.
Nick Bennett [00:02:26]:
Does she write them?
Erica Schneider [00:02:27]:
She writes them and they rhyme and they're terrible. Oh, but like.
Nick Bennett [00:02:31]:
Like terribly awesome.
Erica Schneider [00:02:33]:
Yeah, like terribly awesome, but, like, not something that you're gonna ever try to get paid for. I think I just kind of grew up with a really creative parent and I've also got a very business minded parent and I'm kind of the mixture of the two. So content marketing kind of works pretty well for that, I'd say. But yeah, I've just been writing forever. I've always been messing with words. So I think luckily the idea of writing words has always just flowed. The hard part was figuring out how to do the marketing part of writing words, which is a lot different than just like creative writing.
Nick Bennett [00:03:15]:
Like turning the words into money.
Erica Schneider [00:03:17]:
Yeah, well, turning people's attention onto you about a certain thing as opposed to just moving people in the way that art can. It's like I'm moving you into my world and also if you want, I can help you with all these other things and getting people to actually care and want to work with you and buy things from you. And there's like an art to that.
Nick Bennett [00:03:42]:
Oh yeah. I feel like we go back and forth in humanity between it's all art or no, it's all science. But you said you had the juxtaposition of one parent who is highly creative and one who is high business. So your mom wrote you all these poems. What other types of creative things were you exposed to?
Erica Schneider [00:04:02]:
She doesn't do it that much anymore, but she was like a cake making entrepreneur and ran her business out of our kitchen. She would design and decorate these like huge cakes and it was just crazy. She's like the cake lady.
Nick Bennett [00:04:15]:
Were you helping her make cakes at some point?
Erica Schneider [00:04:18]:
A little bit. I was mostly sitting there and like eating the frosting from memory. Yeah. It's funny, like, I didn't think I picked up any of her creativity in my life because she's so creative. It's only recently that I'm realizing in hindsight, like, oh, shit. This whole like writing thing, like, it all comes from her, even though she doesn't think she's a writer.
Nick Bennett [00:04:39]:
How so? Beyond the poems, she's just really.
Erica Schneider [00:04:42]:
Good at making people feel a type of way. For example, she's like, really good at throwing a party.
Nick Bennett [00:04:51]:
It's a skill. I'm a terrible person at throwing a party.
Erica Schneider [00:04:54]:
Yeah, she's like, so, so embarrassed by my party throwing skills. Like, she's like appetizers, like, check out, like, it's all organized. It's not just the food, which she's amazing at, but like, she creates a really good vibe and there's something really subtle about that that's hard to teach and explain. If someone kind of just like, has it. I don't really feel like I have that. It's funny you say, like the words come out for you. Like I can speak, I can give a presentation or whatever, I guess, but I feel the most like I'm setting a good vibe where people want to hang out when I'm living in words. So I think that's kind of the part of it that I got from her.
Nick Bennett [00:05:34]:
I can totally see that. Because as someone who was pretty recently exposed to your content, there's definitely a party going on there and you've made the vibe. Show your mom that party, show her those vibes. Because kidding aside, like you read your comments, people are like, that's the thing I've been feeling in my heart. You said the words that people are thinking a lot. And you tend to strike that chord more often than most people. And I mean, if that comes from learning how to throw a party, wherever it comes from, it's paying off because people want more of that.
Erica Schneider [00:06:15]:
It's like reading the room almost, you know, like, I know what I feel and then I pay extreme attention to what people are saying, what they want, what they need. And then I speak to that all the time, very intentionally.
Nick Bennett [00:06:33]:
What do you mean by read?
Erica Schneider [00:06:34]:
Read the room in conversations I have with people. Our conversation last week, the conversations that people have in Slack online, you know, at networking events, like, I listen. It's like active listening, you know, you pay attention to what people are saying about what you think about LinkedIn these days? Or like, how are you doing this? Or what's with that? And you pick up on the emotional things that people are saying. And then I think the best blend of writing comes from when you feel it too. You get what they're saying, or at least there's a part of you that does. And then you can speak to it from an experience based personal point of view. But also like, that's why I think it feels like you're speaking so directly to the reader because, you know, like, you've just had a conversation with someone about this, so you know that they're feeling it. And if they're feeling it and they're in this position in this industry and they seem to be this type of person, then you can guess that a bunch of other people are feeling the same way.
Nick Bennett [00:07:35]:
Without a doubt.
Erica Schneider [00:07:36]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:07:36]:
So how do you draw the through line between the signals you're seeing just going through life and the content that you're creating? I think more specifically, I pick up signals all the time. I talk to clients all the time. I talk to you. And I had a conversation last week and I was a few days ago. And there's so much in there. And being able to let that swirl around in your brain and come out as content, let alone marketing content, that amounts to something. Because anyone can do a write up of something and everyone goes, that's neat.
Nick Bennett [00:08:16]:
That's exactly what it's like. And then move on with their life and never spend any money. So there's this thing that you're doing that achieves like, you can do this work and it satisfies your need to make money, but also this, satisfies your need to like, not do marketing the way that it's been drilled into our head. If you scroll LinkedIn for more than like 0 seconds, you'll be told that you need a template or you need a blah, blah, blah, whatever, insert garbage. So that's a loaded question. But I think the main thing I'm trying to get to is when you hear this stuff, what's your process for turning it into something that people want to read, let alone something that motivates another person to make a purchase?
Erica Schneider [00:09:02]:
Yeah, I think it's important to set the context that I've been doing this professional writing thing for almost seven years now. I wasn't this good of a writer, even though I felt like I've always been writing, like I wasn't this good in 2018. It does take a lot of practice. The way that I learned is honestly through frameworks. And that might sound a bit cheesy because, like, not a lot of people love the idea of frameworks, but they really helped me. And there's like a psychological truth to why frameworks work. For example, my favorite one that I learned was situation, challenge, question, answer. It's how we set up a lot of our blog posts at Grizzle.
