Learn to Start a Successful Side Hustle - #001

Show Notes

Every pioneering, multidimensional woman needs a pair of shoulders to lean on, especially if she dreams of starting her own side hustle business. Whether you’ve reached the age (you’re no fresh-out-of-college spring chicken), level (or dead-end) in your career or you’re just plain ready to create something new for yourself, co-hosts Lori and Nola of Sticky Brand Lab podcast are here to help.

Think of us as your ‘podcast’ side hustle girlfriends. The empathetic shoulders you tune in to and lean on. We’ll gladly give you the encouragement you need, the information you seek and the advice you want so you can confidently bring your business idea, speaking idea or new venture to life. Oh, and count on us to deliver it all with humor, grace, great interviews, ways to get in a little self-care and a whole lot of fun.

(2:24.30)  Side hustles can easily lead to a successful full-time business.
     
(3:20.40)  Traveling (to16 different countries) almost all off the beaten path leads to a transformational experience. 

(13:04.60) Often the courses for side gigs are expensive, have many details and don’t fit into your real-world life.  
                                                              
(18:16.20)  Meet real life entrepreneurs who tell you the pivotal moment they overcame their fear of taking their business to the next level or even getting it started.                

We Created a Podcast for Aspiring Side Hustlers
You have a dream, and we want to help you manifest it. And, if you’re like us, you probably have a lot on your plate with work, family, community and other obligations. So, we’re breaking the steps down into small actionable wins you can do in three hours a week or about 30 minutes a day.

As your ‘podcast’ girlfriends and trusted advisors, we feel it’s our obligation to be reminding you that you are stronger, wiser and braver than you may feel at any one particular moment along your entrepreneurial journey.

So what is a pioneering woman? She’s a person who begins or develops something new, often leading the way for others to follow. Well my dears, you’ve come to the right place! Tune in every Tuesday for a new weekly episode.

Thanks for Listening!
You can subscribe to Nola and Lori's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Podcast Intro v4: [00:00:00] You're listening to the sticky brand lab podcast, where time strap professionals, like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

Lori: [00:00:15]
All right. We made it. We're here. We are here to shoot our first episode of our podcast. So if you've tuned in we are so grateful.
We are. I want to welcome you. I'm Lort Vajda

Nola: [00:00:29] And I'm Nola Boea. Welcome to the Sticky Brand Lab Podcast.

Lori: [00:00:34] So let me just say this :Thank you for listening. And Nola did you ever see the movie Up? It's a animated cartoon.

Nola: [00:00:43] No I've heard of it but I haven't seen it.

Lori: [00:00:45] Well, first of all I highly recommend it. It's great for adults. It'll make you cry. It made me cry. Uh but the gist of the story behind my asking this question is, I am so terrible at remembering movie quotes. However, [00:01:00] in the movie Up there are two movie quotes and I have them memorized. The first one is I love you. I just met you. I love you. And the second one is squirrel. And so it's squirrel because it's a dog it's a talking dog. And the dog meets the little boy and the old man and he runs up to them and he said I just met you but I already love you. And then something runs by him, and he says squirrel and his head turns and he goes to chase the squirrel. And that's how I feel here. I have not met our audience who might be listening but I know I love you. And I thank you for for tuning in.

Nola: [00:01:39] That's so sweet.
So Lori and I met over a  cause related type of event and we hit it off.  We realized we were each a couple of entrepre-nerds, So...

Lori: [00:01:56] Well,  actually we met and then you and I were going to [00:02:00] talk about starting that group in South Florida. We met at we met for lunch in Miami  and we decided to set up some meetings so we could talk about it. And the more lunches that we had, the less we talked about that organization, and the more we found the commonality that you and I shared around our respective side hustles. Well, officially my side hustle was the start to a full time uh company that I was running. GB brand partners and it's copywriting content writing and digital brand marketing, and your side hustle was going on while you are working a full time job. 

Nola: [00:02:46] Yup.  Copywriting and marketing consulting.

Lori: [00:02:48] Right. And then we started talking about um a kind of a new business venture that you were wanting to take.
[00:03:00] Yes.  I wanted to take people on destination retreats. Transformational destination retreats. So I started a second side hustle launching that company.
That's right. Why did you want them to be transformational?

Nola: [00:03:18] In my full time job I traveled to 16 different countries and they were almost all off the beaten path. And I met so many amazing people in these unique cultures and I experienced profound transformation. I really wanted to be able to recreate that for other people. I just felt like it's such a good, positive growth experience that I wanted to make that possible for other people to experience as well.

Lori: [00:03:50] And transformational, in my thinking here like having this epiphany or epiphaME because it's all about me. Is uh [00:04:00] when somebody decides to start a side hustle. It's a very transformational experience. If you've never done it before.

Nola: [00:04:08] Yes. If, if somebody gets out of their comfort zone. Faces
their fears. Digs deep to figure out where their passions lie. That's. You're absolutely right. I hadn't thought about that.

