Ep. 28 From Side Hustle to Profitable Business

From Side Hustle to Profitable Business

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SAF 28

[00:00:00] Torie: I wish it was called something else because side hustle feels like it’s secondary and I don’t think it needs to be. It can’t be secondary in your mind.

Hey, Hey, welcome to Smart AF on your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today. So let’s get started. I hear the term side hustle a lot, and there’s something that kind of bugs me about. I think that if you are if you’ve made the decision to be a business owner, and you’re kind of saying that your side hustle, meaning you’re only doing it on the side of your business, I think that’s cool.

But if it’s a side hustle and you’re not serious about it, like if it’s just a hobby business, to me, there’s like a really big difference. Do what do you think.

[00:00:53] Sean: Trying to start a business or has started a business, but maybe they’re also employed in corporate America taking a paycheck. 

[00:01:01] Torie: Possibly. I think sometimes there, they already have a job. Sometimes it’s, maybe they’re moving from their regular job that they’ve had and then they want to go do something. For example, we know a lot of coaches that coach on the side we’ve also met like some military wives or whatever that it’s, or, or wives of people that are in corporate.

And it could be husbands too. Just the ones that I’m thinking of off hand or our wives that have decided they want to do something else. But sometimes they haven’t made that decision that like identity. From, I am you know doing a hobby business. I’m kind of playing around with something too. I am a business owner.

[00:01:45] Sean: Maybe if they’d like to, because that phrase is such a common thing to say, maybe it’s a mentality switch of saying you know, maybe they’re their steady paycheck job that they want to get away from as their side hustle. Go all in on that, on that business venture that they’re trying to make work. 

[00:02:03] Torie: I think all-in, doesn’t have to mean time all in, but it does have to mean like Mindshift on all of. Because if you leave that option of it’s okay. I don’t really have to be serious about this because it’s my side hustle. I don’t have to take it seriously or I don’t have to.

I don’t know. I just see a lot of people making the mistake of not taking it 

serious enough. 

[00:02:29] Sean: So, so like like getting an actual business email address, because you’re serious about your business rather than some Gmail or Hotmail or using your personal emails. Like to me, we get those emails constantly.

And like, they’re almost like. The spam, essentially, a lot, a lot of the emails that we get like that especially when they don’t even know what we do and they’re like, Hey I can market your 

business for you. 

Right. And you look and just go to the top. You ever, I’m sure you get these emails, go to the who’s sending it and you’ll see they’re they’re 95% Gmail addresses 

[00:03:06] Torie: real, real, like it’s not Sean Mathis, Gmail.

It’s like Sean 42, 6, 5. Yo-yo at, I dunno, like it’s always random like stuff in there. At Gmail, 

[00:03:18] Sean: like the off chance that those emails were legitimate, real businesses out there, they’re hustling, trying to get like, there’s no way I would respond to them. 

[00:03:28] Torie: Yeah. Right. And, and a lot of those are scams and they’re not people in the side hustle, but if you have a side hustle and you’re trying to start your business, or you are doing your.

In addition, like I wish it was called something else because side hustle feels like it’s secondary and I don’t think it needs to be say it can’t be secondary in your mind. We’ve had a couple of clients that, you know, we do marketing, we do their website. We’ve spent all this money and they’ve spent all this time and then there’s just not taking it seriously.

Like they don’t check their email for weeks. It’s like, how can you expect to be successful and try to build this into something. If you’re not even going to check your email. And I really do think it’s that mental identity shift of saying I am a business owner because when I became a business owner there, I never had that. Well, I could always go back and work it, blah, blah, blah. There was never like that plan. Burned the boats. And, you know, I hate that term burn the boats, but the boats were burned. 

[00:04:31] Sean: Yeah. Especially after this long. Could you imagine going back and working for somebody and Monday through Friday and commuting and. 

[00:04:38] Torie: No, it was never ever an option, but I think if you don’t make that mental shift, there’s always going to be that you’re almost like dragging yourself down. I think that’s. You got to get yourself in the game. 

[00:04:55] Sean: I think there’s a false sense of security, really. You know, if somebody thinks that, you know, they want to go for this business, but if they don’t go all the way in and they, they don’t put, you know, a hundred percent of their effort in it and it fails, you know, there’s that little bit of a.

