253. Stop Making These 5 Side Hustle Mistakes with Mal Rowan

0:00Financial Feminist Host:We were both running our businesses as side hustles. Yes. What did that feel like? Not great.

0:08My hair loss, my chronic pneumonia, all those things would probably agree that it was not fun.

0:14Financial Feminist Host:I mean, I didn't have that dramatic of a situation, but I think mine was just, there was not enough time in the day. And I also just kept being like, when can I quit my job? I'm not ready to quit my job yet. The business isn't there. and then I would have people ask me like, how's the business doing? Are you ready to quit? And I'm like, emotionally, yes. I've been ready to quit emotionally since like day two of corporate, but I'm not there yet. So in this episode, we are breaking down the five shifts to get unstuck. They're going to be practical. They're going to be actionable. And they're really, really important if you feel like you've hit a wall with the side hustle.

0:53Financial Feminist Host:It's not growing. You're not seeing the amount of money you need to be making. You've got those initial sales from friends and family, but how do we move into that next category? This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. One of the things that so many business owners believe they need is a custom bespoke website that they have hired somebody to code for them. And I'm here to tell you that, yeah, you need a website that's functional and beautiful, but you don't need to pay somebody to code. This is where Squarespace comes in. When I first started Her First 100K, I turned to Squarespace. They were the first investment I ever made in our business to start and grow.

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2:32Financial Feminist Host:So before we get into those five shifts, let's talk about the traps that we see from coaching thousands of entrepreneurs. So the first one is they don't know what to do next. What's happening there? A little decision fatigue. Yeah. It's feeling like sometimes that one wrong move is going to end everything. Instead, you could probably make a hundred more mistakes and you would be fine. And you probably need to make some more mistakes. Yeah. And sometimes it's just maybe you've done those initial first scary steps and you just don't know what's next. Yeah. I think that second one is like what got you here is not going to get you there.

3:04Yeah. Kind of what we're talking about with those friends and family sales. You know, maybe you get what we call those lucky sales, those first few people being supportive. And then you might have to change things up to how you want to continue to grow.

3:17Financial Feminist Host:So I'll tell you a quick story with that. I was doing one-on-one money coaching in 2019 when her first 100K had rebranded and we were starting to get some traction. And I was sitting down with people, you know, one-on-one at a coffee shop to like review their money and do audits and teach them what a Roth IRA was. And it was starting to become pretty profitable, but I was running out of time because I was meeting, you know, for an hour or you could do like a three-hour package with me. I was running out of time to do that one-on-one with people and I killed my best selling product. Now that was temporarily a very stupid decision, right?

3:52Financial Feminist Host:Because it immediately squashed the amount of money I was making. But I realized, oh, in order for this business to scale and to make enough money in a sustainable way, I have to kill my best selling product because what got me here will not get me there. I had to reinvent that as a workshop. So I went from coaching to a workshop where I could basically teach everything I was teaching and coaching, but virtually to 50 people and then charge them for that. And then that became a course and that became the book later too. So I think that that's one of those places where, you know, for me very definitively, oh, I was getting stuck, even though it felt like, oh, I'm making good money.

4:34Financial Feminist Host:It's not going to be sustainable though long-term. And on the flip, I feel like one of the other reasons people feel stuck in their side hustle is they're not making money, right? There may be continuing to push up against that wall and it just feels like no matter what they're trying, it's not landing and they can't really solve why that's happening. Well, it's the confusion of like what to sell definitively. Like I think, again, when you first start a business, you're like, I need to make money. So I'm going to be everything to everybody and I'm going to give everything. So I'm going to give money coaching and I'm going to give career coaching and I'm going to give, I don't know, business coaching and lifestyle coaching.

5:08Financial Feminist Host:And then it's not selling. So I'm just going to lower all the prices. Yes. I'm going to put everything on sale. I'm going to do everything on sale. I must be charging too much because I'm not getting anyone reaching out. I'm not getting any dogs to walk and I'm a dog walker. So I'm going to do it for the free or like two cents. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So let's talk about the shifts to get on stock. Let's talk about that first one. Yeah. So we need to do a refresh of our audience, our brand, our customer. What does this look like? Yeah. I think there's often a disconnect happening there where, you know, we've got that initial branding, we figured out, we've done a launch, maybe we've even been in business for like six months, eight months, whatever it might be.

5:43But at this point, you've probably gotten more clear on exactly who you want to serve. Maybe there's a sub community that's actually, you know, a fraction of who you thought you wanted to serve. I think for me, I talk a lot about like personality being a factor for a customer. We talk so much about demographics and people will be like, I don't care if they're 18 or 24, but thinking about who's the type of person, especially if you're going to have an online business where we do make marketing content, you need to connect with those people. So I think doing that refresh of like, can I get even more connected with who my customer is?

