Topics: Tips for Solopreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
Tips for Solopreneurs | 3 Top business lessons from 100s of female founders…
What REALLY makes a business grow?
This is THE question every solopreneur asks and this episode…is here to give you 3 business truths that no one tells you.
Pulled directly from 12+ years as an entrepreneur and hundreds of conversations with female founders, expect REAL advice…from those who have gone through it (and honestly? Still going through it!)
These are so fundamental to entrepreneurship that they can determine how long our ideas last and what takes off.
This episode is for the solopreneur who’s ready to stop over-launching and overworking—and start growing in a way that actually feels good.
In this episode:
- Create From Impact, Not Panic
A heart-first strategy shift to get out of hustle energy and into aligned momentum—with zero pitch required.
- Grow With the Future in Mind
Why quick-cash loops are keeping you stuck—and how to reclaim your time with one scalable asset (starting this week).
- Refine Before You Scrap It
The 90-day tweak strategy that turns “flop” ideas into client favorites (and helps you shake off perfectionism in the process).
🎧 Listen for grounded tips for solopreneurs who want sustainable growth
TIMESTAMPS
00:45 – Heart-Centered Entrepreneurship for Solopreneurs
04:30 – Aligned Energy vs Hustle in Entrepreneurship
06:55 – Scalable Growth Tips for Solopreneurs
11:25 – Offer Refinement Tips for Solopreneurs
14:00 – Hard-Earned Lessons from 12 Years of Entrepreneurship
LISTEN TO NEXT: Burnout and Solopreneurs
RESOURCES
Instagram:@chardetryel
Sign up for the priority waitlist to launch YOUR successful podcast
FULL TRANSCRIPT WITH CHARDÉT RYEL
Chardet Ryel (00:00.244)
What do you learn from what feels like a lifetime as a business owner? From speaking to hundreds of different female founders. This episode is of lessons learned, insights, things to really help you feel better in your business, in your mindset as a creator, as an entrepreneur. Welcome to her first three years.
from breakdowns to blunders, learn what worked and what didn’t. I’m your host, Chardét, and whether you’re a new entrepreneur or you’re just starting something new, this is your space to learn and feel a little less alone. I’ll see you inside. This is the anniversary episode, so it should be. It should have been back in March, April. That would have marked one year of this podcast.
But of course, know, life, entrepreneurship timelines are different. So I’m bringing it to you here now. This stuff I’m going to share is not what you often see in a reel or in a masterclass. These are truths that come through basically being a creator, being an entrepreneur. The biggest one I can give you to stop chasing money.
and create from a heart-centered place. And I have met, connected with, been friends with people who are astronomically successful. And one of the things that really resonates a lot is not the ones who are hustling and constantly trying to find psychological tricks to sell. It is people who are really thinking about, can I create something that helps, that serves, that has an impact in some way?
When you do that, it’s like you shift your energy and people perceive it. How many times have you think about it? Have you tried to create something from a place of, need this to work. And then how did that go down? You know, it reinforces your anxiety. I had times where I launched and no one bought them. It was always that I was clouded with this idea of trying to pick something that was profitable. Not even necessarily chasing the money, but
Chardet Ryel (02:14.81)
pick something that was profitable or that I saw other people creating and doing that wasn’t really my zone of genius. And I saw that fail in Flounder. The difference you’ll feel when you create something that you’re not chasing people, but you’re doing it from a place of, I know this is gonna help you. I wanna do this and I’m not obsessed with the metrics, et cetera of it is when you will see a lot of success. It’s important to look at metrics and analytics
after you create something, of course, you want to see what was the conversion, how did it work, et cetera, so you can repeat it. But initially, you need to create from a place which is not linear. If you think about things from A to B in your life, how many things went that way? Probably nothing. And probably the C that you got was not anything you could have ever envisioned. And so this is why it’s important to not
hold yourself just to the money or to the profit when you’re creating and likewise to not create from a place of I’m so terrified and scared that I won’t get the money because people can feel that and they can see that. There’s a thing called emotional contagion and this is the idea that people subconsciously sense your anxious versus aligned energy meaning they can tell even if they can’t put words to it.
when you are creating from a space of anxiety and stress and when you are creating from alignment. And if you are just pushing the dollar, especially now when people are a lot smarter about being pitched, et cetera, that’s gonna show in the results that you get. And even if you get the results, it’s gonna show up in how you feel afterwards. It has to be about impact, not just income. Close your eyes if you’re able to.
