Welcome to the first episode of this second season of my podcast, but the first season of it being officially called Compassionate Side Hustle Strategy!
This podcast is marked as explicit because I do use curse words and talk about mature content now and then, so just a heads up if you're not the only one listening in.
Intentions:
- Compassion for yourself and this very difficult career you've chosen
- Compassion for your customers and remembering they're people too and not just numbers
- Acknowledging how powerful and impactful a side hustle is, even if you don't call it a side hustle.
So, hi! My name is Rochelle Sanchez, I'm a side hustle strategist for people like you who feel passionately and feel deeply about what you do, and your intention with your business isn't just to make money (although that's important. Money is power in our capitalist and problematic society right now, so don't discount it).
What do you feel called to do, as an entrepreneur?
But you're here not just for the money but for that feeling you get deep in your body when you think about how much of an impact we could all make if we had the opportunity to do what we truly feel called to do.
Like if everyone had the confidence, and the support, and the PERMISSION that we all think we need to DO THE THING that we want to do in the world. Like THE THING.
I'm talking about the, "Let's wave a magic wand, and assuming everything was guaranteed to go well, what would you do with your one life on this planet?"
That thing. What would that look like. That would be amazing, right?
Well, hopefully, you're here because you know that we don't have to resort magic wand "wishful thinking."
I made the leap of faith out of a soul sucking day job where I was making the most I had ever been getting paid at that point in my life, per hour, and it was also a work-from-home job. And this was in 2016? So, way before pandemic days, when working from home was still weird and basically fictional. Like, no one was doing that.
I hopped from one side hustle to the next and I got really good at pivoting and shifting more into what I was good at rather than what sounded good based on what came up in the Google.
Embrace change as an entrepreneur
One thing I can warn you about, based on my, at this point, 4 1/2 years of being obsessed with entrepreneurship and online marketing, is that it's always changing.
And while IT is changing, you are also changing.
In fact, you're probably feeling it already - like not being able to keep up with all the trends and best practices on Instagram and Tik Tok. Maybe not really caring about how you can't keep up anymore. Like you're just over it.
I feel like in one year of concentrated effort on your business as an entrepreneur, it's basically the same as what you learn about yourself in a decade of life. What you were like in your teens, twenties, thirties, and so on.
Maybe you're a little burned out.
Getting burned out at the thought of coming home from your day job and doing online networking (or in-person networking, once this pandemic somehow resolves itself, while won't be for a while, I'll go ahead and say).
You're tired of coming up with the money for ads, and if you're like me, also getting angry that the default way to reach people via social media is by giving money to Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos via paid ads.
So I hope that in this show, aptly named Compassionate Side Hustle Strategy, we accomplish a few things:
First:
I'd love to influence you to have more compassion for yourself as you continue your journey as an entrepreneur. I know that some people are going to be mad at me for saying that this stuff is hard, but for me, that's the most honest way to talk about.
Starting a business is difficult and maintaining a business is difficult. Building wealth is difficult, being the first in your family to do something like this is difficult, being underestimated and bullied while trying to do so is difficult.
It does get easier as you learn and grow as a business owner.
And also, just like everything, I think life gets a little more peaceful as we age so we're just generally able to handle things better as each year passes.
So I hope to influence you into being kind to yourself.
This stuff is hard but you're in the right place.
Second: I want to remind you and I want to remind myself how important it is to have compassion for the people we want to help. If you feel as passionately about your business -- and I don't care if you sell coaching or copywriting or hand made earrings or artisan keycaps or custom shoelaces -- you know that your product or service makes a difference.
Remember to have compassion for the people you want to help.
It's more than just, "Buy my thing! why aren't they buying my thing! I want them to give me money!"
I think I've reached a point where I've been in enough memberships and masterminds and networking events to know that we entrepreneurial types can get kind of full of ourselves. We really can.
We start to feel faultless because all of the energy and hours and dollars that we're investing into ourselves, sometimes with what feels like zero return. And that shows up in how we speak to one another.
Even before the pandemic and lockdowns hit, I remember I stopped attending certain networking events because it just got tiring spending time with business owners who come together to basically shit talk their customers.
And I started seeing it with my clients, too. As a project manager, I had a client who was a service provider to multiple clients, and I was serving sort of an account manager role for them, and it never felt good to hear them talk shit about them clients, say "so and so is such a pain in my ass right now" but then have them go on social media and sing that client's praises.
It was awkward and yet I could totally understand why they were acting like that, because it's considered okay and normal in our culture as business owners.
It's so important for us to remember to always have compassion for both our clients and our prospective clients. The ones you're hoping will find your blog, or follow you on Instagram, or book an introductory call with you.
I hope that I can give you some non-cheesy ways of getting back into that vibe you had when you first sparked an interest in being a business owner, and have more compassion for both yourself AND your prospective clients.
So, one -- compassion for yourself and this very difficult career you've chosen, compassion for your customers and remembering they're people too and not just numbers, and third, my third intention with Compassionate side hustle strategy:
Let's talk about the idea of a side hustle, and where compassion fits into this.
It's a common phrase, and I'm assuming that your business isn't your main money maker right now. And just so you know, the longer you stay in the entrepreneur world, the more obvious it is that most of us have multiple income streams, including day jobs and several part time jobs. That's normal.
Probably the people you admire the most are juggling several side hustles at once, but it's normal for us to not talk about it. Or how we're funding our business with money from something else we do.