Lori: [00:04:21] Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from Amelia Earhart, "The most difficult thing is to act. The rest is merely tenacity." And the way, if you're going to start a side hustle you're going to need a lot of tenacity. If you even if you have business knowledge that's another um misconception. People think that they either have to have had a business degree or a background in business and you and I really learned about entrepreneurship by doing it. Now, later you know we should say you got an an [00:05:00] MBA and my degree a master's in social work. And even though I was designing programs, that road was not a straight line. It was a taking my real world experience applying it and learning as I was going and making mistakes and learning as I was going. So you you do need tenacity but, the difficult thing is is definitely the making the determination to act.

Nola: [00:05:29] Absolutely. So...

Lori: [00:05:32] What ended up happening, is the two of us went from lunch to dinner, and the tribe kind of connection was really solidifying.

Nola: [00:05:44] Yes, it was. We kept thinking you know, we have all of these ideas and we have such great synergy. What can we do together? Where we can just do this like for a gig.

Lori: [00:05:56] Absolutely. We were brainstorming ideas of well [00:06:00] do we combine our skillset and expand the agency? What do we do? And when we come back you're going to learn what we came up with. I'll give you a hint. We're doing it right now.
 So, Nola, I have a question for you.

Nola: [00:06:34] Uh oh.

Lori: [00:06:35] It's not a bad question. But here's a serious question. 
So how did we come up with the idea for a podcast? I was racking my brain trying to remember that and it was hoping that when I would spring it on you here you'd be able to tell me.

Nola: [00:06:51] How did we come up with the idea for a podcast?
I have no idea. I do remember sitting at a dinner. I remember we were talking about different [00:07:00] stuff and writing stuff down and blah blah blah. And at some point the thing started going to a podcast and I have no recollection of the epiphany of let's make a podcast.  We kept talking about all of the different things we wished our clients would know.  How do we tell them? How do we get this information out to them? And from there a podcast was...pretty much proposed.

Lori: [00:07:22] But the premise behind it is we believe that everyone has something of value to share with the world. And the idea again, was that our clients had so many opportunities or directions they could take their business to scale it. So, we soon realized that emerging entrepreneurs, Uh business people that wanted to expand or scale their business, and business owners and professionals that wanted to um expand on their professional slash personal branding [00:08:00] was who we wanted to target. We saw a real need

Nola: [00:08:03] And, some people just don't know where to start. And they'll take like lurching false starts. Going in a direction when they really haven't really looked inside thought through um all of the aspects. And, if they did, they were completely overwhelmed by all that needed to be done. And either wouldn't do it or would just do part of it and then wonder why it didn't work.

Lori: [00:08:29] So, knowing who we wanted to target was the first part. Then the next thing we really wanted to focus on was kind of that whole idea behind the three hours a week. Do you want to say something about that.

Nola: [00:08:45] Actually, it's from our own experience that we can say three hours a week is workable. Because, we had tried to move forward with our own venture, our own podcast, and um related venture,  Sticky Brand Lab. [00:09:00] We did a lot of thorough thinking through how to put together this business. And, there was a lot to do in order to do it right. And, you know, with working full time having clients having family.  Compounded by moves, health issues, uh you know life, especially in America in 2020.

Lori: [00:09:27] And right now. If you know if you happen to be listening right now. Exactly. With COVID happening.

Nola: [00:09:35] Right,  but every time we tried and we had such ambitious plans. We kept pushing it back. Pushing it back. Pushing it back. Pushing it back. Until we finally had to sit down and say you know what, it's okay. We also agreed to grant each other grace. We would get done what we could. And if we could just spend three [00:10:00] hours a week on it, it wasn't much, it might be one task. We could figure out one task. Sometimes, that wasn't possible because life happened. And so the little baby steps, there were so many people that we've thought were probably in the same boat, especially people who are working full time, who are trying to get their side gig done. There's so much, and it can be so overwhelming, and you can want to give up after a while or you know just figure, I'll start my business when my job settles down. I'll start my business when whatever.

Lori: [00:10:34] Right. So, so the idea that you will start it someday.

Nola: [00:10:38] Yes.

Lori: [00:10:38] And put it off until someday. And, and the reality is, if you're going to again, going back to Amelia Earhart, the most difficult thing is to act. If you've made that decision, then the secret to moving forward, when you have life. When you have a family. When you have whatever else is going on. The [00:11:00] secret to getting things done, is taking small, steps forward, in the right direction. And, so we decided that if we  could help people, emerging entrepreneurs, business owners who wanted to scale, and professionals who wanted to develop their brand, if we could help them take small steps forward, successfully, each week. They could look back, and say I did something successful. I moved forward. I had tiny wins.

Nola: [00:11:30] Tiny wins. Structure and consistency.

Lori: [00:11:33] So, I came up with this, say yes to the mess.

Nola: [00:11:39] I like it.

Lori: [00:11:40] Thank you. Thank you very much. It's one of my new quotes. Say yes to the mess. It's true.

Nola: [00:11:49] Cool.
 
Lori: [00:11:50] A matter of fact I expanded on it a little bit which was, say yes to the mess because that's where the magic lies, and it gives creativity an opportunity [00:12:00] to take root.

