188. Beyond “Find Your Why”: A Smarter Approach to Purpose-Driven Solopreneurship

My name is Carly Ries, and my cohost, Joe Rando, and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around.

We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. So Paul, we are so excited to have you here today. One of the reasons selfishly, I think is because we're currently writing Solopreneur Business For Dummies. So we're writing a book. I know you also just published a book that I can't wait to get to in a bit.

But as we've been writing, one of the things I've been realizing after speaking with our community is that a big hang up is just purpose and drive and creating a business not to make millions and millions of dollars, but one that really fulfills them and and makes them realize what they are meant to do and and happy to do and to create a business around it. So you cannot be coming at a more perfect time today. Welcome to the show.

And if you discover what you're passionate about and pursue your passions and build your career, your business around your passions, well then, basically, for one of a better word, you won't have to work another day in your life. That's as the old adage goes. But what you find is that passions are transient. So you'll be hugely enthusiastic about your passions, but they tend to be transient if you're operating on it with your passions on an ongoing basis. So that that that's one aspect.

But another thing kinda came to fore again over the last ten years was to find your why. And people interpret it from the point of view of, well, if you find your why, well, that's gonna give you a meaning, purpose, fulfillment. And some people actually interpret it as being your purpose. But actually your why is slightly different. And I think the meaning that was taken from find your why was more around, okay, how do you get a team of people in a company to get behind a purpose or a mission for a business itself?

Your true, absolute true why, I prefer to use the word inspiration. call it your genius inspiration. The word genius comes from gignery. It's a Latin word. And that genius to gignery, the actual meaning and the source or the origin of the word gignery is that inherent spirit that was present since birth.

So everybody has a natural genius. Inspiration comes from the art again, the origin of the word inspiration comes from inspirare, which is the breath that is blown within, which is divine guidance. So I prefer to use inspiration. And you you can't you can't alter inspiration. So inspiration are those moments where you've got that wow moment, you're overwhelmed with sheer sense joy, of just wow, of amazement. And everybody will have an emotional response to that in a good way. So it's not that they're crying for sadness. They're actually crying for joy or for wow or for amazement . So inspiration is more to do with what we are actually being prompted to from our unconscious to actually pursue what our purpose is. And so, again, over the last number of decades, I've developed a methodology that actually finds an individual's like purpose, and that's it's different to conventional wisdom in terms of find your passions.

Ikigai is another one, and it's Japanese concept and people will recognize by intersecting circles. There's find your why. there's find your values. And again, each one of those will help to, I suppose, give you an element of happiness. However, it's not your true purpose.

When it goes to solopreneurs, and the vast majority of my clients are solopreneurs and professional services, what I find is a lot of people will set up a business because they've either come in touch with something. Now that could be, a life coach or it could be some methodology or some modality that they found that they had a really regret experience from, and hence they're passionate about it and want to serve the world and want to bring their message or bring their treatment or whatever might be that they found out into the world. And that comes from every single individual's desire to want to make a difference. So when you come to this entrepreneur, they'll set up a business, but a vast majority of people don't know, well, how do we create a business? So how do we get more clients?

How do we price our fees? How do we increase our fees for one better word? How do we manage our time? Because typically as a solopreneur, it's just ourselves. And then what you find is after a couple of years, they get exhausted because, they don't know how to develop that methodology in relation to get more clients and increase the business and get a steady revenue stream.

And now they fall back to being disgruntled, not fulfilled. They've lost their passion again. They've lost their mojo in a lot of cases, and they come back to search for, well, okay. So what should I do now? And that's the circle I see an awful lot of solopreneurs actually fall into.

Now I call it genius unlocked because it's unlocking the genius within an individual, And it's a methodology that'll bring people through in order to find their true purpose and their true innate genius. So your innate genius is the genius that you were actually born with. So there's four elements that makes up that's contained within genius unlocked. There's your genius drivers and your genius drivers is what gives you your joy, fulfillment, your zest for life, your mojo. it literally increases if I talk from a spiritual perspective or from you know, some people talk along these lines in terms of what's going to raise your vibration, what's going to raise your energy levels.

That's what your genuine genius drivers will actually bring to you. So it's your joy, it's your fulfillment, it's that sense of just it's pure zest for life. So that's what I call your genius drivers. Then there's your genius quest. And the definition of quest is a long and arduous journey to find a solution to something or to find something.

