Transcript: EP #181 – The 4 Business Pillars That Allow Me to Only Need a Hint of Hustle

[00:01:38] I am so frigging stoked that you are here officially. I want to welcome you to the show. It is our first episode under the brand Hint of Hustle. And I, I’m just really, I’m really freaking excited and also I say this out loud as I often recommend to clients to not start their presentations by saying, I am excited, but gosh darn it, I, I sure am.

[00:02:08] If you’ve been hanging around on the podcast, you know, this day has been coming. If you are a close friend of mine, you will probably not be surprised of this slight pivot on the show into this episode. My intention today is to give you a little backstage pass at the why the change but more importantly, I want to share with you four reasons or four pillars, if you will, around what I focus on in my business and how I approach entrepreneurship that allow me to live by this idea of hint of hustle.

[00:02:47] Now, let’s talk about what I mean by this concept. If you’re familiar with the 80 20 rule or 20 / 80 rule, or Pareto principle or the, the vital few, all of these are term the same. It comes from a really long time ago around where land was assessed that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land. I digress here, but the concept has since evolved in business where it talks about how generally in business, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers or another way to phrase it is 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. And this is something that I have embraced in my life and in my business because if you’re anything like me, I built my career with my busy badge of honor. I did like many of entrepreneurs. I hustled my ass out of coll-, actually through college.

[00:03:42] I worked full-time all the way through college. I hustled multiple, like sometimes I had multiple jobs my last year in college. Side note, fun fact, if you think I’m an overachiever, sometimes I am. I started going to college when I was 16. I did that program that was part-time college whilst in high school.

[00:04:00] I was doing that, but I didn’t get very far, took me an eternity to finish community college ’cause I was working full-time. In total, I think I was in college for what, I started at 16 and I graduated college at 25. It’s a hot minute. It took me a while because I was doing multiple things at once, working full-time, going to school, changed majors, changed schools.

[00:04:21] All this to say in my last couple semesters, I was going, what, 24-25 credits while working. All this to say, I, I was hustling. I was hustling. I, I joke all the time and it’s a very sad joke with my husband that I sometimes struggle to remember things that happened in my twenties because I was on the go so much. After college I had been working again for years but I got an incredible job. This one I talked about previously on the show in the consulting space, in the medical industry. And that job was a world when it took me all of the US and the world as I spoke on stages and as head of training for that company and it was so much freaking fun.

[00:05:08] I got so many experiences and I do not regret for a moment the volume that I worked but here’s the thing. I found myself on this cycle of climbing to the next achievement. Now, I’m sure me and a therapist could unpack all the reasons of what I was chasing slash running from. I’m sure there is a whole underlining childhood trauma story around losing my mom from cancer when I was in high school.

[00:05:34] So I put my head down into work and just focused on that and created some kind of achievement mentality. I’m fully aware I have things to unpack with that, but I don’t think that I am alone in this pursuit of trying to create something great. You see, I grew up the youngest of six kids. Our family we didn’t have a lot of money.

[00:05:55] My dad was a truck driver. My mom was a seamstress. We had six kids in our house, so eight [00:06:00] people, and we technically lived in a two bedroom house. We made it work growing up. I had no idea we were poor until I wanted to go school clothes shopping at JC Penney’s, and it was replaced by back to school clothes shopping at Value Village.

[00:06:15] I remember the year that my mom took me to JC Penneys to do my back to school clothes shopping. It was a very, I mean, I thought it was the luckiest girl in the world. All this to say we didn’t have money growing up. And when I went over to friends’ houses to spend the night especially as I get older in middle school and I started noticing that what my friends had, they had Clinique makeup. One of my two best friends growing up were identical twins and they gotta shop at Nordstrom’s. And I don’t even know what the heck Nordstrom’s was. And I remember creating this narrative in my brain when I was little that someday I’m gonna make a lot of money because I don’t wanna have to, I don’t wanna have to choose.

[00:06:51] I, I don’t want how to be stressed over paying bills. I don’t wanna be limited by what’s possible for me. So I chose very consciously early on to make money, to never let money be a limiting factor in my life. And I mean, I hustled for it. When I was in the fifth grade, I had a paper route. Y’all, I had a job when I was 10 years old. At one point I decided to hustle even more and I got two paper routes and I was due, I was balling in middle school. I had all of this extra cash. I mean, it probably wasn’t very much money but I had this cash and I would go to, in the lunchroom, they had the Snack Shack and I would be rolling in the you know those packages of Red Vines, like the two, it’s like two stacks of Red Vines, but they’re the ones that are connected together.

[00:07:33] Oh my gosh, I love those and a twisty ice cream cone and a fruit roll up. I would cringe my children today did this, but y’all, I, I was living the life and so narrative, fast forward when I graduated college, I’m like, I got to chase this. I have my cell phone to pay for, my insurance to pay for I have all these things to pay for.

