Liz Steblay is sometimes called “the Yoda of solopreneur success.”
Liz isn’t small, green, or hundreds of years old – but she has been a wise mentor to thousands of self-employed professionals, helping them realize their dreams of becoming solo entrepreneurs.
With decades of experience building her own solopreneur career, including founding a national talent agency that made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. twice, Liz has distilled the formula for solopreneur success down to six essential keys.
As the bestselling author of Succeeding as a Solopreneur, published in partnership with Inc. Magazine in March, Liz explains how these keys are crucial for overcoming FUD—fear, uncertainty, and doubt—and paving the way for long-term success.
What you will learn
- Thinking about going solo? Find out if it’s the right path for you and discover the steps to get started on your own terms.
- In a competitive market, standing out is everything. Master the art of branding, marketing, and business development so you can build the solo career you’ve always dreamed of.
- Want to keep more of what you earn? Learn strategies to reduce taxes and maximize your income while growing your solo business.
- Supercharge your workflow with AI. Discover how to use AI tools to save hours on tasks like content creation, editing, and title generation, freeing you up to focus on what truly matters.
- Keep your pipeline flowing. Build a reliable network virtually and learn smart strategies for turning digital connections into lasting relationships that support your solo journey.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:03 – 00:00:45
Harry Warden and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show that I have with me, Liz Steblay. Now a little bit about Liz, uh She’s sometimes called the ‘Yoda of solopreneur Success’. And as we can see on the screen, she she isn’t small and green or hundreds of years old. Uh But who knows what will happen with uh health research science in the next few years, we might be living hundreds of years old and go green because we’ve been trained by A I. Who knows? Anyway, she has been a wise mentor to thousands of self-employed professionals, helping them realize their dreams of becoming solo entrepreneurs.
With decades of experience building her own solopreneur career, including founding a national talent agency that made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. twice, Liz has distilled the formula for solopreneur success down to six essential keys.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:45 – 00:01:26
As the bestselling author of Succeeding as a Solopreneur, published in partnership with Inc. Magazine in March, Liz explains how these keys are crucial for overcoming FUD—fear, uncertainty, and doubt—and paving the way for long-term success. So Liz, welcome to the show.
Liz Steblay
00:01:26 – 00:01:34
Hi, happy to be here and happy to answer all your questions!
Jeff Bullas
00:01:35 – 00:02:06
Ok. So what got you into all this, in other words, becoming a consultant. And there’s a couple of sort of accidental synergies that happened along the way. So tell us how you just stumbled into being a consultant, which is essentially what you are doing today. Um And then, uh but let’s start maybe with, tell us what a solo prone is and then we’re going to work backwards and hear about your journey to get to uh being a solo Prene.
Liz Steblay
00:02:07 – 00:02:41
OK? So we can do a little bit of time traveling in this conversation. So I fell into being a self employed consultant before the word solo Preneur was ever invented. And it was quite as you said, an accidental or my words, fortuitous happenstance, maybe it was even fate, whatever word you want to call it. So at the time, I was working full as a full time cons, well, sort of full time director at the Levi Strauss, the makers of the Levi Jeans, and I got laid off
Liz Steblay
00:02:41 – 00:03:00
and I called a former client that I had had when I had worked for one of the global consulting firms. And it was the very same day I got the notice I was laid off and I said, hey, Rob, I just got laid off. Do you need any help down there? Because he was in Silicon Valley. I was in San Francisco and he said, are you kidding? How soon can you get here?
Liz Steblay
00:03:00 – 00:03:23
And I literally had my first consulting project before I even had a laptop. In fact, I went down there and had a conversation with Rob. We talked about all the different projects and things that were happening at that high tech company. And um, he’s like, great, ok, let’s hire you to do this one. And I said, can you walk me over to the IT department? Because I wanna um stop by Mike Peter’s desk and have him help me pick out a laptop
Liz Steblay
00:03:23 – 00:03:57
and we ordered my laptop on Mike’s at Mike’s desk that very same day. So when I say I fell into it, I literally fell into it. I wasn’t really even thinking it was just a gut reaction. Like, oh, well, maybe I’ll just do a little consulting work on the side. But that first year I made more money, lowered my effective tax rate, and worked fewer hours. Uh didn’t have to deal with the big firm BS that I used to when I was internal with the global firm. And more importantly, I had more quality time with my kid and I said, well, this is great. Everybody should be doing this and I’m not going back to a real job.
Jeff Bullas
00:03:58 – 00:04:16
Yeah. Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it today? Uh, you mentioned the word laptop, which we all use today and, uh, laptops really only started coming into existence in the late eighties. Was that when you, uh, bought your first laptop, was it in the late eighties or was it early nineties?
Liz Steblay
00:04:17 – 00:04:48
Uh, this was in the, uh, this was actually in the early two thousands because prior to that my company had always paid for my laptops. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, I had a, um, you know, the desktop computer at home or whatever, but my work was always done on a laptop that was paid for, you know, Levi Strauss gave me one or, uh, the big firm I used to work for PWC consulting. You know, they give me a new one every 18 months. So, the first one I ever purchased was that day in early 2004.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:49 – 00:04:54
Right. Ok. So, things have changed a lot since then, haven’t they? Like?
