Suzanne Proksa:
Welcome to The Suzanne Show with me, Suzanne Proxa, HR and business strategist, former featured Etsy seller, plant addict, concert lover, gardener, landscaper in training, and human straight up obsessed with helping others and cheering on women. Here, we talk a little business, personal development, women's health, and a whole lot about things that matter, help people, and give them joy. Grab your coffee or your wine. Break out one of your hundreds of notebooks, light that soy candle, and let's dive in. Hello, Suzanne show fam. Have I ever got a treat for you today? I am going to be talking with Rachel Allen about the big lie. What's going on with online entrepreneurship. Are you intrigued? I hope so.
Suzanne Proksa:
Rachel Allen makes words, make money. The owner of bolt from the blue copywriting, he's worked with some of the top names in the entrepreneurial world, including Jonathan Fields, Todd Herman, Shaw Wasmant, Marsha Shander and Mara Glaxel, as well as influencer, brick and mortar businesses, and nonprofits around the world in 21 plus countries. She's consulted for clients and industries ranging from counting to astrology, and her work has directly contributed to phenomenally successful launches, books that end up on airport bookshelves. And in one memorable case, a client getting an MBE. She's also run a phenomenally popular session at the World Domination Summit and regularly speaks to audiences of all sizes about effective communication. Rachel, I am So glad that you are here today. I cannot wait to hear what you have to say, because I know for 1, I am obsessed with online entrepreneurship, marketing, and all of that good stuff. So welcome.
Suzanne Proksa:
Is there Anything else that you would like to add to that introduction?
Rachel Allen:
Hey, Suzanne. No. I don't have anything to add to that wonderful introduction. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
Suzanne Proksa:
All right, Rachel, let's just get out to it and get into the good stuff. So you've highlighted the concept of the big lie in the solopreneur space, which suggests that individuals can achieve what businesses with whole teams struggle to do. Oh my goodness. I'm shaking my head over here. Anyway, can you dive into that further and hopefully put some of us solopreneurs at ease.
Rachel Allen:
Absolutely. So big lie is this this concept or a way of a concept that I came up with a couple of years ago when I was looking around at the online entrepreneur space. And, you know, I've been doing this for about 15 years, so I've seen a couple cycles come and go. And 5 ish so years ago, we were coming to a cycle that was very, very, very familiar To when I started back around 2008. And I was like, okay. What am I seeing here? So we're seeing, like, all the rides and these, like, DIY courses and join my 90 day itch. Bootcamp and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And, having seen this happen before and really not work for the majority of people, I was like, okay.
Rachel Allen:
What's at the bottom of this? And what I realized is that it is the big lie, which is that you as, like, solopreneur or as a person who has a small team Can and should do the same types of things that businesses that have multilevel marketing departments Do. Or sorry. International marketing departments do. And what I mean by that is all the things that we see, you know, that the Internet says that you should do, should in heavy air quotes. So you should post on Instagram every day, multiple times a day, and you should have a newsletter that comes out every single week along with a dedicated sales letter that comes out People who only, you know, do their hand raises, so you're not annoying your list. And you should be on TikTok or Clubhouse it. Or LinkedIn or wherever. You know, you should be on all the places all the time.
Rachel Allen:
You should be doing all the things with super high level content. Oh, and also, you should have a course, and you should write a book. It's easy. Just join my 90 day plan to do it. You know? We all say these things while you're around, and that's the big lie because here's the truth. You can't do it. Like, you just can't. I've been on the back end of so many phenomenally successful businesses and seen the work that it takes to go into this.
Rachel Allen:
And as you said, Suzanne, people who have full Teams dedicated to getting this type of thing done still sometimes struggle with it. So it's it's just not true To think that any 1 person could do it. And the reason that this is a problem is that when we do buy into the big lie, Then it becomes much easier to maybe buy something that doesn't actually work. You know, like, of course, it says you can do x, y, z in a certain amount of time it. Or, you know, some sort of methodology. Because the whole way that this is set up is that if you don't seed. It's because you didn't try hard enough, you didn't want it hard enough, and everybody else can do it. Why can't you?