[00:07:51] I’m a grownup now. I need to get up on this, and I’d always had great success when I work hard at a job. I would elevate and get promoted so that’s what you do, that’s what I did. So for years, I, I did that. I climbed the corporate ladder and Friend, it worked. It probably worked for you too whatever your version of hustle. I’m sure you have your own story around how you pursued your version of success.

[00:08:19] I mean, if you’re listening to the show, you’re pretty ambitious, right? The fact that you’re listening to podcasts, you’re bettering yourself, you’re, you’re trying to learn new things and grow. My friend, you are, you’re in tune with the idea of growth and with that, we have this need to do more. Well, for me, things changed after I had my first baby and I was so worried about taking time off of work.

[00:08:47] I thought, this is gonna sound so terrible, but I thought, I thought I would be replaced and I know legally, obviously I cannot be replaced. But there is this thing that happens when you’re in an environment that’s hustling all the time, that if you are [00:09:00] absent, someone else will fill the role of being the go-to person.

[00:09:04] I was totally, I was so freaked out by that. I ended my maternity leave a month early to go back and what’s so interesting is when I went back to work after having Owen, our first baby, something in me shifted. Where the things that would get me riled up that I’d be super passionate, excited about, it’s like I, I, what’s the phrase is, it’s like a you know, if you put a filter on a photo, how it’s in like full color, but if you turn back the opacity to half black and white, it’s just like, it’s tinted kind of looks cool, right?

[00:09:38] But it’s, it’s not vibrant. That’s how some of these things that I had been so riled up and so ambitious and so wanting to climb the ladder on, those had changed for me. And I thought it was interesting, but very quickly, I eased my way back into wanting to hustle and wanting to grow and I had some really incredible opportunities to take on these huge pro projects.

[00:09:58] Our company sold to a huge buyer for 151 million and I was tapped on the shoulder to help lead that project and to bring a lot of our trainings and tools and resources into these companies and so that led me on stages all over the world. And for a moment I’m like, that felt good. I felt important. I felt special and I got pregnant again, and that’s when I was pregnant with Levi and I started traveling a lot over to Europe specifically. And I remember this one particular instance, I was teaching a workshop to, in Denmark to a room full of a hundred Danish hearing care professionals and they, most of them spoke English.

[00:10:40] That was a fun experience, story for another day. But I remember at the end of that workshop, the CEO e of that company pulled me aside and he said, Hey, Heather, what are your bosses doing to make sure you don’t leave? And I laughed and I was like, what are you talking about? He’s like, they’re, they’re paying you well, right?

[00:10:54] But like, what are they doing to keep you? I’m like, oh, I’m paid great, like I got a nice little fat bonus from the sale of the company and I’m doing good and he looked at me cuz he realized I was doing what so many of us do. I want you to pay attention to this. I was being very humble and I was deflecting the compliment that he was trying to give me.

[00:11:13] So he looked at me and he had a couple to drink so that probably added to his his, his rigor ear. But he looks at me, he goes, no, no, I don’t think that you hear what I’m saying? Your content is good, like what you do for the company, that’s good, like the stuff that you brought on behalf of the company is good, but you, the way that you hold a room. The way that you think, the nuanced way that you speak to people, that you make them still feel seen. You get them excited about the possibility of what they can do with your material. That’s not the content you brought. That’s you, girl. What are they doing to keep you? Because if you are not there, I’m, I can’t see how this is gonna be taught. Now my ego felt very good for a moment, but I, of course was very humble about it. Side note, that company’s doing wonderful. They did not need me. It’s a story we tell ourselves that we’re irreplaceable. The lesson in this is that conversation of someone pointing out what I was good at, this, this skill that I brought to the table, that I thought I was crazy.

[00:12:10] And I thought, well, I thought that everybody had it. It was something unique to me. It was a talent that I had and he opened up this little door of light that allowed me to peek through and say, could I do this beyond this? Could I, could I do this for other people? Is this something that people would pay me money for without the backing of another brand?

[00:12:32] And that for me, opened the door to entrepreneurship. Have you been in my world before? You’ve heard me share ions of this story, maybe slices of this, but for me it was that, that catalyst that drove me to do things a different way because the reality was I didn’t want to have a boss anymore. Quite frankly, I was terrible, happy to boss.

[00:12:52] Thank God it was a very entrepreneurial company. I gotta do a lot of what I wanted. I, I pretty much ran my own little micro company within the company. And the moment that the company was bought out, I had to have a little bit more like oversight and I realized I hate that. Right? So Min, like, like you, I don’t like having a boss.

[00:13:09] I don’t like people telling me what to do. I’m gonna do what I want anyways. And that is what’s so beautiful about entrepreneurship is we get to do what we want, the crappy part of entrepreneurship is we are own bosses and we also have to hold ourselves accountable to all of the metrics and performances in our company, and that’s what brings a lot of stress. We’re gonna talk about that here today. 

