And perhaps I do want to say this, perhaps if you can't find a problem that your business is solving for and your business is struggling, that could be why. Because you aren't actually solving problems. You just chased an opportunity. And opportunities come and go.

Okay, Christian, so I've been spending a lot of time on watching and listening to a bunch of entrepreneur business podcasts, and just like my feed's been flooded with how to start a business, how to do this, and it's got a lot of these people talking about how do you find the right opportunity? How do you monetize your audience from content creation? How you

Find the gap in the market and the opportunity. And it draws a difference from how I was taught a lot more about business from people like my father and other people that I look up to who have done really well in the business scene. And it's this reframe rather than searching for the opportunity, but looking and understanding about problems, understanding what is the problem

you want to solve and you have a solution for, and then offering that and giving that to people. Because I find, and in reflection of some of this subject, is the speaker on opportunity, gaps in the market, monetizing your audience, it feels very extractive of people, of communities. And ultimately, I don't think that that is going to

be as fulfilling as per se finding problems that you have faced in your life, coming up with solutions, and then sharing that solution with the general public. So in this episode today, Christian, I wanted to talk more about what the problems that small business owners and solopreneurs are facing day to day. Last week we talked a lot about this greater economic problem that we're seeing in the market where

AI is, you know, taking a lot of jobs. It's a very competitive thing that a lot of employers are choosing rather than employees. And so today I would like to talk a little bit more about the real problems that we're seeing that we've faced starting small businesses and in the day-to-day operations and all of that. So so what are some things that you've seen a small business owner struggling with and you need to deal with?

You know, before I answer that, I'd actually like to take a step back. You you said a you said a word that's sticking with me right now, and it's really just like this extractive nature of of of how our system currently works. Does it mean it has to work that way? No. But there there are folks who have chosen that path. and up until this point, even through the Industrial Revolution and before then.

it made a lot of sense to do that. I mean, even if you look at like the extractive nature of the old trading companies that that used to come in, and and now we're seeing that play out again with these data centers. and a lot of these data centers are actually focusing on, I mean, I just read some of the latest news that they're focusing on Native American reservations, promising them that it'll, you know, give them lots of jobs, it'll be this great opportunity.

when really it's just another opportunity to extract resources and to grow their their own business. And I think there's there's quite a bit of a a data center overhyping in my in my opinion and like a a playing down of of the actual impacts that those have. But it but it makes sense systematically when you understand and when you look up the history of how some of these major companies have even come into existence. And it and it's through this

this history of extraction. And so for me, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because when it comes to this era of AI, it to me it feels like there's this opportunity to do things differently. And there's this opportunity where it really levels the playing field for small businesses. You know, in the future of let's just say like very AI, like I can't like AI gets to a place

To where there is basically a surplus or it's very easy to have any sort of product or service. Well, what does that do to our current system of how we work with with money? And so I think that's where again, I think we should we should zoom out to what the past is and understand that. and then also be here today of where small businesses now have this opportunity to level the playing field. Like the industrial revolution was a lot of times focused on like physical labor.

and now with this AI sort of revolution or AI era, whatever you want to call it, it's more outsourcing. I'm gonna use quote unquote intelligence, unquote, but really outsourcing some of those monotonous tasks that people don't want to do anyway. And so for me, when it comes to that small business owner, a lot of times it comes to a very simple thing of time. How much time do you actually have to run your business? How much time

Do you actually have to do these tasks, still spend time with your family, still be creative in whatever you're interested in? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, time is one of the most important things for like humans. You know, time is very valuable. And often I think we can feel caught up like we're just losing track of it and we are losing a sense on time altogether. Yeah. Are there any certain ways in which

Certain tasks that you would say have eaten up most of your time in the past and your work in different things that now you are able to resource and find more time to spend more time with your family or whoever using AI in order to sort of achieve some of that. Some of the things that it's sped up for for me most recently is actually the ability to

Get things done. Like obviously people say all the simple things like, write an email, or hey, write a message to my family, or hey, do this, or hey, do that. and I also think like data entry is is another one of of being able to say, Hey, I want to do this, X, Y, Z. Here's this, here's this, here's basically the data, and I need to enter it into this. Some of those easy things. And another thing is research, especially as a small business owner, like whether I'm researching

what regulations there are in a certain city or state that I want to be doing business in, whether I need some like very light, I would say, it was I don't totally rely on on AI for complete legal advice or tax advice. But if I need some like light thinking or light research, I'll really push instead of me going to search for, hey, what is going on here? I'll say, Hey, AI, this is what I'm doing. Find me some links to the most recent resources. Okay, great. That just gave me a bucket. Yep.

