628: TEDx Revisited: The 3 C's of Side Hustle Happiness (10 Years Later)

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1:20And today I want to replay that audio for you. It's on the three C's of side hustle, happiness and entrepreneurship, creation, connection and contribution. And at that time, the site didn't have a ton of traffic. The podcast didn't have a huge audience. It was legitimately still a side hustle. My main focus, which you'll hear me reference, was the price comparison shoe shopping site. Getting on that stage, at that stage, definitely meant battling some imposter syndrome. Like, who am I to be up here? The organizers of the event asked, well, do you have any speaking experience? And I remember being like, well, I've got this podcast.

1:57And that surprisingly counted for something. So how this episode works is there's a little pre-intro setup. They give some additional context. There's the audio from the 2014 TEDx event, which unfortunately isn't the highest quality that you're used to. Appreciate you bearing with that. You can hear the audience reaction to certain parts, which is kind of fun. And then at the end, you can judge how well did this talk age? And I'll share some 10 years of hindsight post-game analysis on what I might change or add if I had to do it again. Ready? Three C's. I believe everyone needs to live a happy, healthy, productive life, whether that life contains a side hustle or not.

2:36The three C's are creation, connection, and contribution. And I'm going to get into all of those. I'm actually going to play you the audio of my TEDx talk where I explain what I mean by those and why they're so important. The talk centers on the millennial generation and our pull toward entrepreneurship. But while it's rolling, whether you're a millennial or not, I want you to think about the extent that you have creation, connection, and contribution in your own life. And if not, what you can do to introduce more of the three C's either into your day job, into your personal life, or through your side hustle.

3:14Take around to the end of the show and I'm going to share what you can do to give yourself the best chance of landing a TEDx presentation if that's something that is on your bucket list or that's something that you would like to do. That's something I get some questions on. So the idea for this episode comes from an email I was writing last week or the week before. And the statistic that I'll touch on in a moment is that only 30 % of us are engaged and inspired by our work. And And the problem isn't that we're a bunch of disengaged, apathetic zombies just going through the motions because we do have things that we like to do and things that excite us.

3:57The challenge is there's often a gap between, and sometimes a big gap, between what we like to do and what we get paid to do. So what that means for the 70 % of us uninspired workers, it kind of leaves us only two choices. is we can, number one, learn to love our work. This is the Crosby, Stills, and Nashua. Learn, love the one you're with. Or number two, we can learn to work our love. And Side Hustle Nation may be the perfect example of that because I love creating this kind of content, these kind of case studies and experiments and everything that goes along with it and talking with the amazing, amazing guests that share their side hustle stories and the tactics that went behind it.

4:40And on top of that, I thought it would be a fun project when I started two years ago, and it absolutely has been. But when I started, I didn't have a clear monetization model. And if I was going to keep it going, I was going to have to learn to work my love, essentially. And today, it's not quite a full-time income yet, but it does ring the cash register in a variety of ways, like affiliate relationships, the occasional sponsored posts, my private mastermind, and the coaching and consulting work that's come of it. And so let's kind of go through the three C's and see how it applies. So for creation, like writing and recording this type of fun and hopefully helpful content, plus attempting to create a number of different side hustle income streams along the way absolutely does check the box for creation for me.

5:38On connection, I have met more amazing people since starting this site than I did probably in the 10 years prior to that. It's opened up doors in a really serious and really meaningful way. So there's no question that connection has been a huge part of that. And then contribution, this may be the best part because of the emails and the tweets that I get from people, the interaction that I see in the Facebook community, people putting this material into action and seeing results and genuinely trying to help people build these job-free income streams is a contribution that I'm very, I don't know, like it just makes me happy to do.

6:25Like it's a ton of fun and I'm really, grateful to be able to do it. So those three C's for Side Hustle Nation are definitely there. But as you're listening, I want you to think of what the three C's are for you and if they're missing, whether or not those could be found through a side hustle. Let's roll the tape. Thank you. Thank you, Dominique. And thank you all for having me here. I'd like to start off with a show of hands. Everyone who's working right now, part-time, full-time, run a business, that all counts. And don't worry, no audience volunteer or anything. Now, keep your hands up and be honest with this one.