[00:13:32] But for me I had thought my company would be what that guy gave me credit for, which was facilitating and speaking on stages for groups. But here’s the interesting thing, and I want you to pay attention to this. Sometimes what we think is our next step or what we think is going to be the, the big idea. Things shift. Sometimes the big idea is just the bridge to what you’re really meant to do. And what’s interesting is we think that so often it has to be A to Z on our journey, like we have to go straight from A to Z. There are a lot of letters in between on the alphabet, my friend. We, I think, are so focused on getting to that ultimate end finish line that sometimes we miss the opportunity to enjoy the the side roads that happen in.

[00:14:21] So that moment of me thinking about, okay, what would be possible led to me dreaming and start planning out building up my business. But I very quickly realized that, you know, if I had a business as a professional speaker and facilitator that would give me a bunch of different bosses, ie., the clients who booked me. They set the schedule, they set the location, they tell me when I’m going. I would, I would be committed to somebody else’s calendar and that really freaked me out. Well, I love the idea of performing, speaking, connecting, facilitating breakthroughs with audiences. Oh my gosh, and I am so good at it. However, the caveat that came with it is going hold up. I wanna do that, but being tied to a conference 18 months from now, or other organizations on a Saturday or a Sunday, I, and I know I wouldn’t have to say yes to every opportunity, but y’all, when you get started, you gotta say a lot more yeses to establish your brand to then be choosy.

[00:15:21] So I started doing speaking and I quickly realized that I didn’t wanna do that. So I decided to change the design of how I operated business and this front is the lesson. You get to choose and you get to evolve and you get to change what you do, whether that’s your niche, whether that’s who you work from, it’s whether the capacity that you work in, maybe you start by doing one-on-one or like me, you start with doing full speaking and realize that you actually want to create your own stage. You wanna create your own stage and go directly to the audiences to help them. You get to choose what that looks like for you. And when I started asking what’s the [00:16:00] design of the business that I want, let me stop looking at what other people are doing and start asking myself some questions and creating the kind of business and the kind of life that I wanted, that’s when things started becoming really. That’s when I started learning to trust myself, trust my instincts. Trust to bring my past experience into what I’m doing right now. This, this is really the journey of how I discovered the concept of Hint of Hustle. And I wanna share with you today some of the most important insights that I think will help you too, because here’s the interesting thing that happens. You would think the ending on that story or the page turner on that story is like, Ooh, and haven’t got it, and she got the business down and woo. But friend, y’all, what I just did is I moved my aggressive ladder climbing productivity energy from corporate. I’ll move that to entrepreneurship. I lock my business and said, okay, the goal is seven figures.

[00:16:56] Can do that. How long can it take me? Great. I don’t know. Let’s hit the first milestone. Head down, go. Get all the pieces in, like go, go, go, go, go. And so I went full, full ass baby in my business doing all of the things, signing up for so many freaking courses and programs. Oh, oh, I need to learn YouTube. Oh, I need to learn Pinterest.

[00:17:17] Oh, oh, I gotta get all these things, start collecting ’em all. I didn’t take any of ’em. I mean, gosh, I have this whole collection of courses, right? But just in case, I know I’m gonna need this at some point, so I’m gonna buy it. And so I start collecting all these things. All of this busyness, meanwhile going, holy mother, frick, I gotta make some money.

[00:17:35] Let me go over here and find a client. One thing I did very, very well in my business early on, as I said, I need to ensure that I have a revenue. So I prioritized revenue before anything else. We’ll, we’ll talk about that a little bit later for yourself. But that was one of the things I did really, really well.

[00:17:52] But I found myself filling up my. At the time, I had two kids that were in full-time daycare.

[00:18:00] My husband and I made the decision not to pull them from daycare when I started staying home running my business because I wanted to get my business up and running as fast as possible. But the goal was always to cut back their daycare.

[00:18:12] Well, I don’t know about you, but I really, really enjoy working. I love, I love the time with my kids, but I, really, really love the time without my kids, which some y’all might come for me on that statement, but many, you are proud. I think you’re gonna be like, yes, same, same. I too hide in my pantry when the kids are home all weekend, finding their secret snacks. They’re really my secret snacks. With the door closed, I could hear them saying, where’s mom? Don’t respond. They can’t find me. They call that my downstairs office. I digress. But for me, I had all this time, right? I, I had full-time daycare, so therefore I could have full-time business. But I started filling up my plate with all of these other things, and then a really tragic but very beautiful gift happen 2020 in the spring, which essentially pulled the rug out from all of us, right?

