bbittner | Beyond Your Side Hustle

Hustleburg Episode 1 – Interview with Lake Law Firm, P.A.’s Sheila Lake

Lake Law Firm, P.A. on Hustleburg

In the first episode of the Hustleburg podcast, our host Brett Bittner meets with Sheila Lake, attorney at law and owner of Lake Law Firm, P.A. Lake Law Firm focuses on property law, civil litigation, and business formation, practicing in Florida and the Middle District Court of Florida.

Brett and Sheila discuss her journey from bartender to earning her J.D. and starting her practice in Saint Petersburg, what it’s like having a law firm while also being a mom and grandmother, and her involvement in the community. They also discuss her involvement with I Support Youth, an organization teaching young people how to be educated, strong, and successful.

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Find out more about Lake Law Firm, P. A.:

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Get on Hustleburg

If you enjoyed what you heard in this episode, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite player. Each episode is available on its own post, with the entire catalog here. It’s available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast catcher. We listen to this show and our favorites on Castbox. It’s hosted by Podbean. We appreciate your attention, and we can’t wait to have you back for the next episode.

If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on an upcoming Q&A episode, please take a moment to visit beyondyoursidehustle.com/podcastquestion and ask there. If you’re a St. Pete businessperson who’d like to sit down for an interview, please reach out to us here.

Are You Too Focused on “Positive” Feedback Online?

All for the ‘Gram!

(The video below is NSFW/K due to language)

If you watched the video above or listened to Arizona Zervas’ “Roxanne,” you heard at the very beginning that he does things only for Instagram, because of who loves “the ‘Gram.”

Arizona is not alone. There are countless social media users who post strictly for the positive affirmation they receive in response to the things they post. There are some fitness gurus that post selfies to show off their best physical assets, knowing that the “after” means more likes on an image than the process that led there. Others will post cute photos of their children and pets to receive the good feelings that come with the likes.

When they post other types of content on their accounts, the internet “love” just doesn’t arrive in the same way. Their followers take notice of the less popular posts and don’t interact, yet jump on the bandwagon when a post appears to be doing well.

“Likes” Are Seductive

As a content creator, the pull of positive “feedback” is strong. It FEELS good to have your community giving you a like. Here’s why you don’t want the like for the rush it gives you:

The real feelings of your audience lie in what they have to say in the comments. It’s easy to tap, while it takes more effort to form a real thought and share it with you.
Social media is about being social, and a like isn’t as social as the conversation your post should generate. You should want to start those conversations about you and your brand, as you’ll truly engage the raving fans in your community.
You are more likely to fall into the trap of posting for the “likes,” rather than sharing your real, authentic self and brand. You become a slave to those likes, posting puppies or showing skin, rather than sharing what you actually want to say.

This is an opportunity for you to stand out from what everyone else does. It’s your chance to zig when they zag. You can use that differing approach to find your tribe, aka the people who really understand and relate to you.

Find Your Tribe & Engage

When you find and engage your tribe, your raving fans, or whatever you want to call the community who actually supports you, their attention is more valuable than those outside it. We seek that attention, remember?

The community you build is filled with the people who support you. Their love for what you do and the value you add to their lives will attract more people like them to you. Seth Godin calls this the smallest viable audience, and they will be an extension of you… An evangelist of your brand. Doesn’t that sound more valuable than a bunch of likes on a post?

Hustleburg Preview

If you’re like me, you want to know about your community… you want to know about the people, what they do, and how they add value to your neighborhood. Sure, you can read the paper, connect on social media, or ask for recommendations, but that doesn’t always really acquaint you. Specifically, I’m curious about small businesses here in Saint Petersburg, and if you are too, I’ve got the podcast for you. It’s called Hustleburg.

What is Hustleburg?

Hustleburg is an interview-style show, inquiring with some of St. Pete’s small business owners, probing them about how they got to where they are, how they built their business, and how they’re serving our community.

If you are interested in the triumphs, the struggles, and the effort that goes into running a business? These local small businessmen and women will take you inside their business, looking at what they do each and every day.

If you got to know your local barber, shop owner, restauranteur, interior designer, or attorney, would you be more apt to “shop local,” supporting their business? Listen in to hear from those businesses and more on Hustleburg, a podcast about doing business in the ‘Burg.

