To any of my entrepreneurs out there, some thoughts for your Monday… This weekend, I talked about HUSTLE over on Periscope. Watch it here – Katch.Me

Please don’t misunderstand my take on hustle for a dismissal of quality time with friends and family. Or time taken for your health as in meal prep or exercise/movement.

Hustle is what divides the time that everyone has outside of those things to choose to use in various ways. Some choose to watch television, or surf the web, or get extra time socializing, partying, what have you. If you have a family to take care of, certainly your time for these things is even shorter, which is why focus when you are spending time on your business is even more critical.

When you are starting a business or are in the early stages before you have hit whatever level of success you are seeking, if you want to achieve things, you don’t have the luxury of extra time to relax. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.

I’ve never met a successful entrepreneur who says, “Yeah, I took it slowly and, wow, things blew up so fast for me it was easy! I’m so glad I didn’t work too hard in the beginning. Make sure you have balance from the beginning like I did…” If you ever meet someone saying that, don’t buy whatever they’re selling because it’s a pile of B.S.

Can someone find success slowly, over time, with more “balance” in their lives? Sure. But is it at the pace most new business owners are hoping for? Heck no. And that approach, more often, leads to discouragement in the progress of a business or even more money lost because things didn’t move quickly enough.

AS AN ENTREPRENEUR, HUSTLE IS THE INVESTMENT YOU MAKE IN YOUR FUTURE.

When what you don’t have is money or a thriving business to look back at and say, “this is my future and I am secure financially,” your HUSTLE is what you are investing for future gains. AND IT WILL WORK. But only if YOU WORK.

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And come follow me on Periscope! I’ve been posting videos often, and would love for you to hop on and interact with me, LIVE! Download the free Periscope app, then find me by searching “Diane Sanfilippo.” Replays available after at : Katch.Me

 

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Build a Badass Business: Episode # 22:  Hustle is an investment in your future

Coming to you straight from her basement home office in suburban New Jersey, this is Build a Badass Business with Diane Sanfilippo. Diane is a New York Times bestselling author and serial entrepreneur. She’s here to teach you how to grow and develop a successful business you love, and how to create raving fans along the way. Here she is, your host: Diane Sanfilippo.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hey everyone. Thanks for joining me here on Periscope. For those of you tuning in to the Build a Badass Business podcast, this is a live recording that I’m doing from Periscope. I’m recording on Periscope, so it’s live on Periscope right now for those of you watching, and I have an old iPhone, as you guys can see right here who are watching, and if you’re listening you can’t see it, but if you’re listening I’m recording this into an iPhone that was just not in use in the house, and I decided, you know what, I’m going to kill 2 birds with one stone. We can take the video and strip the audio out, and make that an episode, but I figured I’m just going to let this run through the phone.

So today is on the topic of hustle, and you know what I‘m going to do, I’m going to run back to the Instagram post that I made this morning, and I’m going to read the caption to you guys, because if you don’t already follow me on Instagram, might I recommend that you do @DianeSanfilippo. But this is something that, I don’t remember where I was just talking about this. I think I was talking to somebody on something; oh it was yesterday, here on Periscope. I made this observation that hustle is an investment in your future. Because this topic of hustle is all over the place in the entrepreneurial world.

I should probably introduce myself for those of you on Periscope who are like, who are you and why are we listening to you about entrepreneurship. Thos of you who are listening to the podcast, you know a little bit about me. My name is Diane Sanfilippo, I’m a New York Ties’ bestselling author of Practical Paleo and the 21-Day Sugar Detox, and to give you a little bit of your bearings, Practical Paleo was the 6th bestselling cookbook last year, in 2014, and the book came out in 2012. And I’m a bit of a serial entrepreneur.

I refer to myself as a serial entrepreneur because entrepreneurship and marketing and business is sort of what’s in my blood, what comes most naturally to me, and is the thing that I don’t feel. I studied it in school, but I kind of didn’t understand why there were classes about marketing, because I just felt like it was common sense. In hindsight, obviously that’s something I was just naturally born to be good at.