Every single individual has a unique genius quest. It's been with them since birth and it continues throughout their whole life. And I that's again contrary to what conventional wisdom or some people will say to enrich and to life purpose in terms of your purpose changes throughout your life. It doesn't. It never ever ever changes.

It goes throughout your whole life and it starts from literally when you're born. Most people are nudged by their unconscious. And what I found by working with so many clients over the years, what I found is that in around the ages of between six, seven, and eight is when their unconscious is really trying to implant on them what their genius quest is. But again, as we grow up in society and parents and all the kinds of things, we forget about that quest and we don't pursue it. But our unconscious is constantly trying to bring us back to fulfill that quest because it's a soul contract.

It's a life contract. You have to fulfill that mission for one better word. So Eugenius Quest is your mission life. It's your what. And what an awful lot of people when they're trying to find what their purpose is, they're trying to find what they are specifically here to do.

Then there's your genius role. Now I've identified 10 different genius roles. So for example, one of them is the parents, the other one is I'm a guide, and the other one is a leader. So there are 10 different genius roles. Now a person will play one of those genius roles again throughout their whole life.

It's what they naturally do. They don't even think about it. They don't have to go to school about it or college about it. They don't have to learn anything. They literally just naturally play one of those genius roles.

Now there's a shadow side and frustration point to each genius role, and that's what causes self sabotage. But being a solopreneur, you're actually wearing a lot of different hats. So you're delivering declines, you're doing your operations, you're doing your marketing, you're doing your finances, you're doing everything. So you're wearing different hats throughout being a solopreneur. But once you identify what your genius role is, now you structure your business around your genius role.

That's your genius role. That's how you're best to fulfill your mission. And then there's your genius inspiration is what I referred to earlier on, which again comes from the origin word that says for inspirare. And people will have that, again, that response. It's you can create it. Your conscious mind can create it. It's unconsciously created. It's divine given. but your inspiration is always directly linked to your genius quest. Always.

And all the genius elements work so perfectly with everything else. As in your genius role, your genius drivers, your genius quest, your genius inspiration. They're all hand in hand with with each other. That's how perfect the universe is. It's literally nothing's ever missing. Everybody has everything within them that they need in order to actually fulfill what their purpose is. Now that's what I call genius a lot.

But in the business format, it works from the point of view of the parent wants to bring the family together. They want to bring a group of people together. So the parent will naturally be drawn towards wanting to have social gatherings, want to build a community, for example, online or face to face. That's what they wanna do. And they want everybody working together well with it within the actual community or within the environment or within the company that they're working within or whatever.

That's the natural thing for the actual parent. However, the shadow side and frustration point is they look after everybody else's needs first. So they're the ones that are always last to be fed. So they're always last to be sat down at the table while all their, you know, their partner or spouse has been handed their meal, their kids have been handed a meal, and they're always the last one to be sitting down at the table. So they'll actually look after their own needs last.

So what's really, really important for the parental role, meaning that the parent, the genius role as a parent, is self care. It is everybody needs self care, but the parent genius role absolutely needs more self care. So that's really how that might kinda manifest in real life.

But however, on the flip side of the guide is they feel that they're not good enough. They feel that they need to know more information, more knowledge or whatever in order to be able to answer the questions for clients or other people. So that's the shadow side of the guide. So again, every genius role has its own downside as well as positive side.

It could be experiencing a walk in nature. For me, if you probably look at my background, I have a lot of aircraft on on my background. For me, experiencing is really an experience that not many people will do. Like, there's a tiny percentage of the population in the globe that will actually do the kind of experiences I do. So for example, my last experience that I did was I got strapped to the top of a biplane.

I was brought up to 4,000 feet in the air, and we did aerobatics in the air. And not many people are gonna do that. So that's my type of experience.

Since the age of 10, I've been asked myself the question, what would keep me here on this life? Because bottom line is I just did not want to be in this life. I wanted out even at the age of 10. So it's not that I grew up in an abusive childhood and it's nothing like that whatsoever, but I just like, I'm an empath naturally and I'm highly intuitive on another side as well. So growing up in an environment, I literally every single day, I was just thinking, I don't wanna be here.