Suzanne Proksa:
I know my little entrepreneur heart feels much better, and I'm sure that other people do as well knowing that we really shouldn't be expected to do all of the things. So the the big lie is often used to sell courses and systems. We see it all the time. How can solopreneurs distinguish between genuinely helpful resources and those that perpetuate some really unrealistic expectations.
Rachel Allen:
Oh, that's such a good question. So I think the first thing to think about with yielding any resource is why do I think I need this? And if the answer is, well, somebody on Instagram said that I do, then, you know, take a pause, take a breath. If You have a clear strategy and it is teaching you some kind of tactic that you need to know to implement on your strategy, Then I think it can be a good thing. If it's telling you anything along the lines of follow my foolproof pattern for x, y, z, or copy my calendar. Like, anything that is highly specific to 1 person's experience being Strapolated out, usually without very much thought to everybody else's experience, that's where you wanna be really careful because the The issue with that is the person who made that course or the person who made that resource or whatever probably did have a great deal of success with it, But that didn't happen in a vacuum. They were who they are with their audience in a specific time frame with Other things going on in other circumstances, and you are never gonna be able to exactly replicate that. So in trying to just copy something that somebody else did, It's probably not going to work because you're not them, you don't have their audience, and it's not the same time. So yeah.
Rachel Allen:
Again, I would just say look 4 things that are teaching you tactics or something that you can apply to a strategy that you already know works for you as opposed to Don't think about what you need to do in my in your business. Just do what I say and success will happen.
Suzanne Proksa:
Excellent. So I, of course, have read some of your work and your critique of the system and its impact on newcomers to the solopreneur world is really thought provoking. How can season entrepreneurs or industry leaders take responsibility for promoting healthier, more realistic expectations within the industry. You know, what changes would you like to see in the way advice and expertise are shared in the business community around this topic.
Rachel Allen:
So I think the first thing is just that recognition of context of if you're Creating something or selling something and saying like, hey, this works for me and here's why. So that people can have a Clearer understanding of like, hey, this worked for me when I was doing this specific type of thing. But if you are not doing this specific type of thing, maybe it won't work for you. I think another thing that's always important is just to encourage sovereignty in, people as they're reading through your copy when you're selling something. You know? This comes back to the the same drum that everybody's been beating forever, which is, you know, just don't be a jerk when you're writing your marketing copy. Don't do the whole thing where you're like, if you buy my thing, it will fix All of your problems and you'll feel wonderful. And if you don't, then maybe your house is gonna burn down. You know, there's like really, like, shady things that people Try to manipulate or try to use to manipulate people into buying things.
Rachel Allen:
I do also think that it's important To emphasize the difference between strategy and tactics because both can be taught and both can be very successfully taught, But when you try to sell 1 and you're actually teaching the other, that's where you get a lot of issues, lot of squishyness coming up. So I think it comes down to frankly, a willingness to be responsible for the consequences, which also brings up Something that's just not so much on the marketing side of things, but on the actual product delivery side of things. You know? I've seen Several instances where people will get into courses or they'll get into, group setting or masterminds, and they realize right away that this It's not for them. It's not the right fit. Something was perhaps, misrepresented in the marketing. And then they're told, well, like, sorry, it sucks to be you. And, you know, kind of irresponsible as a as a salesperson or as a business owner. So That's just something else to think about.
Rachel Allen:
You know? Like, what are you actually willing to be responsible for when you are putting this stuff up? Because The very obvious but often forgotten truth is, like, actual in real color living color humans are buying the thing that you're selling And your actions have an effect on them. So it's I think it's important to think about that with as much gravity as, you know, your bank balance or your work life balance or whatever else.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you for providing that advice and insight. So I really love to hear from you is what else are you currently seeing playing out in the world of online entrepreneurship.
Rachel Allen:
Oh, gosh. How much time do we have? I've been doing actually, An entire sort of analytic series this year because this has been a weird year in online entrepreneurship. So To kind of nutshell it, so I think everybody came into this year thinking like, I don't know, maybe things are gonna settle out. Maybe things will be a little bit chill as The 1st quarter was a little bit like, maybe it's it, isn't it? And then 2nd Q3 for most people that I've spoken to has just been like, what on earth has happened. Like, customer behavior is very different. People are much slower to buy. They're gonna need they're gonna be a lot more hand holding. And the things that used to work really well, those good old, like, never fail things have been failing badly.