Erica Schneider [00:09:48]:
You would start by setting the scene. This is the situation. And that scene can be spoken about through a quote, through an observation, through a personal story, whatever it is, to just like set the scene and get people to read that and be like, yeah, like, that's the scene that I've been feeling and thinking as well. And then you introduce a challenge, you know, like, so this is the scene. But like, it's really difficult because this is happening. Or struggle with keeping this good vibe going. Is this, you know, a potential enemy coming in or whatever. And then you can ask a question, what do I do about that? Or how do you fix this?
Erica Schneider [00:10:27]:
And then there's a solution. So I think a lot of people start by trying to be like. They quickly set the scene with like a sentence and they're like, I've been noticing this thing lately. If you struggle with that too, you know, like you should. And then they go right to the olution.
Nick Bennett [00:10:41]:
Here are 10 CRMs that might help you. We're one of them.
Erica Schneider [00:10:45]:
Exactly. Yeah. There's just not enough time there. Like, you need to take your time with writing. You need to give people a chance to really resonate with what you're saying. And like, the idea is to bring them into your world and get them like, feeling like they can picture themselves in the situation and the challenges that you're presenting. So by the time you get to a solution, whether that's selling a product, a service, a course, whatever, it shouldn't be like a difficult decision to make. It should be like, that solution makes sense and people aren't going to always buy right away.
Erica Schneider [00:11:20]:
But if you keep kind of doing it in that way, the solution always feels like the next logical step.
Nick Bennett [00:11:26]:
You called it a challenge. I call it framing the problem. But that's the key thing here that people tend to overlook, especially in the long form writing part of this. Like, I joke about like the 10 CRMs, but that type of content on the long form front, I mean, even on social, you see a lot of it, which is, I saw a post that summed this up really well recently, and they were like marketers and just marketing content in general has really just given up because instead of trying to make things, people like, they just create things that we've been relegated to just telling everyone what to do. And so it's like, here's the thing that you need. And they completely bypass the whole. This is the problem you have. Here's how I know, here's what it looks like, and here's how it shows up in your life.
Nick Bennett [00:12:11]:
And that piece of it is where the money is made. And the. In the long term, I believe if you can quickly and clearly articulate the problem better than anybody else, you are this perceived solution.
Erica Schneider [00:12:27]:
There's also a really important aspect, though, that I think a lot of people also overlook because especially in long form or newsletters, you think that the most important part of the content is the meat of the content, where you're like, teaching and helping people. But really it's always the first line. Like, it just is. It's the first line in blogs, in newsletters, in social writing, hooks.
Nick Bennett [00:12:50]:
I learned this lesson, like in a very public way. John. John Benigni just posted this today. I started my newsletter draft last week. I talked with Andrew Kaplan, and he sends me the snooze face emoji on it and his rewrite of it, showing me how to bridge that gap. It was illuminating. It made it just very clear where I was trying to do what you're talking about. Jump straight into the meat of the content and bypass the rapport stage or the personal story stage.
Nick Bennett [00:13:26]:
John referred to it as, you had to bleed a little bit for the audience. And that has been the biggest struggle for me. And I think there's a lot of solopreneurs who recognize how important it is to be a strong writer, and pulling that lever is really difficult because it feels weird.
Erica Schneider [00:13:48]:
The best editing practice that you can put into this, because editing is, like, my thing. So I always believe you should just write whatever first draft you want to write. Because if you try to edit yourself and make it perfect on round one, you're going to get stuck and it's going to take you forever, or you just will never feel satisfied and you'll never publish it and just rewrite the.
Nick Bennett [00:14:09]:
Same line like 60 times.
Erica Schneider [00:14:11]:
I always tell people, get the first draft out of your head, make it as shitty as it needs to be, whatever. Learn how to edit. Editing is basically just besides, like, copy editing, you know, like, oh, does this adverb need to be here? Can I make this sentence a little bit snappier? Like, that's all well and good, but there's a part of editing that really just involves asking yourself a lot of questions and putting yourself in the reader's shoes. So every time that you start at the top of your draft, read your first sentence out loud and ask yourself, if I didn't know me or what was coming next, would I give a shit about what's coming next?
Nick Bennett [00:14:45]:
The answer is universally no for me. But I like this tip. Yeah, I like this tip. Okay, you alluded to this a bit, which was doing this thing, being a content writer professionally for seven years, I think you said.
Erica Schneider [00:15:00]:
I think so. 2018, whatever that math is.
Nick Bennett [00:15:03]:
What was the turning point for you when you decided, fuck it, I'm going solo?
Erica Schneider [00:15:09]:
It was a series of events. I had been at my job for the longest I'd ever been at a job, and that was four and a half years. And I'm someone who craves different types of work, or else I get a bit bored. I've never been someone who wants to, like, get used to something and then settle in and just do that every day for my whole life. Like, that doesn't make me feel passionate. I was kind of getting a little bit antsy. I felt like I wanted to level up professionally, and there was only so much I could do as a small content marketing agency. Not at all their fault.
Erica Schneider [00:15:42]:
They did everything they could. I had kids and my priorities shifted. And I felt like it didn't want to have to be necessarily online when people wanted me to be online. I wanted to own my time more. And if I was gonna have to check in on things, I was gonna make the schedule, not someone else. So that felt important. And I had dabbled in courses for a year as a side hustle in my last year as a job on the team. And so I'd made a good amount of money running a couple cohorts and selling a couple digital courses.
Erica Schneider [00:16:22]:
And I decided, okay, I've been able to make this much money luckily, which I know it's unusual to start with courses and cohorts, but if I'm able to do this as a side hustle, like, I wonder what I could do if I was doing this alone. Like, I kind of need to follow that curiosity. So, yeah, it was those three things coming together where I was like, I've got to jump ship. I've got to do it.
Nick Bennett [00:16:43]:
So I actively discourage a lot of solopreneurs from starting with courses, but it is the conventional wisdom of doing this work, which is start a course because it's the least amount of friction in being able to make money, or at least it feels like that. But I think the realities of it and the economics of those businesses, which is high volume, high throughput, you need a massive amount of reach to make things like that work. And most people don't have that.
