SG Weekly Blog Archives - Solopreneur Grind

A fun new marketing strategy I’m trying

Josh Schachnow — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:05:31 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Another week, another good batch of updates and fun stuff to talk about in the business world.

Let’s jump in:

Trying a new/fun marketing strategy for Visto

It was definitely a slower week.

While summer is usually a bit slower here, we’ve managed to have a pretty strong few months on the business front. But something about last week was just very quiet.

Lots of vacation auto-responders, voicemails, etc. Did you have the same?

And that’s okay, because it’s just the name of the game at certain times of the year. Also gives you time to catch up on other stuff that’s been lower on your list for a while, and also spend some time outdoors, recharging and recouping that energy for when things pick up.

I also launched a LinkedIn Growth program through Visto, which so far is off to an exciting start. What is that, you may ask?

Well as you know, my tech company (visto.ai) builds immigration software for immigration professionals in Canada. As I’ve gotten to know more of them, I’ve learned that most are looking to build their presence online, but don’t know where to start and/or don’t have the time to. And they lean towards LinkedIn as it’s more professional.

So after hearing this from far too many of them – and because I know a thing or two about LinkedIn with over 14,500 followers – I decided to put together a 6-week paid program on how to grow your presence on LinkedIn for immigration professionals. Not only do I enjoy it, but it’s another fun way to market ourselves to our target market and build trust in our industry.

It’s also a nice way to mix things up as I spend most of the rest of my day selling tech, so mixing in some other stuff helps keep me on my toes.

We had the first session on Friday where I went over setting LinkedIn goals, intentions (and why they’re so important) and optimizing your LinkedIn profile, including tips and homework.

As I said, so far, so good, and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes over the next 5 weeks (as it’s a 6-week program).

Key takeaway(s): listen to your audience and get creative to serve them

Now this program is still new, so it might be a complete flop, but the first session went well and I have a great feeling about it. Mainly because I know I’ll provide them with a ton of value, and it’s a cool new way to network.

One of my biggest learnings from this year, especially as we improve on our immigration platform at Visto, is to always be listening to your audience instead of forcing what you think may work on them. Of course, there’s a little bit of that that’s required (especially early on when you’re just starting and don’t have clients), but the last ~6 months of new product features for us have just been based on what our users are asking for.

Ironically, it actually makes improving your product really easy – because users just ask for stuff. But make sure you’re listening and/or giving them the space to communicate their wants and needs with you.

It could also mean testing out some new products or services you hadn’t thought of before, because if enough people are asking you for it, it’s probably for a reason. So get something out there quick, then show it to as many people as possible and listen to what they say (good or bad!).

Book of the week

I’m still not done Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch, but not for a lack of trying. At almost 500 pages, it’s a doozy.

Luckily it’s also a great book. Jack shares a ton of details on how he worked his way up at GE, what it was like running it, chapters on the cool deals he and the company did, management of people and more. I will hopefully be done it for next weeks email…

Episode 14 of the Grind Mastermind podcast also went live, where good friend Chris and I share updates as we grow our businesses, set goals for the next 2 weeks and talk about books/tools we find. Watch or listen to it here.

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure you’re getting my updates right to your inbox here, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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A very valuable networking event and sales tool

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:10:35 +0000

Happy Monday folks, summer continues to fly by, with a lot of exciting times too.

Let’s jump in:

A very valuable networking event and new sales “strategy”

We had another good week on the tech front. Even though summer tends to slow things down a bit here in Canada – on the business side – our revenue curve continues up and to the right.

Also had a cool discovery this week. Which is that the government offers a grant for SMBs to help them implement new tech, that we (Visto) are likely eligible for.

Or in other words, the government offers free money to our clients to implement software like ours. Which is pretty awesome, if we can convince potential clients it’s worth their time to apply for the grant (which we think it is).

