Hi there,

Last Thursday I went to dinner in Lisbon with a bunch of strangers that I am connected to through Justin Welsh’s substack community.

If you don’t know Justin, he built a massive LinkedIn following on consistent content, then turned it into digital products that are actually worth the money for how to build a profitable, lucrative life as your own boss.

He’s sort of the Messiah of Soloprenuership if there ever were one.

And through the randomness of the Internet, timing and Europe…is someone I’m slowly getting to know over a handful of IRL meetups. (including his fab wife who very much runs a lot of his business behind-the-scenes… ***insert the “behind every great man is a woman…) #facts

Nine of us strangers (7 countries repped!) at the dinner -mostly fresh out of corporate building their next professional chapter.

We kicked off the night with two minutes on the clock.
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1. What do you do? (btw it’s astounding how difficult this is for people… a few people who went I still don’t REALLY know what they “do” and I say this with love as that used to be me. Rambling. Lots of words. And confusing my audience. )

2. What is your superpower?

3. What is your biggest challenge right now?

The vulnerability was palpable as some of these people were very successful in their corporate life -hedge funds, management consulting, attorneys, etc.. and now choosing to start over in an entirely different chapter.

Ask anyone who has ever had to get a client on their own, outside of corporate walls and be paid on that effort……there’s nothing more humbling…or inspiring.

And then it got to Justin and I literally thought, “he won’t go as he’s hosting us and he probably doesn’t have that many challenges anyway…”

I KNOW I KNOW so dumb of me to even think that because Ummm…he’s human.

And even he has blind spots who need outside eyes sometimes.

But I can fall prey to the same feelings of looking at someone and deeming them “untouchable.”

And while I won’t go into too much detail as it’s not my story to share, he expressed angst about AI and his next evolution (as so many of us all are.)

In that moment, he then gave so many other people at that table permission to REALLY say the true thing… even to a room full of strangers.

By the end of the night we were swapping advice, support and whatsapp details.

A solo spiral on your laptop could never.

Which brings me to the next unlock I had… only 24 hours later!!! ***and this is why I need to get off my laptop🤪

My husband and I hung out with Justin and Jennifer on a boat because HELLO I LIVE IN PORTUGAL NOW and that’s what we do.

And I was angsting because HELLO THAT IS WHAT I DO about a new audience flow that has had me spinning for months.

To the point that I have had a FULL MONTH of Substack content written since last fall and cannot pull the trigger on starting on that platform (why are we the way we are).

But I now more or less have two audiences and it confuses the crap out of me.

To be super specific with you, many of you reading this now have been here for years (some dark years folks but also some REALLY good ones too!) -reading my newsletters about storytelling, founder stories, my move from NYC to Lisbon, mom life, etc… showing up authentically in your business.

The ADHD mix of a lot of personal but also a lot of insights that you can take to your business.

But now I have a newer group coming in through different My StoryPro funnels….people who have no prior relationship to me, who want to know about AI, about the tool, about what it does and will probably (I’m sort of assuming which is my issue I learned) swipe all the right right on my randomly weird personal musings and family pics I tend to share.

Like this right here.

Same list but different reasons for being here and I’ve been terrified of separating them as Dear God what if I split things and lose people?

What if I am so freaking boring, not able to weave in the tapestry of my life which does involve my family, the occasional panic attack and my rants on ****gestures everything?

On the contrary, what if I’ve been slowing my growth all along because people are reading my diary but are not getting shown the power of My StoryPro and what it does because I am writing like a mom blogger…or maybe I’m not showcasing “business Patrice” enough?

And write TWO NEWSLETTERS???? What?! With what time and yes yes I use AI but NOT to write so these still take me time.

***you get the idea

I explained this to Justin, hand gestures and all and he just listened.

And then 10 minutes later he mapped out what I needed to do.

What was completely blinding me, was so obvious to him I laughed out loud.

His suggestion was not complicated but I never saw it.

This is what can happen when you build too much alone.

He gave me some distinctions about my two audiences that I’d been sitting too close to see for myself and told me how to handle it… the kind of thing that takes someone else’s brain, not yours, to spot.

Anyone who wants to push themselves to the next level needs outside eyes.

Even Justin needed them at a dinner table.
I needed them on the boat.
You probably need them too.

And it’s the reason why I put myself into rooms where I know smart people will be looking at my business and offering me feedback from their POV.

If you are looking for a room – a real one, with accountability, humans looking under your hood, providing feedback on your copy and content, monthly milestones, trainings on meta ads, storytelling, selling and a system that actually works for how to grow a business online with a small audience (or maybe just a stagnant one) I want to tell you about Kar’s year-long mastermind.

Check it out!

I’ve been in Kar’s world for a while now and we have a natural audience crossover as she doesn’t teach storytelling or AI and I don’t teach how to build offers, sell them and systemize your email & socials for that.

We met in NYC six years ago. At some point she and her husband moved to Lisbon. And then, almost the second my husband and I finally made the move ourselves, she promptly moved again (to Mexico City) …so there’s that:)

This is us hanging in 2022 on a Lisbon rooftop where my husband and I “decided to go for it.”

She is not going to sell you a dream (she is not an influencer and all her success has been built on the backs of her clients and students…not her own IG profile.)

She builds profitable online selling systems for people with small audiences, and she does it with a level of hands-on involvement that I genuinely think should cost five times what she charges.

Accountability is the unsexy driver of success and hacks, hooks, and hope don’t build a sustainable business.

A room -even a small one -where someone is actually checking in on whether you did the thing, and catches the blind spot you can’t see anymore because you’re too close to it.

If you’ve been spinning on something for months the way I spun on my two audiences, book a call with Kar and talk it through.​

If you’re serious about making money from your services or digital products online — and you want to do it with real humans in your corner , I hope you will look into it. (she has special bonus as well for anyone she chats to this week.)

I will also be a part of this Mastermind (really excited to be a part of a mastermind and not have to lead, launch and run the whole thing. Full disclosure.🤣) and we’ll be using My StoryPro inside her community as we build and sell out our offers.

As someone who loves AI and tech…. The spikes in my business – the real ones -have almost never come from a new tool or a better LLM chat. (sorry My StoryPro don’t be mad.)

They’ve come from a calculated risk that involved other humans.

👉 Sometimes it might be dinner with strangers.
👉 Maybe a boat conversation.
👉 A hackathon (It’s been a few weeks since I mentioned this so now is a good time to bring it back)

Or a year-long mastermind where you finally get the accountability and support you’ve been looking for all along.

Oh and some changes coming to how I send these.

If you’re here purely for AI and systems and couldn’t care less about my boat stories and family chaos… I hear you. I’m working on a way to make sure you get what you actually came for.

XO
Patrice

P.S. My StoryPro exists, in part, because I know you can’t always get on a boat with Justin Welsh. But you deserve something that pushes back, asks the question you didn’t think to ask, and doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. That’s what we built and if you haven’t tried it yet.. We are back to our amazing selves!