Erica Schneider [00:17:17]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:17:18]:
So when you started doing that and started trying to launch these courses and earn some dollars off of them, where were you on that trajectory? Like, had you been building online on LinkedIn and Twitter and stuff for a while? Like, where were you?
Erica Schneider [00:17:34]:
This is a really important topic. I feel the exact same way that you do. I don't think you should start with a course. What I did was totally unusual because I still had a job, so it was like zero risk. I was still making money.
Nick Bennett [00:17:47]:
Well, for sure. And that fade against full time employment matters. I mean, there are a lot of people that don't have that luxury. Like, I was one of them. But there's a lot of people who do get to control that. That ramp for certain.
Erica Schneider [00:18:03]:
Yeah. But to answer your question, Yes, I think I launched my first cohort in November, so 2022, and I had been building an audience pretty rapidly from January 22, so it was almost a whole year. And I believe I had shot up to like 20 or 25,000 on Twitter and like at least 15,000 on LinkedIn before I did that.
Nick Bennett [00:18:30]:
You didn't ask for a single dollar from your audience.
Erica Schneider [00:18:34]:
Didn't ask for a single dollar until this course. So it was at the point where I was giving away so much value and people were finding what I was saying so good that they had started to comment, like, how can I tip you? Like things like that. Which was just. I was like, oh, people want to give me money. Like, that's what got me thinking, like, I should do something that allows people to give me money.
Nick Bennett [00:18:57]:
So what was the motivation to build online? Well, you just had so many words that you didn't know where to put them. So you're like, I'll just start writing.
Erica Schneider [00:19:04]:
Honestly, no, I'm so glad for what actually did happen, which is very unusual. I was working at this small content marketing agency. There were like me, the founder and CEO and like one other full time hire and everyone else was a freelancer. I think they've grown a bit since. But he challenged us in 2021 to start building personal brands because he saw that it was potentially like, you grow and the agency can grow and it's a really good word of mouth agency. So we all tried it. Everyone quit after like a week because they were like, I hate this. And I had started on Twitter and I also quit because I hated it.
Erica Schneider [00:19:44]:
I just didn't get it. It was so weird and different. So I think I posted April 2021 on Twitter, I quit. And I was like, this personal brand thing is stupid and I don't remember why. But in January 2022 I decided to try again, but this time on LinkedIn. And again, I don't know why, but it just worked. I think I posted once or twice and it was barely any likes. And then I posted about reviewing freelancer pilot projects and like why most of them did not make the cut.
Erica Schneider [00:20:17]:
And it was like, like over a thousand likes. And I haven't had over a thousand likes since, like ever. So I don't know what happened, but it shot up and then the next post I did was like a couple hundred likes and then I averaged out at 50 to 75 to 100 and it just hasn't dropped, which is insane. So I honestly, I don't know if it was luck or what, but yeah. And then I was like, I guess I can try on Twitter again. So I went back in April 22, and I still hated it. It took me, like, three months to figure that platform out. And then, yeah, I grew there, too.
Nick Bennett [00:20:55]:
That's wild. I think there's definitely an element of timing. That CEO. You said the CEO challenged you. He changed your life.
Erica Schneider [00:21:01]:
He did, and I've thanked him for that. I've literally said that to him. You changed my life. The best thing he did for me was ask me to write online because that helped me find my personal voice again. And as someone who had been ghostwriting for three years, at that point, like, I forgot how much I loved writing. Like, I felt like a kid again. And I think that kind of comes out in my content. Like, I'm really playful because I'm just having fun coming from a ghostwriting world.
Erica Schneider [00:21:29]:
Like, the fact that I can do this shit in my own voice is so fun.
Nick Bennett [00:21:32]:
When I was at my last job at an agency, we had a few writers, and a lot of them were ghost writing for other people throughout, like, the leaders. Like, they would interview the leader, a leader in the company, and you write an article to them, and you could tell that the thing that you're articulating and the thing that you went through. And then when I see them write their own stuff online, I'm like, they're much more playful. You can see that spark because they get to write under their own name. And I imagine there's a lot of ghostwriters who feel that and who don't give themselves the opportunity to write for themselves very much.
Erica Schneider [00:22:14]:
I had built all of this affinity over a year, essentially, and then I launched something, and then I rode the momentum train. So basically, like, my best advice is build your audience for at least a year before you try to sell anything to them. At least six months, if not a year. And then pay attention to what else they're asking you for. Because that's how I've made my other two courses. Literally just paying attention to what people are asking me for.
Nick Bennett [00:22:40]:
See, this is where the wheels fall off for a lot of people on their journey, is that they buy, bypass the building of the social capital that is just writing online, because that's a skill for certain. And that skill leads to being able to monetize things, like, anything, whether it's a professional service or a course or a cohort or whatever. So when you did this, was there ever a moment where after you decided to do this, that you were, you second guessed doing this. Like, I'm sure there's really great days where you sell a bunch of courses and then the next day you sold no courses and you're like, what have I done? What are those moments like for you? Or did you have those moments?
Erica Schneider [00:23:15]:
Yeah, I have that. Like every, every moment I'm either like, this is freaking working, or like, what have I done? This is terrible.
Nick Bennett [00:23:31]:
I call this emotional whiplash, by the way. It's the high is really high. And then two minutes later something happens and then you're like, I've never been lower. And then someone says yes or stripe payment hits and then you're back up. What are some of those things for you?
Erica Schneider [00:23:24]:
So the first one was like having a very successful launch and then we closed doors because everyone told me you need to only launch every few months and not keep your doors open. Which, by the way, now I'm trying to not do that because I want to see if Evergreen works. But there's like two ways you can deal with courses and the doors closed and I was sitting on all this cash, which was nice, but then I was like, wait, this isn't going to last more than like two months. So what do I do now? It's funny because you say, don't start with courses. And this is the reason, like, if you're successful, even if you have a big cash influx, you will get stuck in an always launching mode, which is the most exhausting thing I've ever experienced in my professional life. Leading up to a launch is exhausting, launching is exhausting. And then when the adrenaline wears off and you don't know where your next dollar is going to come from, it's really scary. So I think having a service that's recurring makes a lot more sense.