I think a lot of people are scared of marketing; a lot of people don’t understand that the word marketing, all it really means is communicating that you have a solution to a problem that someone else has. And maybe it’s a solution that you’ve created, or maybe it’s a solution that someone else created and you want to tell them about it. For example, some of you may be promoting products and services that you love that you like to stand behind, but in marketing, typically when people are trying to market themselves, that’s when things get a little tough. Or you’re starting to build a business.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of hustle, and I wanted to get into it a little bit more. And for those of you who are watching on Periscope, you can hold your questions, I will get to all of your questions at the end of my little rant. I’ll probably talk for about 10-15 minutes, and then I will get to as many questions as humanly possible.

I am exhausted; we had movers come at 7 o’clock this morning; it’s 7:45 now, so 12 hours ago, and they were here for about 4 hours. This was kind of the epitome of hustle, because I promised people a podcast Mondays and Wednesdays, and Scott said if I recorded it he would edit so we could put it up, and I was like, I’m tired, I don’t want to do it, and he said just go talk about hustle because that’s what this is right now. I promised that I would do this, I made the commitment.

So for those of you who didn’t see my Instagram post this morning, I’m going to read this to you. Again, the caption on the graphic is, Hustle is an investment in your future. So what I said was: To any of my entrepreneurs out there, some thoughts for your Monday… This weekend, I talked about HUSTLE over on Periscope. Please don’t misunderstand my take on hustle for a dismissal of quality time with friends and family, or time taken for your health as in meal prep or exercise/movement.

Hustle is what divides the time that everyone has outside of those things to choose to use in various ways. Some choose to watch television, or surf the web, or get extra time socializing, partying, what have you. If you have a family to take care of, certainly your time for these things is even shorter, which is why focus when you are spending time on your business is even more critical.

When you are starting a business or are in the early stages before you have hit whatever level of success you are seeking, if you want to achieve things, you don’t have the luxury of extra time to relax. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. I’ve never met a successful entrepreneur who says, “Yeah, I took it slowly and, wow, things blew up so fast for me, it was easy! I’m so glad I didn’t work too hard in the beginning. Make sure you have balance from the beginning like I did…” No one ever says that. If you ever meet someone saying that, don’t buy whatever they’re selling because it’s a pile of B.S.

Can someone find success slowly, over time, with more “balance” in their lives? Sure. But is it at the pace most new business owners are hoping for? Heck no. And that approach, more often, leads to discouragement in the progress of a business or even more money lost because things didn’t move quickly enough.

AS AN ENTREPRENEUR, HUSTLE IS THE INVESTMENT YOU MAKE IN YOUR FUTURE.

When what you don’t have is money or a thriving business to look back at and say, “this is my future and I am secure financially,” your HUSTLE is what you are investing for future gains. AND IT WILL WORK. But only if YOU WORK.

That’s it. That’s what I wrote this morning. I don’t know what I am hustling for right now. I don’t know what this business is going to be. I’m talking about marketing; I’ve been talking about nutrition for maybe more than 5 years now, and I’m passionate about nutrition, I’m passionate about health and getting those of you who are watching and listening healthier so that you can spend time focusing on this other thing that you want to do with all of your time that you’re passionate about that makes you excited to get up in the morning and help other people. Because that’s the thing that you’re going to be burning for every single day. You have to wake up and have that burning feeling.

If you are going to sleep at night with dread about getting up the next day; what you’re doing the next day is not right. I used to lay in bed awake; I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to spend extra time watching a show on the computer or some kind of Netflix or something like that because I didn’t want to get up and go to work the next day. So I could take a little bit more time to myself at night, I felt like it was my time that I was getting bad, because my time from 9-5 felt like it wasn’t mine. I felt like I was relinquishing that time.

