You know, we like to say around here that running a solo business doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
But even with all the technology and your network supporting you, at the center of it all is you. And you need a high degree of self-reliance to make it all work, day after day.
You may have read the classic essay “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson back in high school. It’s not exactly a modern text, despite the multitude of wisdom it contains — and it’s certainly not geared specifically toward the modern entrepreneur.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame decided to bring that wisdom forward, and put his own decades of entrepreneurial success into it. The result is The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, a highly useful book organized as a daily devotional with 366 entries, one for each day of the year (including the extra day in leap year 2020).
In this episode, John shares seven of the most important aspects of self-reliance for not only entrepreneurs, but also freelancers and other solo business owners. Join us to understand the fundamental wisdom that can ensure your business remains strong and stable.
Links
- Download: The 7 Pillars of Self-Reliance Quick Guide
- The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur
- Duct Tape Marketing
- Follow John Jantsch on Twitter
- Follow Brian Clark on Twitter
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Transcript
The 7 Pillars of the Successful Solo Businessperson
Jerod Morris: Welcome to 7-Figure Small, the podcast that brings you the stories and strategies that are driving the growing number of solo businesses achieving 7-figures in revenue, without investors or employees. Here is your host for this edition of 7-Figure Small — serial digital entrepreneur, Brian Clark.
Brian Clark: Hey there, and welcome to 7-Figure Small. I’m Brian Clark. Thanks for joining us.
You know, we like to say around here that running a solo business doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
But even with all the technology and your network supporting you, at the center of it all is you. And you need a high degree of self-reliance to make it all work, day after day.
You may have read the classic essay “Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson back in high school. It’s not exactly a modern text, despite the multitude of wisdom it contains — and it’s certainly not geared specifically toward the modern entrepreneur.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame decided to bring that wisdom forward, and put his own decades of entrepreneurial success into it. The result is The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, a highly useful book organized as a daily devotional with 366 entries, one for each day of the year (including the extra day in leap year 2020).
In this episode, John shares seven of the most important aspects of self-reliance for not only entrepreneurs, but also freelancers and other solo business owners. Join us to understand the fundamental wisdom that can ensure your business remains strong and stable.
This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks, easy-to-use cloud accounting software for people like you. Right now they’re offering a 30-day, no credit card required free trial to listeners of the podcast. To claim it, just visit FreshBooks.com/unemployable and make sure to enter UNEMPLOYABLE in the “How Did You Hear About Us? section.
All right, on with the show.
John Jantsch, it’s been too long. How are you, my good friend?
John Jantsch: I am awesome, thanks. And you’re right, it has been too long.
Brian Clark: I know. Well, I’ve been traveling. You’ve been roaming around Colorado now, but you’re home in Kansas City. Good timing, Super Bowl champions, congratulations.
John Jantsch: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. They’re having, let’s see, the parade, depending upon when this comes out. But the parade’s tomorrow, I can say, and they’re expecting a million people. I’m not going, I don’t like people.
Brian Clark: Not that many people at one time. Of course, you said that with the understated enthusiasm of a Kansas City person, a Midwesterner: “Yeah, we won the Super Bowl. It was nice.
John Jantsch: I’ll tell you the truth, I’ll be brutally honest. I mean, I was a fan this year, but I’m more of a baseball fan. I follow the Chiefs and when they’re winning, I’m happy. But I’m more of a Royals fan, so truth be told.
Brian Clark: You’re spending half time in Colorado now, my home as well. And I just found out, I didn’t know. I always see when you’re posting to Instagram or Twitter and I’m like, “John, I’m right down the road. I didn’t realize you were as close as you are though. You’re right up Boulder Canyon outside of Ned. I love going up to Nederland. I keep trying to talk my wife into getting a place up there. It’s tough in the winter though. It can get a bit windy.
John Jantsch: Very windy. Yeah, we’re right at the top of a gulch and we have some hundred mile an hour gusts that come through there in the winter, and you’re holding on for your dear life.
Brian Clark: The fortunate thing is I go during the summer and it’s a breeze. And you welcome the breeze at that point.
John Jantsch: Absolutely. I think July — I mean, I enjoy the snow, especially when we’ve got mountains and fun things to do — but July is pretty darn perfect out there.
What’s Happening in Your Business?
Brian Clark: Yes, very much so. All right. So it has been awhile. Let’s catch up just a bit on Duct Tape Marketing. What’s going on over there? What have you got planned or what’s in motion?