Erica Schneider [00:24:46]:
But that's like another kind of down point that I've had where I'm like, okay, what do I want to do? What's my service going to be? Like, who do I want to serve? So I'm actually still really figuring that out right now. So it's a lot of up and down.
Nick Bennett [00:24:59]:
Yeah, I can feel that there's a bunch of people running services that set themselves up to experience the same roller coaster that you are with courses. So services can be the answer, but they're not always right. You posted this the other day and it really got me and I think it's spot on to what you're talking about, I wrote it down because it was so funny. You were like, fuck it. To all the advice you see on how to be an entrepreneur. So I'm curious, like, what specific advice are you talking about here first?
Erica Schneider [00:25:32]:
The advice that I see besides build a course is niche down like crazy.
Nick Bennett [00:25:38]:
That's me. I'm one of those people.
Erica Schneider [00:25:39]:
Which is good advice. But like, it's funny. Like advice applies to different seasons of your life. I think, like, there's advice out there, but you should only take it depending on what season you're in. So anyone telling me to niche down right now, that would be limiting me a little bit in me. Kind of like trying things so that I can figure out what I want to do and what I don't. I could be wrong. I don't know.
Erica Schneider [00:26:04]:
Tbd.
Nick Bennett [00:26:05]:
Well, I think you have niched down and you just don't log it in your brain as that way. But all of the courses and stuff that you're creating and all of the stuff that you write about that is very much a niche and you, you own it. You own all of these ideas in people's minds. And that's very much part of building a niche that you own. And so I think there's a lot of different definitions for how to niche. And so based on mine, I think you're doing it in. I like the way you're doing it. That's all I'm gonna say.
Erica Schneider [00:26:36]:
Okay, cool. Well, TBD on that after we talk more. But another piece of advice, especially from people that are in the high ticket one to one world, is to avoid courses kind of always. It almost seems like it's beneath them. Like, why would you make a really low ticket product that's not going to be really that transformational? It's the people that are all about transformations and they're like, you can't possibly have a transformation in a self service course. Like, you have to speak to me like, I will change your life. So I don't know. I see a bunch of that around too.
Erica Schneider [00:27:14]:
It's probably just my echo chamber, but whatever the hell was in my echo chamber was stressing me out. And so that's where that post came from.
Nick Bennett [00:27:20]:
I see a lot of similar things, yeah, because people come to me telling me the first thing they want to do is build a course.
Erica Schneider [00:27:27]:
That's so interesting. I wonder if that's because of like the Justin Welshes of the world.
Nick Bennett [00:27:32]:
Without a doubt. Because he's really successful with two evergreen courses and he just recently launched something New. But what people don't get is that the years, like what you already talked about, the years of building that got him there. And people could have a sour taste in their mouth about what he's doing now or not. It doesn't really make a difference. The dude's making money and it influences people.
Erica Schneider [00:27:58]:
I interviewed him. Yeah, he was a masterclass guest for my cohort. I met him on Twitter from Building my personal brand. He's really, really humble and a good guy. I've talked to him twice now, and he'll be the first to admit everybody wants to be Justin from 2023. When I talk to him, nobody wants to be Justin from 2018. Like, he put years in. Like, he started a newsletter and it totally flopped.
Erica Schneider [00:28:20]:
And then he started another one and that kind of took off. He did a shitload of consulting at first as well. So, like, nobody wants to see how long it took him. They just see, dude made course, dude makes money, dude lives good life. I want to be dude. And it's like, that's not how it works.
Nick Bennett [00:28:39]:
They don't see the fact that he also started with services, and in the transition and all the trial and error, they see the templates and the repetitiveness. And he's created this style that you see. I mean, his course is to get started writing on LinkedIn, basically. So all of the people who want to get started go there and then it creates a bunch of clones. Not his fault. People took his advice. I mean, not his fault at all. It's what worked for him.
Nick Bennett [00:29:10]:
I think the trouble is when they take it and they create drivel with it, I think the frameworks are valuable in their own right. But it's about the thinking. You were talking about the high ticket services. I see services in courses and even books in all content, really, on this spectrum of probability of success, a book is really inexpensive because you're paying for the packaging of information and you're paying for access a little bit. The Internet exists. No one's really paying for access to information anymore. They're paying for the packaging of it and for the likelihood that they will achieve something with that.
Nick Bennett [00:29:56]:
So books, really low, of course. Higher than that. More expensive. A hundred bucks. Few hundred bucks. Some are more expensive than maybe thousand bucks, but you're paying for an increased probability of success in different formats of the information and maybe a little to expand it. Then you get into like cohorts, right? More expensive, more in depth. You're closer to the people who created it.
Nick Bennett [00:30:19]:
More access. Then you get into services, the most expensive, but the highest likelihood of success. So I see where people are coming from when they say things like, you can't create transformation for someone if you're doing a digital course. I mean, the probability is really low. But no one's paying for transformation. They're paying for access in packaging of information. Right? So I think that there's just different utilities, and it's just whatever impact you want to make and how many people you want to impact.
Erica Schneider [00:30:51]:
I think the people that I had been reading a lot of before I wrote that post care about making that really deep transformational impact, and I care about that. But, like, I really like being able to help a lot of people get over one specific problem also.
Nick Bennett [00:31:12]:
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think, as anyone who thinks things and has things that they can teach people, this is the dilemma. Do you create a massive impact for very few people? Do you help people clear these speed bumps or these hurdles, but help a ton of people do it? And the way you choose to build just determines that. And so actually, the rest of that post, I wrote this down because I was just laughing. I got a good laugh out of it. I thought I was like, first of all, this is like. So, Erica, like you said, this is like, very much your personality. You said, I'm doing this shit my way.
Nick Bennett [00:31:48]:
I'm building myself a world of choices and multiple income streams. And as I was reading this, I was thinking to myself, options sound great on the surface, but I feel like trying to run all of them at the same time can lead to burnout. And so I'm wondering, what is your process that to manage all those things? And you just posted something, by the way, that now you're doing fractional work with Brooklyn at beam, and you listed a few different things. So from the outside looking in, it could seem as if all the variety is really, really great. But does it also have its downside?
