From Lonely to Thriving: How LifeStarr Creates Community that Fuels Solopreneur Success with Joe Rando
Episode 132 From Lonely to Thriving: How LifeStarr Creates Community that Fuels Solopreneur Success with Joe Rando Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC
Ever feel like you're doing it all and getting nowhere?
You’re not alone. But you don’t have to stay alone. In this powerful episode of the Business Superfans® Podcast, Freddy D sits down with Joe Rando, serial entrepreneur and founder of LifeStarr, to unpack how solopreneurs can overcome isolation, align with the right stakeholders, and build thriving businesses on their own terms.
Joe brings decades of experience in physics, real estate, SaaS, and community building to the mic. After selling Trade Area Systems in 2020, Joe turned his attention to the 30+ million solopreneurs in the U.S. and created a digital hub to unite them. LifeStarr offers tools, community, courses, and now an AI assistant — all designed to help one-person businesses grow smarter, not just harder.
This isn’t just another entrepreneurship podcast. This is a masterclass on stakeholder engagement, customer loyalty, and what it takes to unite solopreneurs into collaborative, empowered ecosystems. You’ll learn how to sidestep burnout, build a business that serves your life, and attract your very own team of Business Superfans®.
Joe also shares behind-the-scenes stories of overcoming tough times by leaning on superfans, tips for outsourcing smartly, and why creating aligned relationships is the missing piece for many small business owners.
Guest Quote Spotlight
"Just flying solo doesn’t mean you're alone."
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://linkly.link/2E9DF
Takeaways:
- Joe Rando emphasizes the importance of community for solopreneurs, showcasing how collaboration can transform isolation into support.
- He shares that outsourcing tasks and seeking help is not a sign of weakness, but a way to enhance productivity for solopreneurs.
- Joe's journey illustrates that building a business should prioritize serving one's life rather than being enslaved to work endlessly.
- Through LifeStar, Joe aims to empower solopreneurs with tools and resources to thrive in their one-person businesses, fostering a supportive environment.
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Freddy D’s Take
Man, Joe Rando gets it. If you’re a solopreneur trying to juggle it all, this episode is your wake-up call. What stood out to me most? The fact that creating superfans starts with not doing it all yourself. When Joe said 80% as good as you is 100% better than not doing it at all? That hit home.
And the way he’s built LifeStarr to bring solopreneurs together—it’s not just smart business, it’s a movement. This is exactly what stakeholder alignment looks like in real life: people helping people, without ego, to build something bigger than themselves.
S.U.P.E.R.F.A.N.S. Framework Pillar Focus
U – Unite | Create Stakeholder Alignment
One Action. One Stakeholder. One Superfan Closer.
Action: Build a virtual "water cooler" to foster micro-moments of connection with partners or clients.
Stakeholder: A trusted contractor or recurring client.
Superfan Closer: They’ll feel part of your business, not just a vendor.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- LifeStar
- Trade Area Systems
- Home Depot
- Wendy's
- Target
- Kohl's
Mentioned in this episode:
Ninja Prospecting
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Ninja Prospecting, the outreach team that makes cold connections feel warm and real. If you're tired of spammy dms and a generic LinkedIn messages that go nowhere, ninja Prospecting flips the script. They help coaches, consultants, and service-based business owners spark real conversations through strategic human-first outreach. No bots. No fluff. Just honest, data-back messaging that sounds like you and, actually gets replies. Talk to my friend Adam Packard and his team. Whether you wanna do it yourself, get guidance or fully handed off, they've got you covered. Head over to ninjaprospecting.com and schedule a chat with Adam. Be sure to mention you heard about it right here on the Business Superfans podcast. If you're ready to get started, join their free community at https://skool.com/ninja-prospecting-7704 to maximize your connections and make the right new ones.
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Transcript
Hey, Superfans superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 132, we're joined by Joe Rando, a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of LifeStar, a platform dedicated to helping solopreneurs build businesses that truly serve their lives.
Speaker A:Over the course of more than three decades, Joe has worn many hats.
Speaker A:Physicist, real estate developer, tech founder, and now solopreneur advocate.
Speaker A:He's developed nearly a million square feet of retail real estate, co founded and exited a successful enterprise software company and launched multiple ventures along the way.
Speaker A:Today, Joe channels all of that expertise into supporting solopreneurs through LifeStar and the aspiring Solopreneur podcast, where he shares practical tools and insight for thriving as a one person business.
Speaker A:He is also the co author of the upcoming Solopreneur Business for Dummies and the creator of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, a proven framework for starting, running and improving solopreneur businesses.
Speaker A:We're excited to dive into Joe's journey and explore what it really takes to build a business that supports your life, not the other way around.
Speaker B:Welcome, Joe, to the Business Superfans podcast.
Speaker B:You and I had a little bit of a conversation before we started recording.