7:02If you would call yourself engaged and inspired at work, and now this being a TEDx fan, I suspect you'd be a little bit above average, which looks like you are. But the truth of the matter is, we live in a world where only 30 % of us are inspired by the work we do. I think that has some pretty great consequences. Imagine instead a world where the majority of us were inspired by our work. Maybe we could solve some problems if we worked, we really cared about. Imagine the impact that would have on our productivity, our economy. The surprising thing is, it's not that far-fetched. There's a shift that's going on right now, and the millennial generation, my generation, is leading the charge.

7:42We may live in a world where only 30 % of us are inspired at work, but we also live in a world where we have an unprecedented opportunity to create our own work, which is exactly what millennials to do. We're channeling our energy into entrepreneurial pursuits faster than ever before, and that translates into a new era of innovation, job growth, and prosperity. How is that possible? Aren't we the generation that's supposed to be drowning in student and consumer debt and battling 15 % unemployment? Exactly. That's us. And we're taking matters into our own hands. The Department of Labor projects a 600 % increase in entrepreneurship by 2025.

8:23600%. In the meantime, we're still trying to shake the label of the entitled generation. Which, in fairness, there may be some truth to the entitled narcissistic stereotypes, because after all, we are the generation that invented the word selfie. Let me see if I can get the tab letters in there. But there's a disconnect I'm here to dispel between, oh here's the selfie, between the entitled myth and the entrepreneurial reality. As a generation, we realize we can't rely on the government or some corporation to be there for us, and more importantly, we're doing something about it in record numbers.

9:02Instead of self-entitlement, we're seeing a return to self-reliance. If the last 100 years were characterized by mass employment, the next 100 would be characterized by mass entrepreneurship. ship. Ask anyone my age if they expect to receive a dime of Social Security benefits when they retire. You're not going to find a single rational person to say, yes, nobody. We're paying into the system, fully expecting nothing in return. Does that sound entitled? A quarter of millennials see the best way. The best way to get ahead financially is to break out my own and start a business. Does that sound entitled?

9:40And a third of millennials have already started one or more businesses. That's triple the rate of the rest of the population. Does that sound like the behavior of an entitled generation to you? No. We're a generation creating a future on our own terms. It's time for a new set of labels. Proactive. Commit. The entrepreneurial generation. The result of this shift, this entrepreneurial shift, is a generation of workers more connected to the work they do, feel like they're making more positive contribution in the world. And that brings us to the three ingredients for a happy human existence. I call them the three C's and they're different from Annie's three C's.

10:27Creation, connection, and contribution. Think about this. If you're working on something you care about that helps other people, you've got healthy relationships, you're a happy camper. And I'm excited because the three C's are contagious, and they're already spreading. You may have heard Sir Ken Robinson in one of the most, maybe the most popular TED Talk of all time, he defined creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. And those two components, ideas and value, are the building blocks of innovation. But here's where Sir Ken gets it wrong. he makes the argument that schools are killing creativity but gives it too narrow a definition talking only about art and music and dance when it's so much more than that it's an innate potential that we all share it's in our genes mine yours everyone's i like to think creativity is a ripped six-pack stomach that we all have or at least we all have the potential for it's in there.

11:34The muscles are in there. It's biology. It just might not be visible yet. The tools, it's okay, I'm still working on mine too. The tools at our disposal, the technology, connectivity, they're fueling innovation at an accelerating pace. Creativity isn't dying. It's thriving. And for millennials, it's thriving out of necessity. At once, it's our reactive response to a world with no guarantees, our proactive drive to build a better future. We're asking the question, and I encourage you to ask this too, what can I create that has value for myself, for others, for the world? What product can I sell?

12:14What service can I offer? What pain can I ease? What solution can I provide? The ability to answer these questions, how more than ever, is a 21st century survival skill. So how do we exercise our creative muscles and work together to build a more prosperous future for everyone. It's simple. We put the three C's into practice in our daily lives. This is my wife, Bryn, and our friend, Brooke. They love to take pictures of our friends' kids and pets and family pictures for Christmas cards, and they would geek out on their camera settings for hours. It was their creative process. Then one day, they went from hobbyist photographers to professional photographers.

12:58And you know what it took to go pro? An ad on Craigslist. A connection. This year, they shot more than a dozen weddings, made a healthy profit, helped these young families capture and share their big day contribution. This is Pat. Pat's an architect who a few years ago was studying for the LEED exam, the certification to design energy-efficient buildings like the one we're in. During this process, Pat decided to put his study notes online so he'd have a central repository accessible from anywhere. his creation. Later he found out that thousands of other architects had discovered his site and were using his notes to help study for and pass the same test.

