Hey everybody, and welcome to the Friday wrap up on Streamline Solopreneur. I'm your
host, Joe Casabona, and here's what's on my mind for
Friday, October 2nd, 2026. Now, I'm gonna be honest, I'm going a little bit off the
cuff here.
I don't know if this one's gonna go out as a newsletter, but I just got back from
Creator Camp,
which is put on by Ecamm the fine folks who make this software I use to record this
very show. So if you watch on YouTube, all of the overlays you see, and the fact
that I can seamlessly switch to different scenes in real time, none of that's editing.
I'm doing that as I record. And that's thanks to E Camm.
if you want to check out E camm,
and get 15% off,
you can go to ecamm.com/joe
and,
use the code casone. I think it'll be automatically applied on that page, ecamm.com/joe.
That's an affiliate link, but it gets you a discount as well. Anyway,
you know, on the plane ride home,
I wrote down my follow ups, and this was basically,
four things that I am thinking about after creator camp,
as well as,
my audience takeaways, because I did give a talk on AI automation and smarter workflows.
And
what's really interesting about a conference like this is I often feel like I am
the,
not the detractor, but I am not
the
common voice of ai.
no, that's not, I don't think that's entirely true. I think I just feel that way.
it obviously came up a lot.
you know,
pat Flynn and Michael Hyatt spoke, and,
pat Flynn didn't really talk about AI at all. He really talked about building community.
I really liked it.
Michael Hyatt did
talk about ai,
and
I got the impression,
he was a very nice man. I got to,
chit chat with him a little bit.
and he,
I think the thing that impressed me the most about him is that someone of his,
expertise in Renno, we'll say, was,
attending a lot of the talks
and engaging with the people at the conference, and seemed really,
interested in learning more. And so I really liked that.
he didn't get too deep into how he uses ai, but,
he did say like, he has like an AI slop skill to say, like, check this for AI slop.
so I wanna talk about the four takeaways, and then
I kind of wanna pose a question to you,
about,
how you're thinking about things. And so,
first of all, the,
big
takeaways from my audience,
that I have written on this yellow legal pad,
people liked when I listed stuff I did,
I was nervous about that. The talk I gave at
SHO
was really emotional and impactful, and I did give like, an emotional, impactful
story,
in this talk too.
but the
where I felt like
the, my talk at creator camp lost focus,
what I was worried about, I should say, because it clearly didn't,
was that
some point I just started listing automations I have, or ways I've used ai.
And I,
I felt like that was boring.
but,
people liked when I listed stuff I did, and because it gave them ideas.
And
so I got a lot of, man, when you said that one thing, it made me realize I could
do this thing, or, hey, when you said that one thing, like, I didn't even know you
could do that. So that was really cool, really validating.
of course, like I, you know,
they had a quote board, right, of like all good quotes from talks. And,
my quote, AI is for tasks, not craft, made it onto the board. Super
super excited about that.
and then like the, you know, the stories,
you know,
that really connected with people, right?
and that
that was one of my takeaways from Opsa Hoy too, like the,
have an episode coming out, I think as,
this episode comes out on Tuesday, right? So
the episode right after this,
which I think is 5 59,
talks about the kind of emotional
side of running a business and why things aren't the way maybe that we,
think they are or feel they are.
So that was the first thing.
people also wanted to go deeper in some cases and get started in others. Like this
was, I think, the most interesting. Like, tell me more about this thing, or could
it also do this?
Were
a few questions I got, but then also just like, where do I start? Right? And,
the, the short answer for where do I start at all is text snippets. Like, I think
that's just the easiest way to,
start automating. I'm pretty sure I have a full episode on that.
and then the third takeaway that I wrote down here was, a lot of people often overlook
a simple thing that they could automate, like moving a file from one folder to another,
or using a smart bulb to turn red,
or to change colors,
with the push of a stream deck button, or just kind of doing anything with a stream
deck button. So,
and that was really interesting to me.
