Ep 7 | Love What You Do
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Love What You Do podcast. I'm Kelly Dugan, former HR executive turned career coach and personal brand expert. And I'm here each episode sharing strategies to help you discover your unique value, leverage your personal brand, and take action to create a career you love.
All right. Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast, my friends. We are as always talking about how you can love what you do. And until this point on the podcast, most of our conversations have been around how you can love what you do in the traditional nine to five work environment. Right. Either a traditional corporate job or some kind of full-time position.[00:01:00]
But today I wanna talk to the people who have maybe some slightly different aspirations. Maybe you've got a side hustle going on, maybe you would love to start a side hustle. Maybe you would love to take your side hustle and turn that into your full-time role. That's what we're gonna talk about today.
What are some of the tips to be successful if that's where you feel called to loving what you do? And this is a topic I can particularly relate to because for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to own my own business. I mean, right back to when I was a kid, I swear I used to sell lemonade as most kids would, in the summertime and it would be my favorite day on the block. You know, the best day would be when your parents would let you not only go to the nice quiet corner, but up to where all of the real traffic was, where you could sell the real [00:02:00] lemonade on the busy street, but I didn't stop there. I remember one of my friends on the block and I went and actually collected rocks and cleaned off those rocks and set up a table in front of our house, and we attempted to try to sell rocks like they were lemonade, , on, on the corner. Um, so I, I've gotta say my business ideas have improved over time, but that entrepreneurial spirit has just always been in me. I learned to crochet, I immediately wanted to figure out how I could turn that around to sell those things on Etsy back in 2010. I just have always known I wanted to start a business. I also knew that I hadn't quite found my business idea yet, until I moved into, uh, working at WWE in the learning and development and career coaching space.
That's when I knew. I was able to take this love for [00:03:00] entrepreneurship and for the first time, I could see a path where I could pair that with something that I really enjoyed and I was really good at and that people needed. And that changed everything, my friends, because that was the moment where I started to let myself think that being an entrepreneur could be possible.
Because if you are someone who is thinking about entrepreneurship right now. You may be exactly where I was in that thinking, this is a really great dream, but I don't know who this actually works out for. It's such a gamble to take. It's so much work to put into it for it maybe not to work out, but what I wanna share with you today are what I think are the secrets to making sure that it works out for you.
And it all starts with the fact that you don't have to quit your day job in order to start building your side hustle, your entrepreneurial [00:04:00] journey. In fact, you know, when I started your place at the top, I was working full-time at a very demanding job, and I continued to do both for about three years before I moved into working in your place at the top full-time coaching and consulting.
And a lot of people fall into that category, but I remember when I was really starting out and I thought to myself, wow, to do this right, am I gonna have to quit my job and make this my full-time focus. Um, financially that just wasn't an option for me. And I have since learned of some statistics that actually prove that that probably was the right move for me for a number of different reasons.
So I've gotta study here. That was published in March, 2016 from Wired Magazine. Uh, and they actually found that entrepreneurs that kept their day jobs, while launching their new business ventures were 33% less [00:05:00] likely to fail compared to those who go all in on their jobs. I was shocked to read that statistic because my mind immediately would go to like, oh, well if you've gone all in, you're going to be more successful because you have more time to work on it.
But this statistic paired with my own particular experience, really had me reflecting and realizing that. Actually by starting my business on the side of my full-time job, it took a lot of the pressure off and it allowed me to take chances that I wouldn't have been able to take had I not had any income coming in at the time.
So if you find yourself right now, working a full-time job and knowing that in order to love what you do, you want to be your own boss, you want to explore entrepreneurship in some way, uh, I just wanna encourage you. Start doing it because you don't have to wait to walk away from your job in order to be successful.
And in fact, you might actually be more successful if you just [00:06:00] start today. So let's talk about what it takes to be successful in the side hustle and to potentially bring that side hustle into your full-time hustle. And honestly, there are really two things when you boiled out, when it's all boiled down that I think.
Make a difference between people who are successful in entrepreneurship and people who aren't. And the first is that people who are successful in side hustle entrepreneurship start. They start and the second thing is they keep going. It is really that simple. My friends starting and keep going. Let's talk about what it looks like to actually start entrepreneurship.
Start thinking about what you want to do, uh, because I think there's a few phases to actually starting, and I think that there is a little bit of a mental game that's in, uh, in play for each one of us before we start to jump into something [00:07:00] like this. So. When we think about actually taking action here is the pathway that I think most of us fall into in order to take that action.
First and foremost is watching others. It's finding examples of people, whether that be online or in person, or mentors that you have who are actually living the life you want, doing what you want to do, and you're watching them and you're starting to think to yourself. I think I can do this. They're doing this.
This is actually possible for me. And making that decision that this can be possible for you is a complete game changer because that's what's going to motivate you into the next phase of starting, which is starting to learn from others. So once you've allowed yourself to think that this could be a reality for you, that you could actually build something on your own, the next thing that you're probably gonna wanna do is starting to learn from people who have done it well.
And again, this can look like [00:08:00] taking online courses. This can look like listening to podcasts, reading the books, taking the online courses. And this is a very tricky phase when it comes to starting, because it's also a place where we can trick ourselves into thinking that all of this learning and absorbing that we're doing is taking action.