Get on Hustleburg

Do you have a question about your small business? Or perhaps about how you can market your side hustle to get you out of your 9-5 and doing what you really love? Send us your question by visiting beyondyoursidehustle.com/podcastquestion, and listen for us to answer it in an upcoming episode.

Coming in January 2020, Hustleburg will be available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, our favorite, Castbox, or whatever you use to listen to your favorite podcasts.

Music in this preview by my friend, Rhymer Educator. You can listen to his latest album, as well as his most recent single, No Fear on Spotify, Tidal, iTunes, or wherever you listen to great music.

Thanks so much for listening, and we look forward to telling you how we do business in the ‘Burg.

Straight to Marriage?

Take a moment to imagine that you just meet someone for the first time. Would you ask a girl (or a guy) to marry you right away? Without so much as a conversation? Or getting to know one another? That sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?

Of course, it does!

First Meeting

When you first meet with the intent of seeking a relationship, you are focused on listening to have enough information to ask him or her to join you for coffee or drinks. At drinks, you get to know him or her better by listening to what he or she is comfortable sharing and learning about her. That date gives you an idea of whether or not you will move on to dinner, a concert, or a hike for a second date. The whole point of the first date is to figure out if there will be a second. You spend your time together on that second date learning and thinking about how compatible you might be.

Are you compatible? That second date might lead to a third and so on.

When you post content online that goes straight for a sale, without an introduction, getting to know your community, or building a relationship, you are basically doing the same thing as proposing at your first meeting. While the internet is an amazing thing, it can’t build trust or help solve the problems of your customers without creating a relationship. Without context or having done anything to foster a relationship, how can you be ready to ask already?

So much content online cuts out listening, learning, and context, zooming past a first conversation, let alone a first date, straight to marriage. If you attended a party where someone stood alone at a party, shouting, “Come buy a refrigerator from me!” over and over at the partygoers socializing and interacting like normal people, would you think about buying a fridge from him or her?

Here’s how to avoid being “that guy” at the party that is the internet:

Dating

First, you listen. You listen to the customers you want to “date.” They will tell you what they need and the problems they struggle with, giving you a glimpse at how you can guide them to the solution, even if it isn’t a solution you primarily offer.

They will also let you know if and how you can even help. If you can offer something in response that’s valuable due to your expertise, even if their needs and the problems they face aren’t primarily the ones you help solve, you can show your eagerness to help. If the problems they face or their needs they have don’t line up with your expertise yet, you know to wait for a better time, because they just aren’t ready for “the relationship” with you.

Listening is imperative early on, and you can’t do it if you’re too busy talking.

Next, when you can offer something of value, you need to respond in context to what they’ve told you they need. It does neither of you any good to respond to what they’ve said with something that doesn’t address their needs or the problems they face.

Responding to someone who needs something other than what you offer with repeated broadcasts of your generic message to buy from you does neither of you any good. They will simply walk away, and you’ve lost their attention because talking to you is like talking to a recording of what you want from them.

Finally, your conversation is about adding value to their lives. When you add value, you have their attention. You’re building your brand, and you need them committed for the long-term, not just some short-term sales goal. When you build for brand, you will be the culmination of the value you’ve added to their lives. When you chase the short-term, you’re only as good as the last time you hit your sales goal.

Marriage, Not a Hook-Up

By looking beyond the short-term at a single sale (that you weren’t likely to get anyway) and building a reputation of adding value to those you interact with, you’ll build a long-lasting relationship. That relationship will be centered on your reputation as someone helpful, and who adds value.

Doesn’t that sound like someone you’d like to buy from?

There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Content

Believe it or not, there is no such thing as too much content in an age where server space gets cheaper by the nanosecond. You simply CANNOT post too much.

Today, there are no longer only three TV networks, a handful of local radio stations, or hundreds of gatekeepers like talent agents and managers preventing you from being “overexposed.” Instead, there is a constant barrage of apps on our phones, on-demand video and audio streaming for every possible genre and niche, and a new advertising medium every minute vying for your attention.

It’s Not Too Much

When you’re really putting out content, an amount you think is way too much, your most passionate supporter (probably Mom) can’t keep up with everything happening in your business’s social media life. Your marketing efforts should be aimed to seek attention from those most likely to patron your business, by posting as much and as frequently as possible.