Liz Steblay
00:04:54 – 00:05:00
Oh, my goodness. Yes, they have. The internet was barely even a thing.
Jeff Bullas
00:05:00 – 00:05:35
Yeah. When I bought my first computer, actually there was, we had local area networks that were just emerging, which connected computers within the office. But essentially there was really nothing to connect offices to other offices, remote unless you did some really sexy sort of technology workarounds. And so we’ve sort of gone from stand alone computers that were sort of quite good. We could do spreadsheets, but we really couldn’t share it with anyone. So today we have the webs just, and then smartphones on top of that.
Liz Steblay
00:05:35 – 00:06:18
Yeah. And it’s, and it’s insane like, sometimes. Uh so, so I leave webinars and workshops from my laptop here in my home office, I came down one day and the internet wasn’t working. So I rebooted, the router still wasn’t working. And by this time I’m 20 minutes before the webinar is supposed to start, I’m like, OK, this is, I don’t have time to drink around with this. So I opened my smartphone using five G service nearest to the free Wi-Fi near me and I grabbed my laptop, went to the nearest coffee shop and I led the workshop from the patio of that coffee shop. I mean, even 10 years ago, I don’t think I would have been able to do that.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:19 – 00:06:25
Well, the other thing too is like, we’ve, you know, in the past, we actually had to use technology called Skype, which is uh
Liz Steblay
00:06:25 – 00:06:26
I remember.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:26 – 00:07:11
Yeah, and Skype was quite good. Um And uh you could do free calls on it. But, and then uh you know, basically, here we are today using Zoom, right? Which essentially has made Skype look a little bit irrelevant and um a little bit lazy and a little bit like legacy software. Really. So, um, but yeah, and doing this on Zoom is so easy. It’s like clicking open up. I do a quick audio test, video, test, hit record, ready to go. And, uh, so it’s pretty close to bulletproof. Occasionally. We get a little bit of glitch and, uh, yeah, sure that’s gonna happen. But the World Wide Web is basically like a utility service. Like, it’s like electricity, isn’t it? You expect it
Liz Steblay
00:07:11 – 00:07:17
to work? I would rather be without um air conditioning than the internet.
Jeff Bullas
00:07:17 – 00:07:18
Ok.
Liz Steblay
00:07:19 – 00:07:45
Uh Yes, it is. It is like a utility but all of these, you know, technologies and apps and things like Zoom or I did a virtual summit this last weekend using a tool called Stream Yard where I was allowed backstage. And I mean, it just, it makes it all so easy to step out on your own because you don’t need the infrastructure. Now. I’m not going to say that it’s always,
Liz Steblay
00:07:45 – 00:08:11
It’s always perfect or easy. I mean, we are, there’s no help desk that I can call. Like that day I came down and the internet wasn’t working. I couldn’t just call the help desk or when I get the blue screen of death on my laptop, I don’t have anybody on call. So there are challenges when you’re self employed. But uh you don’t, you don’t need to have a big firm behind you to do the work that you love to do and make a great living.
Jeff Bullas
00:08:11 – 00:08:35
And that’s what, and the pandemic actually, uh, accelerated remote work, I’d say by about a decade we were heading in that direction. But getting permission was always difficult because, you know, it was the old, you know, theory of management by walking around. In other words, pe, you know, manager walks around and goes, ok, who’s on Facebook? Who’s on Instagram? Exactly.
Liz Steblay
00:08:36 – 00:08:40
Who’s spending too much time in the break room. Exactly.
Jeff Bullas
00:08:40 – 00:09:18
Who’s, who’s bloody gaming today? Um, because the bandwidth has gone up. Look. No. So the reality is that, um, remote work now has become something that has been shown to be that generally it’s been shown to be more productive. Uh, people are more productive doing work, remote work than actually going into the office. And, um, so, you know, my partner, she’s a corporate lawyer. She still requires me to go to the office. Quite a few people still work remotely, but she spends like an hour getting dressed, half an hour getting to the office, you know, then getting back at the end of the day. So we can wipe out 2 to 3 hours by the time you mess around. Right.
Liz Steblay
00:09:19 – 00:09:32
Yes. Yes, I totally agree. And that’s time that you could be spending exercising or with your Children or coaching Little League or whatever it is that you want to do besides commuting and going to an office.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:32 – 00:09:50
Yeah. So let’s go to uh the original, one of the original questions I asked, which is the one of two defining what a solo rene is and I’ll be interested in. Um And we, we’ve talked about consultants. OK. So they are a type of solone. So what’s your definition of a solo prone?