John Jantsch: I would say a lot of what I’ve been doing for 15 years, feels like we’re still doing that, rocking and rolling on marketing as a system. I still have my network of independent marketing consultants around the world that use the Duct Tape Marketing system.
I am probably this week going to sign a contract for what’s going to be a couple more books related to, kind of powered by Duct Tape Marketing. So some specific topics that are related to the original book, but how we’ve evolved as marketing.
And I think there’s a giant need for — we’re creating a certified marketing manager course. There are a lot of companies, mid-sized companies that go out and hire people. They don’t really have a senior marketing person. And so that person comes into the company and doesn’t get any training or any direction. So we’re going to take the Duct Tape Marketing system into kind of a training realm in 2020.
Why “Self-Reliant?
Brian Clark: Excellent. That sounds very good. Now, I know that your attention has been highly focused on the book that was released in the fall, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. As soon as I got my copy, I could tell this is partially inspired by the classic “Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. How much of that really drove the project?
John Jantsch: Well, the book, obviously, the title borrowed from “Self-Reliance. I’ve been a fan of that writing. I’ve been a fan of Thoreau’s and a lot of the writing from that period. And I wanted to write a daily book.
We all have stacks of books that we’re meaning to get to. I wanted to write a book that could kind of fit into your daily morning routine that would be inspirational, would hopefully draw from the fact that I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and just give people something that they could help center and start their day with.
I wanted to anchor it with some foundational writing that stood the test of time. And so I dove into what many people call the Transcendentalist Period in the mid-19th century. Because if you think about what was going on in America at that time, we were on the cusp of the Civil War, women were marching in the streets to get the right to vote, we were trying to abolish the illegal act of slavery.
So a lot of the writing from that period was kind of the first counter-cultural period in America when people were saying, “Hey, maybe we don’t need to listen to our elders or our preachers or our parents. Maybe we need to start thinking for ourselves and following our heart. And of course, that’s still today, I think, some of the best advice for entrepreneurs.
Brian Clark: Absolutely, timely advice for everyone, I’d say. But yes, “Self-Reliance can be a bit archaic in its pros and certainly not tailored specifically toward entrepreneurs, what struck me about the usefulness of the book, but also the format.
I mean, I think to me, until I experience that kind of daily progression format, such as Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic, and now your book, several others, I really find it useful. I wouldn’t have thought that before though, and yet that just very digestible dead-on, “This is what I need to hear today format can just get your day off on the right foot. Is this kind of what you had in mind?
John Jantsch: Yeah, absolutely. It’s actually a practice. It fits into a practice that I’ve done for years. Whether it’s been Wayne Dyer, whoever, I like to read something inspirational as part of meditating, as part of journaling, as part of just kind of getting my day going on my own terms.
So I kind of wrote the book that I wanted to have, I suppose is one way to look at it. But I also feel like there are so many how-to books and videos and everything out there under the sun. But I think entrepreneurs probably don’t — there probably are not enough what I would call “mindset or “why-to books.
And so I really wanted to write a book that was about the mindset that I think you have to have on a daily basis as an entrepreneur.
Brian Clark: Everyone out there listening, I obviously highly recommend the book. And I’m not saying that just because John’s right here looking at me. Highly useful, and it does get you off on the right foot. It’s a good thing to work into.
Like John said, a morning routine, whether that includes meditation, I’ve picked up the habit of reading something every morning, especially if I have to write. That’s one of the tricks. I don’t know that everyone realizes that if you want to find more to write about, then read more. That’s kind of a key.
Today, we’re going to try to boil this down to maybe the seven pillars of self-reliance. Not the whole book, can’t cover the whole book for you. It’s well worth your money to purchase it. But I think John can give you a taste, especially when it comes to running a solo business.
As we say, over and over, you don’t have to go it alone. You shouldn’t go it alone. You should build your own support network, your own service network, freelancers, consultants, vendors, people who help you get it done as an individual.
But at the core of that, you have to be a self-reliant person. I mean, that just goes without saying. And yet, do we get a lot of instruction on that really? I don’t think they teach it in school. And perhaps they should, John.
John Jantsch: Yeah. In fact, I think we might get the opposite. We have a ton of people telling us what we should do, shouldn’t do, can’t do, how crazy our ideas are. And so a lot of times, this idea of intentionally practicing self-reliance is that’s the only way to keep you on the path. That’s the only path that’s right for you.
