Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody,
and welcome to today's episode
of the Never Peak Project Podcast.
I'm your host, Coach Ranger,
and today's episode is one of my weekly updates
in self-employment.
It's my way of kind of documenting and exploring,
navigating the world of self-employment.
So thank you guys so much for joining me on this.
My goal with this is to kind of be like a documentation
and a reminder for myself of the journey
that I've gone through over the last few months
and the next, hopefully, rest of my life.
And I just kind of want to take a page
from Alex Hormozzi's book, where he kind of documents
the lessons that he's learned over time.
Just like he says, Warren, Buffett, and Musk,
they are in that billionaire category,
and he wishes that they had a resource to look back on.
And I kind of hope that the lessons that I learned here,
the things that, the themes that really come up consistently
can be useful for you in your own journey
of solopreneurship and running your own business.
So thank you for your time and attention.
I hope that the things that I share here
are valuable for you.
And if there's anything else that you want me
to talk more about as you listen to these episodes,
I am more than happy to do a little bit more research
and create a legitimate resource for you on your journey.
First thing I want to acknowledge is I know
that everybody comes to this podcast
for the fantastic video quality
that the YouTube videos typically have,
but I am having an issue with my continuity camera
on my iPhone.
What I typically do is I set up the Riverside platform
to connect to my iPhone,
and then I use my iPhone as the camera.
Earlier today, I tried recording a special episode
for a series I'm doing in March of the podcast,
where I'm still debating whether or not
I want to release all the episodes at once,
or just kind of sprinkle them throughout the month.
But the issue that I'm running into
is that the camera keeps freezing,
and it kicked me and my guest off of the podcast
earlier today, which just made everything
more difficult and annoying,
and we ended up having to reschedule
while I figure out what's going on.
I hope that restarting my computer
and getting rid of all the apps that were open would help,
but I tried using my phone again,
and the same issue happened.
It froze and kicked me out of the studio,
so I am now recording on just the base computer camera
that's stuck on my Mac.
It's not terrible, it's not great either,
but it's just something that I need to figure out.
So if anybody listening is a Riverside I.O. expert,
I would super appreciate it.
I am in a podcasting group with a gentleman named Caleb.
He did a little bit of a mastermind
that I was in the last few weeks,
so I might actually reach out to them
and see if they know of anything
or how to kind of troubleshoot that.
But the few things I wanna talk about today
are canceled workshops, leadership roles in extracurriculars,
something that I noticed in podcast analytics,
using AI to cut down on time,
and then an issue I'm running into
with one of my New Year's resolutions.
So the very first one is I had a few really big ideas
going into the year.
One of them was doing a workshop series
called Walking Toward Success
with one of my good friends Stephanie Alston,
who owns Santoshia Yoga Collective in Loomis, California.
If you remember from my walk across America,
she was my yoga instructor.
I would message her every once in a while,
hey, my thigh hurts, what do I do?
My joint hurts, what's a good stretch for this?
How do I reset and reconnect?
I'm feeling very sluggish.
And she would help me with a lot of the body issues
that I was having.
And her and I went through
the Transformative Coaching Essentials cohort
together in 2023.
So we're pretty close.
We've worked together pretty consistently.
We were planning on doing a workshop series together
for the first few months of 2025
called Walking Toward Success,
where I was going to be talking about lessons
for my walk across the country.
The first month was gonna be, you know,
mindset around your why,
how to set a mission statement, a vision,
how to set clear, actionable goals.
The second month was going to be a lot of parts work
and really diving into the sabotaging voice
and how to come up with or get past the mindset shifts
and stories that you're creating for yourself
that are preventing you from getting where you wanna go.
And then the other few months were about, you know,
accountability, how to set that up for yourself,
how to take extreme accountability
for the goals in your life,
and how to break down goals from these big, large, crazy
adventures that you have to go on
in order to become the person you need to be
to achieve them and how to break it down
into the manageable steps.
That was a lot of talking about what the content was,
but the idea was that it was this whole series
about mindset towards creating the life
that you wanna live,
but it was supposed to start tomorrow
and I should actually be in Sacramento right now
at my friend's place crashing there for the night,
but we ended up canceling the entire series.
Now we canceled the entire series because nobody signed up.
Nobody was interested.
And there's a few different reasons that her and I discussed
as to why this was happening.
And I think they're all super valid.
One of the main ones was that she is enrolling
for some higher level workshops and courses herself.
She is the owner of the yoga studio.
She's been doing this for years
and she's actually doing a yoga teacher training herself.
