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Tag: listener question

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.

The Single Most Important Platform

Question from Hustleburg’s Episode 4, Answering Listener Questions:  What is the single most important social platform to get your content out as a side hustler and beyond? Or does it vary from business to business?

I’m glad you hedged your question, because I look at this two ways.

Single Most Important Social Media Platform

The single most important platform is where everyone already is. Right now, in 2020, that’s Facebook. At the end of 2019, they reported 2.5 BILLION monthly active users. As such, it’s simply too large to ignore, and people expect that no matter what business you’re in, that you at least have a Facebook page with some basic information.

Your Customers Are Already There

The reason that people expect this is because that’s someplace where they already are and they can find out something about you. Even if you don’t have a website, people expect that you have a business page on Facebook. We aren’t talking about your Facebook profile, we’re talking about a Facebook business page. You don’t want to confuse the two. A profile is where you share the photos of your children with their grandparents, but a page is about your business activity. Separating them keeps your personal life personal and your business life business.

Great Tools to Advertise

Also, Facebook is going to be a great way to jump into advertising as a part of your digital strategy on social media. Facebook offers so much data on their users to advertisers, so that you can hyper-target your demographics and psychographics. This allows you to spend your advertising dollars only going after your ideal customer. Their tool allows you to really focus on specific zip codes, specific age groups, and specific interests. When you really know your customers and your potential customers, they provide an awesome opportunity to utilize. These tools within Facebook further their position as the single most important platform in 2020. Keep in mind that some advice in the digital marketing space doesn’t age well, because of how rapidly things change so I’ll likely revise this in the future.

Also, Consider This…

Current popularity does not always forever popularity, so the above is not to say that it’s going to be the most popular social platform going forward. Remember Myspace? Or Friendster before that? Neither of those stuck around, as they were surpassed by something that was more interesting or more social. We wanted something different, found it, and platforms either evolve with us or go away.

The other way to look at this question is to consider other platforms as well, because marketing is all about telling the stories. Most importantly, it’s about telling YOUR story, and how will you best tell that story. For example, if you do something that’s very visual, has a very compelling visual element, or is very complicated to share with words, you’re definitely going to want an almost exclusively visual platform.

Finally, you also need to make sure that you choose a platform that you’re comfortable with using. That does not mean, however, that you can just not use a platform because you’re not comfortable. You should learn how to use it. You do that by watching what successful users of that platform do, by interacting with them and your potential customers, and by using the greatest information resource in the history of mankind.

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

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