We discovered it from someone we met at a networking event last week, and are going to push it hard as a sales strategy – especially to try and convert leads who are on the fence about using our product. Certainly de-risks giving our tech platform a try if you can get the full payment back from the government, right?

Suffice to say, I’m excited to get back to sales this week with that tool in my back pocket, and I’m certainly glad we attended that networking event.

It was a pretty interesting one as well because they had a great panel that focused on a) hiring your first 10 employees and b) mental health for founders/entrepreneurs. Two very important topics, I’d argue.

It seems like, to me, part of the battle in solopreneurship is finding the right balance between focus and “getting out of the house”. Especially when you figure out something that works for your business, it’s very important to put the blinders on and grind it out, grow grow grow, and not get too side tracked.

But it’s also good to, periodically or as-needed, get out of the house, talk to some outsiders, take a break. It usually gives good perspective and you might pick up on a new opportunitity, strategy, partnership, etc., along the way.

Key takeaway(s): hire away your least valuable skills

I’ve usually never regretted attending a good networking event, and last week was no different.

Keep in mind the word “good” is important here – because if you do your research then most networking events are a good experience, but some can be weak.

This one was good because it was organized by great companies, they had an interesting panel/topics, and served dinner (major points in my book…).

Alex (my cofounder at Visto) and I had some really good takeaways too, such as:

the grant we discovered that should drastically improve our sales
good tips on how to find the right balance as entrepreneurs
things to think about for your first hires

More specifically, we learned that for those first few hires, you want to hire away your least valuable tasks so you can focus on where you add the most value.

For example, Alex spends a lot of time building our platform and also doing customer service. Our initial thought was to hire another developer so they could build our product faster, but we realized that Alex’s highest value skill is coding – not doing customer service.

So instead of hiring another coder, we should hire someone who can handle customer service, unlocking more time for Alex to focus on his high value skill – coding.

Might sound obvious, but sometimes you need to step back and see the forest from the trees to put those ideas in place.

Book of the week

I’m still reading Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch and am about halfway through. It’s a pretty big book so I’m not sure if I’ll be done by next week, but let me tell you, I can already confirm this is an A-range kind of book.

The closest comparison I can make right now is to Bob Iger’s autobiography, because they’re both “lifers” who worked their way up their respective companies until they became famous CEOs, and I also loved Iger’s book too.

More info next week…

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure to get my business updates right to your inbox here, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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Raising money in the tech world – strategically

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 22:29:03 +0000

Happy Sunday folks, we had a holiday last weekend up here in Canada land, which I used to relax, go for a run, then proceed to waste said run by eating far too many blueberry pancakes.

But hey, we only live once, right?

Let’s jump in:

Crossroads and raising money in the tech world

It’s an interesting time in a good way for my immigration tech startup, Visto, as we continue to grow week over week.

Usually things are a bit quieter in Canada during the summer due to vacations and such, and while it is a little quieter, we still continue to head in the right direction.

But we’ve come to that infamous crossroads in a business, where our revenue is growing and we want to scale up, but don’t yet have the funds to hire (yet). We’re certainly on pace for it, and we know we’ll get there soon, but we’d love to be able to hire yesterday to expedite our growth.

And for that reason, we’re in the process of trying to raise more money from our current investors, which would be great because a) we’d have the funds to grow the team much quicker (and by extension, the company/product/revenue), and b) being able to raise from your current investors (as opposed to going “outside” to new investors) is typically a smoother process (since they already know and trust you).

Have you ever raised money for your company before? Is it something you even want to do?

To be honest, I never know how much time to spend talking about fundraising because I feel like some people won’t ever do it (they may not want or need to, for a variety of reasons), especially since this list started out focused on solopreneurship – which by definition is probably the types of businesses you don’t need or want to fundraise for.

So unless there’s a big demand to read more about it, I’ll keep it surface level for now, and also say that we’re lucky because we don’t have any big fancy venture capital (VC) firms that invested in us. Mostly angel investors, family offices and other successful entrepreneurs who believed in us.