[00:05:14] Torie: I wasn’t serious about it anyway. Yeah. 

[00:05:17] Sean: I think there could be a psychological aspect to it where it’s easier for it to let you know, let go that it didn’t work. Oh, well maybe, maybe it could have worked or maybe it needs to fail a couple times and you need to pivot a few times and work it out, but you gotta, you gotta actually.

Take it seriously. Cause it starts at the top. Like if you, as a business owner does not take it seriously. How is anybody else going to the clients that you’ve had that, you know, didn’t take their business as seriously. You don’t know that until after the fact. So you’re taking it seriously, try and do the best you can for them.

And they’re ultimately wasting your time and that’s in paying you. So, I mean, if they’re trying to get clients in different aspects of stuff and their clients see that, like they don’t take this seriously, Why would anybody else? And that literally sets you up for complete failure. You will completely Flay.

Every time. 

[00:06:17] Torie: Well, then you talked about the pivot and we did a video about this before a show about this before. And I believe in there, I said 75% of businesses who are successful have pivoted. However, I was wrong. I went back and looked at it and it is 95 percent of businesses that are successful have pivoted.

So you can’t think that just because you have to change things up or just because your original idea isn’t going forward, that, that something in there isn’t isn’t right. Like that is the right way. You have to fail your way to success a little bit. 

[00:06:53] Sean: Like if your business is struggling and it’s not working, tweak it a little bit, change it, do something slightly different.

And see if that works, if it doesn’t do it again, if it doesn’t do it again. And literally, if you want to be a business owner, you’re going to do that all the time until it works. 

[00:07:16] Torie: And I, you know, it’s, it’s that side hustle mentality, the bad one, not the good one, because I think there is a good side hustle mentality that people are like, I’m just ramping it up.

But that negative side hustle mentality that I’m not a business owner yet. It’s my hobby, whatever. We’ve seen it with even places that we’ve gone to, we used to go to this coffee shop, little cute coffee shop and a little downtown. They were never on time. They always ran out of things. They didn’t update their hours.

Like there were all these things and we were like, oh, well, you know, that’s what we do. If you’re going to having a hard time with your website or whatever, like we can help you out. Like, cause I liked them. I liked to go in there. I just felt like, like for whatever, there was something wrong, like they just weren’t taking it seriously. And they flat out said it’s a hobby. We don’t really care. Like 

[00:08:03] Sean: it was a, I’ve never heard that response before. 

[00:08:08] Torie: Like, and if you have that attitude that it’s a hobby or you have that attitude is, you know, if this doesn’t work out, then I’ll just go back to whatever I was doing. Like your customers can feel that.

You have to burn the boats. You have to go all in. And that doesn’t mean all in on your time, but it does mean all in, in your mentality of, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to be responsible. I’m going to, you know, take care of my clients. Like I said, we have a lot of people that, and I think it’s good coaches that want to be business coaches.

Maybe they’ve done other things, real estate or insurance or whatever, and they’re ready to go to that next level. You still have to be a hundred percent of business coach when you’re being a business coach. Does that, you know what I mean? For sure. 

[00:08:55] Sean: Yeah. That doesn’t mean, oh, I got to know I got to do something else today. So I, I can’t, I can’t do that, that coaching stuff today. No, you have to do it still. That that’s, that’s kind of the, the deal is, is you have to do what needs to be. And do it well, otherwise again, you might as well, not even try. 

[00:09:22] Torie: So I was reading atomic habits, which is something of book I’ve seen all over the place.

And they’re even talking about habits. Like when you form habits, there’s two ways that you could form habits. You can form a habit for a result, or you can form a habit. That’s an identity type habit, and this is the same type of thing either. You’re going to. Try to set a goal that you’re going to be, you’re gonna run a marathon or you’re going to actually change your identity to, I am going to be a runner.

And I think that that mindset shift is just important in habits that as is, as it is in your business. So, if you’re going to do this, like, I don’t know if you want to call it a side hustle, you need to, you need to like claim this and stake your claim and be the business owner, even if you’re doing it on the side, but don’t let that side hustle label that tag don’t let that hold you back because it will, and you can go from side hustle to lucrative profitable business, even if it’s only part-time just with that one little mind.

[00:10:27] Sean: That’s right.