Speaker B:We got a little bit of similar background in Massachusetts and I used to spend a lot of time there in the 80s and early 90s.
Speaker B:So welcome to the show.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you, Freddy.
Speaker C:Good to be here.
Speaker B:So let's go back to your beginning here and what is your backstory?
Speaker C:It's a long one, but going back after I decided not to try to become a rock star anymore.
Speaker C:When I was in high school, I went to school, got a degree in physics, an undergrad degree, and then went off into the fiber optics industry where I was developing, as I mentioned to you, offline, basically tools that would allow you to communicate data quickly over optical fibers, quickly meaning like 10 megabits, a hundred megabits kind of thing.
Speaker C:And then of course, Twisted Pair came along and was able to do that for much cheaper.
Speaker C:And I was very glad that I had moved on beyond that.
Speaker C:But the idea was I wanted to start a business for myself.
Speaker C:I was always excited about that.
Speaker C:My dad was an entrepreneur and I wanted to be an entrepreneur as well.
Speaker C:He convinced me to go get an mba, which I did in like a year and a half.
Speaker C:I just kind of crammed through it with a baby on the way.
Speaker C:Another story.
Speaker C:But once I did that, I saw an opportunity to develop shopping centers.
Speaker C: This was back in like: Speaker C:Home Depot was coming into the Northeast.
Speaker C:All these big box stores, they Called them category killers.
Speaker C:I had developed some technology in grad school figuring out where to put shopping centers and used that and was able to do about a million square feet, little under a million square feet of shopping centers over the course of the 90s and early aughts.
Speaker C:And then I spun that software into a separate company with a partner and we created a company called Trade Area Systems and ran that and selling to a lot of the biggest retailers and biggest real estate developers in the world.
Speaker C: Sold that in: Speaker C:Everybody thought I was retiring after that.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But I don't have that in me.
Speaker C:My father failed miserably at retirement, so I didn't even want to try.
Speaker C:And so I just started life, looked around a little bit, found that there's tens of millions of solopreneurs, one person businesses just in the US and wanted to find a way to help them and bring them together.
Speaker C:And we have a place for them on the Internet.
Speaker C:It's I call it hub.
Speaker C:And there's tools, there's community, there's content, there's courses and all kinds of things to help solopreneurs run their one person businesses to serve their lives.
Speaker B:Wow, what a backstory.
Speaker B:And yeah, you're right, there's a lot of solopreneurs out there.
Speaker B:And you can only talk to yourself so much.
Speaker C:It gets lonely.
Speaker C:And it's nice to bring them together.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because you can't really brainstorm by yourself.
Speaker B:It's not just lonely.
Speaker B:You can only regurgitate your own stuff so much.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's really important to just get an outsider perspective because what you may think is a brilliant idea, five other people will say, man, that thing doesn't have any legs.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Or just things that people, I'm going to do pay per click advertising.
Speaker C:And somebody comes in and says, yeah, it's a really good way to light money on fire.
Speaker C:And it's like you really want to think that through before you start spending a lot of money.
Speaker C:And I love bringing people from different backgrounds.
Speaker C:You've got a tech person and a life coach and a web developer and they're talking is the perspectives are different but the problems are very much the same and they bring new ideas.
Speaker C:So it's really good to see just the bringing people together, nevermind the stuff that we can help them with ourselves.
Speaker B:Because when we both have worked with different companies, you've got a lot of challenges that you've got to deal with.
Speaker B:Because as a solopreneur or even a small business.
Speaker B:You got the marketing to do, you got the sales to do, you got the customers to deal with prospects, and you got the team to deal with.
Speaker B:And so all that comes into play as a solopreneur.
Speaker B:You're wearing all the hats, right.
Speaker B:And that can become really daunting.
Speaker B:And you can really start realizing that you're actually not going forward, you're actually sliding backwards.
Speaker B:Because at the end of the day, you can't do it all yourself.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And that's one of the things we encourage, is like one of our kind of catchphrases is just flying solo doesn't mean you're alone and really trying to get people to think, yes, you're a solopreneur, you're the only employee, but you can contract with other people.
Speaker C:You can hire companies to do things to help you.
Speaker C:And it's not cheating to get some help with, whether it's bookkeeping or marketing or whatever it is.
Speaker C:But getting somebody to help you in a virtual assistant is a really smart thing to do because your time is valuable doing the things that you get paid to do.
Speaker C:And the amount of time that you spend doing things that you aren't necessarily good at or don't bring, a lot of value is really wasted time.
Speaker C:If you can get somebody else to do it for you and use that time more productively.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:One of the things I've learned is that 80% as good as you is a hundred percent you not doing it.
Speaker C:Good point.
Speaker C:Good point.
Speaker C:And a lot of times, be honest, when you talk about all these different kinds of tasks that need to be done, you're not getting 80%, you're getting 120%, maybe 150%.