And this is a phase of starting, but it is not quite starting yet because all of the learning and preparation that you are doing absolutely will help you in the long run, but. That learning and preparation alone is not going to propel you into starting the business without tangible action. The third phase, this is what I call pretend action, right?
This is the precursor to the action that is really going to matter and really going to make a difference for you in actually starting this dream or [00:09:00] business that you have. And this is where you sit down, you start to put pen to paper, and you're strategizing. You're thinking about what does this actually look like?
What. Are my income streams. How do I want to make this happen? What is my product? What is my offer? Uh, and you're starting to build all of these pieces, but you're building it inside yourself. You haven't let anyone else in yet. Uh, and this is a very important phase. It helps us to get organized. It helps us to see it for the very first time, but this is another place where we can get stuck in tricking ourselves into thinking that we are taking meaningful, powerful action that's going to carry our business forward. And what we end up actually doing is getting stuck in this analysis paralysis with ourselves. So, the final phase of starting and what I think is the most important is to take real action, right? Instead of sitting down and [00:10:00] planning out what your consulting offering is going to look like, absolutely sit down and plan it out.
But get on the phone and start talking to potential clients. Talk to your network. Figure out what they need. Start to put together an offering that people can actually buy into, right? If you want to start a bakery, start baking cookies. Don't wait to find the perfect recipe. Don't get stuck in that pretend action.
Take real action and start to bring other people in. It's a really scary phase when you're taking a dream of yours and you're starting to share it with other people, but it is the only step that actually matters in bringing this dream to life for you. So that's lesson number one. We have to start in order to be successful.
And lesson number two is that we have to keep going because the lesson about entrepreneurship that I absolutely did not want to [00:11:00] accept when I started is that failure is a guaranteed and essential part of the process, right? You will fail. And for a type a analytical. Rule following person that scared me half to death, right?
The idea of knowing that I was gonna go into something and that I was going to fail. Actually kept me in that stage of pretend action for much longer than it should have, because I thought to myself, well, if I can just spend enough time in the preparation, then maybe I can avoid some of this failure. Uh, absolutely wrong because whatever you're starting out to do, you need to learn your market. You have to learn what is needed. You have to learn how to provide the solution that people are looking for, how to provide the good or service that people are looking for, and how to provide it in a way that the market actually wants at a price that the [00:12:00] market is willing to pay.
And the only way to learn that is trial and error. And that error at first does not feel great, but people who stick with entrepreneurship, people who are able to actually transform their side hustles into full-time businesses are people who acknowledge that failure and figure out what can I learn from this?
And honestly, I at this point. The what I would've considered a failure three years ago. Uh, I, I almost don't even use that word anymore when things don't go according to plan because it's all about, okay, what if I learned this is something that I thought it was gonna go one way, it went a different way, but now I have all of this information and data to be able to do it better the next time.
So when you are in this phase of having to keep going, I wanna one resist the urge to fear failure, embrace it, [00:13:00] learn from it. But also you don't want the pendulum to swing too far the other direction, and that you say, you know what? I have to change everything. This one thing didn't work out. This whole business is not how I imagined it.
People don't want this. I'm gonna fold, or I'm going to keep going, but I'm gonna change absolutely everything about this. What you wanna do is figure out, okay, what worked, what didn't work? Address the things that didn't work, and then try again. Incremental movements are the key to helping you keep going and avoiding burnout when you are in this phase of just keep moving in entrepreneurship. And I promise you it takes time, uh, but those failures will not be as painful or as common as they are in the beginning. But you will always need this drive to push yourself, to motivate yourself, to keep going, and that's really where your big why comes in, right?
Because at the end of the day, [00:14:00] you are only gonna wanna stick with this if this contributes to what your definition of success is, and we're gonna talk about our individual definitions of success in a few episodes here, because the truth is success does not look the same for everyone. There are some people listening to this podcast right now that the idea of having to manage a business on the side of their full-time job or make that their full-time job sounds absolutely miserable. But there are some of us listening to this podcast right now who are thinking, absolutely, that is what I want for my life. So you have to really know your why behind why you are starting this business. Know what success means to you. Put the blinders on, don't care what other people are doing and stick with your vision.
And again, we'll talk more about definitions of success in a few episodes. Um, but those are the keys to taking, starting a side [00:15:00] hustle and taking that side hustle and being able to transform it into your full set full time. Job. You wanna start and you wanna keep going. I know it sounds incredibly simple, but if you can remember those two things, you are already far and away ahead of most people who have just sat down and had the idea that maybe this is something that I want to do.
So many of us get stuck in the idea. We get stuck in those first phases of starting and never actually make it to real action and to continuation of that action. But you can do it. It. If you have your why and you have your direction, it is something that you can do, and if this is something that you want for yourself, I wish you all of the best in this because this has been the best thing that I have ever done for my personal career in loving what I do.
So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I really hope this was helpful to you. I can't wait to see you in the next one. We've got a few [00:16:00] great guest interviews coming up over the next few episodes, and again, we will be diving into that topic of how to define success for yourself very soon.
I'll see you next time.
Thanks for joining me on today's episode. As always, if you're looking for coaching support or would like to submit a question, you can drop me an email at info at your place the top.com. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review so this podcast can find its way to other amazing listeners just like you.