Liz Steblay
00:09:51 – 00:10:40
So a solone similar to the word entrepreneur is a person who is in business for themselves. But obviously, with the word solo, they are literally in business for themselves and they really are not interested in growing to be a business more than themselves. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t have a virtual assistant or social media planner on a part time basis or anything. But it, you’re not, you’re not particularly interested in growing the business into something larger. Uh use, I don’t know any solo preneurs that produce a widget or a product unless it might be, you know, download this ebook or take this online course. Right? But we don’t, we’re not manufacturing products. Uh they’re nearly all knowledge workers and that could be anything from. We talked about management consultants,
Liz Steblay
00:10:41 – 00:11:21
life coaches, executive coaches, financial planners, interior designers, all of those fall under solo Preneurs. So you’re being employed by yourself for yourself, you want to do the work that you love, outsource the stuff you don’t like. For me, it’s social media, um calendaring with my virtual assistant and bookkeeping. I outsource all that and I just do the work that I enjoy doing and I don’t have to deal with, with a boss or big firm BS. But there is of course the challenge of business development and developing a pipeline and finding clients and contracting and all of those other things. And that’s the type of stuff that’s in my book.
Jeff Bullas
00:11:21 – 00:12:09
OK. So uh tell us then, OK, because for consultants, it is that sort of that, you know, that funnel of opportunity because quite often it can be with a consultant, can be Feast and famine. So quite often with consulting, um you can get a really decent gig, but then you’re so busy, you don’t have time to actually then work on the pipeline and then the problem then is getting the sequence right? And so, you know, you’ve got one job after the other. Tell us how you manage that, how you, how you build a pipeline for you as a consultant. And uh how do you make sure that you don’t have Feast and families like you run multiple jobs? Tell us about how you actually build that funnel and uh you know, produce opportunity and then how you manage it.
Liz Steblay
00:12:09 – 00:12:43
Yes, it depends on the type of work you do. Of course, some people can juggle more than one client at a time, particularly if you’re in coaching, you have to juggle multiple clients at a time. But as a consultant, it depends on the type of work you do. The type of work I used to do was a change management strategy and implementation for big harry tech projects like implementing SAP for a company with 200,000 employees. Um That’s full time work either for if not 40 hours, it can peak at 60 hours. So there was no way that I was ever going to be able to have more than one client at a time.
Liz Steblay
00:12:44 – 00:13:30
And in fact, after that first project that I did, after I left Levi Strauss, I fell into independent consulting. I was caught flatfooted because I hadn’t done any business development. I hadn’t, I didn’t even know what the word pipeline meant. Uh And so I really had to hustle because I knew I didn’t want to go back to work for a consulting firm. And actually, this is key number three in my book, which is about, it is constantly growing and nourishing your network. So even if you are working 40 to 60 hours a week on one client, you need to dedicate at least one hour a week to growing and nourishing your network in my world when I was on these intense projects that meant having lunch or a drink after work with one person in person once a week,
Liz Steblay
00:13:30 – 00:14:02
even if it was only to, to walk down to the sandwich shop and walk back to our desk because we couldn’t afford the, you know, time to actually sit in a restaurant. That’s how I kept nourishing and expanding my network and, and on that work, we weren’t on those walks to pick up the lunch. We weren’t talking about work. I was finding out about where they went to school. What do they do when they’re not working? Why did they work so hard? Where did they go on their last vacation? Do they have kids? What sports are they interested in? And they develop a relationship? So, when you’re self employed as
Liz Steblay
00:14:02 – 00:14:52
a solo pour, the relationships are key. In fact, one of the favorite, my favorite blog article I think I’ve ever written and I’ve written several dozen by this point, it says business development equals relationship development because people are going to hire a solo preneurs that they, that they know is credible who they like and who they trust and you have to start with relationships. So I know that you spend a lot of time on, on this show talking about digital marketing and, and building pipelines and funnels and lead magnets and newsletters. That’s all great. But every single solo preneurs hired by first having a conversation with a potential client. So everything, all of your marketing stuff needs to funnel into, let’s have a live conversation and then it’s about building the relationship.
Jeff Bullas
00:14:52 – 00:15:12
Exactly. So, then that lies a bit of the challenge with remote work as in you are removed from the physicality of uh networking in some sense. So how do you combine uh uh basically digital networking with face to face networking because they’re, they’re different, aren’t they? Do you do both?
Liz Steblay
00:15:12 – 00:15:54
Yes, they are different. And now you can do both. There were a couple of years there when you couldn’t, it’s like 2020 to 2022. Nobody was going to conferences or meeting in person. But yes, you can, you can and should do both. So, actually during the pandemic when uh that was also the time I moved from San Francisco to Reno Nevada. So I had physically removed myself from being close to a lot of my clients. Anyway, plus it was, it was COVID in the pandemic. So I would uh reach out to potential clients and existing clients and say, hey, you know, things are crazy. We can’t necessarily get together like we normally would, would you like to just have a virtual cup of a virtual cocktail?