So here I am, almost 8 p.m. on Monday night, the movers came, and I don’t even know what I’m hustling for. Whatever this is with helping you guys learn about marketing, not be scared of things, get yourself out there with your business, whatever it is you have to do, make the connections you have to make, talk to people everywhere about your business. People will be interested; if you’re passionate about something, you’ll find a way to talk about it with somebody.

I have nothing to sell you when it comes to marketing. I will talk to you about nutrition, I will show you my books. Because for 20 or 30 bucks, or 40 bucks you can change your life by following one of the plans I’ve written in one of my books, and that’s cool. {laughs} I really don’t make much money from that. You know, I’m not selling you something that costs thousands of dollars. But my goal with whatever it is I’m hustling on, is just I have a deep burning passion for something, and I want to share it with as many people as possible.

To that end, I’m going to take some questions now about hustle. I’ll repeat the questions so that those of you who are listening to this on the podcast can hear it back; I’ll try to be sensitive about how much time we’re spending, because the podcast episodes, for those of you who don’t listen, they tend to be under 30 minutes because I know if you’re an entrepreneur, you want to be an entrepreneur, your time is limited, and typically what you’ll do when listening to a podcast, maybe you’ll do like I do when I put my makeup on in the morning or when I do my hair, curling my hair, what have you, I’ll listen to podcasts.

If I catch myself listening; I’ll listen to music in the shower because I can’t really hear and concentrate, but if I put something on like Pandora, then I’m like, wait a minute, I could be listening to a podcast. I spend plenty of time enjoying myself, but if I listen to a podcast and I get something from it, it’s awesome because I can learn something, feel motivated and inspired. So I try and keep them pretty short.

So if you guys wouldn’t mind sharing the podcast to do that; this is part of what I’m teaching you, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re listening, tap on the little number of people; right now we’re at about 59 people tuned in, you can tap on that little number. This is for people on Periscope. Again, if you’re listening to the podcast, this is how you use Periscope. But you can tap on that number, and just say share this. So, awesome.

I’m going to take some questions from Periscope watchers/listeners, and if you’ve never gone on Periscope, download the app, I highly recommend it. Generally, scoping about business and marketing and business and all this stuff at least a few times a week, so I would love to see you guys on here.

Alright, you guys are so amazing at kind of keeping quiet when I’m just ranting or chatting, but I would love to hear your questions. Go ahead and throw some questions in; if you don’t want to make a comment or a question, you can tap the screen and give hearts. If you’re new to Periscope, that’s how you let somebody know that you’re there and you’re paying attention and you’re excited.

Porkchop is asking, what’s your day like, day to day, schedule and activities? I don’t like to keep a schedule. I wake up and I sometimes touch base with my project manager and see what she needs from me, and if I can stay focused on that, we’re good. I’ll get those things done, and kind of for me, I’m a little bit like fly by the seat of my pants, which is not the best thing for most entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, and this is something that I’ve learned from Gretchen Rubin’s talk, and I’ve talked about this many times on the show. Her podcast is called Happier. But I generally I cannot be scheduled, and I can’t have too many things imposed on me. I’m driven very emotionally.

Somebody is asking what are my tips on hustle without sounding pushy. When I say hustle, I don’t mean hustling to sell your thing to somebody. I mean not spending any time on something that’s not productive for your business if you find yourself doing something that you’re like, I want my business to do X, and I’m sitting here not doing something that contributes to X, and I have this time. And you just kind of catch yourself in that moment. I don’t really know how else to put it, but that’s kind of the basics.

Best advice to hustle myself out of my day job and into my passion job. That’s a really good question, I’m thinking your name is Caroline, there. If you guys are submitting questions, if you wouldn’t mind put two question marks at the end of it and then type your name in all caps, that will really help me identify that you have a question and not just a comment, which comments are great too, and then I can know what your name is.

So, to get out of your day job, I generally recommend that you start to make a plan, and then really start to work little by little on whatever that side project is. So, for example, my last job that I had, I was in school at the same time, and I took class I think it was one night a week, and I just was making my plan little by little. I started taking clients little by little, and started building that up.