She's also doing some other smaller certifications
and I think continuing education units
for yoga instructors.
So I think that a lot of her audience
that when we were sharing this information
and doing these weekly live streams on Instagram,
they weren't really hitting anybody
because these people that are in her audience
have pretty much already gone through that mindset work.
They know how to set goals.
They know how to kind of get past these roadblocks.
Do they know what coaching is in general?
I mean, that was one of the main reasons
that her and her studio wanted to do something like this
was to introduce people to coaching.
It's like, I don't know that they actually know
what coaching is or have experience in that regard,
but I think it was just kind of falling on deaf ears
in her community.
And the thing that I noticed with my community
is that I have a lot of people all across the country
that are on my mailing list and in my Facebook page
and in my sphere of influence still.
So saying that we were doing a workshop series in California
on these specific days at these specific times
didn't really help them.
We did introduce a Zoom version of the workshops eventually,
but I think it was a little bit too late
and not many people were seeing the emails.
I noticed that those ones, whenever I do an ad
in my newsletter and it gets nowhere nearly the interaction
that I would like for it to,
as opposed to just the weekly trail markers
or walk across America stories that I do.
So I think that my community is very much still primed
for walk content.
So I would really love to find a way to still connect
that very clearly with the coaching practice,
which I think it's so clear.
I know that a lot of people that see myself consistently
associate those two together,
but I definitely think that there's still some areas
for improvement.
So like I was saying, that first thing is that
it was falling on deaf ears.
Her community is more higher level than this
and my community is a little bit more spread out
and not super primed to that idea in general.
The other thing was I think really just the messaging
of the workshop series itself.
It wasn't specific who the avatar was.
Who are we actually doing this for?
What I realized when one of our last calls
when we were kind of like,
I don't know, I called it just like our debriefing,
like complaining to each other calls.
It was just like, you know, it's just not,
I feel like we're not talking to anybody.
I feel like we're not getting the point across
to the people that we need to get it across to.
Like there's not a specific avatar or person.
And that really got me thinking like,
if we should be talking specifically to,
not just people that are interested in your yoga studio,
but people that are this profession or this thing.
And it kind of got us thinking that
we should make this specifically for solopreneurs
in the health and wellness space,
even more specifically solopreneurs in the yoga
and wealth, health and fitness space.
So I think that's what we're going to do.
We're going to take all of this.
And I guess what I want to acknowledge first is
neither one of us took this failure,
which I'm going to call,
I'm going to put it in that category of failure.
No one signed up.
We didn't make anything from it.
We spent so much time and money on this.
Honestly, more time than we did money on anything,
but we spent a lot of our time and effort on this
when we could have been doing other stuff
and it didn't really pan out.
So I am going to put it in that failure camp category,
but I'm not going to put myself in that category.
And I'm not going to let her put herself in that category
just because this project failed
doesn't mean that we ourselves are failures.
I want to make that very clear.
What I do want to acknowledge is that in failure,
there is opportunity.
So what we're going to do is take all the content
we've already made.
I mean, we've already been doing it
and really just repurposing and repackaging it
for the spring for yoga and health and wellness solopreneurs
and kind of maybe changing the structure of the workshops
to be a little bit shorter.
Right now we were doing three hour long workshops
for four months, once a month for four months.
So that was still 12 hours that people would need
to commit to to do the entire four workshops.
So I think that might've been a portion of it.
Like we didn't really get specific feedback.
So if you are listening right now actually
and you would be willing to give me the gift
of feedback on that,
if you heard about these workshops series
and you didn't sign up,
I would personally love to know why.
Whether it is the distance, the geography, the content,
it was confusing.
I would personally love to know that.
If I can make an ask for this episode,
I think I'm going to keep it to that.
So just let me know.
I'm just kind of rambling about this now.
But the point is we're taking all that information
and we're repackaging it more
so that we can hit our target audience more specifically.
And I know that's something that Alex Hermosing
and all these other marketers kind of talk about
is know your audience, know who you're talking to.
We thought we did,
but until we were kind of slapped in the face with that,
it didn't really stick.
So that's where we're at with that.
This kind of reminds me of at the very beginning
of me starting my business,
I was talking to this lady who worked
for this youth nonprofit.
It was like a keep the youth off of drugs
and give them something to do organization.
And she had actually asked me
to do a personal finance workshop series there
for a few months.
And I was like, yes, I would love to do that.
That'd be fantastic.
That's a great opportunity.
And the, I don't know, two or three weeks
before I was supposed to start,
she messaged me and said that the nonprofit
was acquired by another business or another entity,
that she was no longer working there
and the entire thing was canceled.