[00:19:09] 2020 did with my kids being home full-time, me being home full-time, my husband being home full-time, oh my gosh, everybody was in my physical space all the time. And for an introvert, oh, that’s a lot. But what it did was essentially shifted everything where instead of having 40 ish hours of week that I could build this business, all of a sudden protected time alone, yo, I had eight hours a week. And for some like you might be going like, that’s wonderful. I don’t have any protected time by myself. Y’all, we’re all on our own different journeys here. All right, let’s not like compare each other’s papers but eight hours. That was a very, very big shift and a big part of it was fun fact write on lockdown about two weeks into it, my husband called for grand jury duty. Yes, they did at a courthouse, them being like in separate rooms all masked up and they had to do, it was six freaking weeks of grand jury duty. Oh my freaking goodness which meant that I was home trying to run the house, run the business, take care of the kids, trying to figure out what’s going life, and we didn’t have any toilet paper y’all, like there were a lot of things happening. We had to make it work with that. I remember freaking panicking with my peer mastermind around, how the hell am I supposed to do this on eight hours a week? And you know what that meant. It meant that I had to cut all of the extra fluff that I had added to my business.

[00:20:31] Now, unfortunately, I had to add, I had to cut some other things too, but I had to get really, really choosy with my commitments. And the funny thing happened when I got way choosier with what I said yes to, it allowed me to start showing up integrity to those commitments. You see, I don’t know if this resonates with you, but I’m the kind of person who used to always just like say yes to, if we’d run into a friend at a coffee shop and be like, oh yeah, we can get together.

[00:20:57] No intention of ever getting together. Sorry if you were one of those friends that I said that to, I just, I’m a hermit. I am an introvert. I’m sure I would love to see and talk to you at some point, but I, I was the front. Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. I know. Terrible. Terrible. But I would always say, yes, yes, we should do that. Yes, we should do that. It was just kind of the courteous things to do, and I would do that with myself, with my goals. I would add things to my plate, a health goal, a a relationship goal, a hobby goal, all of these things I would say yes to. And I had trained myself essentially to go, okay, I say just yes to everything, we’ll figure it out later. We’ll figure it out later, and I always did. I always figured it out. But what was interesting is all of these yeses that I would say all got muddied up into this one big pot and only the things that were on fire or had a deadline, those were the things that got the attention.

[00:21:47] Everything else went down the drain. So I learned to get really choosy with my commitments. And when I did that, I realized that, okay, when I am careful with my yes, I can commit and I can follow through. It wasn’t something wrong with me, it wasn’t bad about follow through. I was just really good at starting a lot of things.

[00:22:07] I talked about this this week with a client similar thing. Great at initiating right, but terrible on follow through. No, I’m just really good at, hoo. What I spend my time in and entered the mantra for me is if you’re gonna say, Go after it with a full ass. That was a mantra. If you were listening around the podcast last year, you heard me use the full asset mantra a lot, but that’s the thing.

[00:22:31] If I’m gonna say yes to something, I’m gonna go all in. And what I realized is when I started to do that, I would go through seasons where I would just be all in it to get a launch done or to get a new module in my course up and running, or to restructure something or to have a series happen on the podcast or collaboration happening.

[00:22:50] When I had these projects that lit me up and I was fully committed to an affiliate launch last year for B B D A, man Baby, I would go all in full. And then what would happen is in between, I would feel my energy going, all right. You can, you can rest, babe. You can take a break over the summer, y’all. I, okay.

[00:23:12] This is such an embarrassing admission, but I feel like we need to have some real talk here over the summer. I was so in a need for mindless rest because we were building the Speaker Co. I mean, we were firing, we were firing on a lot of, we said yes to a lot of things and we full ass a lot of things, which meant that my, my capacity for anything else in my brain was pretty limited.

[00:23:33] So here’s the really embarrassing admission. Oh, the summer, I swear I watched 10 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, which I, I don’t know about, i, I’m embarrassed by that. And also not, I don’t know. I, I did that over the summer. I was in deep rest and it came out with this idea I was sharing with some of our members who came to our Boujee Business Retreat that we did last fall.

[00:23:58] It was a private retreat event, and we were at the Boujee Business Retreat. I was talking about how. I am the laziest entrepreneur. I, I joke about that all the time. I’m so lazy, like I just want minimal effort. And I, and I realized I need to be more careful with my words when I say that because one of our VIP guests at lunch, she had sat down next to me and she goes, you know, I’ve heard you say that quite a few times.

[00:24:19] Can you tell me what you mean? And, and that was when I realized, oh, thank goodness. I need to clarify. What I mean by me being the laziest entrepreneur is I’m always asking where can I put my energy into the things that are actually gonna get in results? What is that 20% that’s gonna get me the 80% of results?