Erica Schneider [00:32:25]:
Totally. So, like, I. I'm making a choice here to get rid of one bucket of anxiety, to take on another form of anxiety that I think I can manage better. And it's only for three months. So I'm doing fractional work for three months. There's an end date, and there's two really strong reasons for why I wanted to do that. Number one, I feel like I don't want to lose my touch with long form, and I miss it, and I want to just, like, get back into it so that I can feel ready to go for a reason. Number Two, which is, I think my offer or the part of my entrepreneurial life I want to lead into is going to be like editorial consulting for content teams.
Erica Schneider [00:33:11]:
And the more that I think that that might be what I want to do, the more I realize I'm worried I've lost my touch a bit. Let me get some of that hands-on experience back so I can more confidently build out this offer. So it's like a play for me, it's a win, win for both of us. Because he really needed help and I could use the brain fodder, so to speak, as I do that. Like, I'm not going to build another course, which takes a ton of time, so I'll have that time free. I'm working with two people on their Social right now and I'm not going to take on any more clients there. And I'm doing like an hour of work a week for Butterdocks. So the anxiety that I traded was like, I've made a bunch of money from this course, but like, how am I gonna make sure that I've got recurring revenue for the next couple months while I figure this shit out? So that anxiety was burning me out more than just working a little bit more hours.
Erica Schneider [00:34:11]:
It's all a bit intense. Like, it's all intense. Like not knowing exactly what you want to do, how you want to help people, how you're going to make recurring revenue. Like it's stressful as hell, you know, that's why I'm glad people like you exist.
Nick Bennett [00:34:42]:
I appreciate that. But I will tell you, from the outside looking in, I mean, it looked, you look like you've got it figured out. And if you didn't post about how crazy things were and crazy this, this job of trying to make your own job. Max Traylor called it just like being your own thinger. If you didn't talk about it, you would look like you got it all figured out. And running all of these plays at the same time was just like a walk in the park.
Erica Schneider [00:34:54]:
That's why I talk about it. I don't think that it's a good use of anyone's time to pretend like everything is easier than it seems. That's part of what pissed me off about Social when I first joined. That like, everyone seemed to be flaunting all of their wins and nobody was talking about the struggles, you know, so everyone looks like they have their shit together. And then I started to get to know some of these big creators, even up to Justin Welsh who still says, you know, he feels like he doesn't have a shit together half the time. So it can be really mentally dangerous. It might be too strong of a word, but like it's not cool to only share the good stuff, in my opinion. I've spoken to a lot of people in the past six months.
Erica Schneider [00:35:37]:
I've been networking like crazy. It's probably anxiety driven. Mostly I'm just asking people like, what do you do? How do you figure it out? What are you doing next? Like da, da, da. You know, because I'm just trying to get all these inputs. And I would say everybody that I speak to is struggling in one way or another. Nobody has their shit completely together.
Nick Bennett [00:35:56]:
That's this show. You can come host the show with me. You're out there doing the good work too, I think you had alluded to. Or you, you mentioned everyone talking about how great everything is. It's July. It's just disingenuous. They call that building in public. And I heard someone recently, they're like, no, that's winning in public.
Nick Bennett [00:36:16]:
Building in public is when you tell people what's going on, good, bad or indifferent. So a lot of people are enjoying winning in public and not building in public. But that skill is really what the difference is. I think from how you're writing and what you're building compares to people like me who really struggle to truly build in public. Like that level of vulnerability to write the thing that is that just say the truth in that way, to get that level of a personal story is very much the difference. So if we were to look at the way that you and I are building, I would be very much winning in public. Like I share things that are hard, but it's more of like a universal truth as I see it, that's more a broad brushstroke and it's not a personal thing. And so being able to do that, whether it's a lever you pull or a skill you possess, is rocket fuel for doing any type of independent work.
Nick Bennett [00:37:21]:
Because being able to write online is a mission critical skill for certain. And it's just, it's a reflection now that I'm as we're going through this.
Erica Schneider [00:37:31]:
It's definitely something that I don't think you need to be vulnerable and personal from day one. If I think back to January 2022, most of my posts were quite tactical for a while, like I was building credibility as a head of content, as an editor, as someone who knows what they're talking about with words. I started to get more vulnerable when I took the what the fuck is all of this bullshit on social approach, which is how people like Devin Reed say they found me because I was making fun of like bad hooks and weird claims. And me being more vulnerable about my journey I think was a direct response to wow, these people are so disingenuine that I'm just gonna be super honest because it makes me sick. And that I think is just part of my personality. But also it's good timing because that's where the market is shifting too. So I wish I could say it was all very much on purpose, but it was very reactionary. And it also happens to coincide with how content isn't really working anymore.
Erica Schneider [00:38:45]:
Like people really want to see more failures. People really want to know the person behind the personality. AI is here. Anyone can write, you know, whatever. Yeah, but I agree with you that the more vulnerable you can be in general, especially if you're someone giving advice or you're in a position where you help people overcome problems. Like they want to be able to trust that you are actually going to guide them because you care about helping them and not just because you're like a selfish person who wants money. It's. When you're vulnerable, it helps people see you for who you are and build that really important trust.
Nick Bennett [00:39:23]:
Yeah, there's enough options out there that they just can go find someone else if they don't get it. People talk about the short attention spans. I am a believer in that the consideration span is short. The attention span is totally fine. If they don't feel like they're going to get the thing from you that they're looking for, you're. There's no consideration whatsoever. Just keep scrolling.
Erica Schneider [00:39:45]:
I love that you put that. That's so true. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:40:09]:
Once you have someone's attention, you get to keep it. You've earned the right and you have to continue to earn the right to keep it. But I mean you can consume. I consume hour-long podcasts from creators and stop what I'm doing and read their emails. And you don't do that for other people. And the question is why? And I think it has a lot to do with what you're talking about. They've done something that has earned my consideration and therefore my attention. So you've done a bunch of digital courses, you did a cohort, you've done one type of class and you've run that a few times and you've done these in partnership with other people.