Liz Steblay
00:15:55 – 00:16:40
And we literally would meet at five o’clock in the afternoon, like on Zoom, we’d each bring our own glass of wine or cocktail and we talk about a little bit about work, but mostly about, well, how are your kids holding up? And oh, you got a new puppy and you know, what are you gonna do when coming out of this? And you know, whatever and it was still about maintaining and strengthening the relationships through a virtual cup of coffee or a virtual cocktail. And that’s still a good, good method for developing relationships. Also, when you go to any sort of online event, whether it’s a virtual summit, like I just participated in this weekend or um maybe it’s a workshop, like one of the workshops that I lead. We do introductions and we send out
Liz Steblay
00:16:41 – 00:17:12
At least this is the way we handle it through my other business. We at the end are the follow up notes. We say these are the 10 people who were in the workshop. These are the links to their linkedin profiles. We encourage you to network, connect with each other on linkedin, and have a virtual cup of coffee. You never know where your next lead or refer is going to come from. And I know that you have also talked about the power of weak ties before you have to continually plant new seeds and establish weak ties because you just don’t know which seeds are going to grow and which ones are not.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:13 – 00:17:55
Yeah. Yeah. The weak ties is a very interesting concept and it sort of leads to things like um discussion about the Dunbar number, which is 100 and 50. It’s like the size of a tribe. So the Dunbar number about a tribe is typically 100 and 50 uh before it starts to actually break up because you can’t maintain, you know, strong relationships more than that sort of number. It’s like a rule of thumb. Um But of course, social media has tried to challenge that number and break it by. OK. Can we have relationships with thousands of people? And the answer to that is no. But can people hear about thousands of people and maybe hundreds of thousands of people can hear about you? Yes. The answer to that is yes.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:56 – 00:18:48
Um But of course, we’ve had social media show up which basically met Facebook, Instagram, their idea now is the original Town Square that was healthy and great that Twitter started. And Facebook and Instagram developed and evolved the reality that they are forcing you to use their algorithms to put you into their feed. So they actually give you information you want, rather than you connecting with people you do want to hang out with and there’s, there’s a real danger and there’s a real movement I think emerging about um the news feeds of the big giant social media players and how dangerous they are to take us in the rabbit holes and selling more stuff, create more drama, more hate, more polarization.
Jeff Bullas
00:18:49 – 00:19:14
Um So despite being a social media influencer back in the day, um before even the word in social media influences the crowd, I was one of those and I actually hardly read, I hardly ever go into a social media stream. I know I’m being played. So it’s really interesting though, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it, but you gotta make sure that you’re playing it rather than you being played by it.
Liz Steblay
00:19:14 – 00:19:49
Yes, I agree. I kind of like the concept of hashtags though, right? Because if I even on linkedin, if I go in and type in a, hashtag let’s say it’s hashtag pay less tax, then I’m going to find the content and the people I’m interested in, in following or learning about on that subject or my favorite hashtag Solo Preneurs Success, which is mostly my stuff. Shameless plug there. But yeah, I like the concept of hashtags because then you can filter out all the, all the, all the other. I’m gonna call it junk, all the other junk. Yeah,
Jeff Bullas
00:19:49 – 00:20:20
exactly. So let me, let’s go on to um you don’t want to work for everyone. You just wanna work with the customers you wanna work with really? Isn’t there like, so how do you, what’s your ideal customer profile? Which is an acronym IC P um which I hate because it’s usually industry speaking as someone uses it in a book and doesn’t explain what it means. You’re going uh What are you talking about? Um But uh I digress. So what’s your ideal customer profile
Liz Steblay
00:20:22 – 00:21:05
personally? For me? Yeah, for your business from my business. And I, I actually have, I have, I call it 2.5 businesses, Jeff. So I have uh the one that how I really make my money, which is a matchmaking agency for self employed consultants who specialize in organizational effectiveness. It’s called the Proco Agency. And we match those consultants with fortune 500 needs and clients, we handle the contracts, their compliance insurance, all the red tape. So that’s really how I make the most of my, most of my money that said I’m not involved in the day to day operations of that business anymore. So about eight years ago, I started something called the professional independent consultants of America
Liz Steblay
00:21:05 – 00:21:55
Pika for short because 17 syllables is way too long for a business name. Pak is an educational organization and community to help people launch and run and grow their own solo preneurs businesses as a result of coaching thousands of people through Pica. That’s when I thought, wow, if I actually put all this knowledge into a book, I could reach and help a whole lot more people and that’s how I came up with the book succeeding as a solone. Uh So that’s the point. Business is 0.5 is now it’s the book. So you have the real, your original question was my ideal, my ideal client or ideal customer profile. So most solo preneurs that, that I can help are mid to late career professionals.
Liz Steblay
00:21:56 – 00:22:45
So that would put you at what? Anywhere from 40 to 45 to 7580 I, I do coach, I’ve coached lots of people who have fully retired and a year later they’re bored out of their minds and they’re like, OK, I think I want to do a little consulting but I might not want to do, go all in and how would I have set this up? And so that would be my ideal customer profile. 100% of these people are college educated. I’d say, um, maybe another half of that group is advanced degrees. I’ve coached people with combined MD phd s honestly, I’m so blessed. I get to coach some of the most intelligent people in the world and it’s just the best job ever, even though I make very little money at it.
Jeff Bullas
00:22:46 – 00:22:54
Well, it’s the thing about like you do stuff because you enjoy it. And uh any other question you need to ask is how much is enough.
Liz Steblay
00:22:55 – 00:23:36
Yes. Exactly. So, now I’ve come to terms with it. I, so I turned 60 this year. I published the book. I had a little life crisis in that I realized I am 100 and 20% burnt out. I’ve been grinding for decades, building two businesses, writing and publishing a book. I’m exhausted and that question has come up. Well, how much is enough? And financially I have enough. So, why don’t I, I just do the work that I really love and continue to mentor and help people launch and grow their own businesses so they can live the life they want. And that the term was introduced to me just a few weeks ago. It’s called joy fuel.
