I found myself in a rare position yesterday morning: I didn’t know what I was going to write about for this newsletter. The best I had was a vague idea about the point I wanted to make.

Then my youngest daughter, Abby, asked me a very pointed question: “Daddy, is that girl really on fire?”

We were listening to Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys; if you’re unfamiliar, the refrain includes the statement “this girl is on fire” 9 times.

When I said no, Abby said, “why does she keep saying it then?” I explained that being on fire could mean being very passionate about something. She then asked me what “passionate” meant.

“Caring a whole lot.”

She forced me to take this statement and put it in the simplest terms possible. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

It can be easy to get sucked into the big complicated setups that some solopreneurs (including myself) have. The massive, multistep Zaps, the “team” of Agentic AI Agents™ doing your work so you don’t have to, quality be damned.

But before you do something fully automated and complicated, two things need to happen:

1. You need to understand the simplest form of the problem.
2. You need to know the building blocks.

My 4-year-old didn’t know “this girl is on fire” could mean anything besides the most literal meaning. So I first had to explain metaphors: what was literally being said meant something different.

Then I used a word she didn’t know: passionate. So I had to explain the metaphor using simpler terms. That’s when she understood…the girl that was on fire cared a whole lot about something¹.

You can do the same thing in your business. Before going off and creating a complicated process, system, or automation, break down the building blocks:

1. What are you doing?
2. Why are you doing it?
3. What information do you need?
4. What is each step in the process?
5. What parts require your unique skills?
6. What parts are predictable and routine?

Once you have these answers, you can start building the system. Start with creating a central place to keep track of the process: the steps, the statuses, the information you need, all in one place.

Then you can start building automations, or yes, even AI skills, to help you do the work.

I feel like I got a little lucky yesterday. Girl on Fire happened to be playing, for the umpteenth time that week. My daughter happened to ask me that question as I was thinking about my newsletter. It was a nice bit of inspiration exactly when I needed it.

But…I fully admit that if I didn’t know what point I wanted to make, you wouldn’t have read that story. Even when I don’t have the full picture, my system helps me understand my overall goal. That makes it easier to find the inspiration.

Now, if you read this thinking, “that sounds great Joe, but I’m still unclear on where to start,” I can help. Use the form below to join my mailing list, and get the Solopreneur Systems Starter Kit — 4 systems every solopreneur needs to get started, and exactly where to start.