6:20Yeah, I was going to say inside my customer. So I had to quickly change the word coming out of my mouth. Can I get inside my

6:28Financial Feminist Host:customer? Yeah. Could I get further inside my customer? No, I mean, it's what happened to me. So 2018, I was making like a couple thousand dollars a year. Like it was nothing to write home about. It was not getting to me, getting me closer to my 100K goal. It was a lot of strife and stress because I was trying to do too many things. So when I rebranded to her first 100K, like it was very obvious who that was for. Right. And that single handedly changed the entire business because like, OK, we have men in the community, but it's very clearly for women. Right. Her. And then first 100K. I wasn't teaching people how to get their first million or their first 200K.

7:01Financial Feminist Host:It's like, okay, we're doing basic starter personal finance largely. And so I think that that helped so much both for me to define what the vision of the company was. Like I'm talking about money. It's inherently feminist. It's for women plus. And also customers immediately understood this is for me or actually no, it's not. And that positioning, that repositioning was the most helpful thing I did when I was still side hustling. Oh, absolutely. even our first business being in powerlifting we could have been just another fitness brand but by focusing on powerlifters that really differentiated us and then we went one step further of okay well we want powerlifters who have minimalist sense of style because a lot of the powerlifting brands were a bit more like skull and heavy metal vibes and so we had a specific design aesthetic that our audience connected with and then on top of that we had a socially conscious aspect.

7:57So it was like, you could say we were a powerlifting brand, but once you looked at it, we were getting more and more refined on who that really was for. And that's what really gave us the growth that it did.

8:07Financial Feminist Host:Yeah. So one of the easiest things you can do if you're feeling stuck is redefine who your customer is and specifically how you serve them. Absolutely. So when we come back from a word with our sponsors, we're talking about the second shift to get unstuck in your side hustle.

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10:32Financial Feminist Host:okay so number two we need to find your quickest win offer so what we mean by this this is not a big launch this is not like your full suite this is not spend six nine twelve months on something huge and brand new this is just like start with something that is fast to deliver and testable yeah and that first shift it might be the positioning right when we're talking brand and customer. Whereas in the second shift, it might be more actually about the offer and it might be time to test a little bit of a shift to your offer. And that's what we're really looking at here. So yeah, like a one hour workshop or a session, a like five day challenge.

11:09I love anything live, whether that's a live workshop or doing something one-on-one where you can really collect feedback from people, especially this is more on the service side. But if you can get that live feedback, if I'm teaching something and you look confused on Zoom, I'm getting that feedback, right? Sometimes it's not just asking them after the fact. If I had sent you an ebook and I was like, how was that? And you're like, it was great. And you're like crying and sweating because it was so overwhelming. I wouldn't know, right? But having that live feedback, that's why we really like these like quick, what can you put together and what's a little revamp to test maybe that new direction you're feeling.

11:42Financial Feminist Host:So if you're a product-based business, would that look like, I don't know, like a flash sale or something like that? Yeah, it could look like a presale actually. Yeah, smart. So if you were thinking, okay, we make t-shirts, we're thinking about doing a water bottle. We did this a lot with even colors of products because we're like, do people want bright pink things or no? Right. And instead of ordering 500 units, you can either pre-sell them if you want to really verify and get them on a wait list even. Yeah. Or alternatively just serving your audience would be another way with that. But I definitely think having, yeah, a pre-sale of something is really great way to also make sure if you have cash flow issues or just you're early on and you don't necessarily have that cash flow, it allows you to secure those sales, which is really exciting too.

12:25Financial Feminist Host:Okay. Number three is something that I think you and I are really good at that. Yeah. We see successful entrepreneurs, like you have this trait, which is like seeing business and making money almost as a game, which is like, if I can pull this lever, what happens? Yes. And I do this a lot with my team even now. And I especially did it when I was side hustling, which is I would just set like mini challenges for myself. So I would say, okay, by, you know, it's a week until the end of the month, how much money can I make in that week? Or like next month in 30 days, I'm going to try to make 500 bucks or a thousand dollars.

13:00Especially if you're early in a business, people talk about forecasting or projections. And for me, that felt like, how the fuck am I going to do that? I was like, I'm just pulling numbers out of a hat. But then I decided, well, why don't I actually pull numbers out of a hat? Right? So it It would be like, you know, maybe there's a week left of the month. And let's say we've done 20K in sales in that whole month. We might go, could we do 30 or 40? Yeah.

13:21Financial Feminist Host:And for side hustlers, it might be I've made 200. Totally. How do I make 500? Totally. Yeah. And so it really pushes you into this territory of going, oh, well, I can't do what I've been doing because that won't magically make an extra big amount appear. So it really forces you to start thinking more creatively. there's a really great exercise I'll throw in for you where I call it the six solution theory, where there's at least six solutions to any problem you're facing, especially the ones where it feels like there's only one answer. And so this is something my partner and I actually kind of learned through real estate and then basically said double it.