And then you can vet it and you can make sure that it you can go check those resources, make sure it's right, and like you get those resources much quicker. I remember in school, that was one of the biggest things that I would use AI for. Is I would be, here's what I'm writing a paper on. And this is my general thesis. Now can you go help me find scholar papers that support some of my ideas? And I would go, it would send me links, some would be.

you know, not good, but some would be great and I would find great quotes to use. And it was just such a a time saver rather than pulling up Google Scholar and going and searching, reading X amount of articles in order to find people sort of also sharing the same point that I'm trying to prove. Yeah. And I've you know, in the past I've you know, when you open up a business you wear a lot of hats. Like

no matter who you are, no matter what business you're in, like you're gonna wear a lot of hats. And I tend to lean towards things that excite me. and then also hats that I know I'm just good at and can get done very quickly because it's just makes sense for me to do it. And so a lot of times I take on like a pseudo operations type hat until somebody else can come in in a more permanent or semi permanent capacity to take that on. And so

Having known that experience, like one of the things that I'm building right now with Aventide is what I'm calling like smart compliance, which it's not legal or tax advice, but it is like this system that is like one place for all of your very important documents that's totally locked up in a vault. The AI doesn't actually read it beyond just doing a brief scan and then that gets deleted.

And being able to tell me like and plan and give me dates on like when I need to do certain things and how I need to do it and what's the most updated guidelines. And you know, there's whole companies out there that provide APIs for this. and to me, this is one of those exciting things of like, no, with the advent of AI, we can actually build this for ourselves and we can actually give this to other small business owners so they can have one less thing to worry about or one less thing to manage. and if you expand that out further, it goes into

You know, making sure that you're you know, just anyway, I'll kinda pause there.

You know, I want to go back to this idea around time a little bit. And because when we were talking about one of the biggest things that we see small business owners and solopreneurs dealing with is this aspect of time. And that's something that resonates a lot with me, with Native Cafe. Is I felt strapped for time. And when I did have free time, I didn't feel like I could do the things I n wanted to do in order to recharge and re-energize myself or

go and pursue other aspects of the business that would ultimately lead towards better systems, better growth, all these different things because I felt so consumed with pressures of rent, payroll, marketing, all these different things that were not my strong suit. And I go back to this problem solution that we were we, you know, how we opened the cafe. Although we had a great opportunity, we saw a problem

in our town where we didn't have a strong community center and good specialty coffee hub. And so that was the problem we were trying to solve and do our best at serving the community. And so once my time started being lost with these other aspects of the business that I wasn't so strong at, so attuned at, I wasn't able to solve the problem that we were trying to solve. Now we

Or do a better job. We solved it. We we did create that sort of space. But things like community events, outreach, things that really got the community involved. When I went out and did extra of that, it was just too much because there were these finite things that we were forced to do day-to-day in operations as a small business. And

Ultimately I I at times felt like it was hard to go and do a better job of the thing we we were trying to do in the first place. So I feel like time is just such a precious thing for us as small business owners, and it's something that I feel like it's easy to lose track when it's happening to you. Like if you were to ask me if I knew I was just feeling like what was going on.

Or what I wanted to be be pursuing, I wouldn't have an answer for you because I didn't have time to sit with my thoughts, process all the things, and also like reflect on some of the positive that had been going in to and what we had been giving back to the community. And so I think these aspects of time, you know, these different things of setting up more.

Automation is just such an asset for small businesses. And ideally, we would have a bigger team, a bigger staff who are able to do more of those roles, right? Do more of that work that was so draining on us. But as a small business, we didn't have those resources. We already didn't really have the resources to pay ourselves. And

How are we going to, you know, pay somebody else to do the work that we already aren't able to pay ourselves to do? And so that's where I think AI absolutely plays a role for small businesses, is when you are so strapped for cash and you don't know how to totally communicate or set up, you don't have the time to set up all the systems for a manager to take over what you've been doing.

Using automation is a huge asset. So, you know, I think of, you know, how could you have payroll running or inventory or understanding like understanding updates about your business, about, you know, having things connected to your different products that you are using? Like I felt like everything was in different places was the other thing. As I always felt like I didn't have one centralized

Home to go to when I wanted to check up on the business. Did I want to go and pull up Square Reports? Did I want to go into QuickBooks? Do I want to pull up our socials? I didn't have a grounded place when I was like, okay, let me think about the business or think about these different things. I didn't have a centralized home for that. And so I felt super disorganized in that time as well.