Pillar 1: Self-Trust
Brian Clark: That’s absolutely correct. I mean, school is designed to make you conform. It’s a throwback to the Industrial Era. We’re not in that anymore, so I think we need to go back to Emerson and figure out how to do it for ourselves. What’s your number one pillar when it comes to self-reliance?
John Jantsch: I think the biggest thing that entrepreneurs have to practice is a level of trust. And I mainly mean self-trust by that. Until we can get to the point where we trust our idea, we trust that we have what it takes to do what it is that we’re trying to do, and we stop trying to control the things that are out of our control, which by the way is most everything, and really decide that the only thing that we are in charge of is how we show up, and how we respond to everything that happens, and nothing else really matters.
I think that until you can develop that level of trust, many of the things that you’re going to need to do on a day-to-day basis to succeed on your own terms are going to be more difficult.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes, it’s the hardest thing to pull off. I mean, the prevalence of impostor syndrome, even among the experienced entrepreneurs, whenever they’re doing the new thing, it creeps back in. And you have to just say, take that deep breath and go, “Look, you got this. You may not know everything yet, but you’ve got to trust that you can figure it out.
John Jantsch: The real key is you have to be okay with where you are now. And that’s the hardest thing, because we see all the Facebook posts and compare ourselves to where we think we should be at this point. And what that tends to do is suck all the joy and happiness of what it is that we’re doing.
Until you can say, “You know what, I’m okay now, I’m enough now. Yeah, sure, I have some where I’m going. That’s step number one, I think, in a level of trust.
Pillar 2: Courage
Brian Clark: And to have that sort of trust in yourself, I would imagine requires a certain amount of courage, which is your second pillar.
John Jantsch: Well, I think courage is going to be on the table anytime we’re talking about entrepreneurs. Because in many ways, we’re doing things that haven’t been done before. We’re creating things that don’t exist before. We are going out there and working on ourselves every single day, and facing a lot of rejection sometimes, or facing things not working out the way we thought they were going to work out.
And so the level of courage that it takes first to follow your own path when — I don’t know about you, but when I started my company, I didn’t know anybody else that had started a company. This was 30 years ago. And I had a lot of people tell me that was just my excuse, because I couldn’t get a job or I was going to go do my own thing.
I mean, I definitely had people that were somewhat negative about my choice to do that. Obviously now, everybody wants to do it. But I think that striking out on your own takes a level of courage no matter what it is that you’re trying to do.
Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t have a bunch of tattoos like all my new business partners, those whippersnappers. But I do have one, and it’s on my left inner ankle, and it’s the symbol for courage.
And that, very early on — because I wasn’t always that brave — I just did that to remind myself that you kind of have to be — courage isn’t lack of fear, it’s getting on your horse and riding into battle anyway. I think some cowboy said that at one point.
John Jantsch: No, I completely agree.
Pillar 3: Curiosity
Brian Clark: Okay, so what’s up next is the third pillar.
John Jantsch: Yeah, this is the one for me that I — when I do these podcasts, sometimes some people have this like, “What’s your super power? And my answer to that always is curiosity. I think that entrepreneurship is probably one of the greatest self-development programs ever created.
For me, the thing that’s driven me to do what I’ve done — whatever, however somebody measures a level of success, it doesn’t really matter. But the thing’s that’s really driven me to do the things that I’ve done to keep me really enjoying every day — I mean, I say I’ve been doing this 30 years and I still love it every single day — is that I’m just insatiably curious about how things work, why they work, where it’s going next.
The beauty of that is there are people that want to know that stuff. As an entrepreneur, you’re the one figuring that stuff out or discovering that stuff, then you can bring a lot of value to the world.
Brian Clark: Absolutely. It’s really funny, I’ve been married 20 years now and my wife’s like, “What are you reading? And I’m chasing down some esoteric thing and she’s like, “Oh, is that something for the business? And I’m like, “It may. You never know.
I find some of my best stuff in the just most random places, whether it be a novel, a nonfiction book on a topic that you think has nothing to do. It’s usually the intersection of things where you get, “Oh, I can make an interesting analogy or tell a story and it helps. But I don’t necessarily set out in that direction.
And I think that’s what true curiosity is. It’s kind of like generosity. You can’t expect to get it paid back, but it does so often. Curiosity pays off with useful material.
John Jantsch: We have this story in my family, I have nine siblings. I have seven brothers and two sisters. And the story goes — it’s mostly myths, but you know how these family stories kind of grow.
But anytime that my parents would take all 10 of us somewhere my mom would say, “I’ll watch the other nine. She would say to my father, “I’ll watch the other nine. You watch John. I wasn’t a holy terror or anything. I just was so curious about stuff that I would wander off and I would strike up conversations with people about stuff.
