solopreneur | Beyond Your Side Hustle

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.

Hustleburg Episode 5 – Interview with Red Hot Tiki’s Robynne Swanson

Listen to Hustleburg

In this episode, Brett sits down with Robynne Swanson of Red Hot Tiki, a spicy gourmet market in Gulfport, just south of Saint Petersburg. With over 1500 spicy products, such as hot sauces, pepper extracts, pickled products, jams, jellies, jerky, and spicy snacks, there is surely something to attract your spicy side.

Brett and Robynne discuss her journey from the corporate world to becoming a solopreneur, running the tiki filled to the brim with hot sauce, selling in the retail space in 2020, and how she’s moving to add a direct to consumer web component to her business. They also talk about the shop’s Scorpion Shot Challenge, an activity for those ready to tackle some of the hottest peppers on earth.

Red Hot Tiki’s 🔥 Links

Find out more about Red Hot Tiki:

Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter

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.

Want to be 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.