So I'd look at every single way of how I could check out of life, but equally, on the flip side of that, I was looking, okay, so what would actually make me stay? So my quest is actually about how what would actually make me stay? So that's where it put me on the quest in order to discover and find out what does an individual's life purpose is. What would actually make them want to stay here in this life? Hence, the reason why all the different elements to the life purpose.

And I'd have people that would come to me that would be either have contemplated checking out, have planned it, have attempted it, and so on. And once they discover what their life purpose is, now it gives them what they're here to do. And once they start living their life in alignment with that, now it starts to dissolve those thoughts suicide ideation, for example. Okay? that's my quest. So my mission, for a while, about a word, is to try and put people on the right path. That's that's my mission. That's what I do every single day. It's what I advise doing in relation to my, the podcast interviews, my business that I do, as well as growing and developing business from that perspective as in once you got your find your purpose, now it's building the business because the pipeline is the ripple effect of that is huge.

So if a person is designing their business around what their purpose is and developing and growing that, the impact that they have on individuals is massive. So I'm kind of leave, June, for one better word, on trying to get as many people on their life purpose as possible because for them to do their work then is huge. So that's in real life from my perspective. Now all the other people that I would've worked with to discover life purpose wouldn't be as how would you like, wouldn't be for lack of a better word as dark as that, but it will be very specific to that individual and therefore the work and the intention that they need to have within their business. Even if they're a life coach or a consultant or makes no difference what they are.

But when they have the intention of the impact that they wanna make in the world for the individuals that's completely aligned with what their purpose is, what their sole contract is, now things start to change. Start now they're in flow. Now they're into achieving the level of success that they absolutely desire. And that's where the Genius Code then comes into play in relation to how they can make that an awful lot easier and reach the level of success that they want.

And so when I see clients, it's yeah. I need a box of Kleenex. Let's put that way. Okay? That is directly connected with my quest From the point of view is my quest is here in vision, getting people on the right track.

When people fulfill their mission and reach their full potential, that's when they've achieved. So your inspiration is directly linked to your mission, always directly linked. That's how the two of them work together. So when I see that, whether it could be in a movie, it could be in an event, it could be the clients that I'm working with, that for me is giving me the unconscious nudge because that's how everything to do with your life purpose is unconsciously given. So the universe is constantly trying to nudge you in order to fulfill your purpose.

So every single time I observe that, that's the unconscious saying, yes. That's what you're meant to do, which needs you need to know your quest in order to understand that part of the inspiration. Does that make sense, Joe?

I wanted to find out that same information for myself because I could never find so hence the reason why I've tried all the other things to try and find out, okay, so what's my purpose? And it never gave me the answers that I was seeking. And that will be common for pretty much every single client that I've come across and everybody that's gone through my course to discover what their life purpose is. They always come out and say that the level of clarity and certainty that they get is huge, and it deeply resonates with them. So the methodology is based on finding the evidence in a person's life in order I call it a bit like the e fairy tale or the fable Hansel and Gretel whereby you find the breadcrumbs.

So when you look back and you find the breadcrumbs, that's the evidence in your life that your unconscious has been guiding you in order to fulfill your purpose. So just as much as I said, when an individual responds in an emotional way to something that they observe or see or hear, that's their unconscious trying to suggest to them that, this is something that they should pursue. Now I'm not talking about, for example, watching a movie and watching a tearjerker movie because that's created. I'm talking about something that's nobody else around them is having an emotional response, but they themselves are having an emotional response. That's their unconscious trying to nudge them to say, here's what you're meant to do.

Okay? So what I do in in all the questions that are in the methodology, I pull out those breadcrumbs, I pull out that information, that evidence in a person's life. When we bring it all together, now they can actually see all those different elements, your role, your drivers, your quest, and your inspiration. And now it's in the book form. So I again, I developed the course to try and reach as many people as I possibly could to bring them through the the methodology.

And then that was such a huge success that it then turned into a book, a gang trying to reach more and more people globally to try and bring them through the methodology.

But again, it can be very, very quick. So, again, for somebody to say that's once this discovered their life purpose in the way that I teach it, they could do it literally within a half a day. That's how quick it is. journaling or meditating up top Of Mountain. It's nothing like that whatsoever.

