My favorite show, or at least one of my favorite shows, is Scrubs. It's a show that I often quote with my brother. I rewatch the series at least once a year, including the Med School series, and I was very excited to see it come back this year. But there is one episode that has stuck with me for 18-19 years, and it's something that I think about nearly every day.
See, your business feels complicated, but this Scrubs episode is going to show us that the simplest solution is the right one. And if you want to get the simplest solution for the four systems that every Solopreneur should have, head over to streamlined.fm/kit and you will get those four systems, the simplest solution for all of them, as well as a tools index so you don't have to go looking for the right tools, and an automation and AI swipe file so that you don't have to build those from scratch. But let's get on with this.
Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, the show that helps you automate your business so you can take time off worry-free. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and here's the problem.
We overcomplicate things. I certainly overcomplicate things, but this Scrubs episode called ‘My Own Worst Enemy’, showed me for the first time, Occam's razor. So in this Scrubs episode, My Own Worst Enemy, the team is having trouble diagnosing a patient. He's exhibiting signs of Lyme disease, but they can't find the most obvious proof that he would have Lyme disease, which is a tick bite. When every other test comes back negative, Dr. Cox comes to a realization. He shaves the patient's head, which reveals the tick bite.
Dr. Cox then mentions Occam's Razor, which is often paraphrased as the simplest solution is often the correct one. And this is why I've thought of this episode constantly for the past 18-19 years. But there's actually more to Occam's Razor than just this simple paraphrase. It actually encourages problem solvers to seek explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It's paraphrased as the simplest solution is often the correct one. But the actual Occam's Razor. Right.
The actual philosophy is to seek explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. This principle has resonated with me because I am naturally an overthinker. I was a Web Developer from the age of 14, and one of my hardest habits to break is the feeling that I need a complicated, custom, controllable system. And as a result, when I start something new, kick off a new project, land a new client, create a new offer, I always wonder if I should create a new process or use a new tool, or now, in the age of vibe coding and generative AI, build a new tool.
But here's the thing. You wouldn't believe how much time I've wasted on this. I know because I time track. And so I was onboarding a new coaching client recently, and I was seeking the perfect solution for all of our needs. I'm helping them put in a system for easy content creation, and I thought I would need trackers and status boards and the whole nine yards. But I thought about Dr. Cox and Occam's razor, and I realized that the simplest solution is actually a Google Doc. And I think this is someplace where we, as solopreneurs and business owners, get stuck.
For a few reasons, evaluating a tool feels productive. Oh, if I just get this one thing, it's going to fix everything. But I want to share a story with Jazz Chisholm Jr. If you are a longtime listener of this podcast, you have probably heard me talk about him. He is very open with the media about the stuff he's doing. And Jazz was recently going through a slump, and he tries a lot of stuff when he's going through a slump; he will use his teammate's bat. In fact, he's used Aaron Judge's bat. He wore Giancarlo Stanton's pants. He was looking for the right tool to help him do the thing better.
But those tools, right? Using Aaron Judge's bat didn't make him Aaron Judge. The tool isn't the fix.The system is the fix. And what Jazz was really doing was trying too hard to hit a home run. And so, you know, when he realized this, he said, oh, I'm gonna stop doing everything at a hundred percent and do it at 70%.
And that reduction has actually, actually helped him. So, like I said, tool hunting feels productive, right? Oh, if I just find the right bat, I'll start hitting home runs. And, you know, if you're familiar with the situation, you'll know that Jazz hit two home runs with Judge's bat, but it didn't make him a home run hitter. He had to fix something more mechanical. Right? So, tool hunting is usually just wasting time in disguise.
So now, I want to share this system a little bit more. Right? Because it's really. It really is just a Google Doc, right? And something I hear all the time is like, Joe, you have a lot of cool systems, but I don't even know how to ask where to start. Which is why I put the solopreneur system starter kit together because it gives you a place to start that is a lot simpler than a complicated thing that I've come up with.
For your admin system, I walk you through what's the simplest thing you can do for your admin system, for your CRM, what's the simplest thing you can do to track customers, right? And it's because I have this experience, right, where I tried a bunch of tools. Clarity flow, Slack, Notion, WhatsApp. Each time I onboarded a new client for like a year, I tried a new tool because I didn't want to give out my phone number, but I wanted something more accessible than email.
And it took one of my clients being really frank with me and being like, I don't, I don't use Slack, or Clarity Flow is too confusing for me. And so that's when I decided, hey, for my coaching deliverable, we're going to have a shared Google Doc, and we're going to put everything in there. And it worked like gangbusters. I would put stuff in there, she would comment on it, she would ask questions, and we still had our calls with Zoom, another tool that everyone's familiar with, but we didn't need this big complicated process that, by the way, complicated my automations too. Cause like with Clarity Flow, like you need like the big plan for Automations.
With Slack, you can barely automate certain things. You can get people into Slack, but you can't get them outta Slack. So it also made my automations more complicated, which broke one of my most important philosophies, the fewest links philosophy, right? The fewer links in an automation chain, the better because the less likely it is for something to break, which goes back to Occam's razor. Find the smallest possible set of elements. Instead of having Clarity Flow for this, and Slack for that, and Notion for this, and probably also a Google Doc, I reduced it to a Google Doc and Zoom. And that was a lot better for all of my clients after that.
So what's the point here? What's the takeaway? You don't need to overcomplicate things, right? Ask yourself, when you're starting something, what's the smallest set of elements that solves this problem? You likely already have something, a tool you're comfortable, you're comfortable with, right? Maybe it is a Google Doc.
Only add complexity when the simple version actually breaks, because again, it could feel productive to be looking for the perfect tool, but it's really just busy work. And busy is not productive. It's looking for a new tool. Is procrastination parading around as productivity? Your business might feel complicated. It doesn't have to feel complicated.
And if you do feel stuck, or if you don't have a system in place for some of these things that we've talked about today, I would strongly encourage you to check out the Solopreneur System Starter kit over at streamlined/fm/kit. It's completely free. It is my most valuable resource ever. It gives you the four systems every Solopreneur needs to confidently take time off. It offers how I'm doing this, like it offers my version of the system, but it also offers the simplest solution for each system. It gives you the tools so you don't have to go looking for them. And it gives you an automation and AI prompt swipe file so that you do not have to start from scratch. That's over at streamlined.fm/kit. That's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.