Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want.

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Hello, hello and welcome to the final episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur for the year 2024.

This episode 447, so if there are show notes, I will link to them in the description wherever you’re listening to this and over at Streamlined.fm/447.

So I have loftily named this episode Year in Review, but it’s not really like the whole year in review.

I’m not going to walk through every little thing I did and every decision I made.

I’m not even going to really talk about finances.

I did have an up year and that was good.

I’m very excited.

I think probably some of the stuff I’m going to talk about is why, but I’m going to have three segments as usual for these solo shows.

My biggest success or what I view as my biggest success, my biggest failure, and then lessons learned.

We’re going to close out with some feedback.

I got a lot of feedback on last week’s episode about using AI, but I got three or two voice notes from my friends Mike and Matt, and so I wanted to play them for you to close out the show and the season.

So let’s dive into it.

My biggest success this year in 2024 was ranking number one in Google for podcast coach.

One of my biggest goals for 2024 was to grow my coaching business.

I think the fact that Google views me as a podcast coach is a very positive signal, but I didn’t really realize until a bunch of people started filling out my coaching form that I was ranking number one or in the top three, depending on the day.

I just checked it before recording and I was number one.

And so that’s really exciting and interesting to me.

As I move into 2025, one of the biggest projects of the year for me was working with Holly Arnett on the rebrand on my personal brand, and I’m going to have her on the show in 2025 to talk about that.

But with CasaBona.org getting a huge rebrand and me focusing on the personal brand and me putting most of my content on CasaBona.org moving forward, especially thought leadership stuff, like podcasting tips will probably still go over on podcast workflows, which breaking news, I guess here you’re hearing it first, but that’s going to get rebranded to streamlined podcaster to fall in line with the rest of my rebrand and this show in 2025.

I’m really going to lean into ranking on Google and having multiple pages for my niches and micro segments as my friend Chris Lemma calls them for a bunch of potential areas where I can help people.

And so ranking number one in Google shows that my work in this area of my business has worked out well because I am clearly sending multiple signals to Google that I am a podcast coach and it is showing.

And so as people are searching podcast coach, they’re finding me, they’re filling out my form.

One of the best things I did this year was join Alex Sanfilippo’s Podmatch Elite Mastermind group and I was in the hot seat and I talked about this and I got really good advice to make the form a little harder to fill out.

But doing that allowed me to kind of more quickly eliminate tire kickers.

And so I ask a number of questions and if I don’t get a certain answer to those questions, I send them to my free podcast and if I do, they get sent to a scheduling link.

And so I think this is really good.

It’s been a good way for me to do some more higher quality discovery calls.

And as a result, I’m almost full on coaching clients.

I rolled out a new product, The Unstuck Sessions, which you’ll I think hear about at the mid roll of this episode, but as far as like actual coaching clients, I’ve got two right now, one potential starting in January, and I think I can max four or five reasonably.

So I’m about to kind of hit this limit and we’ll see what happens, I guess.

But it’s really exciting.

I think this is my biggest success.

I’ve grown my coaching business and it became an appreciable part of my income this year.

And that was a goal.

That was a big goal.

And it’s going to inform some of the things that I’m going to experiment and talk about more in 2025.

I’m reserving some of that stuff for podcast advent.

So if you’re not on my mailing list, you can head over to, let’s say, podcastadvent.org and sign up because those articles will hit in podcast advent first.

So sometime between now and the 24th of December.

My biggest failure of the year is my be everywhere strategy.

And I’m saying that because I abandoned it really quickly.

I abandoned it in the first quarter of the year.

I made a big deal about it in November, December, and January.

And then by like April, I realized, so that’s the second quarter of the year, I guess.

But very early on, I realized it was a terrible idea.

It over complicated my process and there were no upsides.

It was all downsides.

It made it harder for my VA.

It made it harder for me.

And it wasn’t bringing in any income.

So it was like an incredible failure.

I published an episode in April on this show about it called my be everywhere strategy was an incredible failure.

And now even at the end of the year, I’m still publishing my articles to medium and sub stack.

And I’m going to stop publishing to medium.

It just medium things I’m like a productivity person apparently and only promotes my articles about like apps.

Or maybe that’s what medium wants.

Right?

Like they say like sub stack is for politics.

Maybe medium is for productivity wonks.

And it just like none of my podcast articles got traction there.

Very few of my automation and systems articles get traction there.

So what I was doing was publishing on my blogs, and then syndicating them to medium and sub stack.

And I do have blog dot streamlines dot FM set up and pointing to medium.

So you know, maybe some of my like Casa Bona dot org thought leadership think pieces or whatever will eventually go to medium but it’s just the juice is not worth the squeeze.

All right, I think with both of those platforms, they probably want you writing exclusively there.

And I’m just not doing that.