Here come the caveats!

You can’t post just anything to “create” content. Junk is still junk, and your audience, current and future, will leave if they aren’t finding value. With their departure goes their attention.
You can’t go too far “outside your lane.” Your community expects you to stick to areas you’re the expert in. That’s why you are sharing, and that’s why they are paying attention. When you spend too much time outside your expertise, there goes their attention.
You can’t be anyone else. You aren’t as funny as Ellen DeGeneres or Aziz Ansari, so don’t try to be a stand-up comedian. You don’t act as well as Meryl Streep or Bradley Cooper, so don’t act as if you are. Be you.

Your content needs to stay relevant to your brand, important to the community you serve, and authentically “you.” If it isn’t, the attention you crave for your brand will disappear.

Don’t Chase an Algorithm, Add Value

Don’t worry about the mythology of the algorithm controlling who sees what you post. You won’t figure out the algorithm of each platform you use, and if you do, it’ll change. You may have a good idea of which pieces of content will resonate with your community, but you will frequently be surprised by what does and doesn’t “go viral.”

Social media is the ultimate meritocracy. The platforms need traffic to keep advertisers happy and spending money on those ads. If your content is good, they will keep showing it to keep the attention on their app or their site. If your posts aren’t being seen, it’s because your content stinks.

Yeah, I said it. Your. Content. Stinks.

It stinks to the community-at-large, because they aren’t engaging with it. No matter what happens with the magic of the algorithm, good content continues to win. Good content keeps being shared. Good content keeps attention on that app or site.

Think about it. What happens when you go through your feed? If you aren’t getting content worth your time, you keep scrolling. If you continue not to get value, you’ll eventually go away. Thus, for their own survival, the platforms have to show the good stuff.

Now that you know that there is no such thing as “too much,” when are YOU going to start putting out all the content that will add value to your community?

Market Your Business The Way Jalen Hurts Plays

Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community.

Over the weekend, college football saw an awesome and unlikely comeback where the University of Oklahoma, led by Jalen Hurts at quarterback, overcame a 25-point deficit to defeat undefeated Baylor University, 34-31.

The outcome for the Oklahoma Sooners, on the road against a conference foe with something to prove, reminded me of how it feels when you embark on the challenge of marketing a new venture online. Their response to stay in the game, keep working their gameplan, and make the adjustments necessary to overcome a situation that would paralyze many other teams looks like what many side hustlers who use internet marketing to build their business face.

At the beginning of your internet marketing journey, you’re starting from scratch. You have no content and no community, the two things you need to be effective in marketing your business or venture. In addition to starting at zero, you see your industry peers, prolific marketers, and the latest internet-famous meme zooming ahead with their established brand and content. It can be discouraging to see them share their successes, their engagement online increase, and the results from their past efforts as you create the “starter” content in the pre-launch days and early in your marketing calendar.

Build Your Community

As you build your community and add to your initial content, you don’t feel glamorous because you don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing small wins or momentum. Like in Saturday’s game, the competition seems to be unstoppable and out of reach, going up by 25. Everything they do is golden, while you dwell in the inertia of the pre-launch activities.

Those early weeks and months feel like an eternity as you don’t see visible progress in the metrics of contacts added to your CRM, follower counts, or engagement online. Content and social media marketing isn’t something to expect an immediate gain from or to be an instant answer for your business. It should be a part of building the community that supports it, and communities take time and care to build to reach the sustainable and engaging direct access to what your customers think about you.

In business, we don’t play a finite game with a singular opponent, but our lives are filled with wins, losses, and the payoff of success. Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community. That community will be there to support you and to keep you in business long after you’ve hit “Enter.”

Hard Work and Resolve

As those who watched Saturday’s game witnessed, when hard work and resolve to stick to the plan meet, momentum builds. As it does, you see results in the “little things,” and eventually, you prevail.

Even when you feel like you’re down 28-3 as Oklahoma was early in the game, they persisted. As should you.

Why Aren’t You Using the Internet to Market Your Business?

Television? Radio? Billboards? Those are so yesterday. You can’t even measure their effect directly, so how would you even know if they are working? Why would you continue to pump money into the unknown abyss of their ineffectiveness?