So by me working with them, they were able to define did it for both and then I aligned both the purposes together and how they each served each other. Because let me put it this way, the universe is so perfect. Nothing is ever missing and it's so perfect. So what I mean by that is when you get a husband and wife, they generally be mirrors to each other, but they don't know that. So the things that they'll see for example, let's just take a husband and wife.

Okay? The things that they will get annoyed about, that the husband will get annoyed about it, say, and the wife are things that they have within themselves but they haven't owned. So the wife is there as being a mirror to the husband. Equally, the husband is there to be the mirror to the wife. So just in order for and again, so the universe brings these people together in order to get into relationship, to learn from each other, to develop, to evolve, and to grow spiritually.

So to cut a long story short, that's part of the work that he's doing with them in order to develop such a partnership for one of the word together that literally did the because when you bring those energies together, that's phenomenal. Because long story short, because I outlined for them in relation to what their mission is, what they're to do. Now, okay, could say they're solopreneurs in their own right in terms of they come together, but what I said to both of them was you need to do one aspect of the work and your wife needs to do another different aspect the work, but you can still work together serving the same clients if that makes sense. Alright? Good long story short, they are literally traveling the world and their business is going phenomenally well.

So it depends on your definition of success. Some people, it's money and I've got loads of clients that literally probably, you know, if I was to gauge it, they're probably quadruple on average, they probably quadruple their income within the space of two years. So that's from a financial perspective. Because again, as a business consultant, the second book that I came out which is specifically for solopreneurs and people in professional services was how to get more clients, more fees, more time. So when you merge the methodologies and how to grow a business with your being aligned with your purpose, now you're, as we say in Ireland, you're sucking diesel.

You're really in the flow at that stage. So, again, depends on the level of success. Income wise, people would have quadrupled their incomes, increased their fees significantly in terms of the charge because the genius code is all about building confidence and being aligned with your true self being in flow when you're with that and you're able to manage master your emotions. Now everything becomes an awful lot easier. So now if you build your self worth and your confidence, well, now what you would charge will be an awful lot higher than somebody else, for example.

If it comes to relationships, again, the genius code is all really about if you think of it this way, the way I probably best describe for clients is imagine a ground 04:00 and if you're familiar with the ground 04:00 where you got that pendulum and the pendulum swings from left to right. Every single individual is I call the genius pendulum. That genius pendulum operates an individual level, but also on a global level. So you'll see it in politics. You'll see it in countries.

You'll see, you know, countries going from war to peace. You'll see it in politics going from, you know, democratic to republicans and so on. But also on a micro level with individual, each one has a genius pendulum. And every single time we get triggered by something or we have a reaction to something, our genius pendulum has been swung either left or right, but the universe has to bring us back into equilibrium. And when we're in equilibrium, now that's when we're in flow, what people refer to as bliss or love or, you know, just share gratitude for everything.

That's when you're in equilibrium. And now that's where everything starts to flow. So when it comes to people use the word manifesting in your life. Now when you're in equilibrium, you're manifesting pretty much what it is that you want more quickly than you would when you're out of equilibrium. And people wonder why they can't manifest.

The reason being is that they're out of equilibrium. People that I've worked with will that's part of the work that we're working on in relation to remove and dissolve as many of those triggers as possible. So therefore, they don't have fear in their life. They have confidence. it's a confidence not from you know, a cockiness perspective.

It's just a surety that they have. And so they know who they are. They're completely authentic to themselves, and they're just going through life as they are meant to be. And that's literally what we achieve.

So what is the mantra that you would like to share?

And then when it fails or doesn't have the outcome of what people expect, now they start to go inward and say, how did I fail? What did I do wrong? And so now they're self deprecating themselves. Whereas if you had a mantra from the front of you of just fail fast, just try something, and if it works, Brilliant.

Then now you move on to the next step. And if it doesn't work, well then, okay, move on again. Just find the next thing and move forward. But you gotta learn from your failures. It's not about wallowing in your failures. Absolutely not because there's always a learning from every single failure that you come across.

My second book was How to Get More Clients, More Fees, More Time, and I'm currently writing a fourth book. but if you wanna keep in touch, you can sign up to the newsletter too, I'll let people know. So just go to our website davisbusinessconsultants.com.