Speaker C:If I were doing the bookkeeping versus the person that does the bookkeeping, it would be a lot worse if I were doing it, because, number one, I would hate it and I would avoid it, and I would rush through it.
Speaker B:And have a mess.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:And then you got to pay double to get it fixed.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker B:For example, I was running a interpreting and translation company, and the business had been around for 30 years with a husband and wife team.
Speaker B:And unfortunately, he passed away.
Speaker B:And I was there as a director of operations and stepped into the GM role.
Speaker B:And that was the goal, really.
Speaker B:They were going to retire, and then I was just going to run the company, and they were going to go travel the world.
Speaker B:And once we took it over and it was, like, looked at the books and they were a mess.
Speaker B:And so we ended up having to bring in a forensic CFO to Come in and clean it up.
Speaker B:And those guys are not cheap.
Speaker B:And that was like six months worth of cleaning up because they had to go back multiple years back.
Speaker B:So that's one of the reasons I bring it up is, yeah, you may hate to do it, but the reality is you're going to end up spending a ton of money because you probably did it wrong.
Speaker B:You got things wrong, categorized, you wrote off stuff that you shouldn't have wrote off and etc.
Speaker B:Etc.
Speaker B:And that took six months to get those books cleaned up so that we could position the company for sale.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker C:Another thing that people can do and don't do enough of is automating.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Using tools to take away manual tasks.
Speaker C:And it takes a little bit of an investment, sometimes of some money and some time to set it up, but boy, what a difference.
Speaker C:Somebody comes in and fills out a form on your website, well, have an automated email response that says, hey, we got this.
Speaker C:We're looking at, we'll get back to you soon.
Speaker C:Instead of just leaving them ghosted, just that little changes like that can have a huge impact on a number of people that you close because they get an immediate response.
Speaker B:One of the things I always tell people is you got a 15 minute window when you get a lead in from the Internet.
Speaker B:Yeah, 15 minutes.
Speaker B:And you need to contact them more than just an automated.
Speaker B:The automated, I agree with it should go back, says, hey, we received contacting you shortly and you need to be Johnny on a job and actually respond to that.
Speaker B:I've closed more sales because I was the first guy that responded.
Speaker B:And in turn, I can set the bar if they're going to still go shopping and I can put the bar really high.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:And I have the credibility right off the bat.
Speaker B:And I've closed them right on the spot many, many times.
Speaker C:Timeliness is huge.
Speaker C:And it's hard for solopreneurs because again, like you say, if not all, you're still doing a lot of it.
Speaker C:And it's tough.
Speaker C:The cost of stopping this and going over and doing this, that cognitive load of having to change, you're doing some deep work and all of a sudden now you've got to go and pick up the phone and call somebody or respond to an email personally.
Speaker C:And it costs you a lot of time to shift those gears.
Speaker C:It's challenging.
Speaker C:And one of the things that we encourage is creating standard operating procedures.
Speaker C:So when you're doing some of these things, you're not thinking about how to do it right.
Speaker C:You've got it right there.
Speaker B:There's your checklist.
Speaker C:Yep, this is what I do.
Speaker C:And then you take some of that cognitive load away just working through it.
Speaker C:There's a lot to being a solopreneur, but the reason people do it, what I've learned, and it's one of the things that people don't talk about enough, I believe, is that people want to build a business that serves some aspect of their life right.
Speaker C:They're not about scaling at all costs.
Speaker C:I know we hear these talks about the first billion dollar one person business and I'm sure it will happen.
Speaker C:Like I alluded to when I was in high school, I wanted to be a rock star.
Speaker C:And people become rock stars.
Speaker C:Of all the people that want to become rock stars, very few of them do.
Speaker C:Same thing with being famous actor, right?
Speaker C:There's lots of actors, but the ones that get the big bucks are pretty few and far between.
Speaker C:So most of these people aren't doing it to try to become a multi, multi millionaire, a billionaire.
Speaker C:They just want to be able to get to their kids games.
Speaker C:They want to be able to do the kind of work they want to do or they want to be able to quit working at five every day.
Speaker C:They want to be able to drop everything and go golfing when the weather's night.
Speaker C:Whatever it is, they've got some reason or reasons that don't involve scaling at all costs.
Speaker C:And I've done both.
Speaker C:My first business was the solopreneur business as a real estate developer.
Speaker C:And I did it that way because I didn't want to have to continue developing real estate if the market wasn't good.
Speaker C:I just wanted to be able to stop and not do anything when it was a good time to stop.
Speaker C:And that was a kind of a lifestyle decision.
Speaker C:I didn't want to have to try to carry people when things were tough.
Speaker C:And I find that there's very few people that are delusional enough to think that even with a lot of people selling this, many that think they're going to work four hours a week and make $20,000 a month, great, if you can do it.
Speaker C:But most people don't.
Speaker C:They want to just have a job the way they want it to work.
Speaker C:It's their work and their life.