So it's like, these things kind of just keep happening
that I have these workshops series set up
and then something either out of my control
or in my control, I guess,
in this most recent case happens that canceled it.
So, I don't know, I was thinking of that
as I was making the notes for this episode.
And I just wanted to like mention that,
but I can probably talk about that more in other times.
The other thing that happened this week,
or I guess a few weeks ago that kicked in this week
is that I was elected the chair
of my business referral network club
through the Chamber of Commerce in San Mateo.
So it's not the B&I group that I'm a part of,
it's like a smaller group in the Chamber of Commerce
that meets weekly and we talk about our business
and get to know each other.
It's just like a smaller networking group,
but I was elected chair of that in the December of last year.
So I think it was two weeks before Christmas or so,
but we had our first meeting this last week,
it was on Zoom and it was great.
I mean, I really enjoyed it.
I had a good time.
I really wanted to focus on in this first meeting
our purpose and reason for being there.
I wanted to be very clear starting off,
like why are we meeting every week?
Why are we spending this hour?
Why are we encouraging each other
to meet up with one another throughout the month?
Why, right?
And I think that when I brought that up,
people were kind of saying like,
well, you know, it's like supporting one another
and community and this and that,
which is all part of it, like it's true, right?
And one of the guys in the group eventually said,
you know, like, I love you guys, I love being here,
but I'm here because this is marketing.
Like this is part of my business.
Like I'm here to make money.
And I was really glad that he had said that
and was pretty like brought a lot of candor to the meeting
because I mean, that's true, right?
Like that's why we are there.
That's why we are spending this time.
And it really made me remember that
to have a reason as to why you're doing anything,
whether it's for your business or outside of it,
because everything has a cost,
whether it is the time value, the value of your money,
the value of gas, like all these different things
add up towards some kind of cost for your business.
So I think being very clear on the reason and purpose
for everything that you do is important.
But I was able to come up with a mission statement
based off of the conversation that we had, some goals,
and I'm going to share that with everybody
at the next meeting.
So I thought that was really great.
I asked him for initial agreements that I wanted to set
at the very beginning.
And one of the very first ones
was that we start immediately on time.
No, let's wait a minute or two.
No, let's whatever.
It's like, no, we start at 7.30, we start at 7.30.
And that was one of them, laser speak.
So when it is your turn to talk, get to the point,
get to the bottom line.
Let's not waste time adding a lot of dribble to it.
I mean, for me, that's where one-to-ones come in,
is that you can get more personal.
You can learn a lot more about each other.
But during the meeting, we only have a set amount of time.
Let's get in, get out, and not screw around, right?
So those were very basic agreements.
But I think that there are like the, how do you say?
The baseline, base level agreements
that need to be said out loud
so that everybody is on the same page.
I'm really big on having that clear communication
and being very certain about what is going on,
what are the expectations for the group and for ourselves,
and how we all kind of play into that.
So that's what I would encourage
if you're listening to this right now
and you are a part of an extracurricular group
and you are in a leadership role,
is to set clear agreements with one another,
because that's just going to really set the tone
for the meeting so that you're all very clear
and concise on why you are there.
And if the conversation starts drifting
out of those boundaries, you can kind of feel empowered
to say, hey, like, I think we're kind of falling
off the road here, can we get back on
before we fall down the cliff of tangents
and side conversations?
That's really what I would suggest there.
Something cute that I noticed, I noticed this a while ago,
but the third most downloaded, so on rss.com
where my podcast is hosted, they show the analytics
for where your listeners come from.
And you know, like the ones that pop up make sense, right?
It's like Sacramento, San Francisco area,
San Mateo, Redwood City, like where my friends,
family are, Modesto.
But the third most downloaded location
is actually a place called Helsinki, Finland.
So I thought that was cool.
Thank you, whoever is in Helsinki, Finland,
for listening.
I know that I haven't walked across Finland yet.
No, I don't really plan on walking across Finland.
I do wanna visit Finland.
I feel like that would be one of those places
that would be really beautiful.
But if you're listening and you hear this,
send me a message.
I'd love to say thank you personally.
I just think that's cool that it shows you
those kinds of analytics and you can really see
what's going on all over your podcast.
And when it comes to the podcast content,
I think what I'm gonna be doing
is I've been slowly putting filters on the content
about what I really wanna focus on.
When I was doing my Walk Across America,
one of my big regrets, honestly,
I wanna make a regret video about the walk.