And I think that organization and that centralized stuff is actually a huge thing that we've been sort of exploring and and why we're building Aventide, because that's what it's gonna be, is it's a home base for all of your different products and all the different things that you're working on. Because when you don't need to go searching for all of these different

tools that you use, all these different aspects, that's going to save you time. And what time is going to give back to you is going to be huge. And so I'm just really excited that we're going to be able to offer that to some small businesses to be able to start saving their them time and having that centralized space, that home, and also feeling like you have just like connected ecosystem to understand what's going on.

And setting up some rhythms of things that you just need to do. Say you're able to pull things and get a quick order guide every week. So you don't need to go and go line by line in person, checking all of your all of your different cabinets and all of your different things. You have an understanding of what's coming in and out of your business. And and then you can just also be connected to your socials and your marketing and create plans, think

ideate, you know, that's one of the strongest things that I think AI has given us is this ability to have a thought partner is something that you've talked a lot about too. And somebody somewhere, I shouldn't say somebody, to sort of shoot out ideas, pressure test them, and maybe although there is this a lot of AI as a yes man, just tell it to disagree with you if it really disagrees with you.

And you can kind of just sort looking for what's next, that growth, that that energizing. When when you have more time, you're able to feel more energized in your business. And so that's what's really exciting to me with AI. Yeah. And there's there's something happening right now. It really comes down to, you know, somebody, I don't know who said it, but it it makes a lot of sense. It's saying something like AI isn't going to

replace your job, the person using AI is going to replace your job. And and I think that there's there's some truth in that as it's kind of challenging all of us to scale up and challenging all of us to start understanding how it can be used in our business. And when it comes to like what is that value for you specifically for any small independent business owner is a time savings. I think that's what it really comes down to.

and so how can you have time of having that great thought partner basically session, like a deep dive on a certain topic that helps you make a more informed decision? And I'll keep repeating that that it's still us that we need to be making these decisions because AI, while it's good at a lot of things, it's actually probably better at a lot of things than than a lot of us are. There are certain things that it's not very good at.

and and one of those things which is funny that people use it so much is actually like planning and making future-based decisions. and so I still want to encourage anybody out there that's listening, is that you have agency, you have control over your independent business. AI is just a tool to help you make more informed decisions or better decisions. and then once you've made that decision, I think then it flips into how do you actually have AI do something?

you know, like some of these operational tasks, some of these things with maybe your your your just basic bookkeeping or getting generating marketing ideas or coming up with like just recipe things to get your mind moving kind of in that business rhythm. Yeah. Absolutely. Just that that step by step and that consistency is so huge. Now, Christian, I kind of want to shift the conversation back a little bit, talk a little bit more about extraction.

And extraction in businesses and this idea about starting your business and how you start it. And I want to talk a little bit about why I think this matters, this reframe of opportunity slash extraction versus problem solution business ideas. And and why also I think we often are hunting opportunities. And really what that comes down to is I think.

We build extractive businesses because as people, we feel extracted from ourselves. There's a ton of economic pressures on everyday people. And big companies are extracting our our data, our attention, our subscriptions, our money, our like freedom. So we feel like we are being taken from. And really the only way to

kind of gaining more agency is if you do that too. Like if you extract from others and you're able to get ahead and you're able to get ahead of the curb, right? Then those that feeling of being extracted from all of a sudden becomes lighter, becomes easier to deal with day to day because you have that, you know, economic comfort or these different things. And so yeah, Christian, what are some

ways that you feel that sort of cycle happens, things that we're getting extracted from, causing us to sort of we're forced to hunt for opportunities in order to get ahead often. Yeah. And that and that's why, you know, I'm not going to get into how each person makes decisions. I'm not going to get into

maybe the pros and cons of capitalism because it's a system that has worked for us this far and I think that it's also something that we can understand how to work within, but to make different choices, especially in this AI era. and one of the things that that I think about is the there's this there's this massive gap

wage an earning gap between like people who have ultra wealth and people who are struggling to have their basic needs met in the United States and it keeps growing. Right. Like like that's just that's just the data. And and I'm I'm not going to say that I know exactly why that is happening, but but I think some of the the system is in place is to support that extractive nature of doing business.

And obviously each individual person has that accountability for how they choose to participate, but unfortunately it it it does create a very steep competition if you choose not to to be extractive, is what I've found throughout my time and throughout other incredible independent business owners that I've met who have tr who have done things quote unquote the right way or

or being as ethical and more morally responsible as possible. and so I want to spend less time there, but still acknowledging that there are some truths and why extraction has happened. I mean, one example or something that I'll I want to go into deeper is like why why are we so focused on independent businesses? And I think there's a couple of reasons and and one of the base reasons is starts with an economic reason.