Speaker C:And so that's what we try to support.
Speaker B:There's a lot involved into it.
Speaker B:That's what everybody starts out to, having a business so they can have a lifestyle.
Speaker B:But a lot of times they end up putting in 80 hours a week because they don't have the systems in place.
Speaker B:They don't outsource some of the stuff.
Speaker B:And so they're doing it all themselves, and it becomes overwhelming.
Speaker B:And so now they're basically chained to that job because it really.
Speaker B:It's a glorified job.
Speaker B:Because if you can't walk away from them and it doesn't run by itself, you get a glorified job.
Speaker C:And I don't want to overstate the fact that there are people.
Speaker C:That's what they want, right?
Speaker C:They want a job that they control.
Speaker C:They don't want to have a boss, but they don't want necessarily to build.
Speaker C:There's all this talk about building this thing that works while you sleep, and that's great, but not everybody either has the skill set that applies to that, or that's not what they want to do.
Speaker C:They like what the work they're doing.
Speaker C:If you think about a life coach, these people by definition are typically one on one, face to face or virtual face to face with their clients.
Speaker C:Some of them can come up with some courses and things that people can take, and that's great.
Speaker C:But the core of that work is one on one, and it doesn't scale very well.
Speaker C:But there are a lot of people that are really happy with that kind of work.
Speaker C:And you can call it a glorified job, but it's a glorified job that they want and that meets their needs and satisfies their professional goals and personal life goals if they're doing it right.
Speaker C:And so that's really what it comes down to, is just like having life on your own terms as much as is possible.
Speaker C:Anybody working 80 hours a week, that's a great way to start sometimes.
Speaker C:And certainly when I was an entrepreneur starting businesses with employees, it was pretty typical and it was expected.
Speaker C:But solopreneurs aren't looking for that to be the long haul.
Speaker C:Typically.
Speaker B:There's something else totally makes sense.
Speaker B:And I think that the other thing that overlook is that a lot of people think that once they get the deal, the sale's done.
Speaker B:And I always look at it as, no, that's just the beginning.
Speaker B:You just got the paperwork out of the way.
Speaker B:The sale is everything that happens after the paperwork.
Speaker C:Absolutely, 100%.
Speaker C:I was cracked up about these.
Speaker C:I see these people especially going back a few years, and they would.
Speaker C:We just raised $5 million from venture capitalists where success.
Speaker C:And I'm like, uh, that's just the beginning.
Speaker C:Now you've got to make that work.
Speaker C:And it's the same thing with the sale.
Speaker C:You get the sale I remember I had this piece of land, and I was working on it for years, and I believed in it strongly, but I couldn't get anybody to pay attention to it.
Speaker C:And all of a sudden, Home Depot comes along and signs a deal.
Speaker C:And I remember that being the.
Speaker C:One of the worst days of my life.
Speaker C:And it wasn't because I wasn't a good thing.
Speaker C:But once that happened, I was now $600,000 in the hole, because what they were paying to get the land, what I had to spend to make everything happen, was negative $600,000.
Speaker C:So I had to sign a whole bunch more deals to make up that difference before the checks had to be paid, before the bills had to be paid.
Speaker C:And it was really scary.
Speaker C:It's one of those things where you look and you say, hey, this is the beginning.
Speaker C:You signed the deal.
Speaker C:Now you gotta make it real.
Speaker C:And there's a lot there.
Speaker C:So that was my best example of that kind of, ho, ho, here we go.
Speaker C:But it all worked out.
Speaker C:I immediately signed, believe it or not.
Speaker C:Next thing was Wendy's, and then I got Target and Kohl's, and so all was good.
Speaker C:We made it.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:But the bottom line there is to create those super fans.
Speaker B:It's creating that experience.
Speaker B:So you create superfans out of those organizations because you were able to deliver and create what they were looking for, and that opens up more opportunities, because superfans is your best salesforce.
Speaker C:It really comes down to understanding what people need and then giving it to them.
Speaker C:One of the ways to build super fans is to kind of go out and be helpful without expecting really anything in return.
Speaker C:And I see this in so many successful people that just give.
Speaker C:They're not sitting there going, oh, I can't show that.
Speaker C:That's my secret sauce.
Speaker C:Because you know what?
Speaker C:What you're doing is hard.
Speaker C:And even if you tell everybody exactly how you do it, when they start thinking about having to do that along with everything else they got to do, they're going to be like, I'm going to hire that person to do it because it's too much.
Speaker C:I try to go out.
Speaker C:We have these free events for solopreneurs, virtual events, and they come on and we have, like, speakers that talk about topics that help solopreneurs.
Speaker C:We have, like, ones.
Speaker C:We put them in breakout rooms together, and they help each other address their problems.
Speaker C:And we just give it away.
Speaker C:Because you know what?
Speaker C:People appreciate it.
Speaker C:They know that we've got their backs.
