006: How Keeping Your Day Job Can Actually Make You a Better Entrepreneur!

The Modern CEO Podcast, Episode six. Hey, have you heard? There's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor, maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life. Hey. Hey. Welcome to the sixth episode of the Modern CEO podcast. I'm your host, Amber McHugh, and boy, am I pumped to be here with you today. And before we dig in to today's topic, which is, am I really an entrepreneur if I've got a side hustle or if I've got a backup plan? And do I have to quit my day job to be an entrepreneur? Before we dig into that, I just want to apologize to you. Did you guys notice that episodes four and five had a totally different sound than what you're hearing right now? And episode one, two, and three? Well, that's because there was a mix up in my system and in my podcast recording flow, and I used the wrong mic when I was recording. Oh, my goodness. A total newbie mistake and an indication that I needed to update my little system and my checklist for when I sit down and record podcasts. In fact, the editor who was editing our show suggested and said, ooh, we gotta fix your sound. Something's wrong. Oh, my goodness. And that's when I noticed that I used the wrong mic. And then my sweet sister messaged me and said, whoa, what happened to your sound? Episodes four and five are off. I'm like, oh, I know. Thank you so much for letting me know. So big gratitude for those people in your life who are helping you keep things on track. And thank you for listening and bearing with that sound change. I think it was a little bit more echoey in episode four and five, but hopefully we're back on track now. And you notice the improved Sound quality. And that is just a testament to how things don't always go the way you want them to. We are gonna. We're rolling with imperfect here for sure. And that done is better than perfect. Yes, yes. I do rerecord sometimes, like the time that I sounded like a zombie and didn't want you to fall asleep on me. But we did roll with the different audio recording and I hope that gives you just a little bit of encouragement to keep rolling, even though things aren't always perfect. And with that, we are going to turn to today's episode, which isn't perfect. Nothing looks the same. Nothing looks exactly how we expect it to. All of the. And that brings me to this idea that when I was starting my business, I felt a lot of pressure to go all in. You know, people were encouraging me and I was hearing people say that you aren't really committed to this thing called business. You aren't committed to this project, you aren't committed to your idea unless you go all in. And until you quit that day job and I was feeling so much pressure and I think there was a just a big climate, there was a climate of how can you quit your day job the fastest? And I realized and when I let go of that pressure to quit my day job faster, boy did I feel relief. And boy was I able to be more innovative and more creative and what I was creating and we were able to get it right. Now that doesn't mean we were able to procrastinate and not be in action, but we were moving in action on the right things and we were focused on the most important things. And of course that changed day to day, week to week, depending on what was happening. But we were able to grow slowly and surely without feeling the pressure to hustle and make it happen and get this thing off the ground quickly just so we could create our day job. So I want to encourage you to consider that there's a different reality where you keep doing what you're doing to alleviate the pressure to grow this thing that you are growing, to step into this role of modern CEO without the hustle, without the anxiety, without the the frantic energy that may come if you let go of all of your backup plans. In fact, I'll share with you the story of how we grew our photography business to 80,000 in revenue as a side hustle, basically as a part time thing that we were doing. But first, I want to share with you how Warby Parker did this. So we're going to give you two ends of the spectrum, how a small business plays, it plays out with a small business and how we did it and then how an industry, now giant, an industry leader, has really totally taken off. But they also had backup plans. In fact, Adam Grant breaks this down in his book the Originals, which is just a really fun read. But I will confess I haven't actually read the whole book yet. I had so many AHAs and I had so many ideas and I was so satisfied after reading through maybe it was the first 1/3, maybe a half of the book that I got to get back to that. So I am going to add that to my reread finish list for this year. But there was such good stuff in the beginning that I would highly recommend checking it out. The other thing that you could check out is the TED Talk by Adam Grant that is called the Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers. And he breaks down, you know, what people are doing who are being original but maybe aren't doing it the way that you expect. For example, Adam Grant was approached by Warby Parker to invest in their company when they were just starting up. And he said no. He said no because they weren't all in. And that concerned him. That was a risk to him. And he calls it the worst financial decision he has ever made. In fact, he says, in his words, I thought, to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a risk taker. You have to be all in. And what I didn't realize at the time, first of all, was that successful entrepreneurs are much more likely to play it safe and have backup plans than failed entrepreneurs. And secondly, all the time they spend working on other things was giving them the freedom to do something really original. If they had just gone in and started the company, they would have felt the pressure to release their product immediately. Instead, they had the time to figure out that they needed a home try on program to get people to make the leap to order glasses online. I just think. And he goes into much more detail in the book, so definitely check it out. And