It is easy to get like that,
those like expert goggles on and just be like, well, this is, you know, this is commonplace
for me, so surely everybody knows about it.
But no, like,
the problem that you solve,
the people in your audience don't think about the problem you solve nearly as much
as you do.
and that was another big takeaway for me. So, like, sometimes I worry that like,
this is gonna sound boring, but what people are hearing is,
oh,
automation doesn't need to be a big complicated Rube Goldberg machine. It could be
this one action
that can save me a few minutes, multiple times per day, which adds up to hours each
week.
So
I really liked that. Okay. Now, the four questions I have for myself,
are,
do I get
Instagram or Facebook?
And I deleted social media
last year.
it's about a year ago, actually. I did it right before my 40th birthday
because
I was just tired of it.
I was tired of arguing with people or seeing people and like holding my tongue. 'cause
arguing on
social media is futile and,
wastes time.
But after a bunch of talks,
you know, and,
talking to people one-on-one, I thought, is there a way where I can use
social media in a healthy way
that grows my business? Right?
what really
made me think of this
was,
conversation I had with Brandon Washington,
who recorded me speaking
and then came up
and said,
what's your Instagram? I want tag you here.
Well, you can't tag, yeah, I don't have it. He's like, yeah, but like, what's your
username? I'm like, no, I straight up deleted my account.
And so
I thought that was,
that really got me thinking like,
oh,
if, even if I don't have the apps on my phone, even if I don't use them at all,
it's a place for me to showcase things like this,
because now this is the second time that somebody wanted to tag me on social because
of my talk,
and I didn't have
like, I did not give them the opportunity.
So it's really something I'm thinking about. I talked to my VA about this because
another thing that's on my mind is like,
I think a lot of the stuff that I originally hired my VA for,
AI can do now,
and I like having my va Now, there's some things that it can't do fully,
but if I start taking things off my VA's plate, I want to try to replace them. And
so I did ask her like, if social media is a thing that she could do,
from like a management standpoint that, you know, I need to figure out what that
looks like or if she has any interest in that.
so
that is a big question of mine.
and I mean, we have a lot of questions as business owners, sometimes it's,
hard to see
the forest for the trees,
if you will.
now
these events are so important because you, I am getting an outside perspective.
part of being in the room, right, is like trading, consulting a little bit, and,
talking about things in real time, in real context. And that's obviously not true.
And there's people I'm gonna follow up with who I think,
I could really,
benefit from their coaching or consulting. And if you, if you have these questions,
if you're thinking about stuff like this for your business, I do offer something
called the solo Ops Roadmap.
And what this does is I will look at your business, I will ask you these kinds of
questions I'm going through today to figure out how you best work
and what your goals for your business are.
And then I will give you a roadmap
to start taking things off of your plate to start freeing up time for you in your
business so that you can go to more conferences or spend more time with your family,
or finally write that book
or just touch grass. So if you want to learn more about this, if you want to book
a
solo ops roadmap and get some of my time
to figure out how you can save more time, right? Spend an hour with me and I will
save you 25 hours each month.
So if you want that
head over to streamlined fm, that's streamlined FM with a d streamlined FM slash
roadmap, there'll be a link
in the description as well. I do only have a limit number of these, uh, a limited
number of these each month. So book yours today if you are interested.
Okay, so that was the first question.
The second question, which is not even a question anymore, I've settled. This
is,
I'm gonna start live streaming these,
the Friday wrap up.
I think that this is a great opportunity for community building interacting with
people. It's a segmented show, so
it should work super well,
formatted. I'd love to get comments in real time. So starting next week,
Uh, October 9th,
I will go live with the Friday wrap up for the first time, and that will be at 1:00 PM
Eastern Time.
on my YouTube channel,
I'll have a link in the description, but search Joe Casone on YouTube if that's not
where you're listening.
so I will be going live on Fridays at least for a little bit, experiment with this
and see how it goes.