Speaker C:They know that we're out to help them as solopreneurs and the next thing, they're joining our community.
Speaker C:They're coming into the online community and taking advantage of the things that we offer.
Speaker C:It's really the right way to go.
Speaker C:Just really set out to help people.
Speaker C:Don't be thinking about what you're going to get out of it.
Speaker C:And good things happen.
Speaker B:That was my biggest success.
Speaker B:And Cad Cam world that was in for several decades was my customers, was my salesforce.
Speaker B:My fastest sales was 30 minutes.
Speaker B:I've said this story many times.
Speaker B:I got a phone call and the guy basically said so and so said, I need to buy this stuff because I'm doing work for them.
Speaker B:How much?
Speaker B:How fast can you get it?
Speaker B:The 30 minutes was me filling out the paperwork to make sure the configuration was right and everything else to get it to him.
Speaker B:But sale was done.
Speaker B:He didn't even care about the price.
Speaker B:That was it.
Speaker B:Because I had a super fan tell him, joe, you need to get this.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that's it.
Speaker B:And he goes, okay, come on.
Speaker B:What I got to do?
Speaker B:Well, call Freddy D, man.
Speaker C:It's absolutely true.
Speaker C:And I'll tell you another story about super fans that's a little different.
Speaker C:But this is going back to Trade Area Systems.
Speaker C:And we had a product that we were reselling, so we had our own products.
Speaker C:And we also kind of baked in some other people's software and data into our systems.
Speaker C:And it was one of the first reseller deals we had signed.
Speaker C:And we were busy crazy.
Speaker C:And I just signed their paper.
Speaker C:Typically, I would review all the documents and negotiate and make changes.
Speaker C:And I just signed their documents.
Speaker C:So we had built this software into our system and we had a couple of key customers relying on it.
Speaker C:Like three customers that were like six figure a year customers relying on it.
Speaker C:And we get a notice three days before the renewal date, which was auto renewal.
Speaker C:We're not renewing.
Speaker C:They just guess they decided we were competing with them or something.
Speaker C:So we were stuck.
Speaker C:We didn't have access to this software that was kind of driving these systems.
Speaker C:And we didn't have any way to make anything happen magically overnight.
Speaker C:So we go to the customers and we explain what happened.
Speaker C:Well, our reputation was customer comes first.
Speaker C:These guys will lay down in front of a train to slow it down if it's coming toward the customer.
Speaker C:And this other company's reputation was it's all about them and don't care about anybody.
Speaker C:So who did they blame?
Speaker C:Not us.
Speaker C:So even though we got hurt and the customers got hurt, all the blame went on to the company.
Speaker C:That did this to us and not us, because we had superfans, basically.
Speaker C:So surviving those kinds of roadblocks and having superfans can really make a difference in terms of helping you get through those tough times.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker B:I'll just use a funny example.
Speaker B:Look at the Chicago Cubs.
Speaker B:They got super fans that took them 100 years to win a World Series, but the fans stayed with them, thick.
Speaker C:And thin from Boston.
Speaker C:We get it.
Speaker B:But the reality of it.
Speaker C:No, no, I get.
Speaker C:I'm going to say we didn't have to wait quite 100 years, but it was close.
Speaker C:What was it?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C: to: Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Same thing.
Speaker B:But the super fans stay thick and thin.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker B:So, Joe, let's get into a little bit more about what's LifeStar all about.
Speaker C:Well, I'll give you the longer version of the story.
Speaker C:So, basically, when I sold Trade Area Systems, I was looking for something to do because I didn't want to be a retired guy.
Speaker C:And I had an idea for an app and I had an idea for something I wanted to buy and I couldn't find it.
Speaker C:Couldn't find it, couldn't find it.
Speaker C:So when we sold Trader Systems, I said, I think I want to think about building this app because nobody makes it, and I think it would be useful.
Speaker C:So I started to build the app.
Speaker C:I got some programmers involved, and the question was then, who are we going to sell this app to?
Speaker C:So the idea for the app was basically a task management system combined with kind of a social network.
Speaker C:So instead of like, if you look at these things like Asana and trello and Monday.com and ClickUp where you can manage tasks together, but it's your team, right?
Speaker C:It's all about your team.
Speaker C:And I wanted to be able to assign it to anybody, even somebody that didn't use the app.
Speaker C:And so I started thinking about it and we started to build it, and then we said, well, who are we going to sell it to?
Speaker C:And so I was working with a contractor.
Speaker C:She does our marketing.
Speaker C:Her name is Carly Reese.
Speaker C:And actually she and I are writing Solopreneur Business for Dummies together now, but talk about that later.
Speaker C:So she says, what about solopreneurs?
Speaker C:You're talking about working beyond your team.
Speaker C:They don't have teams.
Speaker C:At least they don't have employees.
Speaker C:That would make a lot of sense.