13:38Connection. Lead certified or not, Pat's job did not survive the Great Recession. But because of this resource he created and given away, his contribution, he was able to bundle his test prep materials into a study guide and sell them directly. In his first month, he made more than he ever hat as Dejong has gone up and sell more than half a million dollars for these things. And today, Pat helps thousands of people share their own unique ideas with the world, create their own online businesses. And then there's this guy. Maybe you've got an idea, and the only way to know for sure if it's going to work is to put it out in the world and see what happens.

14:21And that's my story. I learned that people were buying shoes online. I know. So my theory was it was difficult to find out which online shoe store had the best price. So my theory was if I could build a footwear only comparison shopping site by creation, I could deliver more accurate results than the larger shopping engines and work more closely with the retailers to negotiate better deals. Connection. I went on sale, you know,$10 million of the shoes for our retail partners to serve thousands of customers, a contribution. But more importantly than that, the income from this side hustle eventually gave me the freedom and the confidence to walk away from my less than inspiring 9-to-5 job, start new ventures, and try out even more new ideas.

15:12It might take several failed experiments before you land on a winner. And I can say it because I've had my share. But it's worth it to keep trying, to keep pushing, because these small acts of creativity serve a higher purpose. They're each adding a little bit of value to the world, a whole lot of value to the lives of these entrepreneurs. Your sense of independence and self-worth skyrockets the moment you earn that first dollar outside of a traditional job. Now, the pushback I get on this is, I'm not creative. I don't have any business ideas. I'm not an entrepreneur. And neither was I. I convinced myself I wasn't creative because every personality, aptitude test I've ever taken has identified me, correctly by the way, as the analytical, process-driven, Excel spreadsheet-loving kind of guy that I am.

16:05And I've fallen into the trap of defining creativity as art and music and dance. and I wasn't out there painting original murals or composing symphonies, so I must not be creative. Sound familiar? But I found creative outlets in the most unlikely places and I'm confident you will too. For example, there was a routine report that I had to run in Excel. It took four or five minutes every day. So one morning I sat down trying to figure out, there's got to be a better way. How can I automate this process? It took a little bit of time to figure out and ultimately turn that five minutes every day into 15 seconds.

16:44An original idea that had value, she was going to say, me and my team, five minutes a day for years, you better have value. And watching these rows and numbers fly by, it is orchestrating my own silent little nerd symphony. Yes, yes, I am creative, and yes, you are too. Now let's zoom out for a second because this is where it gets really exciting. Bryn and Brooke, Pat and myself are just four. I have 75 million millennials. We make up a quarter of the U.S. population. That's us in blue in the corner. We look good, don't we? I remember one in three of us has already started one or more businesses.

17:25I want you to think of the compound effect of 25 million new businesses and the entrepreneurs at their house. We're staring down the barrel of an unprecedented surge in small business growth, which, as you know, is the biggest driver of our economy. and sure these are small companies especially at first let's not forget Apple started in a garage Facebook started in a dorm room Google started in a university computer lab the next big thing almost always starts as a quiet small thing with these kind of numbers with this wave that's already started I like our odds we're building a future that's more creative more self-reliant more entrepreneurial than anything that's come before So to the millennials in the audience, you are entitled.

18:12You're entitled to pursue the career path you want to pursue. You're entitled to define your own values. And you're entitled to create something of value. And to everyone else, you are too. There's no age restriction on the three C's. In fact, we all have access. We have the exact same creative muscles, the exact same tools at our disposal. We can flip the script so that 70 % of us wake up inspired and excited on Monday morning instead of the 30 % we do today. How we're going to get there is for each of us to harness the three C's and turn this wave into a revolution. This is my challenge to you.

18:52What will you create? How will you connect? What will you contribute? you. What can we collectively accomplish when we individually pursue this creative path in this room, in this city, in this country, and on this planet? Thank you. What would I add for the 2024 edition? That's something that's been on my mind lately, and that's coming up right after this. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call? it's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications.

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21:28Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle and make this Black Friday one to remember. Standing ovation and I'm out. Learn to love your work or learn to work your love. Either way, the path still runs through the three C's. So as promised, how to get selected as a TEDx speaker. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need extensive public speaking experience, which I definitely did not have. Although I do think that may help you deal with the nerves. I was an absolute wreck before this thing. Elevated heart rate, couldn't sleep, just not good.