Rachel Allen:
So I started seeing this in my business, and then I was having clients tell me, like, kind of secretly, like, I think something's wrong with my business. I don't know what's happening. And then I was like, guess what? You're like the 7th person who told me that this week. So I started talking about it much more publicly in, an Instagram series called Diagnosing the Internet where I've Other business owners, and we we diagnose the Internet. We talk about what's going on. But the things that I've pulled out of this, so far Is that we've been in a really interesting situation with, this year where we're seeing a generational cohort shift like we haven't seen in a little while. Also, in 2020, we had a bunch of people who, you know, they were at home or everything was set up up in the air anyway, so they were like, oh, I'm gonna, like, start an online business, and I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. And then everybody else, they also had their SBA money, if they were in the US.
Rachel Allen:
So there was a bunch of new people Who had a lot of liquid assets and it was this big influx and almost artificial bubble. So it was very easy to sell things. I know a lot of people had their best years during the pandemic in the year or during 2020 in the year directly after that. Fast forward to now, We're like 2 years in with this cohort, and this is about the time in in any business owner's journey where you realize, like, wait, this doesn't get less hard. Because no. It doesn't. It just gets different hard forever and ever and ever and ever. So we're seeing a lot of people dropping out, which is Totally cool.
Rachel Allen:
Like, they're realizing this isn't for them, and so they're going back to a w two type job. And what we're also seeing at the same time is a lot of experienced entrepreneurs who are just like, you know what? Already doing this for a while, and they are also leaving for w two jobs. We're seeing a lot of people who have been around This space 15, 20 years or or so going and getting c level jobs in other companies because the line that used be very demarcated between online business and offline business. It's getting a lot more blurry. So we're seeing all of that. And in response to that, we're seeing people kind of go 1 or 2 directions. One of which is they're really doubling down on what worked before because, like, it's Always worked before. So of course, we're gonna try it.
Rachel Allen:
How could it not work? You know, Seth Godin or whoever told me it was gonna work. And I was just making a little like funny gesture with my hands. That's why I'm laughing to myself. But the other way is that people are like, okay, So the old stuff isn't working. Now what? And what I'm really seeing actually provide results for people is craftsmanship. The more you can bring your very best to whatever it is you're doing, the better results you're gonna see. I know entrepreneurship has a culture of ship fast, fail fast, and that's just not really working right now. It probably will again.
Rachel Allen:
I'm like two and a half ish Years just knowing how these cycles go. But right now, the thing that is working is if you can bring a higher level than anything else it. Around you. So in my case, for instance, you know, we all have, like, the typical newsletter opt in. Right? Like, that is the thing that always worked, Except, well, right now, it isn't really. So what I've been doing instead is offering 2 free workshops a month. Like, that is my equivalent to my newsletter opt in. No.
Rachel Allen:
That is so much more work and so much more personal time than just, like, flapping up a little Email embed and then having people sign up and download a PDF, but it works phenomenally. I have tripled my list size this year, And people actually know me. They're highly engaged. I have people coming to the workshops. They bring their friends, and it's leading to clients. So it's that kind of thing where the more you can bring something above and beyond, the better results you're gonna get.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you so much for that rundown. You know, the online space is just constantly changing and evolving and also gonna revert back to some things that we saw back in the day that maybe aren't so great. There's a lot of discussion about that right now. So with what you just discussed you know, in the last question, the previous questions, and, and You know, just what you see in general, what do you recommend that people really start doing instead? What do you think they should avoid? Anything that you would like to share in that realm, I'm sure would be incredibly helpful for those in the audience who are solopreneurs and diving into the world of entrepreneurship.
Rachel Allen:
So I think the very best thing you can do is, Like I said, do the best you possibly can right now. Now, of course, that's gonna change depending on what resources you have, depending on your experience. You know, there's There's only so much you can do sometimes, but if you can bring that little extra oomph to it, you're gonna see a lot better results. Similarly, the more human to human, like, 1 to 1 or 1 to small interaction you can have right now, the better. So customers are also taking a lot longer to nurture and, like, getting ready for their sales. So the more you can talk to them I mean, if you can chose, Like little q and a's, if you've got a really active email list, if you send out emails. The more you can just have that, Like, space to face connection, the better. Things to avoid, I think, is anything that's really large Cohort based right now.