So some people definitely come to it more naturally, but I think as entrepreneurs, we have to be intentionally curious. Again, if that means you’re going to have to go out and trudge through a book on architecture or calculus to try to get some new ideas, then do it.
Pillar 4: Mindfulness
Brian Clark: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so maybe last five, six years, you cannot turn around without hearing about mindfulness. That’s your fourth pillar. How are you using that term in the context of entrepreneurism? I think I have an idea, but I definitely want to hear it from you.
John Jantsch: Well, there is no real hierarchy to these numbers. Frankly, mindfulness to me is actually the key that unlocks the other pillars.
Until we are able to forget about what happened in the past and stop worrying about what’s going to happen in the future, we won’t experience the level of joy and happiness that I think being an entrepreneur allows. We won’t have the relationships with people we work with, our customers, if we’re not paying attention to what they need, what they care about, what our core values are, and if we’re bringing those to every engagement that we have.
We practice mindlessness so often that it’s actually very hard to focus anymore. I mean, there are so many distractions. There are so many things that we do without giving any thought to.
So for me, the practice of mindfulness is about actually developing the habit to be able to stop and say, “Be here now in this moment. This is the only thing that matters if I’m going to actually go to where I want to go.
Brian Clark: It’s so true. I think among starting out entrepreneurs, they look at maybe guys like us who’ve had 20, 30 year careers that have been successful. I’ll tell you right now, everything that pops in my head is when I screwed up. And it does distract you from what you’re doing now.
And thankfully — it took a long time. It takes intentional mindfulness to just let it go and focus on what you’re doing. I’ve gotten much better about not dwelling on outcomes and goals so much as process. And process is in the here and now. You’ve got to just do the next step now.
John Jantsch: Yeah, sure. And how many days have you put in an 8 or 10 hour day, and really about 45 minutes of that day was productive and actually moved you towards anything that made you any money? Mindfulness, I think, you can equate to focus, but focus on the right things.
Pillar 5: Non-Judgment
Brian Clark: Okay. So, as John said, these aren’t ranked in order. When you have pillars, if one of them falls, the whole thing falls. I like that term. What do we have next at number five?
John Jantsch: Non-judgment, and this is one that a lot of people look at and kind of go, “Huh? How does that play a role? I think if we’re being honest, I don’t know about you, but I can go throughout the day and my mind is judging everything that happens. I mean, everything I see, everything I say, everything somebody else says, and we’re judging it as good or bad.
I think that what that does is it turns off the flow of empathy. It turns off the flow of curiosity, of engagement. And so I think that we need to practice more often just — and this is the hard part. A lot of times people get, “Okay, you’re right, I shouldn’t be so judgy. And when they say that, they mean that I shouldn’t judge things as bad. I shouldn’t judge other people as bad.
But I think where a lot of entrepreneurs get in trouble is they start judging a lot of things as good as well. It’s like, “If this only happened, this would make my life complete. Or, “I’m never going to get any higher than this. So then my goal is to meet this level of income. And then I’ll know that I’ve made it.
And I think that either of those, judging things as good or as bad, just robs us of so much vital energy. But it also, I think, closes a lot of doors for us.
Brian Clark: Let me ask you this — this is something I’ve struggled with, because there’s the idea of good judgment in our decision making. And I’ve historically been able to make good decisions through a lot of thinking. I stick with the problem a long time, it just doesn’t occur to me. But you make a good decision.
And then yet, I’ll go out and start judging everything as good or bad when it doesn’t make sense. So in one way, it can be a skill if applied appropriately, at least that’s the way I’ve tried to think of it in my own evolution, because it can be a very damaging thing to be judgmental. How do you separate that out from the concept of good judgment?
John Jantsch: It is tough, because there are definitely things that you and I would agree, and most would agree, are bad. So I’m not saying that there aren’t bad things or good things in the world, but I think it’s how we respond. There is a great Viktor Frankl quote from Man’s Search for Meaning that I use all the time — that between stimulus and response, there is a moment. And in that moment lies our freedom.
I think that idea of when something happens and how we respond to it, there’s this tiny gap. And how we respond or how we choose to respond is what sets us free. Because if that person cuts us off in traffic and our response is to get all pissed off and ruin the next two hours of our date with our wife, then judging that thing as bad had a real cost.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I like that delineation.