Nola: [00:12:01] Ooh!

Lori: [00:12:03] A little too deep maybe? I'll work on it.

Nola: [00:12:06] I like deep cerebral quotes like that. That's inspiring.

Lori: [00:12:09] Thank you. When we come back, we'll talk about why we feel emerging entrepreneurs don't get the love and attention they need.

Nola: [00:12:39] Welcome back to the Sticky Brand Lab Podcast. So, Lori, why is it that you said that we feel emerging entrepreneurs don't get the love and attention they need?

Lori: [00:12:49] Well, that's a really good question. And uh part of the reason is really why we ended up targeting Um an audience that we [00:13:00] felt really connected with. And what we recognized was that often the courses that are out there, that people sign up for, and there are so many details that they don't they don't match up with what's happening in your life. And so pretty soon that, that course that e-course, whatever it is, has your money. But it doesn't have your attention, because you couldn't fit it figure out how to fit it into your real world life.

Nola: [00:13:30] So, you just invested in building a first floor when you haven't got the foundation set yet.

Lori: [00:13:35] Exactly. And that's what we, we talked about the fact that we really wanted to break it down, so that we could help people get things done. Get clarity. Get the steps, the smaller steps needed to feel successful. So, that they could build a better future and a better quality of life for themselves and, if you're [00:14:00] like many, uh for their family.

Nola: [00:14:03] And so we want to give them the love and attention they need.

Lori: [00:14:08] And what we didn't want ,as much as you and I love talking to each other, and that's what this episode got to be about, that wasn't going to be the whole focus that our show would be about. So, we actually came up with I have to say, so it's Ask Muse, and I'm going to let Nola tell you a little bit about it because all you need to know is that for the longest time, I resisted this segment.

Nola: [00:14:30] That's true. I told you had to have the segment. So, we talked about all of the really cool things that can be in a podcast but, you know what? There is something that is unique to our synergy that you can't find on any other podcast. And it took me some time to convince Lori to do this Ask Muse session is really where..   

Lori: [00:14:52] I'm sorry to interrupt you here. A muse, as a verb, is to consider something thoughtfully. A muse,  as a [00:15:00] noun, is a person who is a source of inspiration.

Nola: [00:15:04] Thank you. Yep. We actually interchanged them, because we are often musing about entrepreneurial ventures, but at the same time there is, I would say, a muse, a muse-ability. There is a muse dash ability um, well it's like this. Lori with her web thinking, actually your web thinking and your background in counseling and and others. But, it's more than that. There's more than that. So that's why we call it a superpower. Her superpower is for somebody to come in say, I have this problem. She asks questions, and suddenly like popcorn, all of these ideas and pathways come up, and she can see clearly what the issue is, but hone it down to what most resonates with their their heart. Their purpose. Their personality. [00:16:00] Ask questions. And, give them clarity. Then I have a way of hearing that, catching the same vision, but charting it out in specific steps, actions plans and strategies. So, together, somebody walks away with clarity on their vision and a roadmap to get there. And these are things that they're just innate to our DNA and we do it in an unusual way. It's not like there's an methodology out there that we signed on and we're applying. It's using our, our, our...

Lori: [00:16:34] Creativity. It's like our, like our our canvas.

Nola: [00:16:38] Thank you. Yep. And so, when we were talking about podcast segments and we thought we had it done, I just I literally put my fist on the table and said, you have got to do that. 

Lori: [00:16:55] And, as an audience you're going to hear an actual muse session in one of [00:17:00] our upcoming episodes, in which we'll be taking an executive coach. Or, she might refer more to herself as a business coach, but, you're going to be hearing a coach, who's ready to take her business in a new direction. In scaling it.  And, if you yourself then think, I need a muse session, you can go to our website and check it out and apply to be a guest in a muse session

Nola: [00:17:26] Stickybrandlab.com. That's right. Ask Muse.

Lori: [00:17:31] Other upcoming episodes that we are excited for, is how you, in the comfort of your own home or outside of your home, how you can do your own photo shoot. You want to tell them about another episode that we're so excited about.

Nola: [00:17:50] Coming up with your brand colors.

Lori: [00:17:53] And, that is the element that you will see everywhere on your collateral, on your social, on your [00:18:00] digital, your business cards, your signature, everything. So how do you find the right colors for your business that connect with the audience that you want to talk to?

Nola: [00:18:10] Another segment is our entrepreneur panel.

Lori: [00:18:15] We wanted you to meet real life entrepreneurs who tell you what was the pivotal moment that they overcame their fear of taking their business to the next level or even getting it started.
One of our other episodes that we're extremely excited about is a you're going learn how to put together your own brand message, and why that's so powerful, and how the right brand message can resonate and connect with your target audience and really your buyer.
 So stay tuned. We look forward to having you back, and again, thank you so much for listening to this first episode of the Sticky Brand Lab podcast. Until next time.
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[00:19:00] Nola: [00:19:00] Seeya. Bye.