And there's something called the local multiplier effect, which is that if you spend money locally, it goes, I think it's anywhere between two to four times farther than if you spend it like a big box retail store. some of those reasons being that these local businesses will maybe hire somebody locally. They're then going to spend their money more locally. And it starts to just create this more regenerative nature within these local economies, which is I think how we, how we ultimately close the gap.

It's one of my favorite things to do is to spend in local communities and support independent businesses. And you know, when I think about those businesses, typically this different often we see people who have passions in what they're offering, right? It's the cafe owner who loves coffee. It's the restaurant owner who grew up with food in the ha in their household and they wanted to share that with people. Right. And so I think this.

Supporting local businesses is just an amazing choice that we can all make. And I think this ties into this greater conversation around fulfillment and this, like some of this happiness that I think, you know, there's a lot of talk around happiness numbers dropping and plummeting. And I think one of those big reasons is because people aren't finding

That much fulfillment in what they're doing. They're feeling like they have to do it, not because they're passionate about doing it, but because it's what's gonna allow them to earn money, to do things. And they don't actually want to be doing what they have to do five days out of the week in order to just live. And I do feel like when a business starts from this problem solution mindset.

Rather than opportunity, you're always able to fall back to what the problem is and what the solution is. And so then when you build your small business's culture, when you're able to tie in your problem solution into your company's culture, your small business culture, then all of a sudden your employees are starting to be able to see the vision. They're starting to feel like they're working and they're part of something bigger than just some.

Big corporations hunting down and extracting from communities. And I think that ultimately leans into this idea around fulfillment and happiness. Like you talked about some of these best bus jobs these days is for independent businesses rather than these big corporations that are often seen as like glory homes. Now that sort of conversation about what a good job is, what who the best employees are.

Is starting to be more independent businesses. I think one of the biggest reasons for that is because when you're working for an independent business, it's so much easier to see vision, see the reason that you're doing the work, seeing the impact that you're having, and seeing the problem and seeing the solution and seeing how it's helping people. And I think that leads to a big aspect of our fulfillment.

every day is helping people, essentially. That's what I think we are here to do. Yeah. And specifically I think I think our team, right? like we it feels like a a passion or a fulfillment or a calling to support independent business owners. and so that's how we all check to see like, are we doing are we doing work that's important to our lives today?

Then I also want to acknowledge the the privilege that we have to do this right now. That I have to sit here with you to do this. And I want to acknowledge also the hardship of what it takes to move into owning and building your own way. Like it's not it's not something that just happens overnight, like creating your own independent business. With AI, it's definitely sped up the timeline, that's for sure. And that's why I continue to encourage people to explore. That's why

you know, we started building this company in the first place, was like, hey, I don't I think there's actually this incredible opportunity for the everyday business owner, for the independent for the somebody who already owns a business or somebody who's thought about it but never pulled the trigger to to now do this with with this AI era. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we there's there's one more person on our team, Eric, and he was talking about this in our meeting just yesterday. And

How this, what we're doing here, means so much to him because it is an ability to look back and reflect and say, I did something good and I helped small business owners. And also then for his kids to see the impact, right? And I think that level of feeling impact, helping people, the level of fulfillment and sort of your day to day sort of peace and happiness.

I would love to see those numbers about what the difference is between somebody who is who is constantly extracting from others compared to the numbers of somebody who's helping others, essentially. And they can both be successful, which is really amazing. And I think it's just one key way in for us to sort of find a little bit more happiness and

not burn out as easily. Going back to the cafe, I think if I was able to look back and reflect on the problems that we were solving and what we were able to do for people, I would be have more gratitude in me and I wouldn't burn out so fast because I was able to be doing what I felt really mattered rather than the tasks that didn't feel like they were helping us be better, do better by our people.

And so yeah, I mean Eric was was spot on when you talk when talking about why what we're doing matters to us is because we want to help those independent businesses. Yeah, and each each person I think is gonna have their own, you know, unique flavor that they bring into this world of what they wanna do. You know, I think about one of our our mutual friends who's a chef.

And who owns multiple restaurants and has worked so hard to do it. And when you actually see them like in their craft and their what they're what they're creating, I think it's it's a more beautiful world if we could each be doing those things that bring us fulfillment and joy. A hundred percent. So what to do now? Like I perhaps you already have a business and I want to talk about sort of a little exercise that I was thinking about is think about your business.