I’m double you know, I’m doubling down on the Google thing, or the search engine thing.

And so in short, my be everywhere strategy grossly over complicated my process in hopes that people would become members in multiple places like sub stack and YouTube and streamline solopreneur accelerated.

And I realized that it wasn’t worth it.

Because I needed to build the audience first.

And then last week, for my members, I announced that I’m shutting down streamline solopreneur accelerated so I’m not even doing a podcast membership on my own platform anymore.

So this will tie into one of the lessons but trying to be everywhere I described it as trying to fight a five front war with an army that couldn’t even fight a one front war.

So that was just it was ill advised.

I kind of knew it would be but I wanted to try it anyway.

And turns out is just not great, right.

And I think this is even more prescient.

Now that we’re seeing like a fracture of social media.

Like one of the podcasts I well some of the podcasts I listened to would always sign off with like you can find us on Twitter at whatever.

They left Twitter like like right after Elon bought it.

And so they would say you can find us on mastodon but now they’re on mastodon and threads and Instagram and blue sky.

And they’re like just find us on whatever social media app you’re on.

And I’ve kind of gone in the opposite direction.

I did leave Twitter.

Not this was no political statement.

I haven’t liked Twitter for a long time.

But enough people left it because of their own political statement that they were making that it made blue sky especially a more viable platform for me where I didn’t feel like I was just shouting into the void.

I I deactivated my threads account because threads was the worst.

I think with blue sky getting better it’s also better but like I don’t need to be in multiple places.

Mastodon whatever right.

There are two people shout out to those two people who interact with my toots on mastodon so like mastodon is boring to me.

And after the election I uninstalled all of the social media apps off of my phone.

I just didn’t I didn’t need to get my news from the way people were feeling.

And so I just knew the best thing for me to do was to just sign off on all of those.

And you know what it’s been grand.

I like blue sky.

I still participate in LinkedIn and actually one of my goals for 2025 is to get to 10000 followers on LinkedIn.

The fraction the great fracturing of social media has made me feel even more strongly about doubling down on my own properties.

And I think that’s a nice segue into the lessons part right.

So I hear three lessons that I think that I feel I’ve learned in 2024.

The first one is know your niche.

Up until podcast movement if you had asked me who my audience is I would have described them as podcasters.

And then I went to podcast movement where I interacted with a bunch of podcasters and I thought is this my audience a bunch of like DIY podcast people.

And in my other mastermind group one of the people in it Becky who was on the show actually shout out Becky said I don’t if I launch my podcast I don’t consider myself a podcaster I consider myself a business owner who is using a podcast to support her business.

And I thought man that is so smart and I’m so dumb and like everybody I ran this by I was like yeah right.

But there was such a disconnect right.

I just I I just I felt if you have a podcast you’re a podcaster and that is a result of just me not talking to enough people in my core audience right.

That’s really what it is.

And so that revelation has changed a lot for me right.

It’s what made me talk to Holly differently about my brand.

It’s leading the charge for for how I’m changing this show.

It’s leading the charge for what I’m going to be writing about in my newsletter in 2025.

And ultimately it I am better positioned right.

Most of my coaching clients I landed after that revelation.

So I think that if I had taken some time to really think about it I would have come to that conclusion faster.

But what I’ll say to you is don’t think about the language you use to describe your audience.

Think about the language your audience uses to describe themselves because that’s the language you need to connect with.

That’s the language that they’re going to use right.

Maybe if I was trying to rank for coach for podcasters I wouldn’t be ranking as high because my audience isn’t looking for a coach for podcasters.

They’re looking for a coach who can help them with their podcast.

So that’s the first lesson.

The second lesson don’t discount SEO or Google right.

I’m I’m making a pretty big bet that I can grow my business without social media.

It just hasn’t.

And I mean I know I said the goal about LinkedIn.

So I guess I’m not all in on this bet but I’m mostly in on this bet because I’m not on Twitter.

I’m not going to really you know I’ll I’m not going to do the social media strategy to grow my business because it’s I don’t think it’s helpful.

I really don’t.

And so I’m going to try the old fashioned Google way.

And this is even as chat GPT grows and grows and becomes more of a search engine.

This is something I want to dive into maybe delve into if we’re talking AI language.

This is a big thing to consider.

And then the last thing is focus.

It’s the opposite of what I was saying last year right where I was like I’m going to be everywhere.

I’m going to focus on my Web site on this podcast and secondarily on LinkedIn right.

Everything else is going to be noise to me right.

Maybe if I want to keep publishing on medium and subset I have I just have my VA do that.

That’s not something I’m going to do with my time anymore.

As for me I’m going to focus on writing and optimizing my writing for SEO on my own properties.

So there you go.

My biggest success is ranking number one in Google for podcast coach because it reinforces the things I’ve been working on this year.