Nick Bennett [00:39:48]:
Right. Talk to me through partnerships and how you approach them, because they are very appealing, but I think there's pros and cons to doing them. And I know you've done it. You've done a few with different people. What's your opinion or what's your experience with them? Really?
Erica Schneider [00:40:46]:
You have to, like, really trust the person because you're going to be working with them really closely. And where things get out of whack is if one person feels like they're doing more work or pulling more of the load. But you've agreed to split things in a certain way. Right. So most of mine have been 50. 50. It can get a little dicey if someone can't do a lot in, like, a couple weeks where the other person's working a lot harder. So that's a tough part of partnerships.
Erica Schneider [00:41:15]:
There's got to be a big trust there. You've got to really understand the person's strengths and weaknesses, and you have to be. You have to have a good communication plan, because there's a lot of moving pieces. I think business partnerships are. Are where it gets really tricky because there's so much that has to be decided there. And if I were to do it again, I would have, like, really clearly defined roles of, like, who's doing what from the outset. Because a lot of what I did in my business partnership was we were both really good at winging things, and eventually we tried to get a little bit more, what are we actually doing here? That's where things started to get a little bit muddled. And eventually I left because I realized I had built a business for an ICP that I wasn't sure made sense for me anymore.
Erica Schneider [00:42:02]:
So try to be clear up front about, like, why you're doing this together, what both of your dream outcomes are, who your dream ICP is, and get aligned on that. Because if you realize down the line that that's shifted, that can be difficult with course collabs. Like, I got really lucky. I've chosen my friend, Rob Lennon. We were friends first for, like, a year before we decided to work together. We have the same style of work. We tell each other what we're going to do, and then we just go off, and then we do it, and then we come back and we're like, okay, let's talk about what we did. What else do we have to do? And then we go off and do it, and then we come back, like, we don't have to hold each other's hands, which works for me.
Erica Schneider [00:42:39]:
So this has to be the right personality, or else it's not going to work.
Nick Bennett [00:42:44]:
How did you end up in these types of partnerships in the first place?
Erica Schneider [00:42:49]:
Two very different stories. With Kasey Jones, who was my partner at Power your Platform, which was a cohort that we ran, and then eventually a business that we were growing, Rob actually introduced us, and then we were ranting in the DMS on Twitter about how frustrated we were with all of the dudes there that only ever, like, repped other dudes in their lists. We were like, what about women, man? Like, this is crazy. So at first, we wanted to start something that was, like, for the women that felt like they didn't have a space. And then we were like, no, we want to serve everyone. But that's how it started. So it was like a personal connection again, like, totally outside of business. And then we realized that we both wanted to do this thing and that she was a strategist, like a business growth strategist, and I was the writer.
Erica Schneider [00:43:33]:
So that made sense from our skill sets with Rob. The first time we did a paid collab together, I had made a course on my own, and I had sold $14,000 of it, which was pretty good on my own. But that was over, like, four months. So that's not bad. But compared to what we did next, essentially, I did what I said earlier. I paid attention to what people were asking me for, and people were asking me if it was possible.
Erica Schneider [00:43:58]:
The course was on hooks, and people wanted to know if there was any way that AI could help them write hooks and then how they could edit hooks that AI generated. So I reached out to Rob because he had just done, like, a prompt engineering course, and everybody was saying how amazing it was and how amazing he was, and I already knew that, but he had the reputation there already. So I pulled him in and he like, AI my course. And so we packaged that and sold that, and then we did that two more times together.
Nick Bennett [00:44:27]:
It's interesting, the way that you describe is you're like, hey, Rob, can we, like, try and do this thing? People are talking about this thing, and you're like, sure, let's like. And it seems like it just organically happened. You launched it, you sold it, and you're like, that seemed to work pretty well. So which was the course you made? $14,000. Was that the hooks course?
Erica Schneider [00:44:43]:
Yeah. So the $14,000 was. It was the second iteration of my hooks course. And then Rob and I did the third one. So I started with a $27 PDF. I think that was when people were like, can I give you my money? And I was like, I guess I can put what I know about hooks into an ebook. So I sold that to only 100 people. I capped it, and then I wanted feedback.
Erica Schneider [00:45:05]:
And all of the feedback I got was, we want more. We want more examples, more principles, more this. So I expanded it to a notion doc with, like, a bunch of different pages, and that was $47. And that made $14,000 in four or five months. And then those people there were, like, 300, 250, 300 of them. They said that they wanted to AI-itize it. And so, yeah, literally, I texted Rob and said, hey, if I gave you my course, could you, like, copy my course into, like, really good prompts and, like, make it do things? And he was like, yeah. And literally one week later, we launched a course.
Erica Schneider [00:45:47]:
Like, it was, like, done.
Nick Bennett [00:45:49]:
This is an interesting and, in my opinion, probably the cleanest way to build, like, instead of starting with a $600 masterclass on hooks and being like, why didn't anybody give me $600? You're like, 20 bucks for a PDF. Let's see what happens. And it was like, okay, more. Let's do 50 bucks for a notion database with all the stuff. And then it was. I don't know how much you sold the course for.
Erica Schneider [00:46:18]:
I think it was 147. Yeah. But anyone who had bought version two for 47 bucks, we gave them that money back. So we gave them a 50 coupon and said, Buy the AI stuff. So we built, like, a ton of affinity and, like, a bunch of, like, promoters from that.
Nick Bennett [00:47:03]:
I've been marketed too that way, and I have taken people up on that offer because it's smart. Why wouldn't I?
Erica Schneider [00:46:39]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:46:40]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Erica Schneider [00:47:11]:
Yeah. So Rob and I have this joke. Like, we basically are the opposite of people that overthink courses. We, like, underthink them. We always build them in, like, two weeks, and we just get it out the door.
Nick Bennett [00:46:56]:
It works. I'm a classic overthinker on the vast majority of my creative work. And you don't ship when you do that. So I want more of that in my life. So looking back on just the long six months that you've been doing this, but really it's like the year and a half that you created your first course and stuff, what's something you would have done differently?
