EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 25 minutes

Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who keep themselves busy doing comfortable tasks whilst avoiding the work that would actually set them free

Key Outcome: Listeners will recognise the specific ways they have trapped themselves in their business and have a clear path to building something that runs without them

He built his business for freedom. Then he noticed he had simply created a more sophisticated prison.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You know that feeling. You are up early, answering emails before the family wakes. You tell yourself you are being productive. The thing is, deep down you know you are avoiding something bigger. You have created what Rick Tracewell calls the uncomfortable comfort zone, that strange place where things are not falling apart, they are just not moving forward either. It feels stressful, familiar, and maddeningly easy to normalise. Rick spent years as a solo business owner doing what most trapped entrepreneurs do, working long hours, staying busy, being responsible, and quietly wondering why things still were not improving. His book names what is actually happening for so many business owners. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And that awareness is where real progress starts.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

You will finally have a name for why you feel stuck even though you are working harder than ever

You will understand why your business would stop if you stepped away for two weeks, and what that really means

You will discover the difference between having a business and having created a job for yourself

You will see the real cost of avoiding this conversation, more years lost to busyness instead of progress

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

The uncomfortable comfort zone exists because you know what to expect by doing what you know best. You stay busy with website tweaks, social media posts, cleaning the office, anything to avoid the harder work. Once you recognise this pattern, you cannot go back to pretending it is not there.

Most solopreneurs cannot answer this question honestly. If you had to step away from your business for two weeks, what happens? If the answer is everything stops, you have not built a business. You have created a job for yourself. This realisation changes everything about how you structure your days.

The ego trap keeps you stuck. There is pride in being the business owner. That same pride makes it hard to admit there are areas where you need help. The trapped entrepreneur who cannot ask for help stays trapped longer.

AI and new technology are just tools. They are the next thing, like the printing press was, like television was. The business owners who treat them as magic buttons stay disappointed. The ones who learn to use them properly get their time back.

If you set up your business so someone could walk in and learn it, or someone you could train to do it, you change your life. You can finally get to the gym. You can take time for family. You stop being the bottleneck.

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"If you had to step away from your business for two weeks and it stops, you don't have a business. You've created a job for yourself." - Rick Tracewell

"The uncomfortable comfort zone is when deep down you know something's wrong, you know you need to fix it, and you just don't know where to start." - Rick Tracewell

"If you read this book and find things you recognise in yourself, it's like somebody pointing at your feet saying you stepped in dog crap. Hard to ignore that." - Rick Tracewell

"You can't see the label from inside the jar." - Roy Castleman

"There's nobody to walk up behind you and put their hand on your shoulder and say, it's great that you're busy, but shouldn't you be working on this other thing?" - Rick Tracewell

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meeting Rick and setting the stage for trapped entrepreneurs

02:30 - The creative journey: How Rick discovered he was unemployable and embraced it

05:15 - The 1% reality: Why entrepreneurs are a different breed who see problems and solutions

08:45 - The lonely road: Why business ownership isolates you from everyone who does not understand

11:20 - AI demystified: Treating new technology as a tool rather than a magic solution

14:00 - The uncomfortable comfort zone: Naming what keeps business owners stuck

17:30 - The two week test: Would your business survive without you, and what that reveals

21:00 - Building for freedom: How to structure your business so someone else could run it

24:00 - Conclusion: Where to find Rick and take your first step out of the trap

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Rick Tracewell

Bio: Rick is a marketing consultant and author of The Uncomfortable Comfort Zone, a book born from years of watching himself and his clients stay stuck in patterns they could not name. He works with solopreneurs and small business owners on marketing strategy, branding, and the mindset shifts needed to stop working in the business and start working on it.

Connect with Rick:

Website: https://UCZBook.com

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Take the two week test honestly. Write down exactly what would happen to your business if you disappeared for a fortnight. No sugarcoating. This awareness is your starting point.

This Month: Identify the three tasks you do regularly that keep you busy but comfortable. These are your avoidance patterns. Choose one to delegate or eliminate.