Liz Steblay
00:23:36 – 00:23:53
What, what’s, what’s the fuel? What, what’s the work that just gives me joy and, and lights up my day and I can do that a couple hours a day and then go about the rest of my life. So really helping people live the career of their dreams is my joy fuel.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:54 – 00:24:44
It’s fantastic. And uh I think there’s a question we need to ask each other where we are much more often rather than just nose to the grindstone, copying everyone else instead of following your own bliss, which is a term used by Joseph Campbell, the hero’s journey. Um He says that we don’t, none of us really have this big God given purpose that, you know, there’s only one purpose for you to do. It’s like his term for it was to follow your bliss for me in looking at what he did. And also what I’ve experimented with is uh following a curiosity that actually brings you joy. What am I curious about? And then lean into that and what I’ve discovered by leaning into that with intent and acting on it and then creating and sharing means that
Jeff Bullas
00:24:44 – 00:25:33
um the world seems to show up in a, in a magical way. And um it’s worked for me for the last 16 years since 2008. So, uh that for me and, you know, basically joy fuel. I totally agree with it. And uh like there’s a lot of, you know, people go well, just follow your, you know, passion type of thing. Well, it’s a little bit more than that. It’s the, no, I love the model of the icky guy, which is basically this is a Japanese term about where your purpose lies. And I’ve written about it quite a few times and I think that way of describing, you know, where’s your expertise? What are you curious about? What do you love doing? What will the, and then that intersects with what the world will pay you for?
Liz Steblay
00:25:33 – 00:25:37
Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:25:37 – 00:25:49
So that’s the little part that quite often is just following your passion and, you know, like, I love gambling on sports. Well, that’s not gonna pay well unless you actually start a sports app, gambling app, right? Which could be part of that story. But, um,
Liz Steblay
00:25:50 – 00:26:25
yes, there are, there needs to be a market for what, for what it is. If you truly need to make a living doing what you’re doing and if most people are looking to step into self employment in their, you know, in their forties or, and, or even fifties, they probably are still looking to make a decent living. So that intersection of, you know, what does the world actually need or what does the market need? And what they are willing to pay for is very, very important. You might be, you might be the world’s best person at underwater basket weaving, but there is very little market for that. So that’s probably not the right passion to follow.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:26 – 00:26:58
Exactly. So let’s move on to the latest technology uh which is in front of our eyes at incredible speed and velocity and it’s only emerged in the last two years. A I so does A I help you to be more productive? And how do you use it if um if you actually are using it and I’m sure you are cos you’re in um you wanna be more productive. So how, how are you using A I for yourself today in your business?
Liz Steblay
00:26:59 – 00:27:51
I wouldn’t say I’m a heavy user or maybe even, not even a daily user. But when I use it, boy, is it an accelerator? So, my favorite tool is Claude dot A I, because I talk to Claude like a real person. Hey, Claude, I need to write a blog on how to, you know, the best tips or the best way to announce to the world that you’ve started your own business as a solo prone. My target audience is XYZ. I want it to be about 1200 words. I’ve got, you know, snippets from these or transcripts from these, you know, three webinars that I did recently. Can you please write a first round that just saved me two hours easily, right? Uh or my, my normal editor. So I had to, I I publish my, my media blogs once a month
Liz Steblay
00:27:52 – 00:28:38
and my normal editor. Well, OK, it was my fault last month. I got it done too late. And she said, my editor said, I don’t think I can get this to you by the end of the day tomorrow. I’m like, OK, I’ll just, I’ll figure something out. So I uploaded the blog to claw dot A. I told him that the demographics of my audience, the education level like the tone as they usually do. Uh I might have even included, you know, here’s a couple of the blogs I published in the past to give you an idea of my, my voice. Can you please edit this for me? It took less than two minutes and I incorporated, it was a red line version and I incorporated 90% of those edits. And I thought, I don’t know if I’m ever going to use my human editor again.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:40 – 00:28:43
She’s not listening. I’m sure she doesn’t know that you’re going to do that.
Liz Steblay
00:28:43 – 00:29:30
I don’t know. But I was, I was, I was amazed and then I needed to generate titles, generate a friendly title for this blog, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then I tend to choose from. Um So that’s one way that it’s totally changed how I work. Um And, and I, I use voice assistants a lot and this is a super, almost, almost silly way. But, you know, I’m, I’ve got my hands on the keyboard and in the middle of writing something, whether it’s an email to somebody or a blog, whatever. And I’ll say Um, Alexa, what’s 2062 divided by 43. And I don’t have to take my hands off the keyboard. I
Jeff Bullas
00:29:30 – 00:29:30
just
Liz Steblay
00:29:30 – 00:29:31
I love that.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:31 – 00:29:32
Yeah.