Which is pretty great because there’s less pressure, more realistic expectations (as opposed to some VC firms that expect 10+ times their investment returned within 3-5 years) and a more personal relationship.

Maybe you do or don’t plan on raising funds at some point, and assuming you’re not building the next Facebook, I recommend going the route that we did (which, to be honest, was mostly by accident and not design!).

Key takeaway: raise money, like anything else, very intentionally for your business

Fundraising ain’t for every business and/or person, but if you decide to do it, I still recommend doing it intentionally. Like anything in your business.

Especially if you don’t want/need to raise a ton of money, try to stick to more down-to-earth investors that won’t have the expectations and pressure from VCs. Easier said than done, as most things are, but it will help you sleep better at night and, given the tools and resources out there these days, most companies probably don’t need as much money as they think anyway.

If you’re starting out on your own, try to leverage everything else possible. All of the new AI tools, communities, maybe even a business partner to fill in your blanks, and get as much traction for your business first before going out for any money.

Because if you can fund your business through revenue then you may never need to raise, and if you do need to raise, it will be much easier if you have revenue to show to prospective investors!

Book of the week

I finished reading Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, and I gotta say, it was a great read. Best comparison I can make is to The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz – if you liked that book, you’ll like this too.

In short:

highly recommended read, especially to entrepreneurs/founders of any kind of business
short, punchy chapters that are easy to read with very little fluff
covers a wide variety of topics and provides a ton of advice in very few words (a great combo)
topics range from starting a business, motivation, productivity, hiring, culture and more. You may not need to know it all this second, but they’re quick to cover and the book acts as great reference material for down the road

It’s pretty short too, so it won’t take you weeks to read.

Up next: Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch. I’m about 50 pages in and loving it…

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure to get all of my updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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Growing pains of a small tech company

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 21:34:55 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Back to the regular Monday morning grind update since last weeks travel debacle.

(And in case you missed my email last week, you can read about my 7.5 hour overnight drive home here)

Let’s jump in:

Growing pains for a small tech company

It’s been a good summer for us so far. We continue to focus on adding in new features for our immigration platform, Visto, and onboarding new clients.

As I’ve talked about many times before, the tech world is a bit different from the traditional service business world I was used to, but learning and improving as we go along.

Our userbase is continuing to grow and, most importantly, staying with us and not dropping off.

It’s an interesting situation to be in, especially when you’re a small team, because we have this sort of virtuous – but difficult – cycle.

As we get more users for our tech platform, we also get more feedback and requests. And this is awesome, because when you have an open feedback loop, your users basically guide you in what to build next (on the tech side). It’s great – assuming you are listening to them, which you definitely should be.

Designing and building tech products can be hard enough, so take any advantage you can get in the form of user feedback.

It’s funny, now that I think about it, it’s also how I built my Tiktok channel… I started posting a few basic videos that I thought would be helpful, then all I did was reply to the comments/questions with new videos, answering their questions. And it grew from there (my Tiktok account for Visto has over 54k followers).

The downside is that with more users comes more customer service requests, questions, queries, etc.

Again, these aren’t bad things and are just part of doing business, but it also means the tech team has to spend more time responding to/fixing issues, which then slows down the development of new features.

In short: growing pains.

But hey, I’d rather have growing pains than shrinking pains, right?

And I’ll continue to share my journey and the ups-and-downs of growing a tech company with a small team/budget. I think it’s going to be a fun year or two…

Key takeaway: accept and adapt

Building a business of any kind is hard, otherwise everyone would do it – and do it successfully.

The interesting thing is that when things start to go well, they can also get harder in ways you didn’t experience earlier on. When you start, you’re struggling to get clients. When you get clients, you may struggle to keep them happy. And so on and so forth.

It’s good to remember that 1) this is just business. If you think it’ll be a walk in the park, you may have signed up for the wrong gig. And 2) everyone else goes through similar struggles. They may feel personal and unique, but we’re all going through the grind. Together, in one way or another.