Speaker C:And I said, that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker C:Where do we find them?
Speaker C:And we couldn't find any place to find them.
Speaker C:And I'm like, oh, bummer.
Speaker C:And then I looked A little deeper and found out that there's literally tens of millions of them in the U.S. if you look at like one person businesses and gig workers, there's probably 70, 80 million of them.
Speaker C:But the ones that are kind of truly entrepreneurial, there's probably 30 odd million approximately and just in the US and nevermind Canada and the rest of the world.
Speaker C:So he said let's build a place for those people because we're not going to sell this app if we don't have a place to sell it.
Speaker C:So forget about the app for now.
Speaker C:Let's build a place for people.
Speaker C:And that's what we've been doing and engaging solopreneurs.
Speaker C:They come in and like I said, we've got tons of content, like literally probably 20 books worth of content that we've created just for solopreneurs on different topics.
Speaker C:We've got online events, we've got AI tools trained specifically for solopreneurs to answer business questions from that perspective because cause it's very different than the perspective you would get as a subject matter expert or as a person that works for an employee based company.
Speaker C:Solopreneurs are different.
Speaker C:They need that 20% that's going to get them 80% of the results.
Speaker C:So it's a different thing.
Speaker C:So we've built out an AI for that courses, continually building courses and that kind of thing.
Speaker C:So really just trying to build a place where these people can kind of up their game, keep up with changes, learn from each other and just have a community.
Speaker C:We even have like a virtual water cooler.
Speaker C:So just if you're bored you can pop into this thing and if anybody else is at the water cooler you can have a little chat.
Speaker C:Doesn't actually produce water but just a virtual hangout place for people because this is things that solopreneurs, not all of them, but a lot of the miss from corporate is just having other people.
Speaker C:So that's the long and the short of it.
Speaker C:We're just a bunch of people that are trying to build businesses in service of our life and don't necessarily want to do it alone.
Speaker B:So do you have any stories of some people that have transformed and became a super fan from the being part of that community Community?
Speaker C:A bunch actually a couple of examples come to mind.
Speaker C:One woman came to us and it was like I don't know how I'm going to make rent.
Speaker C:And she got involved in our paid tier so this kind of office hours to work on problems and things and she actually increased her sales 407% and that was enough for her to start actually being able to get by fine and put some money away and that kind of thing.
Speaker C:And she's still doing great to this day.
Speaker C:Has created a new business beyond the one that she already had that she's very excited about that.
Speaker C:We helped with another gentleman.
Speaker C:When he first started with us, he did basically like animation for videos and things and he was having trouble getting customers.
Speaker C:He just came in and hung out and brainstormed and he developed this new model for funding these things because a lot of them are educational just by brainstorming with us and other people in the community.
Speaker C:And sadly we don't see him as much anymore because he's too busy, which is a great thing to have, great problem to have.
Speaker C:But yeah, he completely turned his business around from struggling to get customers to the point where he's biggest challenge now is finding contractors to help him do the animation.
Speaker C:So yeah, there's things like that.
Speaker C:And it's just a matter of number one, getting that outside perspective, getting ideas from people that have solved problems that in ways that you might never think of.
Speaker C:And a lot of times niching down like a lot of times, unfortunately, solopreneurs, they say whatever it is, I'm a contractor, I'm a programmer or a life coach or this or that, and they can help all these different people.
Speaker C:But they don't understand that even though you can help this many people, nobody's going to hear you if you target them.
Speaker C:And you've got to get that thing focused down to a chisel point and say, this is who I'm going after, these people with this problem and get as niche down as you can.
Speaker C:So when that one person comes along and sees what you do, they say I have to go to them because you're better off getting that one person than getting ignored by a hundred people.
Speaker C:So that's one of the things we really help people with, is kind of narrowing down that offer to really target.
Speaker B:Someone that's really important.
Speaker B:Because I used to attend bni, as I'm sure you've heard of the whole group.
Speaker B:I've actually met Dr. Ivan Meisner and I've come up with a saying, to be terrific, you need to be specific.
Speaker B:And if you're specific, you will be terrific.
Speaker C:Yep, you gotta be focused on that offering and who you help, how you help them.
Speaker C:And then the other thing isn't always a killer, but it can be sometimes, depending on how people are getting customers, but sometimes just the websites, that big hero section at the beginning of their homepage of the website and it's their name and it's like, but what do you do?
Speaker C:And so trying to get people to realize that you get about three seconds to get people's attention.
Speaker C:What you do and who you do it for should be front and center and then you can talk about yourself a little further down.
Speaker C:So we've helped a lot of people get their websites converting better and just understanding what taking that perspective from the person that's looking and try to get them to say, hey, this is what I'm looking for when they see that website.
Speaker C:True.
Speaker B:You also mentioned that you are writing a book.
Speaker C:Yeah, the Dummies book series.