Number three is setting my four pillars for YouTube.
you might have noticed, I've been experimenting with a lot of things here. I've been
trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. And
I've kind of determined that I wanna talk about hardware,
I wanna talk about software.
I wanna talk about ai. I wanna talk about how all of these things fit together
for solo business owners and small business owners. So I need to set those pillars
and talk more about them.
I definitely have some cool content
in the pipeline.
so I'm really excited about that.
You know, I wanna talk more about the stream deck, and I wanna talk about
more of the thing
that's on my mind,
that I'll get to in a minute. Kinda like the closing segment of this show, but setting
my four pillars. And then
the fourth thing,
do I have some simple digital product? I don't think the roadmap that I just talked
about is simple.
I think simple is easy. No-brainer. Here's 50 bucks.
I did something at Creator Camp that I never do.
And that's sell from the stage.
And my friend, Justin Wise,
strongly recommended I do this, sell from the stage, offer a limited time discount,
see if anybody buys it. And to my surprise, three people bought it. And I don't really
think I made a very strong pitch.
So people went to the page, they checked it out, a few people bought, I'm gonna follow
up with those people next week.
but I don't, you know, the other thing I wasn't sure about, and maybe this is why
it wasn't such a strong pitch,
is, is this the digital product? Is this the right audience?
I thought a long time about making an Automation Foundations course for
anybody to figure out how they would automate,
but is that it?
Which brings me to the,
next and final topic,
which is when to code your own thing. Something else,
that I really enjoyed talking to people about at Creator Camp is,
how we are using AI to code replacement tools. And so this morning
I coded a replacement teleprompter app because the El Gado camera hub software sucks.
And I got this idea from my friend Matt Staiano, who's amazing, like, check out his
book.
it's basically how to like, give better interviews, but it's really, it's more than
that, right? It's like a reflection on
what you're asking and why you're asking and how you wanna present yourself. So I
think that's really cool. So,
and so that he gave me that idea, I gave somebody else an idea on how
to,
code up their own version of Seja. And
there's this fine line that I've been thinking about
with respect to when you should code your own thing and when you shouldn't.
For example, I would never code a replacement to eca MI just don't wanna deal with
that even a little bit.
I don't want to
code a replacement for kit 'cause I don't want to deal with deliverability or spam
or anything like that.
But these little utilities that I'm using
I'm gonna send this out in my newsletter on Monday,
but
I'd love to hear from you over@streamlinedfeedback.com.
When should you code your own? When do you code your own thing? Have you coded your
own thing?
Tell me about it over@streamlinedfeedback.com.
You can, that's again, streamlined with a d
you can,
leave a voice note and if you leave a voice note, I might play it on the show. So
maybe I'll do that for the live stream. I'll play voice notes,
live on air.
but
I've really been thinking about that. I have opinions I don't wanna give them, 'cause
I don't want to kind of color your thinking on it,
but it is something I've been thinking about. Also, let me know if that is something
you want guidance on,
right? This is something as a software developer, I know the software development
cycle and I know what could go wrong and I know what could go right
and which is probably why I have these opinions on it. I'm also not so AI brained
that I think it could replace everything I do in every tool I do.
So I feel like
with my thoughts on conscientious AI use
and my experience
as a software developer,
I'm pretty uniquely situated for this. So
if that's something you wanna learn more about, let me know that too. You can do
all of that over@streamlinedfeedback.com. And if you're listening to this thinking,
Hey, this is a lot of stuff I know I need help, I don't know where,
I can help you out with that as well. If you go to streamlined fm slash rap,
you can book a free strategy call with me 25 minutes. We'll get to the heart of what
you're thinking and then we'll figure out if there's more that I can do for you or
if it makes sense.
that's over at streamlined fm slash wrap.
All right, that's it for this episode
of the Friday wrap on the Streamline solopreneur. Thanks so much for listening, and
until next time, I hope you find some space in your weekend.