If business was boring and easy, then it probably wouldn’t be so fun…

Book of the week

I finished a re-read of Shoe Dog, and let me tell you – this is an absolute must-read for any solopreneur.

As you know I read a lot, and I’ve read hundreds of business books/biographies/memoirs/etc. Shoe Dog is a top 5, maybe top 3, business book. The story, the way it’s written, the detail he goes into, the flow of the entire adventure. It’s an incredible read.

And I’ve lost count how many times I’ve read it, because I usually read it every ~2 years. I think it’s been 3-4 times now, but it’s such a good book to re-read because, as I talked about above, it’s a great example of the grind that is entrepreneurship, and how perserverence and hard work can lead to so much success (as opposed to just brain power/intelligence).

And since I’ve read it so many times, you can check out my last review on the book here.

Next up: I’m reading Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. I’m about 1/3 of the way through and it’s very good. Full review next week when I’m done.

That’s it for me – have a great week and keep grinding,

– Josh

PS episode 12 of the Grind Mastermind podcast dropped last week, where good friend Chris and I share updates from our week in business, tools/book reviews and more. You can give it a watch or listen here.

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My 7.5 hour drive home in the dark

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 15:58:10 +0000

Hey folks,

Had quite the adventure trying to get home from a trip this past weekend (read below) hence the major delay in this email (as you know it usually goes out Monday morning).

Let’s jump in:

An adventure back from America

So this past weekend I spent in New York visiting some very good friends. We usually go for a visit every summer.

The problem?

Airlines kind of suck these days. And last weekend, 2 of my friends had flights cancelled to/from New York due to weather. Not a good sign.

Our flight there was totally fine, but our trip home was a bit of a mess.

As I always insist on, we got to the airport early, but our flight was quickly delayed. First they said it would be 4 hours (!), then they moved it down to 1.5 hours, then pushed it to a 2.5 hour delay.

Not great, but considering how bad air travel has been lately, not the end of the world.

Then they cancelled the flight…

Something to do with weather, who knows, but we were stuck at the Newark airport at 730pm and the next available flight on our airline was the next day at 6pm.

It only took me about 2 minutes to suggest that we (my fiancé and I) rent a car and drive home. Now keep in mind, it was only a 1.5 hour flight, and the drive is about 7.5 hours… but based on all of the cancellations i’d seen over the last week, plus the 100+ other people trying to rebook for Monday, plus the risk that flights on Monday might also be cancelled…

Made me confident that we should just rent a car and drive home.

Sure, it would suck (driving 7.5 hours, mostly in the dark, and getting home after 3am), but at least we’d be home.

So we did. We rented a car, got on the road and made it home around 330am.

I wouldn’t recommend doing it for fun, but it wasn’t the end of the world. We got to sleep in our bed, I didn’t have to reorganize my whole day of work and there was no traffic (woo).

Anyway, that is why this email is 2 days late… please forgive me?

Key takeaway: rip the bandaid

Since getting home I’ve thought a lot about that decision we made and how I may not have done the same thing a few years ago.

But one thing I’ve realized is that it’s worth short-term pain for long-term gains.

In that example, the “easy” but risky thing would’ve been to just stay overnight in New York, get on a flight the next day and hope that it worked out.

But I don’t like that kind of risk, and I also trust myself more than others to get stuff done. I knew I could drive home (I did the full 7.5 hours of driving myself) and that I could salvage the next day of work, I didn’t know if the planes would takeoff the next day/how long we could be stranded there.

Good application in business and life too: sometimes it’s better/less risky to suffer some short term pains (driving 7.5 hours overnight) for long terms gains (being settled at home to start the week properly).

Book of the week

I took a break from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene to do a re-read of Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

Because Greene’s book is a long one I felt I needed to break it up, and I usually read Shoe Dog every couple years (yes, it’s that good). I’ll chime in on it next week when I’m done, and/or you can read or watch my last review on the book here.