Erica Schneider [00:47:18]:
I think I sort of said it already, but with the partnership that ended up becoming like cooperating a business, I would have slowed that way down because my partner Kasey had done the entrepreneur thing. She had a full time job as well. She had just gone back in, but before that I think she'd been an entrepreneur for half a decade or a decade. So she had like done this journey of figuring out who do I want to serve, what makes me really happy to get out of bed, all of that stuff. I hadn't done it. So when we decided to co partner, things moved very quickly and I didn't feel like there was going to be enough room for me to figure out, is this even right for me? What do I even want to do? And I was super transparent about that with her, which is why it was such a clean break when I decided to leave, like, everything's fine, but I would have slowed that down and I wouldn't have committed to that so strongly because I think it caused a lot of overwhelm for me. So I would say keep your options. Like, don't pick something right away and go all into it.
Erica Schneider [00:48:22]:
If you're someone like me who feels like you need to kind of experiment for a while before you know what you want to do, or like to experiment with a bunch of things while you're still at work if you can. So that way you can feel like, okay, now I'm going to go all in on this once I leave. But for me, I was kind of in this middle zone where I'd kind of experimented but not enough. And then I think I said yes to too many things and I dropped a couple balls as well.
Nick Bennett [00:48:47]:
What are you most excited about that you're building right now?
Erica Schneider [00:48:51]:
I'm most excited about two things, like getting my passive income stream to like a really good place. And that involves taking the time to build a bunch of like funnels and get more creative with the lead magnets and marketing stuff for all of the courses that I've already built. It's the classic, like, you've got the content, you don't need to build more of it. Like, you just have to get more eyeballs on it. So like, I need to figure out that problem, but that's an exciting problem for me and also figuring out who do I want to serve and how do I want to serve them. If I can figure out a really exciting consulting offer, that would be amazing. And that's what I'm looking forward to the most. And I think I could probably have the most impact there.
Erica Schneider [00:49:57]:
So, yeah, I can see the light, but I'm still kind of in the dark.
Nick Bennett [00:50:11]:
Is there something that you want to do that you haven't done yet or aren't currently working on?
Erica Schneider [00:49:52]:
Yeah, big goal for either end of 2024 or 2025. I've never done a paid speaking gig, so I know that doesn't sound like a big goal to a lot of people, but I haven't done it yet, so it's. It's on there. Otherwise, like, I'm really focused on just building my evergreen passive income and figuring out my consulting stuff, and I think the rest of it is just going to kind of roll with what comes to me in the moment and see what I want to do next. But, yeah, it would be cool to feel like I'm not scared of speaking on the stage.
Nick Bennett [00:50:30]:
Okay, so I was going to ask you what's motivating about the speaking element? Is this just conquering a fear?
Erica Schneider [00:50:37]:
I haven't done it, and I think I'm someone who probably gets a bit of stage fright, so it's like a personal challenge to me.
Nick Bennett [00:50:43]:
Do you see it amplifying what you're doing now, or is it something more independent of that? Do you want to speak on the same types of things, or is it.
Erica Schneider [00:50:50]:
That’s a really good question. I haven't thought that far ahead, so I think it's a personal thing for me.
Nick Bennett [00:50:55]:
Just a vendetta against the stage. There was something in third grade one time that, yeah, probably you were like, that's it. I got to deal with that.
Erica Schneider [00:51:03]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:51:03]:
I'm always interested to understand because one of the hurdles that I have found tough to clear, and I'm sure a lot of other people do, is connecting all of the different types of work that you're doing to the point.
Erica Schneider [00:51:17]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:51:18]:
Which is we need to make money so that we can all live our life. And getting paid to speak, there's a clear shot to how that contributes. But doing a show like this, it's very indirect. Being exceptionally vulnerable and transparent in your content is not as direct as some of these other things. And so I'm always interested in trying to figure out how do people navigate that or find the motivation to continue doing the thing when it's not so clear.
Erica Schneider [00:51:50]:
My motivation for the personal writing stuff is just that it feels really good. And it's the only thing that I've ever done in my writing career that has been for me, by me, for me. Nobody owns it. That's that nobody can tell me what to say, what not to say. And it feels really good. Every ghostwriter should do this.
Nick Bennett [00:52:47]:
Unapologetically Erica is really what it is.
Erica Schneider [00:52:51]:
Even if it didn't lead to money, which I'm really thankful that it. It does. Like, I would do it because it feels good. Somebody posted the other day on LinkedIn about how every time they hit send on their newsletter, they freak out and they're like, was it good enough? This and that, like, and I commented and I was like, maybe I'm weird, but I literally never worry about whether it's good enough. I'm just like, hell yeah. Like, I. I sent something that was mine to the world and it's mine. It's got my name on it.
Erica Schneider [00:52:53]:
Like, just feels good. So I'll keep doing that in whatever capacity probably for the rest of my life. And I'm really glad that I figured out how to do that now because that's. I'm just going to keep that with me no matter what I do.
Nick Bennett [00:52:55]:
Do you feel like there is an audience that is too small? To send a newsletter to one person is something that people feel ashamed of. To send a newsletter to 70 people, that is something that I. That people feel ashamed of. To have a post that only gets 100 or 500 impressions is something people feel ashamed of. And the way that I talk to people about this is that. Imagine being in a room with 500 people and you read your post to them, they all saw it, they all heard what the words you had to say, like, you don't need a million people. And the same thing on the newsletter front.
Nick Bennett [00:53:35]:
The fact that anyone wanted to see it and read it is, yeah, amazing. But I'm curious how you approach that. And if there's any lens that you take from people going from zero to one.
Erica Schneider [00:53:46]:
I think it's huge at the start. If anyone is paying attention to you, that's really cool. I think it definitely can take a hit on your ego. Everyone says don't let your ego get involved, but like, it takes a hit on your ego.
Nick Bennett [00:53:58]:
Yeah. Especially the deeper you are, the deeper you are in your career and the more like status you feel. Or just the, whatever the thing is. And then you have like, no one sees your post or no one reads your stuff. You're like, what? Yeah, that hurts.