Pillar 6: Resilience
Brian Clark: So the next pillar, I mean, how much can you talk about resilience? Whether you want to call it “grit, which is really the intersection of passion and perseverance, a lot of people forget about the passion part.
The ability to keep going, that’s the tagline of my other project Further. It’s just so key and I think it’s got to be baked in you. Again, it comes back to that keep going — good, bad — keep going because you just learned something valuable. What’s the key to developing resilience?
John Jantsch: I think the key is we’re not talking about hustle, hustle, hustle. That mindset of “Just keep going, never give up, is not really what I’m talking about.
I think the most successful people, who have built anything, have come up against something not working. Let’s call it failure, whatever you want to call it. But I think that the key is the ability to reframe what happened.
The people that fail look at something and say, “I failed. I was no good. I’m not meant for this. But the people who are in that same situation, who keep going, who are resilient, say, “Okay, this approach didn’t work. What did we learn from it? This idea, nobody wanted. Okay, how can we take and repackage it as something else? Or how can we go out and find out what they do want?
So I think the ability to kind of make things specific and reframe them as opposed to like global failure is really the key to resilience.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s kind of the old growth mindset versus fixed mindset. I know there’s been some — I don’t know exactly, but there was a little push back on the concept that a growth mindset naturally leads to success. But we do know that a growth mindset allows you to fail and learn, as opposed to saying, “Oh, I just can’t do this. And that’s resilience.
John Jantsch: Yeah, absolutely. Again, some people were dealt a tougher deck of cards than others. They didn’t have the advantages, they didn’t have certain things. But you still see people like that who are able to overcome and just have this belief in maybe themselves or in something that says, “You know what, I need to go back at this again, as opposed to folding up tent.
And then we see a lot of people that certainly have all the means and have all the education and have all the opportunities who are not able to be resilient enough to push through and figure out what the world really wants them to do.
Pillar 7: Gratitude
Brian Clark: Absolutely, true facts. Okay, so the seventh pillar is one I haven’t always practiced, but I have learned is so important — good or bad, success or failure. What is it, John?
John Jantsch: Well, it’s gratitude. And I know it’s kind of trendy right now. There are a lot of people writing a lot about this idea of gratitude, and I think with good reason.
A couple of things happen. First off, I’ve found that it’s impossible to give thanks for something and not be mindful. You have to be thinking about that thing you’re giving thanks for. I think the other thing it does… How many people do you see in social media —unfortunately, I like to bag on it, because there’s just so much stuff out there that is not healthy or positive — but how many people do you see feeling sorry for themselves when they really shouldn’t? They really have no reason to.
I mean, what we get to do is so amazing. And so to not be able to say, “Hey, maybe this thing didn’t work out. Maybe I haven’t made it to where I thought I was going to, but look how far I’ve come. Look how amazing this life is that I’ve been able to live. I always think it’s really sad when you see people that all they can do is complain about their situation and feel sorry for themselves. When in fact, we’ve got it pretty good.
Brian Clark: Okay, John, that was pretty solid. I’ve got to say you can’t go wrong following this list. But to get your day off right, I highly recommend the book.
We’re going to have a nice handout of these seven pillars that John has made in the show notes. We’re also, of course, going to link to the book, so that you can buy it. John, where’s the best place? Amazon, or is it at the site?
John Jantsch: I mean, that’s totally up to peoples’ choices. It’s available on all the online retailers. I always love to support that local bookstore if you’ve got a good one in your community. I know Boulder Books has it, the Tattered Cover has it out in Colorado. But there’s an audio version, the Kindle version. So whatever your chosen format, you can get it pretty much anywhere.
Where Can We Find You?
Brian Clark: Excellent. And where can people find you for some Duct Tape Marketing goodness?
John Jantsch: Sure. So pretty much everything I’ve been doing for the last couple of decades, at least, you can find at Ducttapemarketing.com.
Brian Clark: John, it’s been a pleasure. And now that I know you’re just up the canyon half the year, you have no excuses. We’re going to have to get together, do some hiking or coffee, what have you.
John Jantsch: There’s a great new brewery in Ned if you haven’t found it yet, and they’re producing really good beers too. I know there’s a lot of these trendy breweries that are just cropping up everywhere.
Brian Clark: It’s a Colorado must-have, right?
John Jantsch: Yeah. They’re producing some great beer and they’ve got bluegrass music on Sundays. So maybe a Sunday afternoon there.
Brian Clark: Excellent. Just let me know and I’ll see you there. All right, John, thank you so much. Take care.