That’s it for me – have a great week, don’t miss getting my weekly updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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Tech business and social media growth stuff

Josh Schachnow — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 22:03:23 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Been another busy week in the immigration + tech cofounder world of mine.

Let’s jump in:

Building tech businesses and online audiences

We had another pretty good week over at Visto, as we continue to focus on adding more features and clients to our immigration tech platform. The pieces really feel like they’re fitting together well, so it’s a matter of how we want to continue to scale it.

While getting a tech company off the ground has been much harder than non-tech – from my experience – I think my overly simplified guide would be:

find an underserved market that is willing to pay for a solution that will make their experience/business/life better
build a really good product
create and optimize 1 really good sales funnel
be in constant communication with your early clients/users to continue to improve the product

Of course, each of those steps could be a novel of its own, but if you let me know which interests you the most, I can go into more detail in the next email.

I’m also continuing to evaluate and evolve our content/social media marketing strategies, ie. where we’re posting, how often, etc. Over the years I’ve really come to like 2 methods:

1) email lists like these:

As different platforms come and go, and/or change their algorithms, email lists are forever. Pick 1-2-3 social media platforms you like, post good content and point everyone to an email list

2) long form video content into snippets:

We all know that content is king, but video content is the king of kings. That’s why we all can’t help ourselves scrolling on Tiktok/Shorts/Reels/etc. And my best suggestion to “hack” video is to record 1 long form piece of content and then just edit it into shorter snippets.

For example: every 2 weeks we record an episode of the Grind Mastermind podcast (which you should be watching/listening to every 2 weeks here of course). From each podcast, we edit 10-20 short 30-60 second snippets that we can post inbetween episodes for even more reach.

1 recording, dozens of videos. And it can be done for any/every business if you’re creative enough.

What’s holding you back?

Key takeaway: keep things simple and systematize

One thing I love about business is how simple it is. It’s not easy – but a lot of it is actually pretty simple.

In my opinion, hard work + simplicity is the key, despite what all the content/gurus online might be telling you or trying to sell you.

Want a big audience on Tiktok? Go study 2-3 profiles you aspire to, and post religiously for 6+ months.

To do that, build systems so that you’re not staring at a blank screen each time too.

For example, this email. I have a calendar event for every single Sunday reminding me to write this email, plus a template to use. So when the time comes, I sit down and I write – following the system I already have in place.

If you’re trying to do something and constantly skipping/missing it, ask if you’ve got the right system in place to make it easier for you to do consistently.

Book of the week

I’m still reading The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Yes, still.

As mentioned previously, it’s long as hell, so it’s hard to say when I’ll be finished. To hold you over, especially since I was on the topic of social media above, here’s a review I did of Crushing It! by Gary Vee.

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure you don’t miss another update here and keep grinding,

– Josh

PS episode 11 of the Grind Mastermind podcast just dropped, where good friend Chris and I share updates on our businesses, tools we’re using, books we’re reading, and more every 2 weeks.

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A Canada Day delay

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:35:49 +0000

Happy Tuesday folks, before you start yelling at me for missing the Monday update, please note that it was Canada Day weekend up north, so we had Monday off…

Let’s jump in:

Growing pains of the week

It was an interesting week on our end at Visto, as we continue to try and scale our immigration tech platform.

As we get busier and onboard more clients, an interesting difficulty slowly creeps in: more clients means more customer success work on the backend. And for a smaller team, or really any growing company, you have that chicken and egg problem.

Which is needing more people/help, but maybe not having the funds (yet) to hire.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good problem to have, but I’m sure most of you have experienced something similar – it’s hard to explain, but the best way I can try, is to think about having “the perfect amount of staff for the business”.

Maybe you have 3 clients, and 1 person (you) are enough to service that amount of clients.

