Hustle Hard, the Earth is Not Flat: Two ways to keep hustling every day.

Some may think the earth is flat , but we don’t need a rocket to know that it’s always spinning. As a fempreneur you are hustling to keep up with the countless opportunities ahead of you. This blog outlines some keys we have for keeping up the hustle every day.

Keeping Up Takes Planning with a Side of Moxie

Keeping up with the realities of a new business is one of the most prominent challenges entrepreneurs have when they first lean out. We’ve heard countless stories of discipline and focus challenges from the fempreneurs we’ve had on the podcast.

We recommend listening to Sara Grey’s story of her brand new side hustle, Molly Beane’s story of how she keeps up daily marketing and selling practices, and Kalyn Johnson Chandler’s story about how she launched her online business.

Each of the women who have leaned the fuck out with us have at one time or another met a challenge of distraction. Keeping a system of consistency and discipline is often the number one challenge for someone trying to hustle.

Once you launch into your own business, you become your own number one accountability partner and that requires self-discipline, consistent activities, time blocking, and giving yourself regular pep talks are essential to keep your business moving forward.

Your Excitement For Your Business Isn’t Enough, You Have to Hustle

One of the greatest misconceptions of starting a business is that your passion and excitement for the business will help you keep moving. When the rubber meets the road though there are distractions all around you.

Shiny objects pop up daily, friends and family demand your time, and if you are starting as a side hustle your day job can get in the way regularly. To keep yourself moving forward, your passion for your business is never enough. All entrepreneurs should have daily rituals, operational systems, and sales rhythms to keep themselves and their businesses moving forward.

Setting Up Your Rhythm

There are two major components of your business we recommend setting up your rhythm for immediately as soon as you launch your business. Each of these categories will help to ensure you stay focused on your business in the right ways and at the right times.

Daily Practice

The first and most important category for your rhythm is a daily practice for your mindset and to-do list. We describe in the Lean the Fuck Out Launch Kit the importance of setting up a daily mindset practice focused on affirmations, goals, and personal accountability.

Use the daily mindset practice worksheet in the Launch Kit to set up a daily rhythm for check-ins on your goals, self-affirmations, and outlining the tasks you need to complete each day. If you want some external accountability support, sign up for our weekly affirmations email. We send out a new, kickass, personal affirmation each week to keep you going.

Outside daily affirmations, here are a list of items you should be tackling each day:

Do something. Do at least one thing each day, even if it’s a small item, on your business to-do list. Putting all the items off to complete in one big chunk of time may sound efficient, but finding a block of time to knock off all your to do list items is impossible and easy to put off. If you are checking off items on your list each day you will be moving your business forward more regularly.

Time block. Put items on your calendar that you don’t want to miss doing regularly. For example, every day at 10 a.m. I do a check in on any transactions I need to complete. I put this time on my calendar and make sure I don’t schedule anything else over it. I do the same for writing and time with my boys in the evening. Another key to time blocking is chunking together tasks that you need more focus on or tasks that can knock you out of your rhythm. These could be tasks like meetings, errands, or checking email.

Set up days to complete specific tasks. You don’t always have full control of your schedule (kids, work, and life can get in the way), but one thing you can control is what tasks you complete during your flex time. If each afternoon you find yourself with your list in front of you and a few hours to get something done, have a regular schedule for what you complete each day. To support efficiency, group together similar tasks each day to avoid trying to multitask. My rhythm goes as follows: on Mondays I complete administrative tasks, on Tuesdays marketing tasks, on Wednesdays I hold meetings, on Thursdays I learn and network, and on Fridays I do tasks that require more focus. This rhythm helps me avoid the time of wondering what I should do next.

Sales Rhythm

Building a sales rhythm is extremely important to ensure you have a regular flow of funds coming in the door and that you are consistent with all potential supporters and customers.

When we talk about sales, we aren’t talking solely about traditional sales of products like real estate or pharmaceutical sales, but sales can also encompass seeking out clients for your consulting business, getting advertisers for your blog or podcast, and setting up product sales funnels and emails, just to name a few. We all have a product or service we are selling in our business.

Here is a formula we recommend for setting up your daily sales tasks. You will need your yearly sales goals and an outline of what you believe are the best ways to reach your customers.

Write down the answers to each of the following questions:

• What is your yearly gross sales goal?
• How many products or services do you need to sell in order to reach that goal?

(NOTE: If you haven’t figured this number out yet, take a step back and figure out what you need to net each year and estimate how much you need to sell. The Launch Kit includes a budget tool for figuring this out if you need it.)

Here’s an example:
Say you figured out that you need to make $50,000 net this year. In order to reach that goal you will need to gross $100,000 in sales. (This is a round number, but would include taxes, expenses, and cost to make a product if you are selling something tangible.)

Let’s say you’re sales need to break down as follows to meet that goal. In this example, we will need to sell the following:

• 5 – $10,000 consulting gigs
• 8 – $5,000 marketing package sales
• 15 – $500 dollar ads
• $2,500 in online product sales (eBooks and downloads)

In order to sell the numbers you need to (5 consulting contracts, 8 marketing packages, and 15 advertisements) you now need to figure out how many you need to sell or reach out to.

Think about your returns thus far, how much your industry typically turns around and figure out how many people you need to reach out to in order to make those numbers happen. For example, are you successful in selling marketing packages 2% of the time, if so than you need to make contact with 400 people. This could be 400 email connections or 400 connections through Facebook or even 400 individual calls. No matter the case if you break that down and say you work 300 days per year, you will have to make a direct contact with only 2 people per day to hit your sales.

With this number in mind, consider the most effective way to reach out to your customers and perform two of those tasks each day.

The key is breaking down your sales goals to daily practice, to ensure you hitting your goals. Then set up a system to back that up, so you can perform the task without much thought. Setup email templates, sales scripts, and regular marketing funnels. There is absolutely nothing wrong with copy and paste. It saves you a ton of time the person on the other end won’t know the difference.

The Earth is Only Flat if You Want it To Be, Hustle Every Day

With a daily mindset practice and sales rhythm you can get your new business off the ground or set up a plan for growing your business in a new way. These types of systems and discipline will get you farther than you ever know. The successful fempreneurs are the ones that focus on the details and are always consistent. Be that successful fempreneur!