he's got some other examples of companies and innovators who have done something similar and really taken off and done a great job. But Adam calls out how procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity. So we have to stay in action. But procrastinating can be a virtue for creativity. And the people who do this right and the people who get this are able to find a balance between the two. What a lot of great originals do is they're quick to start, but they're slow to finish. You dive in with the idea, you start to get some traction, but you take your time refining it and making sure it's right. And I have come to embrace over the years that I am slow, I move slowly, but it's the right pace for my life and the lifestyle that I want and it's the right space for what I want to create in the market. And after years of sort of sitting in a space and doing the same thing, I am starting for the last six months, really I've been percolating on new ideas and I've come to trust the process, embrace the process that I don't have to rush through idea creation and I don't have to rush to the finish line. But I'm going to take time to journal and I'm going to take time to reflect and have silence and banter about the idea with people. So if you put pressure on yourself to just take that idea to market very, very quickly, maybe ease up a little bit because you might still be in the percolation mode. You might want to get in action on journaling, you might want to get in action on testing a piece of the idea. So you, like Warby Parker, can find, you know, maybe we need to give people an opportunity to try this on before we go all in with our online ordering model. And we know that that try on model is something that others in the industry have picked up on. So they are onto something. In fact, if you worry about innovating, right, and you want to be different in the market, Warby Parker wasn't an innovator. There are other people selling glasses, right. They didn't innovate, but they improved the model. And some interesting insights on this. So Warby Parker percolated and worked on this idea for a year and a half before they took it to market. And in the first three weeks in business, so they launched and three weeks later they had already hit their one year sales target. So talk about like, whoa, taking time to percolate and then, and then going to market with a bang, knowing you were in exactly the right space and then potentially being able to let go of your backup plans without having the worry and the anxiety and the stress that you might have if you went all in before percolating, before testing, before refining your model and really letting your creative genius do its thing when it comes to innovation. Adam Grant in the Originals calls out that the people that are the first to market, who are the innovators into the space, who are doing something completely different. Like if this were the first time glasses were ever sold, right? You have a 70. I'm sorry, oh my gosh, I flipped those numbers. You have a 47% chance of failure. So those companies that are totally new doing something completely different have a 47% failure rate. It's those innovators like Warby Parker who took selling glasses and innovative and changed how that was done. Like the Netflixes, where there were already rental models, right? Where they built upon something like Blockbuster but made it all digital. Those companies who are improvers in the industry, as Adam calls them, have only an 8% failure rate. So if you've got this pressure to, to. To take big risks to do something completely innovative, and I have felt that pressure before. So when I read stats like this, I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you. I. My goal then is to build upon. Build upon something I've already created or build upon something that's happening in the market. Because I see a different way. I see how that can be improved. I see a gap in the market where customers are asking for things to be done just a little bit differently and we can improve upon something that's already happening in the market that we're already doing and decrease our chances of failure. But really it's an innovation, it's doing something different. Right? Glasses being sold online and you get to try them on first and you don't even have to leave your home. Like big innovations happening there. So you don't have to be first market. You just have to do things better and different. And those are some of the gauges I would use when you're bringing a new product to market. What's better about this than what's already out there? And what am I doing different? What are my unique differentiators? How do I show up differently? How do I serve differently? So you can use that as a gauge. Is this better and is this different as you're bringing things to market? So here's how this worked differently. More. No Warby Parker. Gotta love them. But we are doing things a little bit differently and how we approached this in our photography business. So we created. We didn't go all in, as you know, and we created Our photography business 3 Boudoir as a side hustle. So it was nights and sometimes it was late nights. Guys, because I've got kids, there were other things going on. Sometimes we had to work late and on the weekends and God bless, my husband and my dad stayed with us from time to time. So him as well, we kicked him and the kids out of the house on the weekends so we could do our photo shoots. And it was a lot of fun. We would have about four photo shoots on the weekend and we'd be working things on the nights in between. And I enjoy work. I was able at the time to bring that level of energy and that level of enthusiasm to this project. But because our time was limited, because we were working 40 hours a week or more at a day job as well, we had to be really smart and really efficient with our time. We had to focus on the most important things. We had to identify those things that we were really good at. And my business partner and I would divide and conquer. And that's how we started to start up, set up our org structure as well. And then over time, we identified