Do you reach out to people for partnerships? I’m not sure I caught the rest of that question, if you wouldn’t mind posting that again, that would be cool. What is your process; thank you for repeating this one. What is your process of coming up with creative ways to market your business? Alyssa. Alyssa, I have to admit to you my process is, I have what I call rainbow string effect in my brain all the time. So this stream of ideas that’s constantly running for things I can do or should do, or could recommend that my team do to help me out, it really never ends. So for me creative marketing ideas just don’t end.

I think if you think about marketing differently; if you don’t’ think about marketing as selling. So think about marketing is, how can I tell these people that I have this awesome thing that they’re sitting at home wishing they had because they have this problem that I can solve? You have to think about marketing; this is a Gary Vaynerchuk-ism, Vaynerism, I don’t know what you would call it. He talks about jab, jab, jab, right hook, and jab, jab, jab, is like giving, giving, giving before you ask for anything, and I feel like I’ve been doing that and saying that to people for a long time for many years.

People now, in the communities that I’m in are starting a blog, and even within one year or two years are like, why am I not making $100,000 from it? And I’m like, do you know how long I was working on what I was doing and how many different things I was doing? I was traveling the country and teaching and I wasn’t; not that “just” staying at home, with finger quotes, blogging isn’t enough, it’s certainly enough, but to have expectations above and beyond what other people may be achieving based on what you’re doing. There’s just this totally unequal expectation of what people have will return based on the work that they’re doing. I’m like, you’re not doing that work, you can’t expect that return. I don’t even know, I just got off on a tangent. So that’s pretty classic of me.

Hey, Megahn Telpner! You guys, go follow Meghan Telpner if you want nutrition advice, all that good stuff. Gary Vaynerchuk said, jab, jab, jab, right hook. It’s a book of his, you can follow @GaryVaynerchuk on here, on Periscope. He’s got an amazing podcast, #Ask Gary V. Go check him out. If any of you guys follow Marie Forleo, and Gary Vaynerchuk; if they had a love child, that would be me, because I’m not quite as intense as Gary and I’m not quite as mellow as Marie. I’m somewhere in between, and we’re all from New Jersey, so. Jersey, in the house.

I love watching Gary V too. And its fine while I read, or listened to two of his books, Thank You Economy and I think I started to listen to Crush It. I was listening to it, and I was like, this guy is putting words to the stuff that I’ve just been doing innately and inherently for the last 10 years or more of just running businesses. So, he was talking a lot about, in Thank You Economy, and I talked about this in an episode of the Build a Badass Business podcast entitled you are not Taylor Swift. And what I mean by that is, people are out here posting pictures of themselves, posting pictures of a scene, posting pictures of whatever, and then just kind of walking away from it. I have no issues with selfies; I really don’t care what people want to post. I’m like, cool, you look great, I love it. I don’t judge what people post; I’m not going to passively aggressively be like, people are jerks for posting this or that. I don’t care. Post whatever you want, whatever makes you happy.

But don’t abandon your post after you put it there. If you’re Taylor Swift, you can put up a picture of yourself singing, and performing for 50-60,000 people a night with whoever is joining you on stage, and that’s awesome, cool. Because you’re Taylor Swift, you can’t answer a million people. But you are not Taylor Swift; if you’re watching this, you’re only one of a handful of people right now. I’m not Taylor Swift; answer the questions that people are asking you. Don’t get annoyed by it, don’t get frustrated by it.

Sure, sometimes we get questions that are a little crazy, and we like to laugh about it. But you know, I’ve seen over the years, and this is probably something that I did too, in the beginning, and then I really started shifting my perspective on it. As somebody who writes recipes and is often working with people who have a lot of food allergies, which I do too, you post a recipe, and the first question you get is, can I make this without X ingredient. And it’s like, well I posted the recipe this way, so you have to make it this way.