Liz Steblay
00:29:32 – 00:29:50
Yes. And I keep lists and I keep notes and I do a lot of them just verbally. Right. Because then I don’t, I’m not distracted. I don’t have to, like, move to a different screen or whatever. I can just go and so it helps me stay in my, in my, in my flow a little bit better.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:51 – 00:30:19
Right. Cool. That’s, that’s some great tips and I’m sure we’ll uh that will be on the show notes along with the actual audio and video. So in fact, we turn the long video into the short snippets done by A I as well that we put up as Insta Instagram reels, tiktok and also as youtube shorts. So uh yeah, it’s, it’s just fun to experiment with it and like some are good, some are ugly, some are better than others. So it’s, it’s, it’s fun to experiment, isn’t it?
Liz Steblay
00:30:19 – 00:30:34
Yes. And the more you use it, the better you get at it. And I think as we get better, I don’t think it gets any better. I think we get better at giving it the prompts and it learns, you know, if you have a paid account, it learns, it learns from you.
Jeff Bullas
00:30:35 – 00:31:25
Yeah. The challenge at the moment I think is that uh it’s very good at short term memory, which just means that on the topic that you started the questioning, it’s learning from you. So that’s the short term memory of it. It still hasn’t got to long-term memory yet. In other words, remembering all the stuff that you talk about every day and weaving it into one as if it becomes your long-term memory because at the moment I think it’s the cost of maintaining that database of information about each individual would be horrendous at this stage. But anyway, that’s another topic. So, so uh tell us about the book because you did that with ink. Um, didn’t you? So, uh so how did, how did the writing of that book hurt? Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:26 – 00:31:33
Success. What led you to that? And uh when did it, when did it come out this year? Wasn’t it?
Liz Steblay
00:31:34 – 00:32:16
Yes, it came out in March of 2024 this year it did. And so it was kind of a long journey. Well, the whole thing was a long journey. I’ve been working on it, living it for 20 years, right? I had to live through all the lessons before I could create the book and I had to experience the content and coach 1000 people, whatever. So, yes, it was 20 years in the making. But, by the time I actually sat down and said, OK, I need to, I need to publish this book. It was probably two years from start to publication. I really hate to write, which is why I love Claude dot A I, but, and maybe I could have done it with a tool like Claude,
Liz Steblay
00:32:17 – 00:33:15
which didn’t exist when I started writing this book. Or at least I didn’t know about it. So I hired a ghostwriter and I said, OK, I’ve got, here’s, I don’t know how many blogs I sent her. Here’s 30 blogs. Here’s the transcripts from the six core workshops that I lead for the professional independent consultants of America. Um And here’s the outline, I knew what the six keys to success were. And so I need all of this disparate stuff to go into this outline. And then I spent probably about 10 hours maybe where she would have conversations with me and, and she teased out the stories and the lessons learned and sort of the color commentary of, of what’s of the lessons in the book, right? And then there was AAA brutal round of editing with a live person.
Liz Steblay
00:33:16 – 00:33:56
And I say brutal because that was all done in, via Zoom live where one person would read the text and then the editor would say no, that sounds weird, you know, or that’s too much passive voice. We need to rewrite it, blah, blah, blah. So the editing was by far the hardest part and then I needed to find a publisher. I was either going to self publish or, or use a hybrid publisher I would know I was definitely not going to do a traditional publishing because that’s what would have added another two years onto the life onto the project plan. Plus you have more control if you sell published hybrids, et cetera. So I knew I wanted to do hybrid publishing. And so I
Liz Steblay
00:33:57 – 00:34:13
did a Google search, top five or top three hybrid publishers for business books. And one of them that came up was a green leaf, green leaf book group and they are affiliated with Fast Company and inc.com.
Jeff Bullas
00:34:14 – 00:34:14
Ok.
Liz Steblay
00:34:15 – 00:34:37
So, um I paid to have the book published and ink its a percentage of every book or audio book or ebook, whatever is sold. Um And that’s how it was published as an original. Now, it wasn’t a shoe and they had to send it to ink and they had to review it and whatever, all those sort of things, but that’s how it got published as an inc original.
Jeff Bullas
00:34:38 – 00:34:44
Cool. All right, let’s get to the essence of the book. Then what are the six key steps to succeed as a solo prone? Then
Liz Steblay
00:34:44 – 00:35:36
they’re, they’re all interrelated, but they cluster into three sections. So the subtitle of the book is uh six keys to taking the leap, winning clients and building wealth. And so roughly the six keys go along those three main themes. Uh So the first key straight out of the gate is be prepared to vanquish fud which you mentioned in your introduction, which is fear, uncertainty and doubt. If you haven’t yet gone, take the leap into self employment or you’re very new to self-employment. F fund is larger than life. I call it the FUD monster because I imagine this little gremlin creature whispering in my ear. Like who are you to start your own business? Who are you to negotiate a contract? Who do you like to publish a newsletter? What whatever it is that that self doubt
Liz Steblay
00:35:36 – 00:36:09
will chew away at you and you’ve got to learn how to tame it or you will not be successful. It takes a humongous amount of confidence to be self-employed. You don’t have to know everything. You just need to have the confidence to know that you’re smart enough to figure it out or get the answers you need. So be prepared to vanquish fud is number one and there’s tips in there for how to, how to vanquish the fud. Uh The second key is to be known for something and be memorable. A lot of people think they need to go to market as a jack of all trades. So they’re available for more work. But the reverse is true. Nobody wants to hire a jack of all trades. They want to hire an expert,
Liz Steblay
00:36:09 – 00:36:54
particularly in consulting. If a client is going to spend $50,000 to solve their problem, they don’t want to hire somebody who has done it once or twice before they want to hire the person who is their sweet spot. So that’s the second key. The third key is to constantly grow and nourish your network. We already talked about establishing more weak ties and developing relationships. Uh The fourth key is to be professional and set yourself up as a business. So there’s a ton of freelancers out there. Million subcontractors, you know, when you go to market as a subcontractor, you’re giving up at least 35%. Well, ok, it depends if you find your work through a platform or an agency. If you find your work through a platform like Catalan,
Liz Steblay
00:36:55 – 00:37:16
uh you’re giving up 25% of your income. If you could find your work through an agency, you’re giving up sometimes as much as 50%. If you set yourself up as a business and can be hired on a business to business basis in the United States, that’s a 1099 basis tax basis, you get to keep more of what you earn.