This Quarter: Document one core process in your business so completely that someone else could do it without asking you questions. This is your first step toward a business that runs without you.

EPISODE RESOURCES

The Uncomfortable Comfort Zone by Rick Tracewell, available in audiobook format and in Spanish

UCZBook.com, includes free access to the first chapter in audio and visual formats

Traction by Gino Wickman, mentioned by Roy as a key resource for building systematic businesses

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READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

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Good morning, good evening, good day wherever you are in

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the world. Today I'm with Rick and Rick is going

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to tell us about the book he's written. He's going

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to tell us about his journey and we're just going

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to dig in and have an interesting conversation. Welcome, Rick.

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Hey. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Glad to

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be here. Let's go back to young Rick. Tell us

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a little bit about your early life, how you got

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to where you are now. What were the main triggers

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and things that really made you think I need to

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go. I've always been in the creative space. Music, writing,

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that kind of thing. When I was in my later

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teens, I was working those things called newspapers. Remember those?

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That got me into doing some graphic design and some

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photography. And that touched a nerve with me. So everything

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I've done is all in the creative space. So that's

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really where I started and gravitated toward marketing because that's

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a gigantic umbrella that covers all the different creative things

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that I enjoy doing. And you were working. You were

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gainfully employed doing that? Considering I'm self employed. No.

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Before you stepped out into self, how did that work?

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I did little stints places like one was the newspaper

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and I was in the advertising department. So I was

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part of the creative team and ventured into it. It

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was a smaller newspaper, so I ventured into the. The

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graphic design stuff and all that kind of thing. That

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worked fine. And then I did some stint doing sales

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and. Not real. Yeah. I guess what I'm asking is

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when did you realize you were unemployable? But that is

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definitely the word, strangely enough. I mean, I realized it

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almost right away. I tried different stints in between trying

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to start a business. Not real sure which kind of

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business I was going to do and that sort of

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thing. So I. Pretty early on, early 20s. And how

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long did you fight that for? I fought being employed

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or fought being self employed to be employed. It just

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didn't sit right with me. And the times that I

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did, I remember there was a computer company, they sold

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hardware and I took the job because I needed something

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steady and regular. And I was like, you were just

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saying I was trying to make it work. And within

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two weeks I was trying to redesign their logo and

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that it didn't sit well with them. You know what

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I really love about entrepreneur? Yeah. We're a different breed

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of people, right? We really are. Yes. 1% of people

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will start a business this year. 1%. 1% of people

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will start a business throughout their whole lives. Okay. Yeah.

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There's only 2% of people in the world that will

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start a business that puts us in a different bracket.

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And the thing that I love about it is that

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what we do is we see a problem in the

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world and we're like, I can fix that problem. That's

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right. And then we take this step which goes away

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from the comfort that we know the money coming in

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and we go out into the world and we birth

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this baby of ours. And it's the same. I don't

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know if you've got children. My daughter's 22. We birth

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this baby. It's the same. It comes out and it's

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just a mess. And it's like, what the. What the

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hell? This is all just a problem. And I can't

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sleep anymore and I've got to change diapers and I've

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got to do all this stuff. And slowly, surely this

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baby grows up and then becomes a teenager. Can do

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things. And so many of us get stuck in the

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teenage years. We can't let it go. Yeah. Becomes the

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entire thing that our life kind of revolves around. Most

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of us are not starting a solo business. Especially if

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you're young with an mba, you don't have all that

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experience and it's usually starting a small business, you're not

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starting it with partners or a bunch of employees right

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away. So, yeah, it's tough. Yeah. And we now go

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into a really different world with AI because there's going

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to be a lot more solo entrepreneurs. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

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They're talking about the first billion pound solo entrepreneur company

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is coming and I can see it. Yeah. What's your

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experience being on the air front? What's your experience been

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so far? They are. I look at it like. And

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I explain this to a lot of my clients too,

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or all my clients. AI to me, it's another thing.

