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Always Be Hustling

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Hustle is one of the great traits anyone can possess. Whether you are competing on the playing field or in business, hustle gives you a competitive edge over your competitor. You work a little harder, look over the details a little more, and seek that extra edge in everything you do.

Hustle is critically important when you are engaged in the “side hustle” of starting your business. I must admit that I am stealing the term “side hustle” from one of my favorite entrepreneurship books, Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim. Ms. Slim left a successful corporate career to work as a self-employed consultant before starting her own coaching and writing career. Few books I have read blend the vision of entrepreneurship with the practical steps of executing a self-employment strategy.

Side Hustle

Ms. Slim learned the term “side hustle” from a family member who started a business doing nails while in college. Her family member was interested in earning some additional cash while studying, and Ms. Slim learned that she was doing the nail business as a “side hustle”. I love this term, because it portrays the perfect attitude to have when starting a new venture.
If you have read my past Debt-Free Adventure articles, you know I am passionate about starting your business the right way. I do not advocate quitting your day job right away as you build your business. I still work a full-time job as I develop Whiteboard Business Partners, because I want to remain hungry and committed to building a business of my own. I’m hustling every day when I write an extra blog post, research new ideas, or create a new educational program. I’m hustling when I use my savings or extra cash to build my business instead of seeking a bank loan. I’m hustling when I leave home to meet with a client right after dinner.

Matt’s note: For 2 years I worked a full-time job while building my business on the side. I hustled and sacrificed a lot of sleep in those 2 years, but it was so worth it. Now my “side gig” is my full-time job, and I love it.

Hustling is about doing the extra work and caring enough to do the right things in the right manner. If you approach your own work by hustling every day, people will notice your extra effort. You may receive an additional referral, earn a new speaking opportunity, or be featured on a local radio show. The key is never becoming content. The successful business owners I know are always looking for new ways to build their businesses. They are aware of their surroundings and seeking new revenue streams or opportunities to serve.
When you are working a “side hustle”, you should always seek ways to either turn your side job into full-time income or find better ways to earn part-time income. Your side job need not become a full-time opportunity. You may enjoy your full-time position and simply want a chance to fulfill a passion. You may want to earn additional income for play or for other means. Whatever you do, never stop hustling and finding ways to improve.

Are you hustling?

I consider hustling as one key factor differentiating the good from the great. When you hustle, you demonstrate initiative and motivation to the rest of the world. No matter what you do, always approach your endeavors with hustle.

Are you hustling? Prove it to us in the comments!

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Invest In Your Business

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When you are starting a new business, every dollar is important. You are either starting your business on the side as you continue your current job, or you are using savings while you are not earning a “traditional income”. The natural inclination is to spend as little money as possible. However, this approach can actually be worse than spending too much money too early in your business.

The adage is often true – “You must spend money to make money.” You must invest resources, money included, to increase your visibility and productivity. If you are cheap instead of frugal, you can easily become overwhelmed and frustrated as you try to do too much with too few resources. There are several areas where you must invest money to begin a viable business. Investing wisely in these two key areas, without overspending, will give you an advantage as you build your new source of income.

Invest in marketing

No business survives without sales, and sales come from visibility and exposure. Marketing is designed to promote the benefits your business provides to your target market and ideal customers. One great way to maximize your marketing investment is to identify your ideal customer. You cannot be all things to all people, so don’t try. Instead you need to identify the specific customer you want to attract and start marketing to them wisely.

Your first marketing investment should be a good Internet presence.

There are two key parts of building a good website. The first, registering a domain and finding a solid web host, is not very expensive. My domain for $11/year and host it for under $7/month, which is very inexpensive!

Designing a good website can cost more money, but is well worth the investment. I tried to design my own website using WordPress, but it looked very amateur so I ended up hiring someone to design my website and Twitter page as part of an overall branding exercise. I spent about $500 for this service, and it was well worth the investment!

In addition to a great website, you should invest time and/or money to attend networking events and join online communities. I budget $30/month to attend networking functions and other events where I can talk with professionals. I also invest in two online communities that advance my goal of self-employment. One community, Free Agent Academy, is $125/month. The other, Accidental Creative Engage, is $10/month. You should find the communities that will give you the skills and contacts to succeed and invest the time and money to be a valuable resource.