Liz Steblay
00:37:16 – 00:37:45
So that’s the key number four is be professional, set yourself up as a business. Key five is to be confident and charge what you’re worth. I’d say the single biggest mistake I see people make is they don’t charge enough, which of course, ties to confidence. But there’s other ways to figure out and calculate what is a reasonable price for your services and your expertise. And then key six is to pay less tax and keep more of what you earn. I will say that key number six is particularly US centric.
Liz Steblay
00:37:46 – 00:38:09
Uh, but uh yeah, it’s very, very important to pay as little tax as possible. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay your fair share, but when you, when you have your own business, there’s certain things in the States for everything from business owner tax deductions to retirement plans that lower your effective tax rate, that can make a huge difference, and build wealth over time.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:09 – 00:38:18
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s uh so yeah, so we want to do tax minimization, but we want to do tax avoidance as two different things.
Liz Steblay
00:38:18 – 00:38:23
Yes, it’s not a tax scheme, it’s a tax strategy.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:24 – 00:39:06
And the other thing you mentioned, which is very important, is to build wealth over time. In other words, uh you know, as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett will talk about all the time is the power of compounding. Yes. OK. So be willing to, you know, take the slope, not the quick way to riches which most people want to do. And um but uh is actually saying, OK, I’m gonna play the long game here and uh and that comes down to investing as well. It’s like, OK, let’s just invest and let you know that no 9.9% you know, index, you know, share fund return, just keep working every year and just keep putting it back in and
Jeff Bullas
00:39:07 – 00:40:08
uh uh and the power of compounding is incredible. I came across one of our leading financial newspapers here in Australia called the A Fr Weekend Review. And it showed the difference between the American uh index share fund which generated over the last 30 years, 11.9%. The Australian Index share fund 9.9 a difference of only 2%. And they show the difference over 30 years of just $10,000 put into both of those, what it would return. So this is where com yes, this is where compound gets very, very exciting and sexy. Actually, in that the Australian share index fund would have earned $134,000. Pretty good. 30 years, $10,000 down, nothing pulled out. Just let it keep, you know, all the divans to put back in and all that 11.92% difference, the compound growth of $10,000
Jeff Bullas
00:40:09 – 00:40:31
ended up being $235,000. Exactly. So the power of compounding is what people would need to really seriously consider, which means starting maybe your, I think in America, you call it 401. In Australia, we call it superannuation, which is just putting money in and working.
Liz Steblay
00:40:32 – 00:41:11
Well, let me share my favorite trick Jeff. Um So the, the, the first year I was a solo prone self employed was in 2004 and it came when you’re self employed in the States. You have to file your taxes quarterly, pay your taxes quarterly because it’s not being withheld from your paycheck. So I got caught flat footed. I hadn’t been saving money for this quarterly tax payment and I don’t remember now what it was, it was $12,000 or something. I didn’t have $12,000. I don’t remember what I did to scrape it together because you definitely do not want to pay those things late because the penalty and interest is ridiculous.
Liz Steblay
00:41:11 – 00:41:38
I probably borrowed money from my brother or something. But I said, ok, I’m never going to get caught short again. And so I took half in those early years, I took 50% of every invoice that was paid and I put it into a separate bank, not my normal bank. Because when I log in and I see I have $10,000 in savings, I’ll tell my daughter, oh, we’ve got enough to go on vacation to Hawaii. Right. I have no fiscal discipline whatsoever. So I had to put it into a completely different bank.
Liz Steblay
00:41:39 – 00:42:25
So then when it was time to pay my quarterly taxes, I would transfer the 12 K, 15 K whatever it was to my normal bank and I’d pay my taxes. Then the annual tax return comes around and I would lo and behold, have 20 or $25,000 left over in the secret bank account. That’s what went into my retirement account, uh, myself, my, at the time I had a sub ira in the States. That’s what lowered my affected tax rate. That’s the money I invested. And fortunately I happened to hit the bull market at the right time and bought things like Apple, Amazon, et cetera. But even if you just put it in an index fund, as you just mentioned at the compounding, uh, before, you know, 1520 years have gone by and you’re like, oh, look what I did.