22:15But what I learned was the vast majority of the speakers at this event were either in the first or second degree personal or professional networks of the organizers of the event. So what that means is you should go to TED.com. They have a tab that says attend. Under the attend tab, they have a link for the TEDx events where you can search for the local ones happening in your area. and from there they're going to have information on the organizers and oftentimes there's going to be a dedicated website for that specific event where you can find contact information dates they may even have a speaker submission page if they don't know who you are there is zero chance of getting selected so don't feel bad about reaching out and making your case that's exactly what i did now one one thing to note is that each event is usually going to have a specific theme and in our case, it was creativity.

23:12So if you're going to send a pitch, make sure to tie it into the theme somehow. This is a mistake that I made. The theme last year and the website hadn't been updated, was education. And so I sent my original pitch on entrepreneurial education or something. And it wasn't a great fit. It still started a conversation. So it served its purpose. But if you can figure out what the theme is, tie your pitch into the theme, I think that would be a good idea. And also, of course, if you have any common ground or connections that you can think of. Like if you're local, you probably have some common connections on LinkedIn.

23:46Maybe you attended the same university. Maybe you were an attendee at the TEDx event the year before. So that's just my two cents on the topic. I think if you can figure out who the organizers are, get on their radar and somehow you can stand a pretty good chance because they do have to fill up a speaker roster. And if you can send them examples of your work, you're going to be in good shape there. So thank you so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed hearing my talk, my take on all this stuff. And I'm going to link up the actual video in the show notes of this episode. So it's been 10 years since that speech, since that day, which makes it a good a time as any to play Monday morning quarterback and ask, well, if you had the chance to do it over, what would you do differently?

24:29What would you say if you had the same stage today? Now, I think the three C's have actually aged pretty well, because over the last 10 years, we've definitely seen the rise of and even the branding of the so-called creator economy that centers on this exact idea. And I still love the challenge of creating helpful content that can find an audience and help them solve their problems and reach their goals. That's the work that was really fun and rewarding then that's still really fun and rewarding now. So I do still think you got to find what that looks like in your life, in your business. Now, what would I add?

25:03I I mean, that's the challenge of the TEDx format. It's intentionally brief by design, where a podcast episode can be as long as it needs to be. Now, a few things have definitely emerged. A few ideas, concepts, just points of view have definitely emerged over the last 10 years that would not necessarily replace the three C's of creation, connection, and contribution, but could certainly supplement them. And for the sake of consistency, I'm going to call them the three E's. Those are equity or ownership, energy, and experimentation. I'll break those down here. The equity piece is something that's definitely been top of mind.

25:44This is super important. You got to think about building ownership in something, some sort of asset that has value outside of your direct time. That's how you're going to build leverage. That's how you're going to be able to scale back trading hours for dollars. that's how you're going to be able to build up the passive or time leveraged slice of your income pie chart. It could be your business. It could be traditional stock market investments. It could be real estate, but super important to have some ownership in something. And this may be the distinguishing factor between side hustles like driving for Uber, where you don't really have any equity or ownership and side hustles that have some more entrepreneurial upside where you're calling the shots, the things that can really scale that can ultimately set you free from your day job.

26:30So that's E number one, equity. The second piece is energy. This is something I think I took for granted early on, but think of this like the fuel for the fire. And there's a couple parts to it, the mental and the physical. On the physical side, this is the foundational part. This is like the taking care of your body in such a way that you have the physical energy and capacity to do the work you want to do and show up as your best self. That's a really critical foundation where, you know, if this isn't in place, it makes everything else so much more difficult. This is your sleep. This is your diet.

27:07This is your exercise, your movement. Are you giving your body what it needs or are you making the near-term compromises that have long-term consequences? That's the first part, the physical part. The second part of energy is the mental part. Are Are you doing the work that excites you, that lights you up, that follows your curiosity? Do you feel challenged? Are you giving yourself time to think through problems and figure out what you really want and where you want to go? It's uncomfortable. It is hard to do that saw sharpening time when there's a whole proverbial forest of trees that need chopping.

27:42So you almost have to schedule it in, block it off in your calendar, get your spouse or partner involved, get on the same page, get in alignment and start working toward those common goals with energy. That is E number two. And the final E is experimentation. There's a truth, I believe, in online business and probably all business. Nobody really knows what they're doing. Everything is just an experiment until you find the thing that works. You don't need to have the answers. You just need to set up the test and be willing to find out. So this is asking questions. This is setting up the experiment.