Do you watch TV commercials? Or are you watching the content available to you via Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, etc? Even if you are watching television live as it airs, aren’t you picking up your phone, iPad, or laptop to monopolize your attention until the show comes back?

Do you listen to the radio in the car? I can’t remember the last time I drove without having a podcast, streaming music, or an audio-book playing. I couldn’t even tell you a single local radio station for the last two major metro areas I’ve lived.

Billboards require capturing attention to be effective. The next time you’re driving, take a look at the cars you pass on the road and those that pass you. The passengers nearly all hold the familiar pose. Head down, eyes locked on the screen in front of them. The kids are watching Frozen in the backseat for the 116th time, and the driver HOPEFULLY has his or her eyes on the road and isn’t engaged reading something on their phones or responding to their latest text. Who’s going to see your billboard?

Get Their Attention

Digital marketing, on the other hand… It’s 2019, and everyone, including your parents or grandparents, uses the internet in some capacity. The key here is understanding how to harness the power of it.

You have the ability to truly examine the return on investment for each ad you run, down to a granular level to examine your geographic, demographic, and psychographic impact. While your organic content for many platforms is somewhat “spray and pray” in regard to how it’s displayed, your paid advertising is very specific, down to a microscopic level.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the platforms outside of advertising, however. Your efforts there should be engaging and listening in nature. You have a FREE focus group that will freely tell you about your business. They will tell you what they love, so you can keep delivering in those areas, and they will tell you what they hate, so you can shore up a deficiency and invite them back to show them you care enough to fix it.

Tell More Stories

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

As we lead by example, we continue to demonstrate the principles we espouse.

By showing before we tell, we add credibility to our words.

When we listen, we understand the issues and outcomes important to those with whom we speak.

Now that we’ve demonstrated our principles, made ourselves credible, and understand the issues and outcomes, we can talk about our ideas.

It is very easy to jump to facts, figures, and studies to make the case for what we believe. Reason, logic, and philosophical principles are what likely grabbed our attention, but they are not particularly persuasive to those who are not yet on the same page in their thinking. So, how can we reach them?

Tell The Story

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

Telling stories helps connect the listener to details, important points, and outcomes that are not found in citing statistics and studies.

Think about the last time you went to an event where there was an in-depth Powerpoint presentation with lots of slides, filled with statistics, facts, and figures. You likely took copious notes to keep up with every last shred of data.

When you left the presentation, how much did you retain without those notes? And six months later? A year later? A decade later?

Very few adults are blessed with an eidetic memory, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, so recalling these details does not come naturally.

What’s something we all remember?

What We Remember

The stories we learned at a young age. Fables from Aesop, movies by Disney, and silly rhyming books by Dr. Seuss. Why do we remember, sometimes in amazing detail, something we heard, read, or watched twenty, thirty, forty or more years ago?

When did you last read or hear the story, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” one of Aesop’s fables?

If asked for a synopsis, we could easily give an accurate retelling of how the hare was beyond confident in his abilities to defeat the tortoise in a foot race. He was so confident that he sped off to an early lead and took a nap. When he awoke and hopped to the finish line, he found that the tortoise had beaten him by staying the course.

The lesson that we can all recite in unison? “Slow and steady wins the race.”

It’s probably been twenty years or more since I’ve heard that fable, but I remember what occurred due to the structure of the plot, characters, climax, and resolution involved in storytelling.

Twenty years ago, I would likely have been sitting in Chemistry class, but I don’t know that I could tell you what Avogadro’s number is or why it’s important, despite its repeated use.

If you’re interested in the science behind why storytelling is effective, here is an article about how stories activate our brains.

So, how many stories are you going to have in your repertoire?

Do What You Say You’ll Do

Carl Jung is quoted as saying, “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

What you do, or don’t do, is the foundation of your reputation to others. We’ve all heard that someone’s reputation precedes them, and a reputation can often tell others more about you than any words you may communicate. Shouldn’t you be a shining example for who and what we are?

Credibility

When we can’t live up to doing what we say we will do, we lose our credibility. It’s like putting a question mark at the end of every promise we make and every position we take. Would you really want to take a chance on losing that trust? We have many other things to overcome without having to rebuild credibility.

So, how can we make sure we live up to our reputation?