Liz Steblay
00:42:26 – 00:42:41
But it’s, it’s bundling that, that money off in a consistent way and tucking it away. So you don’t see it. So you’re not tempted by it, invest it and it, it accumulates and next thing, you know, wow, I do have enough money to retire.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:42 – 00:43:21
Yeah, it’s, um, uh I think there’s these different sorts of what we call mental models that we can use in life and I think they go across everything, you know, like how we, you know, our relationships, how we invest. And uh I read Charlie Munger’s book, um The Poor Charlie’s Almanac, which is uh a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Almanac. I think it was and it is not a copy but took off the same sort of title. Um And at the age of 99 he was pretty wise and he had about 90 different mental models that he used to live to invest and live and um pretty amazing, great book actually. So, um,
Liz Steblay
00:43:21 – 00:43:25
It also makes me think of atomic habits by James Clear.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:25 – 00:43:26
Yes,
Liz Steblay
00:43:26 – 00:43:27
same sort of thing. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:27 – 00:44:00
Great book. I read it about two or three years ago. And uh so one of those little atomic habits I have is exercise. So uh which I started at the age of 12, I’ve never really given up. So, yeah, but I digress again. So just to sum this up. Well, thank you very much for sharing how the book started. And also those six keys to success as an entrepreneur. The last question I’m gonna ask you is if you had all the money in the world, Liz, what would you do every day? That would, that brings you deep joy.
Liz Steblay
00:44:02 – 00:44:34
Not much different than what I would do. Now, to be very honest, what I really love doing is coaching people one on one. It could be, I do these things called the ask me anything for 15 minutes for free and people pop in and they’re like, oh, this is OK. So I’m, I don’t know, do I need to set up an LLC or not or maybe it’s uh this one woman I had last week for 15 minutes. She said I’ve been wanting to be self-employed, but my husband wasn’t working, but now he is working, but now I’m just scared and I don’t know how to get started.
Liz Steblay
00:44:34 – 00:45:04
It was amazing how much I could help her in 15 minutes and say, OK, I want you to go to this blog and do this exercise. I want you to look this up. I want you to take out a home equity loan before you quit your W-2 job. So you have that financial cushion if you need it. And I was able to easily rattle off five things. And at the end of these 15 minutes, she said, oh my God, this is terrific. Now, I have some homework and I know what steps to take so that I can, I can plan to really make this a reality.
Liz Steblay
00:45:04 – 00:45:48
That’s what I will continue to do until I am no longer capable of doing it. I just, it, I just love it. You know, there’s sometimes people, I have a two, a daughter who’s 23 and, you know, sometimes they’re gen Z generation, but in particular, we’re talking about their life’s purpose. I don’t know what my life’s purpose is. I’m like, honey, I didn’t know what my life purpose was until about four years ago. Ok. So you just keep trying things, you keep doing things. But now I know that my life purpose is to help other people launch and grow their own small businesses. That’s, that’s what I will continue to do until I literally cannot do it anymore. Now, would I like to have an extra million dollars in the bank? Yeah,
Jeff Bullas
00:45:48 – 00:45:48
of
Liz Steblay
00:45:48 – 00:45:49
course,
Jeff Bullas
00:45:49 – 00:45:50
I would.
Liz Steblay
00:45:50 – 00:45:54
But that wasn’t the answer to your question. That’s not what you asked.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:55 – 00:46:00
So, what you’re doing every day is making a difference to their lives. And that brings you joy.
Liz Steblay
00:46:00 – 00:46:39
It brings me joy. And maybe I only do it for two or four or five hours a week and I can go play golf or I can go skiing or I could travel. My partner is retired. So he wants me to be more available to do these things. And as we get older, it is more important to spend more time together. And we actually have a physical uh physical, well, you know, it’s a spreadsheet. It’s a bucket list. We have these things written down and we have prioritized some of these things we need to do while we’re younger while we can like helicopter skiing, swimming with sharks. We know we might not want to do these things in our eighties. So, um yeah, we’re working on the bucket list.
Jeff Bullas
00:46:39 – 00:47:12
Awesome. Ok. Thank you Liz for sharing your insights, experience and expertise and passion about what you love doing and are doing. And uh thank you for sharing what brings you deep joy. And um thank you. And the book is succeeding as a rene and uh I would recommend everyone go and read it. Um It is an entire lifetime experience written and distilled into a single book and that’s what I love about books. So thank you Liz for putting that book together and thank you for sharing it.
Liz Steblay
00:47:13 – 00:47:24
My pleasure. The easiest way to find the book is to go to six keys.info, not six keys.com because that was too expensive. Six keys.info.
Jeff Bullas
00:47:25 – 00:47:33
Great. That’ll be in the show notes too. So, thanks Liz and look forward to maybe dropping to Reno Nevada one day and saying hi
Liz Steblay
00:47:33 – 00:47:35
as you pass through to Lake Tahoe.
Jeff Bullas
00:47:37 – 00:47:48
I wanna go to Lake Tahoe. Actually, it’s um, I’ve got a bucket list. I just need to actually make it a bit bigger because uh yeah. Anyway, that’s another story. So, thanks Liz. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Liz Steblay
00:47:48 – 00:47:50
I agree. Thanks Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:47:50 – 00:47:51
Thank you.