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It's the next thing. If you can demystify it a

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little bit. Yes. It's very powerful. It's very technical. It

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can be very confusing as far as how to use

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it or can you even use it, that kind of

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thing. And so I try to simplify things as best

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I can. It's a new technology. There was one point,

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it was the printing press and then it was telephones.

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And then it was like when TV first came out,

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there were people that felt, oh, we're going to go

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out of business. Because he can advertise on tv. There's

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always something. So it really is a matter of not

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trying to absorb all of it all at once because

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there are People who can do great things with AI.

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And then there are other people, like maybe you and

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I, who we have our niche that we're fixated and

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focused on. And so you like simplified. Okay, what can

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AI do for me? And there's a lot of resources

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now. In fact, I think you just came out with

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a book, right? Absolutely. Or you're about to. Yeah. So

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you just have to learn that journey of mastery, isn't

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it? Yeah. You have to start using it and doing

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it. There's only 1.6% of the people. I'm quite in

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figures today. I don't know where this is coming from.

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1.6% of people in the world have actually got ChatGPT

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or a claw. It's that small. So you're still early.

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This concept for business owners, that's one of the things

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I teach quite a lot is the thing for business

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owners is fix the problem. Don't try and fix everything.

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So overwhelmed by, oh, look what it can do. Go

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and chase the Chinese. That's right. And that's the thing

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that a lot of people, small business owners should know

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right up front, is that it's a tool. And it's

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not. If there's no magic button. It's not going to.

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You're not going to press a button and it's going

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to fix everything for you. It's just another tool and

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you got to learn how to use it. That's really

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the. I think, what a lot of people miss. Yeah.

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Let's delve now into your book and what you do.

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Share some insights. Yeah, sure. Some of the words you

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mentioned earlier touches on it. When most solopreneurs start out,

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how can we possibly all know everything? Right. So we

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all have our strengths. And like you said, usually entrepreneurs

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start out with. They notice a hole that needs to

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be filled. Right. There's a need and you feel that

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you can fulfill it either because there's nobody in your

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area who is filling that need now, or you feel

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like you can fill it better or cheaper or whatever

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it is. That doesn't mean that you know all about

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financing. That doesn't mean you know all about computers. It

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doesn't mean you know all about marketing. There's so many

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things to make a business grow and become stronger and

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be majorly profitable. And there is. I don't know if

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you noticed this, but my standpoint. I've always noticed that

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there is a. It's not. I'm not saying anything negative.

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There is a bit of an ego thing with owning

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a business because it's. You can be very proud of

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being the business owner if you're at a chamber of

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commerce mixer or a meeting or something and somebody says,

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oh, what do you do? I'm the business owner. So

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sometimes it's hard to even admit to ourselves that there's

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an area that we're not good at. This is what

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prompted me to put together this book is throughout the

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years I did this, I still do it. I still

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have to watch myself and a lot of my clients

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because there's. Most of them are solopreneurs. They, after getting

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to know them a little better over the years, they

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open up a little more and they're dealing with the

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same things, but they maybe don't have even a name

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for it. I have always called it the uncomfortable comfort

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zone. Because when you're stuck like that, for whatever reason,

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you know what to expect by doing what you know

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best. So it may be working on the website or

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work posting a couple of dumb social media things or

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whatever, cleaning the floors in the bathroom, taking the trash

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out, whatever it is that you keep yourself busy doing,

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but it's not the stuff you should be busy doing.

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That's why it's uncomfortable comfort zone. Because deep, deep down,

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you know that something's wrong and you know you need

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to fix it and you just don't know how. You

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don't know where to start. Yeah, I think my journey,

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my first company, I was 19, I think, and I

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was studying mushrooms door to door. I worked in a

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mushroom farm and I was taking them home and people

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saying, bring me some mushrooms, bring me some mushrooms. And

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I was in South Africa And I was 1500 rand

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a month, which was nothing. Yeah, 175

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pounds in today's money. Yeah. And I started taking these

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bags of mushrooms out and I was like, okay, I

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can sell them for six rand. Yeah. Yeah. And I

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took 20 out after work and then I took 30

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out and eventually I was making 10,000 rand a month,

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working four days a week for five hours a day.