Because now that I'm out of it
and I can see the things that I did wrong,
the things that I would do different,
I feel like there's quite a few of them.
And one of them is that I didn't just call it
Rangers Walk Across America podcast.
I feel like that's a little bit of a missed opportunity
to get more downloads and more exposure
because I think it's a little bit confusing
that I was using my business name,
but I wanted it to be marketing for the business,
I wanted it to be all these things.
I didn't really pan out,
and I kinda just wish I doubled down on that.
Anyway, what I wish I had done,
not what I wish, I already told you what I wish I had done.
What I'm doing now is putting filters over the content.
So now I've put over the business filter
and the Ranger focus filter.
During my walk, all of them were guest episodes
except one or two.
Now, I mean, I've only had three guest episodes
and I have three that are lined up to be dropped
in the next month and a half or so.
But what I'm gonna be doing now is focusing a lot more
on solopreneurs and small nonprofit leaders
and really helping people in that,
like making content for that specific event
for that category of people.
I mean, that's the category of people that I'm in.
I mean, I'm part of a non-prompt,
like the Lions Club that I just joined,
like they do fundraising, they do outreach.
My personal business, I do everything myself.
I don't have an editor for my podcast anymore.
So all of it is me generated.
And I feel like since that I'm very much in that same realm,
it would be a lot more beneficial for me to make content
for my own learning, my own individual sake,
but also for those that are listeners.
I do still think that if you are not in that category,
there are definitely still things
that you can get out of it.
I think there's plenty of great lessons
for folks to grab onto and share.
But I think that that is the lens
that I'm gonna slightly kind of put over the content
just to get better reach and we have an easier time
explaining what the podcast is about.
I mean, the podcast is still always gonna be
about continuous improvement
and getting a little bit better every single day,
really just focusing on that never peak mentality
that the best is yet to come.
So that is still the main focus,
but I think making the mindset episodes more focused
around that would be helpful,
especially as I chop up the content
and put it on socials or create carousels.
So if you're listening and you're not following me
on Instagram, I try to cut up the content
and put it into different formats there,
like carousels or still images.
So let me know on that.
That kind of bleeds into one of the next topics
is using AI to cut down on time.
If you're a business owner and you're not using AI
to save yourself a little bit of sanity and grace,
you are missing out on a huge opportunity.
One of the biggest things,
the easiest way that I can say that I use AI
to cut down on time is just the $20 a month chat GPT.
With these episodes, all I do is I take the transcript,
copy and paste it, put it into chat GPT,
have it give me a rundown, like the show notes.
I don't have to write the show notes.
I just gotta do checks for consistency and details.
I ask it for captions for social media
when I'm promoting it, ask it for the copy
when I'm sending out an email about the podcast.
Then I say, hey, what are the top five lessons
from this episode?
It gives them to me line by line.
Hey, can you put that in a format that would be good
for a carousel for Instagram?
And it gives me that.
And then I can go to Insta, or for Canva,
type in Instagram carousel and then just plug and play.
And I tried doing that on my own.
It took me a ton of time.
And it was one of those things
that I never felt like it was good enough.
But when I have something that I can just edit
and put in my voice a little bit better,
it saves a ton of time.
So right now, I mean, I'm recording this episode.
I started recording right around 6.30 PM.
Right now it's seven.
My goal is to have this up by 8.00 PM.
So from recording to publish,
it's not gonna take that long.
So if you're not using AI to cut down on some time,
but you'd like to, please let me know.
One of my good friends, Holly Resendez,
she runs the Align 260 School Community that I'm a part of.
Since I closed down my community,
I'm gonna be talking about hers a little bit more
because I really love what she's creating there
with Ama and everybody else in the group.
She has some great resources about AI
and how to use ChatGBT to your benefit,
how to create better prompts that will give you the,
kind of like create the content
that you want to actually create.
So I'll link her group in there as well.
And if you join, just let her know that I sent you
so that she thinks that I'm cool.
I would appreciate that.
But there's some great content there.
And I will still put my GPT that I made,
Rangefinder, in the description as well.
So there's gonna be a couple different resources
in the description.
But if you have the time and you wanna check out
a school community, go to hers and I'll see you there.
One of the things that we talked about actually
in her mastermind that she does every week
is one of the goals that I have for the year
is to give away 100 free coaching calls.
And I think they hate it.
And by I think they hate that is,
there were four or five of us on that call.
And I think every single person said
that I should stop saying that.
And I was a little bit taken aback by that.
Like, what do you, why?
What's wrong with that?
Like it's 100 like calls.
Like my time doesn't affect your time.