those things that neither of us were very good at. We just hated. Or it was a big time suck and we couldn't get to it while we were working our full time jobs or it was an energy suck or for us. And those are the things that we, yes, outsourced. We outsourced things in our business before we were full time in the business, before we were all in. In the business so we could get a better leverage model. And I mentioned to you that we were doing about four shoots a day on the weekends that we were shooting and we took time right as we were still working our full time jobs and this was a side hustle, we identified a way that we could scale this business and do more in less time. So when we were shooting four shoots on the weekend, that was Joanna, my business partner, and I both spending all the full hour, the full one hour photo shoot with one client. But we didn't necessarily both need to be there the full hour. We needed to be there during the shoot because one person would take pictures and Joanna would direct the shoot and was the shoot stylist. But we didn't have to be there for the kickoff and we both didn't need to be there for the wrap up where we discussed next steps with the client. So we took the front end and we took the back end of shoots and we started to overlap our appointments. So instead of us both being there to wrap up and kick off the photo shoot, we would divide and conquer. And Joanna would kick off the photo shoot and I would do the wrap up while she was doing the kickoff. So we were able to go from four shoots on a weekend to six or seven and sometimes eight shoots on a weekend, depending on how much time we had and depending on the demand. Right. So we would monitor, okay, how many Shoots do we need to open up based on what people have booked? And so we took that time in between. We grew a little bit more slowly, but we were able to do it in a way that was really true to our values and really aligned to the life that we wanted to be creating. And again, thank goodness for supportive family who believed in our vision, who got excited about what we are doing, and who would support us in this slow growth model. And that took a little bit of extra time because we were working, working full time jobs while we were doing this as a side hustle, again on the nights and weekends. And we were able to grow this business to 80,000 in revenue as a side hustle. And certainly it's grown since then. And we've got teams of people and Joanna and I are still not full time in the business. So we've never been full time in this business. And it has grown significantly since those days when we were working it as a side hustle. So that's an example of how you may be able to. And here's some questions you can think about. Okay, what do I need to focus on? What do I love to do? Where do I get the most bang for my buck, or do what we do? How do you find the $100 bills? What are your $100 bills? The things that are going to have the biggest impact in your business to your clients, to your growth and on your life? Right. What are the $100 bills in your life and how do you need to balance those things with what's happening in the business? Because there did come a time when we were like, oh my gosh, we need our weekends back and we had to change the model a little bit. But how can this work for you? What do you need to focus on? And how can you position and use what you're doing right now, whether it's your backup plan or if it's the thing that you're going to use to invest in your business. How can you make those two things work together? How can you be more efficient in growing your business? And how can you focus on the most important things? So no, you do not have to quit your day job, you do not have to leave behind your backup plans, and you do not have to kick risk to the highest possible levels and go all in to grow this thing. In fact, so many business owners today are operating as solopreneurs. Most small businesses have contractors that they leverage, do not have full teams of employees, and they're focused on the most important things and they get Help and they outsource where there are things that someone else can do better than they can do them and where things suck their energy and someone else could do that for them so they can have a better leverage model. In fact, we're going to talk about what you should think about outsourcing and how you identify those things you need to be outsourcing in our next episode. So please join us in episode seven if that's something that is top of mind for you and you know that there are things that you could be getting help with. And we'll also share. I'll also share how I started outsourcing in my business before we were making money and how we made that work as well. So I've got a good feeling about what you are doing and what you are up to and I cannot wait to hear how this resonates with you and how you are going to get more leverage in your business right now so you can scale and you can grow and still have a backup plan and still maintain the lifestyle that you are living right now and build upon that with your business. Because a better business means a better life, not the other way around. And with that, we're gonna. We're gonna close it with a little Flo Rida. And I'm gonna warn you in advance that I sing this off tune. So here we go. I. I've got a good feeling. Oh, my gosh. That was so off key. I'm not going to redo it because it probably won't get any better. I got a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before. Okay, we're going to stop right there. Right there. And if you can sing that song better, I would love to hear it. Send me an audio message and definitely tag me in social media. Actually, I'm sure you can sing that song better, so I should maybe take that back. Sending me the audio message. I bet almost all of you can sing that better than I just sang it. But we are going to keep on rolling with doing what we do imperfectly. Give me a shout out on social media to let me know what your next moves are. And I cannot wait to see you in episode seven. We're going to dive into outsourcing. Have a good one, Sam.