Choosing the term "side hustle" for this podcast doesn't mean I'm trying to say that the thing you're working on is just a thing on the side. I hope that's obvious, but I did want to just say that because I honor the work you're doing. I absolutely believe that any product or service can be life changing. I have bought workbooks and worked on them in tears in a Starbucks for hours, and I swear, that ... you know, that print-at-home stack of papers with open ended questions totally changed my outlook on my life.
And same is true for your workbook, your art, your rocks and minerals, whatever you sell.
Do you believe in your small business?
I believe in small business. I truly believe that if enough of us become millionaires and we can make an incredible change in the world, we could totally give the billionaires and corporations a run for their money.
I know that our success means that fewer people will die from health reasons, or suicide, and we can influence the right people to make reparations and set the country straight when it comes to inequality and social justice.
When the right people have money, good people get elected as politicians and the things that we need, that our loved ones need, get legalized. Well, maybe. Like, hopefully.
Professionally, I'm here for this awkward, intermediate, what I like to call "awkward teenage phase" of being a business owner.
Embrace being in the "awkward teenage phase" of business ownership!
Some people are blessed with trying an idea out and hitting six figures in a couple of years. Others take longer. Maybe you find yourself watching too many webinars and you implement everything you learned in that $2,000 digital business course and nothing happens.
Sometimes you end up investing in products and learning resources that are a total scam.
Often, I will say this, white supremacy permeates our small business circles and many people of color, disabled people, queer people, lots of marginalized folks get pushed out.
And whether it's intentional, each of our businesses affects all of these marginalized communities, hopefully for better rather than for worse, through exclusion or ignorance or through paying attention and doing the right thing.
And to you, as the business owner, I'll say this:
All of your brilliant ideas matter.
Your business matters.
And you matter.
I firmly believe that everyone should be able to do what they love for a living, and if you love what you're building right now, I'm here for it.
Let's make it your main thing so you don't have to split yourself too many ways anymore.
So again, intentions!
- Compassion for yourself and this very difficult career you've chosen
- Compassion for your customers and remembering they're people too and not just numbers
- Acknowledging how powerful and impactful a side hustle is, even if you don't call it a side hustle.
So, what's coming up?
This is literally my first solo episode and this is after recording 3 interviews with some amazing guests this season, so here are 5 things that I foresee for us together (and for myself!) on this show if you wanna stick around:
- We will be having to have a lot of compassion for ourselves. Me, in not over-planning this thing but also giving myself permission to over-deliver if I want to. You, I hope will have some compassion with yourself in future episodes when I bring the nitty gritty marketing and business system strategies and all that stuff. I hope you'll focus more on tuning these ideas and strategies to match your energy levels... your budget... and your preferences, really. I learned that from one of my first business coaches and I'll echo her words here: "You don't have to do anything that anyone tells you to do, even me."
- We're going to have some interviews! For this season I'll be mixing it up with solo teaching episodes with me only, but I'm also going to be interviewing other business owners like yourself so you can hear and learn from their example about ways to infuse more compassion into your business. Since we're not going to just be throwing around toxic positivity and love and light bullshit, we're going to talk about hard things. The hard things that you're facing as a business owner and we're going to figure out how to make it not feel so shitty.
- Coaching calls! If you would like some help infusing more compassion into your marketing and back end systems, please apply to be a guest on this show. I'm happy to chat with you about something you feel stuck on, plus, you'll get some practice being on podcasts if you haven't already started working on your PR and visibility for your business. Whether you want to chat about your established business or you want a coaching call, you can go to RochelleSanchez.com/guest to be a guest. To apply to be a guest, really.
- I'm looking forward to the collaborations that will happen as a result of the interviews. I can totally see us collaborating on offers, or hosting summits, or in-person retreats. I promised I wouldn't get ahead of myself and I'd take it one episode at a time, but I'm still pretty excited about that, so I'm not gonna lie.
- There are going to be a lot of shout outs to the mental health struggles we're all going through while we continue the entrepreneurship journey. Especially post pandemic. As I close up this episode, I want to read to you a snippet from an email I got recently in reply to my newsletter. If you wanna subscribe, please visit WeeklyUplift.com and sign up. And actually, in October I'll also be starting back up with hosting weekly co-working sessions on Tuesday evenings, so you're welcome to join me for that, as well. But anyway, the email I got was from Stacy Soderholm, who is an Inner Critic Whisperer (isn't that something we all need!). And she said:
- I've been quietly on your list for a bunch of years now... And I'm always so happy to see an email from you and eager to see what's up with you. It's totally fine (even maybe appreciated) that you don't email on any kind of schedule that I can see - it not only makes me know that if you're writing it's because you have something to say but ALSO gives me permission to do that too, when I have a list to write to! ... thank you again for keeping it real. For saying things you know won't be popular with everyone. For modeling that you can actually both be depressed and run a business. That you can struggle and serve at the same time. I honor and appreciate you for continuing to show up.
Stacy, if you're listening to this, thank you so much again for writing those words.
And to you, whoever you are, listening to this, thank you being here. It's worth it to just show for yourself and be honest and not choose the "hustle and burn yourself out" route.
Let's sit together and talk about hard things in entrepreneurship. We have a lot of work to do but I think we're in good company with good intentions and big goals. Keep up the good work, and I'll see you next time.