[00:24:37] And then when it’s time, like when those things are done and there’s a little beat in between, I’m going to rest guilt-free. I’m gonna take an afternoon off. I’m gonna reorganize my pantry on a random Tuesday if that’s what I wanna do. I’m gonna watch 10 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, and I’m not gonna feel guilty about it. I’m gonna go get my nails done on a random Thursday. Say that’s a terrible example. I haven’t gotten my nails done since pre pandemic, and I really want to, so we’ll add that to the list. But the idea is I don’t feel guilt anymore from being in seasons of rest because I know those seasons of rest, taking that time off, whether it’s, in any given random week, if I’m feeling resistance to something and I go on a walk or I take the rest of the day off, or I don’t get everything finished that I had on my plate, I no longer beat myself up.

[00:25:25] And it’s because I know for the things that matter, I will show up and go full ass. I am not afraid to hustle and friend y’all. I hustle hard. I know a lot of people don’t like that word hustle, and there’s this whole movement about anti hustle. Hustle, in my opinion, is necessary for you to achieve the big ass goals that you have on your list. To think that we can just saunter our way to these big things that have never been done by us before, I think is just crazy town. But I also know that going full ass all the time is not sustainable. I want you to think about, let’s do as a physical metaphor, when you’re working out, if you’re a workout person, let’s talk about muscles for a moment.

[00:26:06] What happens with muscles is you actually have to be under resistance in order to tear that muscle and then be in rest for that muscle to recuperate and that’s how your muscles grow stronger. There is tension and. Tension and rest, and for you to be able to achieve the goals that you have out for yourself and for your business and for your family.

[00:26:29] You’re going to be in seasons of tension and seasons of rest. What you have to learn to do is know when and where to apply both because if you’re running under tension and stress all the time, it’s not good for you physically. It’s not good for you mentally and it’s definitely not good for your business even if you think it is, it is not. Our businesses need a little bit of that rest period to rejuvenate. We are, when we’re at the center of our businesses, right? We’re the ideas person, we’re the executors, we’re the front facing clients. When we’re the content creators, we have to give our, like ourselves the opportunity to breathe.

[00:27:04] We gotta recover. We gotta come up with better ideas. If you’ve ever worked in capacity where you’ve worked, when you’re really, really tired and you come back maybe a day later and you’re like, oh, that felt really hard and I didn’t get much done. But when you’re fresh, right, you can get something done in about 20 minutes and it maybe took you four hours before.

[00:27:22] That’s the same concept here. When it comes down to it, I believe that hustle is required in business, but if you are in for business for the long game, and if you actually want to live a life that’s not just about your business, you have to have a hint of hustle. You gotta know when to lean in, when to go through these seasons. And a season doesn’t mean a like summer, right? I’m talking about seasons could be any given week, could be really busy, but the next week is light or maybe you have a month or a quarter that is super intense. But finding those little pockets of rest, finding those little pockets of quiet, finding those things that you need based off your own rest cycle, right?

[00:28:00] Some of us rest in different ways. I, I mean, hashtag self-care is very friendly, but you gotta find what works for you. Sometimes rest is taking a call on your treadmill or outside. I don’t, I’m not gonna define that for you, but you know the difference when you have the dial cranked up to a hundred percent capacity versus when you are giving yourself intentional recovery periods.

[00:28:24] For me, a hint of hustle is choosing your yeses wisely. It’s saying yes to the things that you know are going to create results and equally so in your life, outside of work, being choosy with what you want and going after it, creating capacity for you to have the kind of health that you desire, to have the energy to desire the relationships you desire. We have to be intentional with each of these things. So this show is dedicated to help remind you. That it’s okay to hustle. You’ll be supported with strategies and with tips and tactics. Y’all know I’m gonna bring it on the show to help you really dial in that 20% that’s gonna help you be effective in business.

[00:29:05] But also it’s gonna remind you that you can take a beat and it’s okay. You can go through these seasons of rest, seasons of hustle. But most important, I hope this show inspires you, that at the end of the day, you’re the one in the driver’s seat. You have to figure out what is the mix that works for you.

[00:29:22] And hear me when I say this, note, it’s probably gonna change six months from now. Hell, it might even change next months or 90 days. I think we get so tied to this idea of needing to have a business schedule or having these specific habits and rituals, and that if we stick to them then, then we’re going to be able to show up in the way that we want or have what we want.

[00:29:43] When X happens, then we’ll have that, that when-then, thing. Oh my gosh. That’s gonna, that’s real, a real downer. But what I want you to think about is this tension between hustle and rest, building your business muscle, my friend, building your being maybe more than your business muscle. It’s evolving. So just like with strength training, if you follow the exact same strength training routine your muscles are going to, they’re gonna plateau, cause it’s like, yeah, we know how to do this. You have to change up the routine. So when you think about your seasons of hustles, just expect that you’re gonna a change and you’re gonna evolve. Maybe you go through a season where you’re really in to your specific health habits and you’re obsessed over them.