Speaker C:Wiley does and started with Dos for Dummies back in the 80s and they've got a number of books but they didn't have one on solopreneur business.
Speaker C:And so we went to Wiley and they said, yeah, I would like to do it.
Speaker C:So we're writing Solopreneur Business for Dummies available for pre order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, coming out in early October.
Speaker C:And it's a soup to nuts book.
Speaker C:We're building it around something that I developed called the Solopreneur Success cycle.
Speaker C:And the idea is there's a process of starting a business.
Speaker C:With a solopreneur business especially, you should start with your goals.
Speaker C:Why are you doing this?
Speaker C:What is your reason for doing a solo business?
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:If it's to become a billionaire, we might want to think about the employees.
Speaker C:And so starting with those goals while you're doing it, then this process of kind of envisioning the business once you decide what it is you want to do, planning it out, setting it up, and then we go into executing.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So then you got to execute the business and learn from the process of executing because you didn't get it right the first time.
Speaker C:And then once you've done that for a little while, go in and assess the situation and figure out what it is that you know you might want to change, deciding which things you want to change, making those changes, going back into executing.
Speaker C:So then from here on it's a virtuous cycle of getting that business better and better.
Speaker C:So the entire book is built on this concept and it really helping solopreneurs build businesses that serve their goals.
Speaker C:And that's we always come back to those goals.
Speaker C:So it's very different from a typical even small business book.
Speaker C:But we do cover all the basics in, in terms of things like P Ls and all those things you really need to run A business, but that we do have this very kind of goal oriented, lifestyle oriented perspective on things to make sure that people aren't building a business.
Speaker C:They hate running.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker B:And goal setting is the first important step.
Speaker B:One is knowing why.
Speaker B:And then two, what's your objective?
Speaker B:And because your objective, AKA your goal, helps you define the roadmap and what you need to do to get there.
Speaker B:Because otherwise you're just winging it.
Speaker B:And really life gets in the way and starts blowing you around and you'll never get to your goal.
Speaker C:I had an experience once where I built a business that I hated running.
Speaker C:And it's not a good thing.
Speaker C:It's one of those things where you can wake up and go, wow, I am not having a good time here.
Speaker C: alluded to earlier and it was: Speaker C:I built this software when I was getting my MBA and I was using it to figure out where to go out and tie up land for shopping Centers.
Speaker C: And in: Speaker C:Now I think they're on the 49ers and.
Speaker C:But they were a big mall developer.
Speaker C:And this guy heard about your software.
Speaker C:It turned out the professor I was working under in school and I'd like to license it.
Speaker C:And I'm like, world just beat a path to my door.
Speaker C:So I started this company called Retail analytics and started hiring.
Speaker C:I hired a couple of programmers, I hired a sales guy and the sales guy, sales and marketing guy comes in and very quickly ties up a six figure a year recurring revenue deal.
Speaker C:And we are like, here we go, this is the beginning.
Speaker C:And we never closed another sale for the software.
Speaker C: happened was, if you remember: Speaker C: By: Speaker C:So nobody was investing big money in retail site selection software.
Speaker C:So we were just pushing on a rope.
Speaker C:But so they still needed to do site selection, they still needed to figure out where to put stores.
Speaker C:So now they were hiring us to run the software and do the analysis for them and we were producing reports.
Speaker C:So basically I'm a huge fan of recurring revenue.
Speaker C:I came out of the shopping center business where you're collecting rent every month, went into the SaaS business.
Speaker C:Software as a service was what I was doing.
Speaker C:Kind of early didn't have that name back then, but selling the software every year over and over again.
Speaker B:You had the yearly 20% maintenance on the software back then?
Speaker C:No, but we were selling the full bore every year for six figures.
Speaker C:So it was a full renewal.
Speaker C:It was a great business model, but you needed more than one customer to make it work.
Speaker C:So then I started doing reports.
Speaker C:So we do these analyses and reports and there was all this work and like the joke that you were just earning your lunch every day, you had to work for your lunch every day.
Speaker C:And so it just got to be so tiresome and we still weren't making any money.
Speaker C:And so I basically kind of gracefully shut the thing down in 99.
Speaker C:So I kind of had a five year life and then it just had to shut it down.
Speaker C:But I did it gracefully, stayed close with all the tech people that were doing the work and they ended up all together at a big company.
Speaker C: terested in doing it again in: Speaker C:And that did really well.
Speaker C:But the timing's everything, right?
Speaker C:You missed the Internet.
Speaker B:I remember those days vividly because that was the beginning.
Speaker B:It was really early on.
Speaker B:I remember we started having email at the company.
Speaker B:I was a district manager for a place.
Speaker B:And the next thing you know, they said, well, now that we can communicate online and we can send you files and all that stuff, we're going to have everybody that's remote work from home.
Speaker B: That's really: Speaker B:Yeah, but you weren't doing no video conferencing, but you were at least emailing, going back and forth.
