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Tag: entrepreneur

How To Prevent Being Discouraged

Question from Hustleburg’s Episode 2, Answering Listener Questions: How can the solopreneur who is trying to keep up with their 9-5 while also starting their side hustle keep from getting discouraged? How did you do it?

Once you’ve decided that you’re ready to ditch your 9-5 and embark on your entrepreneur journey, you need to keep giving 100% at work, but limit it to only 100%. You can’t give your day job free space in your head outside of the time you gave at the office. Outside the office, that space is for you and your dreams.

The Question, “Why?”

Then, think about why your side hustle is your passion. Why is this “it?” You’ll notice in the interviews on the Hustleburg podcast that I start each of them with “Why?” That’s because I want to know what drives the guest. When I consult with a potential client, I ask it as well. Repeatedly. It’s likely maddening in the moment, because they feel like they are answering an inquisitive 5-year-old who only has one question in his toolbox. In interviews and consultations, I have to know.

More importantly, YOU need to know what drives you, why you’re passionate about it, and you need to share that with yourself and others. Everything becomes about the mission of what you do. Why? Why? Why? It usually takes the third or fourth Why to truly understand your underlying meaning in doing this. This is your vision of the dream you have for yourself.

Make Your Vision Your Mission

When you make that vision the focus of everything that you do it makes all of your business decisions, it makes all of your conversations, all of the things that you do regarding your side hustle and eventually your business, about your why. When you can serve your why you’re not likely to get discouraged, because you have made that vision a mission. You’re not likely to get burned out, because you have a purpose.

Focus on Your Mission

You will always be focused on the real reason why you’re doing it. That’s how I did it. I started with asking why I needed to get rid of the nine to five so that I could help other people do exactly the same.

This listener question was a part of Hustleburg’s second episode. If you have a question you’d like to have answered, please join the community here.

Top Podcasts for the Budding Entrepreneur

It may seem like self-development in business and entrepreneurship means a lot of reading, but there is a world of podcasts that we consume. Here are our recommendations of the top podcasts for the budding entrepreneur:

Akimbo: A Podcast by Seth Godin

On Tuesday mornings, we’re probably looking most forward to Akimbo: A Podcast by Seth Godin it gives you a marketer’s view of how we can act to change the culture. We’re not just talking about the culture at large, but the culture specifically around what we do, the culture around the people that we serve, and the community that we are. Every week, when Akimbo comes out, it is it definitely goes to the top of the queue. There is just something amazing about how Seth Godin can look at something and talk about it in an engaging way.

EntreLeadership Podcast

The EntreLeadership podcast offers you some of the top minds in business. Formerly hosted by Ken Coleman, and now hosted by Alex Judd, it’s primarily an interview podcast based around the leadership philosophy that Dave Ramsey used to build his entire business network. That philosophy governs all of the things that Ramsey Solutions does, and they do a fantastic job providing some amazing resources for small business leaders. In addition to the podcast, they’ve built a community that serves small businesses, often giving away excellent resources completely for free to podcast listeners. This podcast publishes weekly on Mondays, which makes for a great start to the week.

HBR IdeaCast

The Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast publishes on Tuesdays and offers listeners an opportunity to hear about emerging trends in business. The really cool part about the IdeaCast is that you get to experience the best interviews from each of their magazine’s issues in full when listening, rather than what they’ve pared down for the article they sought to publish in that month’s issue. The full-fledged interview, between one of the two hosts, both senior editors for Harvard Business Review, and the business or thought leader, provides you with a lot of data and findings surrounding what’s happening in business today. It’s terrific to hear from the study researchers and professors about the things that they’ve learned and share.

The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast

John Maxwell has written many books on the subject of leadership, and it’s amazing that none of them made the top books article, but we wanted to keep things solely focused on small business. The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast gives you lessons, insights, and candid conversations about how to be a leader. When your business grows beyond “solopreneur” status, you’re going to need to be able to lead your team. The podcast takes a deeper dive into the lessons he’s written about and Mark Cole, Jason Brooks, and John himself discuss how you can bring those ideas to work in your own life. Regular episodes publish on Wednesday, and the occasional “candid conversations” usually appear in their feed on Fridays.

The GaryVee Audio Experience

This daily podcast is the absolute holy grail of marketing knowledge. You’ll hear me frequently talk about looking for attention, and this is where that idea came from. The GaryVee Audio Experience is a daily dose of drinking from the fire hose of marketing. At first, I didn’t like Gary Vaynerchuk. His larger than life personality and style turned me off, but I listened beyond that first impression. As part of panels, on other podcasts and as part of other programs, the fact that he really understands what we’re all looking for in business, and that is the attention for our brand. We’re looking for the attention necessary to sell what we sell and to do what we do. The audio experience is a variety of different ways for you to consume that, whether it’s a keynote and Q&A that he has given, an interview that he’s done for radio or television and had the audio stripped, or his sage advice in conversations with celebrities and up-and-comers, it is an awesome documenting of the process. In it, you get to see an aspect of what he does in a way that is is very useful and very educational for every businessperson.

Would you rather read? Check out this article detailing our favorite books for budding entrepreneurs.