Rachel Allen:
I'm not seeing anybody do it especially well. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist or just haven't really seen it. And I haven't seen one, frankly, It's gone particularly well for anybody, like, on the customer side or the business side in a couple years, so I would keep an eye out for that. I also keep an eye out for anything that promises a quick fix, which, like, sounds really obvious when you say it, but there's so many things where it's like, oh, if you just do this, if you just change that. And the way that things are working right now, the level of complexity we're playing with, that's just not gonna happen. So I don't really have a good news for people there, but what I do say a lot of times, and I've said this in so many interviews and places, but Whenever anybody asks me, hey, you know, do you think I should be an entrepreneur? I say, okay, here's the deal. Entrepreneurship is where almost nothing is your fault And almost everything is your problem. That is the experience of it all day long forever that never changes.
Rachel Allen:
And most People are like, well, that sounds terrible. I mean, it kind of is. So, you know, they are perhaps better suited to doing something else because If you don't love that, it's a bad way to spend a life. But there's a few people who are like, oh, they feel like Really feeds my brain. Like, I wanna solve problems all day long. And I'm like, great. Then this might be for you. So that's what I would just recommend having that Reframe and really thinking, like, do you really wanna do this, or did you just kind of want the Internet to be your ATM because that's just not going to happen? And if you do enjoy the the problem solving and the freedom of, being able to work like this and, you know, all the risk that comes with that as well, Then great.
Rachel Allen:
No. Now is the time to really double down, hone your craft, provide the best you conceivably can for your people, and really get to know them.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you for all of that sheer gold, Rachel. That is going to be so helpful for people. And now we get to one of my favorite questions, because I think it's just nice to summarize for people. What are the top 3 takeaways? If people remember nothing else from our discussion. What are the 3 things that you would really like them to take away from this episode?
Rachel Allen:
So I think the first thing is just remember that the big lie is just that it is not physically possible for you to do What companies with international marketing departments do. You just can't. If you want to play at that level, you have to have a team. It's 1 human or a very small team cannot do it. So that's my first thing. Just know that and stop beating yourself up about it Or stop buying courses that tell you you can because you can't. It's just not doable. And then the second thing is to recognize that this has been a really weird year in business.
Rachel Allen:
So if you have any listeners who are maybe a little bit newer to this and you're like, wait, is it always a garbage fire? Like, yeah, but not like this. We are in a particularly interesting phase of a cycle, so things will shift. And I think the third thing is just the the move right now Is to be as human with people as you can. It's something I'd say in entrepreneurship all the time is that human is the only move left because it is. That's it's what's working and it's what's what we need in business. So I would, remember that and remember to bring your craftsmanship to the The more quality you can deliver right now, the deeper, more rewarding, and long lasting client relationships you'll do, develop.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you so much for just getting that summarized for people. That's always so helpful. So by now, You know, there are probably people who are wondering how do I get more Rachel Allen? Where do I find her? What does she have to offer. So please do tell the audience, how do they find you? Where do they find you and how do they work with you, Rachel?
Rachel Allen:
Oh, I am very easy to find. I'm all over the Internet. So you can visit my website at bolt from the blue copywriting.com. We're also on Facebook at Bolt from the Loop Copywriting. I'm most active on Instagram, which is also Bolt from Loop Copywriting. It. And LinkedIn, where you can find me under my name, which is Rachel Allen, a l l e n. You can also just send me an email, and I will email you that, like, real live human, you know? And that is rachel, r a c h e l, at bolt from the blue copywriting.com.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you so much for being on the show, Rachel. It's been an absolute honor to have you, and I just absolutely love your, your viewpoints and what you bring to the entrepreneurial space. And I'm sure I am not alone. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope to come across you again soon in the online space.
Rachel Allen:
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And, yeah, I can't wait to learn our paths cross again too.
Suzanne Proksa:
I hope that you loved this episode. If you did, give me those shout outs, show me some love on iTunes, give me a rating. And, hey, if you wanna know where to find me, You can find me on pretty much all social media at suzanneproksa. That's suzannepro KSA. And you can also head over to my website, Suzanne Prosa.com. Until it.