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And that was a real birth into entrepreneurial life. I

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just realized I couldn't go and do. And then I

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tried to work, starting door to door alarm systems and

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other stuff. The fact that your mind works like that's

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what separates you. And like you said earlier, it's a

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fraction of a percentage of the people that it's owning

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a business, especially starting one. It's not for everybody. It's

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not for the weak, that's for sure. Tenacity is the

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key word there. I think you have to be tenacious

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and you have to have a vision. You have to

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really push forward and understand what you're doing and believe

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in yourself. I love what you said there about that

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part of the journey. There's a big part on Dig

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into. Now, there's two main points. Being an entrepreneur is

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lonely, Right. It is lonely because you start. And you've

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got a circle of friends, right? Yep. And you start

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talking to your wife or your girlfriend in the first

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three or four conversations. They're interested and they're excited. They.

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And then the eyes close over and it's just. They

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don't understand. I think loneliness is such a big play.

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Yeah. And it's something I mentioned in my book several

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times, too, in different ways. As solopreneurs, one of the

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things that's missing is there's nobody to walk up behind

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you and put their hand on your shoulder and say,

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it's great that you're busy, but shouldn't you be working

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on this other thing over here? There's nobody to do

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that. We're our own boss. Which has its positives, it's

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got its benefits, but it's also got some drawbacks. Like

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you said, delve into quite a lot is this. If

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he can do it, if he's 25 years old and

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he's making a million pounds, why can't I do it?

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Oh, yeah. So then we go into the coachability piece.

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Yeah. Skydive. Let me tell you a little story. A

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skydive. And I've done two and a half thousand skydives.

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And back in probably early 2000s, I went to a

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wind tunnel, the indoor wind tunnel, and I bought

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10 hours of wind tunnel time. 6,000. Really? Yeah. Wow.

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£600 an hour. Okay. I'm gonna figure this stuff out.

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Because I was really driven to get it right. I

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went in for six hours, right there it was in

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this wind tunnel. And I just. Then someone said to

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me, get a coach. And I'm like, no, I've already

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paid £600 an hour for this. I'm not going to

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pay another 200 pounds for a coach an hour. So

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a friend of mine took pity on me and he

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said, okay, I'm going to coach you for half an

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hour. He was a coach and he coached. In that

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half an hour, I learned more than I did in

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the six hours before. You can't see the label from

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inside the jaw. You can't see what you're doing. You

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can't appreciate what you're doing. And why not look at

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somebody who's actually had the problems, understood the problems and

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has a solution for it. And that's part of this

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whole piece of he can do it, so I should

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be able to do it. You don't. What? You don't

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know. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me or tell us how

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you started this part of your business, what you do

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day to day with people. Yeah. What does that look

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like? I said I'm a marketing guy. This book is

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just something that we talked before the podcast that I'm.

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I. It's not something I'm expected to make millions of

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dollars. It's really just I'd like to help people make

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with things that I've experienced and hopefully I can help

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them get out of their stuck place. But overall, I'm

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a marketing guy and that, like I said earlier, it's

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a huge umbrella. So I'm consulting, I'm helping put together

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marketing plans and the whole kit and caboodle as far

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as the logos and the corporate identity and their materials

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and their website and video production. I do whatever people

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need. And you've got a good client base on that.