If you get 1-2 more clients, you may be in that “zone” where you have a bit too much work for 1 staff, but it’s a big risk to hire someone else. Or you simply can’t afford to. So you tough it out for a few months, get 3-4 more clients, and hire someone. Now you have 7 clients and 2 staff, and everything is perfect in the world.

But then you get another 1-2 more clients, and your 2 staff are over-loaded… but you’re not quite ready to hire your 3rd staff. You’re back in that difficult “zone”.

But hey – that’s just business. It’s one of the difficult parts of growth, but also good that you are, in fact, growing (as opposed to doing the opposite).

So that’s been our focus of late; how to keep growing, efficiently, while we’re in that “zone of imperfection” from a personnel side – did I just coin a new term?

Consider it patented and trademarked!

Key takeaway: you have to take the good with the bad

Building businesses is awesome and terrible at the same time. Awesome as you grow and succeed, but that growth also causes new pain points that you didn’t have at that earlier stage.

And that’s okay, and is one of the reasons why building businesses is super fun – they evolve over time, always keep you guessing and you have to learn to overcome new challenges as things progress.

Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself so you can navigate the ups and downs…

Book of the week

I’m still reading The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a big frickin’ book, and taking me longer than normal.

It’s right around 500 pages, but the problem is the pages are huge and there are notes in the margins too – a ton of text! That being said, I’m really enjoying it and hope to be done in a few weeks for a full review.

Oh and don’t miss episode 11 of the Grind Mastermind podcast that just dropped yesterday, on Youtube here (the audio podcast will be up next weekend).

That’s it for me – have a great week, sign up here to get these updates right to your inbox each week, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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Fueling the body to keep up the (solopreneur) grind

Josh Schachnow — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 19:36:59 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Back after a very hot weekend up here in Toronto, as the summer heats up.

Let’s jump in:

A “cold” end to the week

It was a slightly quieter week on my end, for two reasons.

On the one hand, my days were actually quite busy. But for some reason, I wasn’t able to close as many new clients as the week before.

I’m not really sure why, as I had roughly the same number of demos and cold calling, I think it’s just one of those flukey things. Some weeks everything seems to “work”, some weeks they don’t.

Not to say I had a bad week, just wasn’t as great as the one before it.

And the one thing I keep coming back to is that, in solopreneurship and especially in sales, it’s all a numbers game.

You may get ghosted, you may have a good chat, they may not buy for X number of reasons. But at the end of the day, a lot of it – assuming you’re giving it your best effort – is still out of your control. But if you keep pounding the phones (or doing whatever it is you need to do), week in and week out, and trust the process, you’ll keep moving in the right direction.

I also caught a bit of a cold Thursday night, which slowed me down Friday.

I’m not sure if anyone agrees with me here, or if you’ve ever experienced this before, but I live a very healthy life and find that I only get sick when I let something slip. I rarely get a cold, but when I do, I can usually feel it coming on and know exactly why.

In this case, my Wednesday and Thursday were packed, and I ran out of food in the condo, and halfway through Thursday I was over-worked and underfed. And I could slowly feel my body get a bit weaker and a sickness coming on.

My fiance thinks I’m nuts and that I just “caught something from someone”, but I know my body… and I could tell I simply under-fueled and it led to a 3 day cold.

Can anyone relate? I need some backup here before I present my argument to her again!

Key takeaway: keep the tank full

In my case, if I don’t give my body enough rest and fuel, I get setback with a minor cold which sucks. I’m usually pretty good with it and have rarely gotten sick over the last few years, but need to do a better job of not letting those little things slip just because I get busy.

What I’ll be doing is coming up with a more standard weekly “menu” I can follow so that every day I know what I should be eating, each day and at what time (if you’re curious, let me know and I can share some of my weekly menu next week).

If we’re going to keep grinding, need to keep the gas tank full!

Book of the week

I’m still reading The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a big book, and I’m about halfway done.