If not, just think about this and ask yourself this. If I removed money from the equation, what would I create today just for the impact? If I took money out of the context, don’t need it, not worried about it, what would I create today for impact? The impact part here is really important because it’s not just you want to create it. It’s also you know that it will be something that can help people.
Chardet Ryel (04:33.481)
Ask yourself that question anytime you’re thinking about something. Often if I make something new or I’m playing with an idea, I will an offer etc. Even just a free lead magnet, I will look at am I creating this because I’m afraid or am I creating this to help? Am I creating this just for the potential profit or because of the impact? And if it’s not in the impact, how can I make it about that?
How can I make it super helpful? And that usually helps you align your energy better. The biggest thing is, you know, when people tell you to raise your prices, the thing that’s missing here that they don’t talk about is this feeling. The reason you don’t want to raise your prices is because you are in this anxious energy and really what you’re creating you don’t feel is worth the value. Instead of lowering the price, how can you make the value worth it? So the action here for you, for this one,
for this first insight is to create one piece of content, be it a newsletter, be it a podcast, Instagram story, with no call to action, no pitching, just something that’s helpful. Because this is putting you in that energy of creating for impact. When you do it, I would love to see it. If it’s on Instagram especially, send it to me. Chardét Reel, I wanna see what are you sharing of impact?
and I will re-share it. Okay? I will spread that word. This shift is going to open doors for you. It brings more clients and more leads. And even if you’re someone who’s doing really well in business, numbers-wise, guarantee this shift can take you even further. Next insight from my own experience and from speaking to tons of entrepreneurs. Take away the quick cash and think about scalable strategy.
We often fall into the trap of the nine to five or eight to seven or whatever working time, exchanging time for money and often for the quick money. When you think about entrepreneurship, the real value is not actually the money, it’s your time and how you’re investing it. You have to put a lot more premium on it and you have to look at, I could use this time to create this thing, which will give me money right now, which sure, sometimes we need to do it or
Chardet Ryel (06:52.779)
I could put my time towards something which will be bigger. If I look at the 12 years of experience I have, I would say that over half of them I wasted doing things which were more quick cash, money in the pocket, versus thinking of a more scalable thing. And so I was constantly in this rat race of pitching, launching, creating, et cetera, and not really looking beyond that.
One of the really good, I had a conversation on this podcast as well that will come out soon with a incredible founder. Her stuff was featured on the Today Show and she was saying how when you create a business, this was her one big piece of advice, always think about what is the end goal? Same with an offer. What is the end goal? What is the point of doing this? Think beyond just what you need right now. Because when I think about the years that I spent, for example,
constantly getting stuck doing stuff where I was delivering it once or not able to use it again or something that didn’t have any longevity or I didn’t have time to really create stuff that was more passive, etc. That is where I got stuck and it’s the same for so many of us. Thinking about scalability is more like a workshop that’s on demand, for example, a group offer.
Things like this compound and get bigger. Even just something that you can use again and again is helpful. When I was a nutritionist, so I did nutrition for a while, I would build these amazing one-to-one meal plans and I am grateful for the impact I had. I also spent hours creating them and they were not replicable. So that was not a strategy.
that was really in the best interest of my business longer term. Otherwise, what we fall into is the scarcity loop. We have financial pressure or the feeling of it, and we fall for it at the cost of longer term freedom and result. One of the choices I’ve made, for example, this year is I am limiting quite a bit how many people I bring into my group programs. One, because I know it’s more valuable to people.
Chardet Ryel (09:12.173)
These are the live group programs, not the courses. And two, I know my capacity. If I have as many people as possible, there is no extra room to do anything else. And that’s something that I have fallen into in the past. So think about for you, if you look at your last week, what percentage of your work was for immediate money or the promise of it versus for future growth?
If you really wanna grow, you need to think about at least 30 to 40 % of your time being for future growth. Second thing to think about here, if you think about the way you’re creating, the way you’re doing business, if you continue to do it this way for the next 12 months, the next year, without changing anything else, would you feel burnt out? And that is your answer.
So to start getting out of that, start thinking about one scalable asset. One thing you could start this month. And I’m gonna suggest that at the end of this episode, when you’re done, you go in your calendar and you block one hour this week. You say, this is for my scalable time. This is my growth to start working on it. It’s important to remember here always that more work, more productivity doesn’t always mean growth.