Why are you like, they weren't angry about it.
I feel like I'm being a little bit dramatic on that.
It just like took me back because I'm like,
why shouldn't I try to get people interested in coaching
and like get those better leads?
Because my intention behind it is that they are more so
introductory calls to get people in the door
and then pitch the 12 weeks of coaching that I have
and what I offer like empowerment coaching wise.
But what they were saying is that when people see free,
they think there's no value here.
And I was a little bit confused.
I'm like, I don't know how else to say it.
Like it's that free introductory call.
And I think when I said that out loud,
I was like, wait a second,
I should focus on it being introductory call, right?
And maybe that's one of those goals
that I don't necessarily say out loud to people,
but I have internally.
So I went to chat GPT, Mr. Good old chat.
And I asked it, I just was like,
hey, this is what I'm trying to do.
Some people are saying it diminishes value.
This is what I'm trying to do.
I feel like it could bring people in.
I have people in my pipeline that are actively interested
in coaching because of these free calls.
But the posts that I'm making don't,
like I'm working on my messaging every week
at these networking events that I'm doing on my posts,
in the podcast.
But I feel like people still don't really get it
until they try it out.
So what chat GPT suggested was that it makes sense
because of community exposure, lead generation,
and then practice that I get,
and then testimonials from people that,
it's kind of like if they don't sign up,
then I can still ask for a testimonial.
But what it was, was that there's a perceived value
that free coaching could make people undervalue my expertise,
especially if it's not positioned correctly,
and that there is a time drain
that I could spend a significant time coaching people
who never actually convert, which is true.
There is that risk.
The way that I saw it was that if they don't convert,
then I still got practice.
I still got a better idea of who I am as a coach.
I'm still getting my name out there.
I'm still getting people,
I can't physically put my product in people's hands,
like a smoothie from Burger King,
but I can still get in people's minds and show them like,
hey, this is what coaching is like.
This is what you get, right?
But they were saying that it's the framing.
So it gave me some ideas on what it was.
And one of the suggestions that I like,
which makes way more sense,
is that rebrand the free session as a discovery call
or a breakthrough strategy session.
So it's like during this 30 to 45 minute strategy session,
we'll identify one key roadblock
and create an actionable next step for your growth.
And I was like, oh, that makes way more sense.
And I'm gonna mention that in Holly's group here pretty soon,
that I probably rebranded this something like that,
because I do feel like right now where I'm at
with my business, like I don't have very many clients,
like being honest,
but I have quite a few people in my audience
that are interested in like people
that are kind of like on the fence.
So I wanted to be that as a way of like,
hey, like there's a way that you can still try it
and see if it works for you.
Like it's like Jack and Karen,
my friends at San Diego Pepper Company,
like they give free samples, like try it before you buy.
Right, we know it's good.
We know that the product works.
Like my services help people.
I mean, I have, after today,
I'm gonna have 20 Google reviews, five stars.
So it's like I've worked with plenty of people
enough that they know that what I offering is good.
There's now, now it's just like getting to the point
that I've done that, it's that more better new.
Like right now I'm doing more calls, more learning,
more working with people.
And now it's really for refining and making it better,
making that system better so that it can convert more
into paying customers.
So that is really all I have for today.
Thank you for listening.
And if you wanna take me up on that discovery call,
let me know.
But again, I would really just love feedback
on the workshop series.
If you knew about it, if you heard about it,
but didn't sign up, please let me know why.
I would super appreciate that.
If you just put in like the subject line,
SemitwoRanger at withinrangecoaching.com,
just put why I didn't sign up for your course.
It might kind of sting.
Please don't be mean about it, I guess.
But also like be honest, like why you didn't.
I'm just curious.
Maybe this is shooting myself in the foot
by making you focus on the reason why you did it.
But if you did, I would be more than happy to see
if there's any other way that I can help you out quickly
with your goals or anything.
So it won't just be me reading it
and not doing anything about it.
I would love to see if there's a way
that I can also still help you with what you want to create.
But anyway, I've said enough, I think,
for this beautiful Friday, January 10th.
Thank you everybody for listening to today's episode.
I really appreciate it.
If you could just take a quick moment
to give me a rating and review
in whatever podcasting platform you're listening to this on,
I would super appreciate it.
Takes a few swipes of the thumb,
but means the world to me
and could help out another entrepreneur
that needs it as well.
As always everybody, thank you so much for listening.
And remember that the best is yet to come
as long as you're willing to make the decision
to never settle, never quit, and never peak.
I'll see you guys in the next one.