So far I’m really enjoying it. It’s one o those books that’s a good mix of stories and lessons (and lessons told through stories), and also one of those books that you want to read “slower”, because each page has a lot of meat in it.

I’m not sure if I’ll finish by next Monday, but I’ll certainly keep you posted.

That’s it for me – have a great week, sign up to get my updates right to your inbox here, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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A good week, AI tool and laws of Power

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 21:13:22 +0000

Happy Monday folks, it’s been a fun week in the business world with a lot going on. Sales, new AI tools, an online community and maybe a fundraise too.

Who said summer is quiet?

Let’s jump in:

Update from last week

We’ve had a really great few weeks of sales at my immigration tech company, Visto. So much so that we’re thinking of how to keep scaling, adding more clients, adding more features, all that fun kind of stuff.

I think it’s been a good culmination of our product coming a long way (mostly from just listening to our first few clients and building in new features based on what they ask for), and also fine-tuning our sales process.

Not going to go into details on sales in these update as I’ve talked about sales a LOT over the last few months, but really spending time to fine-tune everything – cold calling script, target market, messaging, demo call script, pricing and more – has started to really pay off. If you want more sales-focused content from me, definitely check out the last 5-10 posts on my blog here.

Another fun thing we’ve added, more on the marketing side, is started a Discord community for our users and target market. Since our platform uses AI in the immigration space, and lots of immigration professionals don’t have much experience with AI, I started hosting a weekly call for Canadian immigration practitioners so we can share tools, tips, etc., about how we can leverage AI to grow in this industry.

The first call was last Tuesday and it went really well – I’m excited to keep running it. And it all started because a few potential clients said they wish there was a place they could do just that… talk about AI with other professionals! Always be listening to your audience…

On the topic of AI, I’ve been keeping an eye out for good tools and software that use AI to help save time growing a business. I may actually need to create a new section for AI tool of the week…

For this week, I found an awesome tool that helps create short video snippets for Tiktok, Youtube Shorts, etc.

As most of you know, I host the Grind Mastermind podcast and also go live on LinkedIn every 2 weeks. And I love to splice those videos up into short clips to share on social media to spread the word. But of course, editing those short clips takes time (and/or money).

I found this pretty cool tool at https://www.opus.pro/ that will auto-generate short clips for you, including captions and a title, in minutes, using AI (I’m not affiliated although I wish I was). I’ve used it for about a week, both for Visto (repurposing my LinkedIn Lives) and SG (repurposing the Grind Mastermind podcast).

And while it isn’t amazing, it’s still impressively good considering it does everything for you. If you’re posting longer form video on youtube (right now you can only upload youtube links), I suggest giving it a try.

Key takeaway

The big lesson of the week is to listen. They say we have 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason, so respect that ratio!

A lot of what we’ve done at Visto over the last few months is to just listen to users/clients and keep building and testing based on what they say/ask for. It’s one of the reasons why I never suggest spending months/years planning your business before you launch it.

The best thing you can do, for any business or industry, is launch something super quick and then adapt and evolve based on feedback.

Books

I started a doozie this week, a book that’s considered “one of the greats” that I probably should’ve read a long time ago.

And that book is The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. I’m about 1/5 of the way through – it’s a pretty big book (physically and by page number), but keeping me very interested so far.

In short, it goes chapter-by-chapter explaining a different law of power – and yes it’s as creepy and as cool as it sounds. Forexample, Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.

One of the main reasons I’m liking it so much is because ~~it’s going to help me takeover the world~~ he uses stories from history to explain each law, and sometimes more than 1 story per law. And what I’ve learned now that I’ve read something like 500+ books, is that even for nonfiction, I much prefer reading stories to textbooks.

So far so good, more on the book next week…

The importance of focus in solopreneurship and big business decisions

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 21:59:10 +0000

Happy Monday folks, crazy week up here with all of the wildfire smoke and pre-summer busy-ness.