[00:30:27] I did that last year and then I went into a season where I really wanted to focus on building the new company. Now I’m in a season where I’m figuring out my ebb and flow in between. We each go through seasons and what I really want you to hear is that, It’s not doing it wrong. If you change how you do it, it means that you are changing things up to adapt so that your muscle can grow. That’s the thing about entrepreneurship, is you have to grow, you have to evolve, and the secret here, the operative board is you. You are the cap in your business. This is the first fundamental pillar of what I stand for when it comes to having a hint of hustle in my life and in my business is number one, it starts and ends with you.

[00:31:11] Your own personal growth, how you view business will dictate how you perform in business and what’s possible for you in business. How you show up as a leader is going to be a cap for what your team can accomplish. How you, how you show up what you put into your brain, what you expose yourself to. Are you, what are you reading?

[00:31:29] What are you scrolling? What’s the inputs that you have, and do you have way more inputs, meaning you’re consuming all of this other people’s information but you’re choked off of your own creativity, that’s a you problem friend. You need to prioritize time for you to be creative, to turn off the, the inputs and focus on writing, focused on brainstorming, focusing on topping, like talking.

[00:31:53] These are things you are at the center of this. There are four pillars that I think are essential to [00:32:00] you being able to live this lifestyle of hint of hustle. It’s what I’m embodying. This is what I wanna share with you right now. So the first, the pinnacle is you. I call it self and it’s self-awareness.

[00:32:09] It’s self-development, it’s self-discipline, it’s self grace. It’s all of these things is you really being in tune with yourself so that you can be confident and trust your intuition. Trust that you can prioritize yourself because friend, if you are not. Standing, the likelihood of your business surviving is pretty low.

[00:32:28] I mean, if you’re listening to this show, most likely you have a personal brand, right? You have a content expert based business. You’re not here with a big giant team. Most likely you’re listening cuz you are an, like essential part of your business. And we can talk later about succession planning and all of those things, but right now, as it stands, friend, you have to take care of.

[00:32:49] And the more that you take care of you by, by reading and fueling your brain and your body with things that are gonna make you feel good and help you have good outputs, that has to be [00:33:00] absolutely top of the list. So one of the things we’re gonna talk about the show, I’m gonna be talking about personal development.

[00:33:05] I’ll share with you my personal habits. I’m gonna bring on people that have influenced me in my own personal development and growth. We’re really gonna be talking about what you are doing to keep yourself queued up to show up for your life and your business, so yourself. That is number one, my friend.

[00:33:22] Number two, your strategy. Once you understand, okay, I wanna adopt this idea of, I wanna figure out what are those things, at a top 20%, what’s really, really important is you have to design the business that’s going to give you what you’re after. So often in business, we model what we are gonna build based off other people, because we don’t, if we see what others have, we go, Ooh, that looks good.

[00:33:49] I’ll take one of those. It’s like it’s like at a fancy steakhouse when they come by with a dessert cart to show you all of those things, and you’re like, yes. Now I didn’t know if I wanted dessert, but now I want 50 desserts. Thank you. It’s when you see it, then it’s like, Ooh, I’m salivating. I want that. But a lot of times we don’t actually stop and say, but do I, like for me, when I thought I wanted to build a business about becoming a professional speaker and a facilitator, because that was my skill, but when I got real with what do I actually like. What would that picture look like if that were my life? I loved traveling on airplanes. I loved that. But ooh, it was a non-start. Well, it already started, but it was a direction change when I realized that, oh my gosh, I’m gonna have a bajillion bosses of event planners, I don’t, that’s not what I want. I don’t want someone else with my schedule.

[00:34:39] So I had to get creative and say, but what could I create? What is the business model that works for me?. So for you, what does that look like, right? If you’ve been trying to answer the question, do I create a course? Do I launch a membership? Do I go out and do paid speaking? Do I do consulting? Can I do a coaching program? What’s the difference between like, if you’re muddling trying to figure out those pieces, Friend, let me just tell you and make a fricking decision because as I mentioned, it’s okay to pivot. It’s okay to evolve and it’s okay to grow, but you have to get really clear around what do you want that to look like.

[00:35:12] What’s actually gonna take for that to be happen? Have you run the numbers. If you have an idea for a membership that’s $7 a month and your vision is to be making six figures this year, have you done the math on what that would take for that to happen? Not judging it, I’m not saying it’s wrong, but what I find for a lot of the entrepreneurs I talk to, they’ve kind of run the math, but they haven’t thought about what it would take to make that math happen.

[00:35:38] I don’t say that because it’s the wrong choice. I just say that as part of your job as an entrepreneurs to have a level of awareness of, oh, okay, these are the things that would need to happen. And then ask, do I want to do that? So on this show we’re gonna talk about business models and different strategies. We’re gonna talk about what are some different things that you might wanna be thinking about in your business? It’s a big part of the guests I’m gonna be having on this show. I wanna know the backstage of their business. You know, we see everything that’s onstage. We see them on social media, we see them on physical stages. We see in the newsletters, we see all that front facing onstage work. I wanna know is what’s happening behind the scenes? Do these people hustle all the time? Do they believe in hustle? Do they, do they wear their busyness like a badge of honor? Have they learned that maybe there’s a different way? Are they now anti hustle?