But when you realize that your audience and the people whose problems you’re trying to solve need you to continue helping them to solve that problem, instead of being annoyed by their question, realize there’s a better way for you to solve their problems. This is also part of the hustle.

I have reviewed from my books on Amazon, and I read every single review. And if somebody writes a negative review, I respond. And it’s not because I’m defensive; I don’t care. If somebody doesn’t like the book, return it. That’s really what I want to say; if you don’t like it, just return it. Get your money back. Don’t let that thing take up space in your house if it’s annoying you and you don’t want to cook from it {laughs} just return the book. Whatever.

But if you’re writing something, and a recipe didn’t turn out for you, or you felt like the meal plan was inaccurate or something was wrong or something didn’t work or something I said maybe didn’t seem accurate or whatever it was, I try to respond and let that person know, hey. Maybe try this recipe if you didn’t like that one. Or you know, since you’ve bought the book, we’ve reprinted it and we modified this recipe. Or it can just say, let me know how it’s going, and come over and interact with me over here. Or I’ll clarify something so if somebody else reads that negative review, not only do they see A) I’m a real person who’s responding to people. So you can’t just come, I don’t know, blast me on the internet and I’m not going to show up. But also, I care that people are getting something good from the stuff I’m putting out, and that’s really all it is. I don’t know what it is that drives me, but it’s maybe just our name and pride.

One of the things I learned from Robb Wolf really early on, if you guys follow anything in terms of paleo and all of that, Robb Wolf, one of the things he said to me really early on. This was over this issue that came up, forever ago. He was like, you know, if there’s anything that we have in this industry of blogging and writing and helping people, it’s just our name. Because if you’re just someone out there helping people, you just have your name. Anyway, I want to be known for having that integrity, and for hustling, and for responding to people.

That responding to people, not only publicly but behind the scenes, if people are telling you XYZ is happening, or this recipe isn’t working, or this product that you have keeps breaking or whatever, do something to fix it.

Somebody was asking me was there anything I would change about Practical Paleo. Not really. I mean, it’s tough because you hit a book deadline, and there’s always more that you want to put into a book, and just the whole process. In hindsight, no I did the best that I could. I never worked so hard on anything in my life. I never stayed up so late or worked so hard on anything. I never studied for a test as hard as I worked on that book, I never cared about anything as much. And I’m not sorry that I did. I’m not sorry that I busted my butt and felt like I was going to die. I’m not sorry that I did that.

I think for any business owner, that was probably a solid 6 months, but the last 1 to 2 months was insane hustle. I really felt like I was going to die, to the point where I had blood work done, and I don’t like needles. I was like, doctor what’s wrong with me? {laughs} And she’s like, nothing is wrong with you. You’re just stressed out, you know?

I’m not here to tell everyone that that’s the gear you have to be in. if that’s not a gear that you’re ever comfortable with, then maybe being a second in command, a co-pilot, first mate, whatever you want to call it to somebody who is that way, then that’s great. Those of us who are this way by nature, we need that other type of person. I need the people on my team.

You know, my fiancé, he has a lot of drive and hustle, but he doesn’t have it to the same exact level that I do, and I don’t think I would be able to get along with him if he did. I think it would drive me absolutely nuts. We’re a really good balance for each other, and I think that’s also what happens with the folks on my team. They are great, but they’re not crazy like I am. I have this amount of crazy, but I do think if you have passion and ideas, and you want to get stuff done and get it out there, any spare time that you have, even if it just means listening to a podcast that’s going to help you with your business, I think that’s all part of the hustle.

That’s all I’ve got for you guys today. Don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes so you don’t miss an episode. And drop me a review to let me know what’s speaking to you from the show. If you want to get in on the conversation and you haven’t yet joined the group already on Facebook, head on over there and join the Build a Badass Business group. I share insights and tips regularly, as well as answer your questions right there on the page. Do work that you love, and hustle to make your business grow like your life depends on it, because it does. Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

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