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That's working well. Do I have a good client base

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on that and is that working well? Yeah, yeah. There's

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always small business owners that need help and if you're

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in marketing, that's the place to be, right? Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah. So there's always somebody who's stuck in one way

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or another and needs some help and starts to realize

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that they need that help. What other lessons can you

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bring us from your book would be, I think you

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had 12 chapters in there and they're super, super short,

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easy read. It's not a book you have to read

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cover to cover by any stretch. One of the things

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that I've been telling people just to give people an

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idea of what the book's about, because it's not an

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answer book. It's not like you're going to read this

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and go, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. It's

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not like that. You do have to come up with

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it on your own. It's your business. Every business is

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so different. Like what it is, where it's located and

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the owner. Everybody's different backgrounds, different experiences, different education. So

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I try to keep it more about experience. Some people

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will connect with chapters two and six and some will

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connect to the other chapters. It's more about finding awareness

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and putting a name to some things that maybe you

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never put a name to. So how I describe that

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is basically if you are walking down the street. And.

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And somebody points at your feet and says, hey, you

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stepped in dog crap. Hard to ignore that, right? So

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you're going to start looking for something to wipe your

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shoe off or something to A hose to squirt your

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shoe off. But the whole idea is that if you

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read this book and find things that you recognize in

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yourself, hopefully you don't go back to that uncomfortable comfort

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zone where you're pretending, I'm holding up, being aware of

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it, you can't ignore it. And you go, now that

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I know that's what it is, I've really got to

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figure out how I'm going to step out of that.

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That's what I. What's your biggest lesson from that? My

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biggest what lesson? In the book, one of the chapters

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that seems to be resonating the most with people, and

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it's certainly something that I still struggle with, even though

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I'm very aware of it, is that I always have

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asked business owners if it's just a hypothetical, if your

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business had to. If you had to step away from

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your business for two weeks. And I try not to

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make it morbid. So something like you have a vacation

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home or your parents home out of town, and the

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plumbing needs to be redone, the pipes burst or whatever,

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you have to be at what happens to your business.

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And most of the time the answer is it stops

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or it's on hold or it. There's a sign out

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front that says, be back in two weeks. If that's

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the case, technically in businesses all over the world, if

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they were actually being evaluated by a professional, you don't

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have a business. You have. You created a job for

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yourself. That's it. So that kind of puts people in

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the mindset. And I try and explain to clients that

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if you pretend like you're going to sell your business,

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sell it, franchise it, whatever, if you pretend that way,

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then you start to think that, oh, okay, I should

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probably have these kind of procedures. Like step one, somebody

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calls. What's the first thing you have to do? If

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you can set up your business so that somebody could

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walk in and learn it, or somebody you can train

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to do it, it really can change your business and

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can also help you change your life, loosen things up

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a bit and make it where. I don't know about

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you, but if I'm busy, it's so difficult to get

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me to the gym because I. It's work. I got

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to do the work. So taking time out for yourself,

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for your family, for your loved ones, for yourself especially,

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it's really a good thing to do. So that's probably

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one of the biggest lessons for sure. I had the

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same situation in 2019. I have three IT

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companies and somebody came up and offered to buy them.

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So I was like great, I can sell them. And

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they came up with a nice big number and then

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said you got to stay here for three years. Ah,

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that's not the deal. I don't want to do that.

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Yep. I help slightly bigger business owners because at that

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stage there's a book called Traction Gino. Gino Wickman and

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he talks. Yeah, I took that same 14 hours a

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day, seven days a week. Yeah. On two companies. I

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acquired the third company and then for the last seven

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years I've worked five hours a week on those companies

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which lets me go and do other things. Oh, so

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you actually learned. Yeah. So

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if people want to work with you, if people want

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to understand a bit more about you, how do they

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get hold of you? As far a great way to.

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Because we're talking about the uncomfortable comfort zone. I did

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a little one pager website for the book and it

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explains it gives people the idea. Here's some information to

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see if you if this book's for you. And so

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the first chapter is on there audio and visual and

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also the book is available in Spanish on Audible Audiobook

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and I can be reached that website as well. It's.

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You can get to it a couple ways. Uncomfortablecomfort zone.com

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or the quicker way is by its initials so it's

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uczbook.com those are the two. That's the way to get

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to there and get to me. Great. I will share

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that. Comments thank you very much for joining me. It's

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been great. Thank you very much for having me on.

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No worries.