Erica Schneider [00:54:13]:
I would say no matter who is reading it or how many people, the most important thing you can do is to build a body of work and practice writing so people will eventually read it. If you pay attention to the signal, like I was talking about in the beginning, you know, like, what are people saying? What are people feeling? Like, what's the general vibe of this conversation? If you really pay attention to that and you can connect that to something that you also deeply care about, more and more people will read your stuff and more and more people will share your stuff. Like, that is inevitable. It will have a compounding effect. So, like, even if no one's reading it now, that's a really great opportunity to, like, give less and just practice. No one read my Twitter posts for, like, months. I remember posting on LinkedIn once and being like, if anyone wants to follow me on Twitter, like, this is my handle. But, like, no one reads my shit anyway.
Erica Schneider [00:55:09]:
And I remember posting that and being like, ugh, fucking hate Twitter. And like, I'm in a bad mood, you know, But I. But it was all practice, you know? And also now I have, like, posts that I can use in my content to make fun of myself, which is also a tactic that I was just talking with John about today. Like, if I don't know what to post about, sometimes I go back and find my old work and I just roast it for fun.
Nick Bennett [00:55:30]:
This is brilliant.
Erica Schneider [00:55:31]:
Everyone needs to see the suck.
Nick Bennett [00:56:15]:
There's a LinkedIn creator I follow, Alex B. Sheridan, and he is always bringing up posts from when he first started where it's like 0 likes, and it was like posted four years ago. 0 likes. He's like, see, like what you see in front of you today with the 30,000 whatever followers and all the engagement is not what it is. And to your point about even the Justin Welsh effect, nobody sees all of the bullshit that people had to work through.
Erica Schneider [00:56:47]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:56:05]:
In order to get to the part where what they're doing works.
Nick Bennett [00:56:09]:
So, yeah, perfect place to, to bookend it.
Nick Bennett [00:56:57]:
Thanks for sticking around.
Erica Schneider [00:56:15]:
Yeah. It's Friday. I don't. I don't book things on Friday. So I could do a four hour podcast on Friday. It's fine.
Nick Bennett [00:56:21]:
We should do the podcast a thon. I appreciate you hanging out, Erica. I appreciate you sharing all your stuff. I would usually say I appreciate the vulnerability, but it's. That's just baked into the cake.
Erica Schneider [00:56:34]:
Into a cake that my mom taught me to make.
Nick Bennett [00:56:37]:
Yes. See, I was gonna make the horrible reference, like the horrible joke, but you did it for me. No, I'm serious. So I appreciate it that you are willing to share all that you are because I know more people feel seen because of it. And it's not always fun and it's stressful and it makes people anxious because they have a family or they have to provide. So there's no. It's not a straight shot. But I like what you're doing because it's unapologetically Erica.
Erica Schneider [00:57:08]:
I am a very anxious person, even if it doesn't come across that way. And I think a lot of my content that's me being vulnerable. It's almost like I need to hear what I'm saying and I know other people need to hear it too. But like a lot of times it's also for me. So like just know that if anyone reads my stuff, like I don't have all my together and I am just waking up every day trying to try to do the thing.
Nick Bennett [00:57:32]:
It's a coping mechanism.
Erica Schneider [00:57:33]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:57:33]:
The same way that people win in public to help cope in whatever way. It's a similar thing. But I think it's cool that you have created a space in your own life that allows you to do some of these things. What's hard is that some people are really backed into a corner here and they gotta make it work. I mean, we talked about your ramp from full time employment to solopreneurship. Well, my ramp was like 20 minutes. There was a restructure, I got laid off and the question was, how am I going to provide for my family? I did one search for like a director or VP level marketing role and they all had 2,000 plus applicants.
Nick Bennett [00:58:16]:
And so after that search, I decided there's a better way. And I think there's a lot of people. Given the rush, this mass migration to solopreneurship. I'm not alone in that thought process. I always told myself I was going to do what you're doing or what you and what you did. And I didn't do it. I don't know why I didn't do it. I just didn't.
Nick Bennett [00:58:38]:
I was like, oh well, you know, I'll build this course one day and I'll try to. Or I'll try to start somewhere. And it never happened. And so when I talk with people who did go through it, it is eye opening. It has just as many problems and stressors and love and all the different types of anxiety that comes with that that's going through my than it was going through my situation. Because when your back's against a wall, you're just Forced to decide versus the stress that is, what the hell am I gonna do? You're like, I can make all these different things. There's a million different ways I can try to make money. And you’re drowning and opportunity versus, like, what's the fastest path between me and providing for my family?
Erica Schneider [00:59:19]:
I am, quote, unquote, drowning in opportunity. But, like, I've sold a lot of my time a way in order to, like, provide for my family as I figure this out. And I guess, yeah. To really answer your question about what am I most excited about in the future, I want to leverage my time, like, in the way that I intended to when I left my job so that I'm not working like crazy, but I'm making good money.
Nick Bennett [00:59:45]:
It's the dream for all of us. Right.
Erica Schneider [00:59:46]:
And I'm definitely not there yet. Like, I'm working like crazy.
Nick Bennett [00:59:50]:
It shows. I mean, you. You can tell that you're working your ass off to do this. So I know you're going to get there. You're going to crack this code. And I don't think you'll ever stop building and trying new things. But I think there you will hit. You're going to hit on one that feels so right that you're going to wake up in the morning and your feet are going to hit the floor and you're going to be like, let's fucking go. This is it.
Erica Schneider [01:00:12]:
That's the dream. Let's get there.
Nick Bennett [01:00:14]:
You're closer than you think. Like I said, you don't see yourself as niched, but you're so much closer to achieving those things than you realize.
Erica Schneider [01:00:23]:
Okay, cool. Good.
Nick Bennett [01:00:25]:
I appreciate you, Erica.
Erica Schneider [01:00:26]:
Yeah, you too. Thanks for having me on.
Nick Bennett [01:00:28]:
Thanks for coming on.
Nick Bennett [01:00:35]:
Hey, Nick. Again. And thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 Routes newsletter where I process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you build a new and different future for your own business. You can sign up at 1000routes.com or check the link in the show notes.