And just write down the problem that you're solving, not the product or the service that you're offering, but what is the problem and how are you working to fix that? And you could have started a business out of seeing a great opportunity, seeing a storefront that you were like, that's a corner store, there's gonna be a bunch of foot traffic, I wanna put something in there. But rather than although you may have started in that sort of state of seeing an opportunity.

Reflect on what the problem is that you're solving. Because ultimately, for any business to really be successful, they need to help somebody solve a problem. That's why somebody's going to pay for your service in the first place. And so if you aren't solving any problems, and this could be anything, you know, it could be in skincare. Maybe you don't, there isn't a product that fits your skin skin tone.

And maybe somebody else feels that same way and then they resonate and it blows up. Perhaps it's a software product for for the gym. Who knows? And it's helping people organize and see progress rather than, there wasn't this all before and there's an opportunity here. Start looking at the problem and not the product. And I think that can if perhaps if you are feeling really burnt out, start looking at the people that you're helping.

And how you're offering a solution to this problem. And then to add something on top of that, once you have that solved, I want to challenge anybody to then think like what is your moat beyond the product or service you're offering? So in a world where AI or anyone can do anything, like what is that unique piece or that that people will want to come to to you for that?

Absolutely. Like get specific on why you stand out. Even if it's in a saturated market, there can still be space if you are offering something, a solution to a problem that's real and that you believe in. You want to consume or use the product that you're offering because it is helping you. And perhaps I do want to say this: perhaps if you can't find a problem that you're

business is solving for and your business is struggling, that could be why. Because you aren't actually solving problems. You just chased an opportunity. And opportunities come and go. Like a good center storefront, I think about like restaurants and cafes in cities where they thrived when everybody was working in the offices. And now offices as are not selling on cubicles and there's

less foot traffic and they're struggling. Like in COVID, it was a huge issue for cafes because a lot of downtown locations, even once people started coming back, but everybody was remote, there wasn't that same opportunity. So opportunities come and go, hunt for those problems and fix them for people. Yeah. And and to your point about just things shift, right? Like you have to be paying attention to what's happening on both macro and micro level.

within our country, you know, what's happening honestly, even through like meme culture, like what what is popular, what's moving around. And not to say that you need to shift what your passion is or what you're what you're doing, but it's important to know. So just like what Dylan just mentioned, and actually there's a r a report today, which is funny, I haven't even told Dylan this yet, but here I'll read it right now. Jobless rates were higher in April than a year earlier in 200 of the 387

metropolitan areas. So basically there are now less jobs or people w without jobs inside of these major metropolitan areas, over half, a little over half. and so that's very much related to like, you know, business all sorts of issues. I'm not going to say I I understand why. what you talk about there with keeping up with what's going on is problems do change. Like if you are keeping up with

this greater economic situation for different people. Problems change for people based on different things happening. And so perhaps your problem isn't as big of a problem anymore. And so you ne ed to be fixing a problem in your business. And if your problem isn't as big of a deal anymore, then perhaps a good idea to look for what your previous customer bases are dealing with now, really ultimately.

be a big recommendation. And just reflect on that, you know, that whole conversation about what that looks like. And what are what are also the problems that you're facing as a business owner? And what tools do you feel like you need to do them better or get more time on your hands? And so just reflect on your business. How did you start? Where did you start? Did you start from an opportunity? Did you start from a problem?

How have things changed? And I think this exercise of reflection on your business is a great tool to kind of get an internal pulse. You can get a pulse of how your business is doing externally with your different tools and your metrics. But check in with yourself, see if you're still solving for a problem or if you're no longer in that same spot. And I think that'll just be a healthy way to take a step back in perhaps if you're facing some burnout.

Find yourself giving yourself space and time to just reflect, I think, is a is a huge exercise for us. Yeah, and and and I'll I'll end on this is make sure you're not chasing an opportunity or chasing the market. you know, I've been in business for a long time and I've seen a lot of different folks try to do that and and it doesn't ever seem to work out.

There might be like a very short-term opportunity that you're like, if I do this really quick, I can maybe take advantage of this. I I guess my recommendation would be to not do that. My recommendation would be to find what you're what what you actually are interested in working on, not just chasing the market. I mean, markets change. And also right now, it is a very fluctuating place and just

Reflect on human nature, what problems do humans face, and solve for them. Because I think those are gonna be longstanding solutions and businesses is if we can solve for problems that real people are facing, real people are gonna want what you're offering. So, anyways, I think that is all for today. Thanks for Christian for chatting and

Yeah, check out the last episode if you want to hear a little bit more about kind of AI and layoffs and ke stay posted for the next one. Awesome. Thank you. Ciao.