Invest money in your business

I know accounting is not the most exciting part of running a business, but you must have good financial information to run your business. Sound finances are the foundation of your business, so be sure to invest in a sound financial setup. There are three accounting programs I recommend you review to start tracking your spending. All three services are web-based and let you access your information through any computing device with a web browser.

Kashoo – I tested this service about a year ago and liked it. It is designed for service businesses and has a clean, user-friendly interface. Kashoo just introduced an iPad app so you can now enter and review information without using your laptop.

InDinero – This service markets itself to brand-new businesses with a very simple method of tracking your information. InDinero offers a very clean dashboard showing you key information at a glance and also tracks spending patterns to create the starting point for a budget (which is a must).

Xero – This is the software I will use as I transition from an Excel-based system; I also recommend this tool to my coaching clients. Xero offers more invoicing and product features than Kashoo and InDinero, including the ability to price and track inventory. Xero also has a great iPhone/iPad app for your mobile computing needs. If you sell products, I would recommend reviewing Xero.

Invest in your business!

Marketing and finances form the foundation for your business, so be sure to invest in both. Not only will you save time by having more help, you will also present a better brand and be more productive with your limited time.

Find Work You Love

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Is it really possible to love your job? Despite what you may hear from your friends and co-workers, I know it’s possible. It just takes some time and understanding of who you are. The real key to successfully navigating a debt free adventure  is to find work for which you are passionate, engaged, and aligned.

By many accounts, too many of us have not achieved this goal. A 2010 Conference Board study showed only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their job. It’s clear too many of us are not happy in an important area of our lives, and it impacts our behavior in other ways.

While I advocate self-employment as the best way to find work you enjoy, not everyone agrees with me. In my recent article on working on your business, a reader commented that self-employment is not a suitable option for everyone. As much as I advocate working for yourself and having full control over your life and money, I do agree with this reader. For a variety of reasons, self-employment is not for everyone. If job satisfaction is so important, how can you achieve this goal? Consider two important factors as you are looking for meaningful and fulfilling work.

Passion and Purpose

Think of a time where you did not sense time passing. You were totally involved with what you were doing, and your focus was only on what you were doing. You suddenly look at your watch or cell phone and ask, “Where did the time go?” I’m guessing the event in your mind wasn’t your job. If I’m right, then you understand a lot of what affects us in our jobs. Few of us have the passion for our work that we have in other areas of our lives. I’m not saying that work has to be the primary focus of our lives. I continue to believe that we work to live and that we should fit our work into our lives. However, this does not mean work should be something we dread.

Two months ago, my grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. A mutual friend and I were catching up on old times, and she described her job and how passionate she was about what she did. I walked away from that conversation thinking how blessed she was to find work she enjoyed so much.

Your job must also serve a purpose in your life. My friend Jonathan Pool describes how what you do must fit your core purpose. This purpose has nothing to do with your job, but what you do must satisfy why you exist and how you want to best serve the world. My core purpose is to educate and inspire others to transform their ideas into plans of action. There are many ways I can do this, both inside and outside of work. Think about what makes you come alive and how you can turn that into work that matters to you.

Engagement and alignment

I just finished a great book called “We” by Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse. My biggest takeaway from the book was how you must be engaged in your work AND how your work must align with your passions and purpose. If you are not fully engaged in what you do, you will not bring your best self to what you do. If you think of your work as a paycheck or working for “the man”, you will not fully engage and what you’re doing. Your job performance and pay will likely demonstrate this lack of engagement.

What may be even more important than engagement is how your work aligns with your values, purpose, and ideal work environment. “We” has a companion website full of free information, and one free tool is a survey designed to identify your ideal workplace type. I took the assessment, and it identified my ideal workplace as a “revolutionary” workplace where freedom and creativity are highly valued. Unfortunately, many of my past jobs have been in companies that were anything but revolutionary. I worked for companies that valued order, structure, and conformity. I now know why I did not like working in those environments. The work environments were completely misaligned with how I enjoy working.

Finding work you love is a challenge. We all have unique gifts and life visions. The goal is to find the work that allows you to bring your best self every day. I look at my sister with envy, because she has found that work as a high school teacher. I could not picture her doing anything different, and she loves what she does. It is no wonder that she is also an outstanding teacher who is well respected by her administrators and community. We all need to find the passion and purpose to find work where we can become fully engaged and align our work with the rest of our lives.