As we’ve shared on Hustleburg, we love Castbox as a podcast listening app, and the image above is a screenshot of my favorite podcasts in that app.

Top Books for the Budding Entrepreneur

We’re frequently asked, “What are some of the top books for the budding entrepreneur?” As such, here are our recommendations for someone ready to go beyond their hustle:

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

We highly recommend beginning with Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, and we say that you should read that before anything else in the business management or leadership space. Being able to answer the “Why?” question makes so many of your decisions and helps you to define the actions that you will take. This book really lays out the case for how important that question really is.

As you’ve heard in every Hustleburg interview, I ask why someone does what they do. It’s an imperative question that will define your purpose, mission, and ultimately your business.

Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller

The next thing that we recommend you read would be Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand. It’s very much a must-read early on in your entrepreneurial journey, because it details how you tell the story of who you are what you do and how you’ll help your customer. When coupled with Start With Why, you see how to align your words with your mission and vision when you talk about your business and why you do it. Also, as you hang around us more this will make a lot more sense, but it also details why you should be the Genie, rather than Aladdin.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This book is one that everyone should read, but ESPECIALLY budding entrepreneurs, because a lot of people actually do need to heed the advice within. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People should definitely be read early on in the entrepreneurial journey. The book provides a literal guide for interacting with others and you would be surprised how many people fail at that despite having been in business for years. Even those seen as successful really do not do a good job of interacting with others.

The Power of Moments by Chip & Dan Heath

While these are in no particular order of importance, Chip and Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments should probably be read earlier than others. This is especially the case for entrepreneurs in the service industry or with heavy and direct customer contact.

This book offers insight into some of the most powerful inspiration for creating an amazing experience for those you serve. We frequently say that marketing may get people in the door, but delighting them will keep them coming back. What you do and how you do it is essentially re-marketing your brand to your existing customers. Delighting them when they interact with you is essentially an extension of your marketing program, and it keeps them coming back and evangelizing about what you do and how you delighted them.

Good to Great by Jim Collins

This classic business study book definitely has to be on every entrepreneur’s reading list. In Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team share the stories and data about some of the best companies in history and how they became great. It even compares how they became great over peers of the time, how they became great over their competitors, and it ties together a lot of the takeaways from the other books on this list.

Listen to this list (and to hear the top podcasts for a budding entrepreneur) as part of the Hustleburg podcast by clicking here.

If you clicked any of the Amazon links for the books listed above, you likely saw they were AmazonSmile links for charity. We love Survivor’s Rupert Boneham and all he does for his community with Rupert’s Kids.


Hustleburg Episode 3 – Interview with Kara Wright Photography’s Kara Wright

Photography Lessons

In this episode of the Hustleburg podcast, Brett Bittner meets with Kara Wright, photographer and owner of Kara Wright Photography. Kara Wright Photography focuses her lens on weddings, engagement shoot, and real estate photography in Saint Petersburg and Tampa, Florida.  

Brett and Kara discuss her photography business in its infancy after a move from the DC area, her favorite shoots, and how exciting it is to find the perfect angle for every shoot.

Connect With Kara Wright Photography

Find out more about Kara Wright Photography:

Website
Facebook
Instagram
The Knot

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. 

Get On Hustleburg

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 Making Time To Listen and Respond?

“Yep”

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.

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“Uh huh”

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.

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“Wow. Really?”

You’ve said those things when you’re trapped in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves and their interests, right? You never get a chance to offer a real response, adding the things above when they pause to breathe. You really are trapped in that conversation, but you aren’t sure if they would even notice if you left, no matter how rudely you made your exit.

Listening to What They Need

Remember when we talked about the guy who sold refrigerators at the party like a psycho? We discussed the need to listen in order not to be “that guy.” Real listening. Actual, active listening. Not what we do most of the time, which is to be so busy thinking about what we will say next that we don’t actually hear what was said to us. 

On social, that means consuming a lot of content by those in our community. It results in reading, listening, and watching what those who follow you, and your competitors, share. You have to know them, their likes, and their dislikes, to fully engage with them and include them in the community you build. 

This consumption isn’t just of the posts they create though. You also need to read the comments and replies they make as well. There is even more truth about who they are and how they feel in the reactions they have to what others create. 

Your effort can’t stop here though. You are posting to your accounts, reading/watching/listening to the people who matter to you and your brand, and then there’s the most important piece of advice for engaging your community. 

Respond With Care and Thought

You have to respond to them thoughtfully. You have to comment, reply, or react to their content in a relevant way that shows that you’re listening and that you care. The easiest way to do this is to be grateful, both inside and out, about every interaction you have online. When you respond to every comment, even if it’s just with a simple “thank you,” you build your relationship with that person. When you go beyond that thanks with a heartfelt, honest reply, you are building a lifelong relationship, instead of a transactional one with that person. 

Early in your digital marketing journey, it’s easy to broadcast what you want to say and say that you’re too busy for anything else. This is actually the best time to build the habit of listening actively and responding thoughtfully. When you make it part of your routine early on, it will remain a part of your routine throughout the rest of your digital life. It will follow you from platform to platform, no matter which one gets the attention you crave and allows you to interact best with the community you serve. Take advantage of the early days by making this a part of your activities online.