Reputation

First, don’t take on too much. Often, we see a void and we step up to fill it. As a former leader in the service industry, I realize that we often over promise and under deliver, but if we flip that, we can make sure we meet our commitments by setting reasonable expectations and wowing with our results. Switch to an “underpromise, overdeliver” approach and see the results of keeping things under control.

Next, honestly evaluate the level of effort or time necessary to do a good job meeting the commitments you make. Something may seem to be quick or easy on the surface, but it can really bite you when it’s more complex than you first thought. Being honest about what it will take, along with not taking on too much will help you to do what you say you’ll do.

Explain, Don’t Excuse

Finally, when you can’t make things happen on the timeline you’ve set, make sure you offer explanations, not excuses. Excuses are flimsy, and the real reason is often the better route, especially if it’s humbling.

Are you ready to do what you way you’ll do?

Underpromise and Overdeliver

You have two options in business: 1. Overpromise and hope not to underdeliver.
2. Underpromise and hope to overdeliver

In a recent post on LinkedIn, I posited that the easiest way to improve your life at work is to “underpromise and overdeliver.” I expanded on the thought a bit there and thought that I should offer something a bit more in-depth.

Imagine that you decide to dine at a local restaurant. They don’t take reservations, rather they offer a hosting station with a young lady or gentlemen, who seats guests as tables become available. It is a busy time for the restaurant, and there are no tables available, but they are taking names and party sizes from guests willing to wait to be seated. We’ve all been in this situation. You offer your name and how many are in your party. They take down that information, possibly offer you a pager or to text you when your table is available and give you an estimate of how long the wait for your party will be.

The host or hostess knows how many parties are in front of you and how long their average table takes to be turned, and he or she has two real options with this estimate:

Overpromise and hope not to underdeliver
Underpromise and hope to overdeliver

Overpromise and underdeliver results

With Option 1, this person, knowing that it should take 20 minutes for you to be seated, tells you that it should “only be 10–15 minutes.” They would do this in hopes that you will only be mildly inconvenienced by the delay and won’t seek another place to dine. They hope that despite the numerous parties ahead of you and the pace of their diners and staff that it will actually only be 10–15 minutes to have a menu in front of you at the table. So, what happens here?

After your perception of 15 minutes, you become bothered over how long it has taken to be seated. You may even inquire again about the length of the wait or weigh other options with the other members of your party. There’s actually a Seinfeld episode (Season 2, Episode 11 — The Chinese Restaurant), where Jerry, Elaine, and George play out the frustration of being the party being told Option 1. They are pretty upset about it disturbing their plans and end up leaving hungry, upset at the situation at the restaurant. Even if you don’t leave out of frustration, your dining experience is already soured by the extended wait before you even look at a menu.

When you overpromise and underdeliver, you make an adversary with your customer, before they even try your product. This is a very difficult situation to revive to make a great experience, because your service is starting from behind.

Underpromise and Overdeliver Results

With Option 2, the host or hostess, knowing that it should take their team 20 minutes to turn that table, tells you that it should be “25–30 minutes” for you to be seated. They know the speed of their colleagues and the average diner, along with the number of people ahead of you on the list, but they also realize that things can happen to delay your meal. They hope that the estimate isn’t enough to drive you away and to another establishment, while also setting an expectation that’s realistic and then some. What happens with Option 2?

They call, buzz, or text you 19 minutes after your name was added to their list, and you are delighted that it didn’t take the 30 minutes they stated, and you’re eating earlier than expected. This is a win for you, because you feel like they went above and beyond to serve you, and it is a win for them, because they have set the stage for a great experience. Who doesn’t love a win-win?

When you underpromise and overdeliver, you set an expectation that is lower than your ability to account for a surprise delay or issue. If everything goes to plan, you will wow them with how you exceeded their expectations, never mind that you were the one who set them.

While this example is pretty basic, the application to your work is easily applied. You can set work deadlines or features that are easy for your team to meet with your customers, vendors, or colleagues and then wow them when you finish early or have a higher quality than you said you would. Isn’t that something that would make your work life easier, as you rid yourself of the conflict from Option 1?

You can also apply the underpromise and overdeliver principle in your non-work life by setting expectations and wowing your children, partner, or friends by exceeding them in your commitments to them.