14:00With real estate property, some people look at having three different exits if they're buying a property. So that was something we learned. And I'm like, I kind of love that because it really would force us to go like, oh, well, what's the third? And so in my business, I always look at what's the sixth solution. So if you said, I want to make a thousand in my business this month, and I've only made 200. If you looked at what are six different ways to make that thousand. Well, the first one, somebody's going

14:23Financial Feminist Host:to go, I'm going to discount my stuff. Yeah. I'm going to do a sale. Yeah. Which you can do. Yeah. But when you discount something, then you have to sell a higher quantity. And I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that. Well, and what would be a great flip is I'm going to throw in a bonus right for the same price or I'm going to do a limited time yeah I'm going to do a bundle where I'm putting together three of my things but maybe the cost is okay on the back end and it's going to up those sales but I think like I don't know I don't in my head it's like a dog walker but it's like I'm going to give you if you pay up front now for three months of my services I'll give you a discount or I'll give you if you lock in six months instead of the month by month we're on, right?

15:03So when you do those, think of those six solutions, it really forces you to get more creative, maybe talk it out with a friend, look at other business models.

15:12Financial Feminist Host:Shout out GPT actually is a great, great solution here. Find those options of how could I look at this problem differently. And also the nice thing is maybe with the six, you're like, wait, I love three of these ideas. And now you have three tools that you could use for the next launch and the next launch and the next launch. So you need to ask, what's the easiest way I could make this money with what I know right now? Yeah. And then how would you execute that? Totally. Okay. So number four, speaking of actually how we execute. I was trying to segue. Yeah, it's perfect. The thing we hear for side hustlers, the thing we both experience is like, but Tori, I don't have enough time.

15:48Financial Feminist Host:Yeah. Mallory, I have children. I have a really demanding job. I'm trying to like make this work. Yeah. So we have to create a timeline we can actually stick to and we have to get honest with ourselves about what that timeline actually looks like. Yeah. I'd rather it be long for you than to make it. I'm going to start a business in the next seven days. Yeah. Yeah. I use social media as an example for this a lot, too. It's like if you don't have capacity to post five times a week, but you want to post five times a week. What most people do is they start posting five times a week and they maybe make it through two weeks at most and then they crash out.

16:23Financial Feminist Host:And then it's like working out or anything else. It's like, cool, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to try to run a half marathon every time I'm at the gym. Exactly. You got to start smaller. So after that crash out, then people don't post anything for three months. And now we've lost all of that time. And the momentum. Yeah. If we were realistic and said, I have capacity right now for one good post a week, and then you did that for the next six weeks, and then you felt like you could do that in your sleep, then you're going to go two posts a month. Right. So I think if you can learn that timeline and actually respect it, um, when you say the gym, there's, I love this example in, um, James Clear's atomic habits, but he says like, if we went to the gym once a week and we weren't going last year, that's 52 times more.

17:02Right. And if you told somebody like you could get a 52 X, you'd be like, that's amazing. But then for some reason we go, well, that's not good enough because other people are going three times a week. Right. So I think just looking at your current situation as you're someone who doesn't work out right now, once a week for you would be incredible. It would be a 52 X look at that for your business too. If you're not posting on social at all, if you're

17:24Financial Feminist Host:not landing any clients or if you have only one hour to spend this week, exactly getting that website up or doing whatever you need to do to build a business. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. I think my bonus tip here too when I was trying to manage my time as a side hustler everybody told me like block your calendar right like block a specific amount of time and there were some times I'd get home from work and I'm like I had a really shitty day yeah boss made me feel like shit the train got canceled so my commute was triple the amount of time and like I just want to watch Netflix and eat my dinner and go to bed at nine yeah and the time block I had for the three hours I was supposed to work on my business like that didn't happen yeah but there were some times where you know I'd be trying to get ready for bed at 10, 1030, and I'd get like this little boost of energy.

18:09Financial Feminist Host:And I started realizing I had to follow my energy when I was trying to build my business. Now, there were certain times I had to get things done on a timeline, right? But there were other times I could be like, okay, I don't have the energy to do that now. But I know I'm going to feel better tomorrow if I go to bed now. And I'm going to figure it out. And I think following your energy was something that was really, really helpful for me when I was trying to juggle all the balls I wanted to juggle as opposed to actually very strict boundaries with myself because I knew I would still keep my commitments.

18:40Financial Feminist Host:Yeah. I love to use my to-do list to support that. So for me, it's like a daily to-do list. There's one thing on the top and I have to start with that thing. So if my energy or my time runs out, at least that one thing's covered. And I've also started where I just have like a task dump, which is separate from my to-do list because the to-do list is only things that I tackled today. And if I don't get to something, it has to be tackled by the end of the week. And that doesn't mean like I'm working over time. It's actually means I'm really filtering the to do list. So I have this task dump over here of all the great things, because sometimes when we're working, right, we're like, Oh, I'd love to do this cool campaign on social media.

19:17We have all these fun ideas. It's also taking up brain space to where it's stressing you out. So you're trying to get it down. And then every week you're feeling bad because you're like, I haven't done that idea yet. But if you just put it over in the dump, um, some people call it like a parking lot, right? But I think keep your to-do list really focused on what's going to move the needle the most. And then that's going to really help you just naturally find that timeline you were talking about.

19:40Financial Feminist Host:So I need everybody to answer, like, what's your next right step in the time you've allotted? So whether it's the next hour, the next three hours, the next week, I think that's great. So when we come back from a word with our sponsors, we're talking about how to get unstuck from the traps that often pop up for new business owners. So stay tuned.