Often it doesn’t, it’s hustle. It’s a trap. You are building something bigger. Insight number three here, keep working on one idea, refining it until it works. I have shared how the big thing that I always struggled with, and this is something that I see really highly successful tech entrepreneurs, for example, doing that most of us don’t.
is they take one thing and they keep refining, refining, refining. Now you wanna make sure the one thing has demand. So if you start doing it and you see it’s just not what people want, that’s different. But if it is something that people do want and need, then it is all about you refining. And too often we walk away from it, we don’t tweak it, and we miss the opportunity for something else. And so many of the entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with on the podcast and
Chardet Ryel (11:24.139)
live over the years really focused on refining one thing. And often what happened is the thing they thought people wanted was a little bit different, but you only get to that if you keep refining. One idea I had like this is I created this 360 wellness plan, nutrition, fitness, behavior change, and it was based on the one-to-one coaching that I had done. So I thought, I know it works one-to-one, let me try as a group program.
And that had really mixed success. It didn’t do super well. I was really tempted to throw it out, because I have done that a lot, done things that didn’t work and just thrown them out. But I thought, I know this works one to one. So this is the point of the demand that I mentioned. How can I refine this? And what ended up happening is I saw that the highest engagement, the best part for people was
the fitness side, the workouts. And so that became a membership which I continued to run for years and had clients stay on for years. This was the case of refining an idea because it was different than what I thought. But I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t refine it. And I kept asking people, of course, you know, the key is to get feedback here. So what is something that you suspect could work but isn’t yet? Can you ask for some feedback on it? Can you tweak it?
Can you test it? This is where you kind of have to beat the perfectionism away because it’s hard, I know. It’s very tempting if you create something, it fails to throw it out because it really does damage our sense of perfectionism. But you have to keep doing things, refining, refining, refining, refining because otherwise it doesn’t work. mean, product entrepreneurs are great at this. For example, Sarah Blakely, she created Spanx. Years of refining before things really hit.
your innovation, your updating, getting what people want comes through iteration, comes from refining again and again. And most of us, give up too soon. This is why even when I run things that I know will be a course, content that has no live interaction, I will still run it every time as a group program at least once, because when I do that, I get feedback.
Chardet Ryel (13:41.175)
innovate, I see what can work so that when it is something people have on demand, I already have fit their need because I’ve reiterated it with people. So think about that if you’re ever considering a type of course. So what’s one idea in your business, you’ve probably already been thinking about it, that you abandoned too early?
Maybe it was because it didn’t have the success you hoped, it didn’t look the way you wanted, but you created it from a place of knowing people actually needed it. That’s the key, you didn’t just create it because you wanted to. What was it? Another really helpful practice to get you in this frame of mind is to look at your old offers and content. Things that were free or paid and say, what was I missing that I now know? What was I missing?
And this might be a question of you thinking of it yourself, going to past clients, checking out competitors, just figuring out because sometimes it’s so much easier to revive and repurpose what you’ve already done. So I’m gonna invite you to take one idea, one thing that you know you gave up too early or you could fix and commit to refining it for 90 days. 90 days.
Refining it doesn’t mean you have to do it every day But let’s say every week you put in the calendar refine our We’ve got a few things in the calendar now and let me know on Instagram charlotte ray out What are you refining? I’ll be really curious to see because I think many of you have amazing ideas They just needed a few more iterations a few more versions Because you know when you fail when things don’t work, it’s not a red light. I know it feels like that, but it’s just data
Every successful person is able to joinust fail more. If it didn’t work out, it doesn’t always mean you were wrong. It could just mean that you need to get more direction and you need to refine it. Now this is the end of these insights. I hope that they gave you some inspiration to think about. Again, our first one was about creating from a heart-centered place, not just from the money and the profit.
Chardet Ryel (15:59.021)
Then we talked about replacing quick cash, know, things you immediately want to bring in the door with a more scalable strategy, including putting your time there. And this last thing is refining one idea. It’s been, as I said, amazing learning in this last year on this podcast. I’m so grateful for you for being here, for listening, for sharing these episodes, for you DMing and telling me what…
made a difference for you. It really does matter to me when you tell me. I really love that. Thank you for that. I want to continue to create content that really helps you here, that you feel makes a difference because your business journey, your creator journey is yours. It doesn’t need to look any sort of way. And I really hope that you walk away with this.
Thank you for being here. you’re someone who has left a review, I especially thank you. know it’s not easy to, you know, take some time and write it and we often forget. So I appreciate that. If you haven’t yet, I would ask you to. It means so much just to see this community grow. So I appreciate you so much and I will see you in the next one. If you laugh, learn.
or felt a little less alone, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify and subscribe! Come back for more! We’re building a community of women to tear down the BS around business and grow in real, ways. Together!