My biggest failure is my be everywhere strategy because I abandoned it really quickly and I don’t think that if I had stuck with it it would have worked out because it was just too complicated.

And lessons know your niche.

Don’t discount SEO and focus.

OK so let’s get into the feedback.

So I think what do I have queued up here.

I think I’m going to play Matt’s first.

So let’s let’s play this and then I’ll give you my quick summarizing thoughts.

This is from Matt Maderos.

Hey Joe it’s Matt from the podcast set up dot com just giving you my insights into using A.I. at the end of 2024.

I will tell you two years ago I was a major skeptic.

Still hold some skepticism about all of these platforms that help us create content ideate content refined content write code and do all kinds of other things like compete with Google search which leads me into the first way that I’ve been leveraging chat GPT and other platforms more so these days is replacing the Google search for technical knowledge based querying type of requests.

Certainly not on the comparison side like if I’m researching something maybe for technical details I’ll use it but I still like to sift through the SERPs of Google to pick the brands and identify the trust that I have in other major outlets but certainly from a technical perspective how do I do this thing.

Chat GPT search has been a go to for me as well.

Number two learning how to code again sort of kind of using chat GPT cursor clod a whole amalgamy of other A.I. driven platforms to help me understand the broader set of coding that is available to us outside the WordPress space really diving into the probably most popular alternative platform for ad hoc coding react JS next JS tailwind building my own little micro apps to do different things.

So learning how to code and then number three building utility apps to help me do things that maybe even Zapier would do so connecting up to APIs without the overhead or cost of Zapier to automate things like summarization social posting those types of things.

I haven’t quite refined it yet because that’s part of my learning experience but using A.I. to build these very unique tailored for me apps that help automate a lot of my processes that’s something that I have been exploring deeply and then of course the last item is helping all the things I do with podcasting from you know ideating creating show notes summarizing transcripts finding important quotes and social clips leveraging these A.I. tools that’s what I’ve been largely using A.I. for in twenty twenty four and looking ahead to do more of it in twenty twenty five.

Hopefully that was helpful again.

It’s Matt from the podcast set up dot com.

Awesome thank you Matt for that.

That was really thorough.

I will link to Matt’s podcast and his Web site in the show notes of a Matt’s using Chachi be team or I think we all are right.

It’s because of the Googling something feels awkward right.

It’s like Al Borland actor age home improvement season three.

Right.

So like with with Chachi BT it’s like what what was the age of the guy who played Al Borland in season three of Home Improvement.

Right.

Like I like everything he said.

Matt’s also been really big in the no code so it really makes sense what he’s saying about the no code stuff and then the podcasting ideation things.

I did write a piece on my blog called We Need to Disclose A.I. use like we disclose affiliate links I would encourage you to check that out.

Also for like ideation and stuff I would say and more so for if you’re actually using a I to write parts or like write a first draft or if it takes your first draft and changes an appreciable amount of it.

My rule is if it wrote more than 5 percent I’m going to disclose that I helped me write it so I’ll link that in the show notes as well.

But thank you Matt for that.

So let’s move on to my friend Bagel Mike.

We call him Bagel because his last name kind of sounds like that but let’s see what he had to say.

For me A.I. has helped immensely actually in note taking and making sure that I have all the right next steps for any meeting that I have.

I was a little resistant to that at first because I’m an avid note taker and usually like to be pretty detailed in what I capture from meetings but I’ve noticed that since using an A.I. note taker and I have tried a few different ones to kind of figure out which work best that they really do a great job for the most part of summarizing all the important points.

Some of them let you customize like what type of meeting it was and then give pretty clear next steps or action items for me to go and run with and it just immensely saves time but also allows me to stay focused in the conversation that I’m having to make sure I’m engaged with the other person.

Awesome thank you Bagel.

That is great.

So I really appreciate he said this.

Something that I’ve been I noticed I’ve been doing more is or I guess less is writing in the Google Doc for interviews right.

So I create this Google Doc with all the questions I send it over to the guest and usually I’ll take notes in line there and I haven’t been lately I’ve actually been keeping a note card next to me and just kind of surreptitiously taking notes mostly about edits that I want to make and that means I’m much more engaged because I know that AI can reasonably summarize and pull out some of the top takeaways.

So yeah plus one on that from Bagel I want to thank Matt and Bagel for right or for calling in I guess leaving a voice note.

If you want to leave feedback for the show you can head over to streamlined feedback dot com.

It could just be text but it also it’ll also give you the opportunity to upload if you want to record a voice note and upload it.

And yeah thank you so much for listening.

It’s been a wild year something I didn’t even include in this is the fact that I rebranded this show.

I’ll talk more about that in a different episode though I do want to do like a full retrospective on that but this has already gone on longer than I intended so I am just going to sign off here.

Thank you so much for listening.

Have a good rest of your year and until next time I’ll see you out there.