Speaker B:And that was the beginning of it.
Speaker C:That's crazy.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C: So that: Speaker C:Interesting.
Speaker B:Yep, yep.
Speaker B:Because yeah, 96 ended up working for a company out of Toronto and then switched over to a UK company and then moved to Arizona because I was the western regional manager for everything west of the Mississippi.
Speaker B:And you can't really manage that from Chicago.
Speaker B:So I came out here and I communicated with them all through the Internet.
Speaker C:Yeah, it was a big change.
Speaker C:And then obviously Covid has completely cemented that change.
Speaker C:Boy, I still have an office for.
Speaker C:I can still do some property management.
Speaker C:I have this property management business and three people in the office.
Speaker C:They don't want to leave, they don't want to work from home.
Speaker C:So we still have that.
Speaker B:It goes back to that.
Speaker B:But the reason it goes back to the camaraderie, which is why you created LifeStar, is the fact that they don't want to work from home because then it's they're by themselves.
Speaker C:Right, Exactly.
Speaker B:My wife has been working for hearing aid company for over seven years now.
Speaker B:She works from home.
Speaker B:But they have virtual get togethers.
Speaker B:They bring the team in every so often into the corporate headquarters.
Speaker B:So people have camaraderie and it's a multi day event and they pay for all that stuff and that's how they do it.
Speaker B:And she's been there and she's super happy.
Speaker B:She's one of the top salespeople and because of the way they handle it.
Speaker C:That'S good that they do that.
Speaker C:We don't have that luxury as solopreneurs as much.
Speaker C: back at Trade area systems in: Speaker C:She was part of an agency I hired and so we are talking basically nine years.
Speaker C:I've never met her.
Speaker C:I've never met her and face to face.
Speaker C:So yeah, we're going to meet in September at a conference.
Speaker C:But it's pretty funny that go on that long and never have a face to face.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:That's crazy.
Speaker B:It's crazy.
Speaker B:So Joe, as we come closer to the end here, how can people find you?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So lifestar.com is the best way to kind of connect up with the community.
Speaker C:I'm there all the time and Lifestar has two Rs so it's lifestar.com My email address is joeifestar.com if anybody wants to email me.
Speaker C:I am also on LinkedIn.
Speaker C:That's my primary social network and it's just Joe Rando on LinkedIn and those are the best ways to reach out.
Speaker C:But any solopreneur is interested.
Speaker C:Whether you're just getting started or established, Both are welcome.
Speaker C:LifeStar, we have a free tier to the community that gets you access to a number of things and a lot of searchable content and a basic version of our AI.
Speaker C:So check that out.
Speaker C:Also, we also have a podcast called the Aspiring Solopreneur which is available on all the major podcast platforms.
Speaker C:So anybody that's interested in solopreneurship, it's definitely worth checking out.
Speaker C:We do both interviews and kind of subject matter episodes and people really seem to like it.
Speaker B:Excellent.
Speaker B:We'll make sure all that's on the show.
Speaker B:Notes.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you again for your time today.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker B:And you and I could probably talk about this stuff for hours, so definitely would love to have you on the show down the road again.
Speaker C:That'd be great.
Speaker C:Excellent.
Speaker C:Well, thank you, Freddie.
Speaker C:Take care.
Speaker A:What a powerful conversation with Joe Rando.
Speaker A:Today's pillar is unite.
Speaker A:Create stakeholder alignment Building a unified culture by aligning your team, partners and vendors around shared goals.
Speaker A:Joe reminds us that even solopreneurs don't have to do it alone.
Speaker A:By connecting with others, outsourcing tasks and creating communities like LifeStar, he showed how alignment transforms isolation into collaboration.
Speaker A:Here's your challenge.
Speaker A:Look for one area of your business you're holding onto alone and invite somebody in to help the result.
Speaker A:You move from wearing every hat to building a circle of support that shares your vision.
Speaker A:And remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer.
Speaker A:Until next time, keep building your business.
Speaker A:Superfans, thank you for listening.
Speaker A:And know this we when you do, freedom follows.
Speaker A:Hey, one more thing before we sign off.
Speaker A:What if your employees, your customers and even your partners became your biggest advocates?
Speaker A:Imagine referrals flowing in, clients staying loyal, and a business that scales sustainably, not forcefully.
Speaker A:That's what we're building inside the Superfans Growth hub, the community for service based business owners who want proven strategies, my Superfans framework and a supportive network to accelerate results.
Speaker A:So if you're ready to outpace your competition and build a business powered by super fans, join us today@superfansgrowthhub.com once again, that's superfansgrowthub.com and I'll see you on the inside.
Speaker D:We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast.
Speaker D:The path to success relies on taking action.
Speaker D:So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.
Speaker D:If you haven't already, join the accelerator community and take that first step in generating a team of passionate supporters for your business.
Speaker D:Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.