[00:36:26] I wanna know how many hours a week do they work? What does their team look like? What would they go back if they had to build it again? What was the first version? What would they do differently? What lessons they learned? What skills allowed them to be successful? These are the kinds of questions I’m gonna ask, but some of them are going to be, how did you design your business?

[00:36:44] Was it intentional? How did it evolve? I want to give you more examples on that dessert cart so you can be choosier with what works for you. My hope is on this show that we get those light bulb moments happening for you that you’re like, yeah, that, that I hadn’t, I knew something was off, but that is what I want.

[00:37:03] I want you to really evaluate, but we need to show you more options and that’s my intention for many of the conversations I’ll have on the show with guest. The third area that has allowed me to be successful and I think is instrumental to this, adopting a hint of hustle mindset. Number three is, friend, we gotta talk about money and we gotta talk about you making it, making sales in your business and generating money is.

[00:37:29] It is money is the oxygen for your business. And it’s baffling to me that so many business owners are so afraid to ask for money. If you are afraid of asking for money, you gotta start banking on an alternative path, my friend. So here’s the thing, we don’t need to, I don’t wanna make you feel bad about it.

[00:37:46] If you feel weird asking for money, you’re not alone. It’s very, very normal. In fact, that was my job for years. That thing I did for stage on stages for training. I tapped sales. More specifically, I taught doctors how to make cells, which funny doctors go to school to help people. The last thing they wanna do is sell people, but the industry I worked in was the hearing care industry and hearing care is the one random thing that they have these little widget devices, I’m wearing them right now.

[00:38:14] Those of you who are new, I wear hearing aids. I have dependent upon them for the last, I don’t know, 11, 12 years. Thank goodness for them. But insurance doesn’t really cover them or cover the good ones. So I had to teach doctors how to sell $9,000 devices to patients, and I can tell you there’s a lot of head junk around that.

[00:38:32] But for you, my friend, I get, it’s hard when you’re selling something intangible, when you’re selling your skills, your expertise. When you’re selling knowledge, it can feel very weird and uncomfortable to describe it, but just because that feels foreign or uncomfortable does not give you an excuse to not embrace it and master it.

[00:38:54] Mastering sales, mastering generated money. That is the name of the game and that’s why [00:39:00] we’re gonna talk about it a lot more on the show because while I’m very, very good at it and we’ll teach you what I know so that you too can be successful. It’s also a conversational I’ll have with guests. I’ll bring on different experts.

[00:39:11] We’ll have conversations around how other people’s relationship with money has changed to give you that hope that you’re not alone and it’s possible to change that money narrative. We all have it. What we need to focus on is equipping you the, with the click moment, that’s gonna help you become a catalyst of really generating money and taking ownership of the sales of your business.

[00:39:31] Okay, the fourth pillar, we talked about self, we’ve talked about strategy, we talked about sales. The fourth one you didn’t think of I was gonna get through this whole episode without talking about speaking because y’all know I’m a speaking coach, co-founder of the Speaker Co, where we help you create and deliver magnetic presentations that grow your business.

[00:39:51] See how smooth that came right out. It’s like, I’ve done this before. Speaking, I believe as an entrepreneur, especially an entrepreneur who’s an expert, who sells their expertise through courses, coaching, consulting speaking on stages, you have to know how to articulate your ideas, how to articulate what it is that you do, your value. You have to articulate the problem that you solve, your communication skills from the stage, but also interpersonal skills of you with your relationship building and your collaborations, negotiating contracts or speaking fees, or working with your team. Your ability to communicate yourself and the communication skills will be a cap on your success.

[00:40:33] So we’re gonna to talk about that. It might not be the sexiest topic, and it might be a very specific topic on an entrepreneurship podcast. But here’s the thing, communication is the number one skill of entrepreneurs, in my opinion. Yes, you have to have critical thinking. Yes, you have to be decisive.

[00:40:50] Yes, you have to be creative and innovative, but if you cannot articulate your ideas in language that other people will buy into, you’re all alone. You don’t have a business. You’re just a man on a mountain with an idea. It’s not gonna work for you for the goals that you have. First of all, you’re probably not a man on a mountain, so there’s that problem.

[00:41:10] But secondly, we have to get you talking about your shit in a way that excites you and represents that excitement, and it gets other people excited too. Does that mean you need to be a rah rah cheerleader and talks fast as me all the time? No. We need to figure out the version that works for you. How do you articulate your ideas?