Let’s jump in:

Update from last week

It felt like a short and hectic week because we were coming back from a conference last week, that went all day Friday and Saturday. Which meant that I didn’t have much of a weekend last week, and got right into playing catchup.

And since we’re still heads down trying to make more sales, and had a lot of follow-ups to send from the conference, it was a busy one.

Suffice to say, this past weekend was a nice and relaxing one.

The last few weeks have also really helped me refine both our target market and sales process.

It’s funny, how like almost anything, a sales process can be a real rabbit hole. You can get very granular on every step of the process, from exactly how you do cold outreach, the words/text you use, the funnel you create, the way you run sales calls, your pricing/packaging/upselling, and more.

I also think we’re really zeroed in on our ideal target customer. It’s funny because you may think you know who it may be at first, but it’s only once you get into the grind of selling and analyze results that the leader will show itself.

For us, now that we’ve got a bunch of b2b clients, it’s become clear who it is and who we should focus on.

Even though I had a few target segments – 2-3 different types of buyers I thought could be a good fit – 1 is clearly converting at far better rates than the others.

So we’re going to triple down on that segment, the one that’s clearly working, and forget the rest for now.

Key takeaway

The more time I spend in business and the older I get, the more I realize that the key is usually one thing: focus.

They say diversification is good, but some of the greats like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger say the opposite – specialize. Get really freakin’ good at one thing, or one area, or one whatever, and ride that into the wind.

Now that we’ve got some good feedback, indicators and sales, our CTO Alex is focusing 100% on continuing to improve our product, and I’m focusing 100% on selling to 1 type of buyer that we know is working.

I think Alex Harmozi said in one of his videos, that to get any business to $1 million per year, you really just need to get good at selling 1 product/service to 1 type of customer.

In reality, most of us think that business should be more complicated than that – but it isn’t. So take a step back, and if your biz is doing less than $1 million/year – or you’re just starting out – put all of your energy into selling 1 product/service to 1 target market.

And ignore the rest.

Books

I just finished The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time: Apple, Ford, IBM, Zappos, and Others Made Radical Choices that Changed the Course of Business by Verne Harnish.

It’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it was a very good read. I’d give it a solid B+.

And the title is really all you need to read to get a sense for what it’s about. The book spends each chapter analyzing and explaining what they believe to be the best business decisions of all time, and it’s definitely interesting. They go into detail on how and why certain companies/people made these decisions, and why they were so good.

For example, the decision by Zappos to offer free returns. In the early 2000s this was an insane idea – but now it’s almost a requirement to survive in e-commerce.

It was fun to read about decisions that were revolutionary when they happened, but now are often commonplace.

SG Weekly Blog Archives - Solopreneur Grind

A fun new marketing strategy I’m trying

Trying a new/fun marketing strategy for Visto

Key takeaway(s): listen to your audience and get creative to serve them

Book of the week

A very valuable networking event and sales tool

A very valuable networking event and new sales “strategy”

Key takeaway(s): hire away your least valuable skills

Book of the week

Raising money in the tech world – strategically

Crossroads and raising money in the tech world

Key takeaway: raise money, like anything else, very intentionally for your business

Book of the week

Growing pains of a small tech company

Growing pains for a small tech company

Key takeaway: accept and adapt

Book of the week

My 7.5 hour drive home in the dark

An adventure back from America

Key takeaway: rip the bandaid

Book of the week

Tech business and social media growth stuff

Building tech businesses and online audiences

Key takeaway: keep things simple and systematize

Book of the week

A Canada Day delay

Growing pains of the week

Key takeaway: you have to take the good with the bad

Book of the week

Fueling the body to keep up the (solopreneur) grind

A “cold” end to the week

Key takeaway: keep the tank full

Book of the week

A good week, AI tool and laws of Power

Update from last week

Key takeaway

Books

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The importance of focus in solopreneurship and big business decisions

Update from last week

Key takeaway

Books

Recent Content