[00:41:29] How do you articulate your thoughts? How do you enroll others in your vision? How do you talk to your customers? How do you make sales with your words? These are all things we’ve covered on the show. We’re going to talk about more on the show if you are excited about that. Let me get my shit together with my words.

[00:41:44] Let me get better at communication. Just gonna give you a little head start here. If you have not downloaded our cheat sheet to help you with phrases you can use to become more magnetic right now for your audience, you can grab that cheat sheet at thespeakerco.com/magnet. It’s by far our number one download.

[00:42:02] It’s my 19 favorite ways that when you’re speaking to your audience to get them to like, listen, pay attention, take you seriously, and then do what it is that you want them to do, so that go grab. Speakerco.com/magnet. It’ll also be in the show notes, but we’re gonna talk about speaking because here is the very direct reality that 20%, the things that are gonna get you the biggest results in your business, really identifying what that is, using your voice.

[00:42:30] Getting clear around what you have to offer, your unique perspective, sharing your story in a way that resonates with others. That right there, that communication piece, that’s part of that 20% because when we, we believe Emily and I, my business partner, we believe that when you know how to talk about these things, when you know how to collaborate and build relationships with other people, when you know how to speak to your audience, when you know how to use your words to make sales, when you know how to master that vocality and that speaking piece, [00:43:00] you only need a hint of hustle.

[00:43:02] You see, when I built my business before we launched a Speaker Co, I didn’t have all the fancy stuff. I had sure, I had the podcast. Yeah, I had an email list, but I had no strategy on social media. I didn’t do all the other extra stuff that we’re quote unquote supposed to do. What I had was my voice. So I showed up on my stages and other people’s stages, and I just talked about my expertise in language that resonated with people so well they ran to my list and our launches sold out like hotcakes That is what built what you see today, right? That catalyst of being so good with communication, that was the foundation of everything. So, of course, my friend, we’re still gonna talk about speaking around here and we’ll have speaking specific episodes.

[00:43:48] If you wanna binge some of those episodes, check out the show notes of this episode. Wherever you’re listening, we’ll put a link. We created a secret podcast playlist for you of our favorite episodes [00:44:00] on business communication and speaking. So if you want that, check out the show notes and grab that little secret link.

[00:44:05] Also, share that with a friend. Anytime you hear anybody talking about speaking, share the, the link. It’s an opt-in, so don’t share the secret, secret link, but you can share an area where they can get access to it too. Okay, friend. This is what Hint of Hustle is all about. It’s helping you drive a higher level awareness for how you’re showing up what you want and designing your life in business in a way that’s gonna feel right for you.

[00:44:28] On the show, you can expect solo episodes just like this, me talking to you through this little camera, through this microphone. You can watch any of these episodes on the Speaker Co blog on YouTube, or you can listen obviously wherever you’re listening to this, to. If you like the watch it format, go for it. You can also read the show notes. You can just click the link and wherever you’re listening to this. But what I’m most excited about, what I’m most freaking excited about is this is a platform that’s gonna allow me to have some of the most incredible conversations with founders. I have questions. I, I wanna know how people develop their [00:45:00] expertise, how they have pivoted in their business, how their businesses have evolved. Like I mentioned before. I wanna know what, what the economics are behind their business. How much do they work? How they hustle? Do they actually take rest? Do they feel guilty about it? Do they suffer with the same things that you do around this guilt game? What’s their relationship with selling and money and how has that evolved? These are the conversations I have starting next week with my very first guest, Ellen Yin, host of Cubicle to CEO she and I had a phenomenal conversation and when I said that starting next week, nope, I totally lied. It’s actually available for you right now after this episode, so be sure to check that one out.

[00:45:38] We drop both of these episodes for you at the same time so you can do a little hint of hustle binge so I hope you enjoy. I just wanna thank you so much for being around on this journey, this show. I’m so freaking excited, baby. I’m full assing this because I was very choosy with the yes for this and I’m gonna bring it.

[00:45:55] I’m gonna bring it for you, and I am so honored and grateful that you’re [00:46:00] here on the ride. Now one little last question before you go today. Can you do me a quick favor? If this episode got you fired up inspired, you were excited about building this hint of hustle mantra into your life and business, would you please take a screenshot of this and share it?

[00:46:17] Share it, share it with your audience, share it with a friend, tell, tell people about it. Tell ’em what resonated with you. What would also mean the world for me. If you could take a moment and leave a review on Apple Podcast. It would mean the freaking world reviews are the lifeblood for podcasters. It’s how other people make decisions of whether or not to listen to an episode of a show.

[00:46:38] So if you can help me out, we’re on a mission to get these reviews going in as part of this launch for Hint of Hustle. So please take a moment, leave a review. It would mean the world. All right, friend, until the next episode. Keep hint of hustle, top of mind, and I cannot wait to see how you resonate with today’s episode by friend.