Lise Cartwright - Hustle and Groove

Hey, it's time for episode 301 of the Small Business Show. How are you doing, Dave?

I'm good. So we've got 300 in the bag. We are now into our 400th section of the show.

Yeah, that's right. I like that. It's pushing forward.

Just direction pushing forward. That's it. Yeah, yeah. Forget about those first 300. Now it's time to look forward. That's right.

Now we're really going to get good at it.

Now we're going to figure it out. That's right.

That's cool. We have a great guest today, someone who's helped us with our own self publishing business that we've been working on and also just brings a whole different realm of possibilities about being successful with an online business with us today. I'm really looking forward to talking to Lease Cartwright from Hustle and Groove. It's going to be fun.

Yeah. This interview, I mean, I knew I was going to enjoy talking with Lis because we've always enjoyed talking with Lisa. Like you said, she's helped us with some things that we've done here, but this really went in a direction that explored so much more about who she is, how she is successful, why she is successful and her thought processes and things. And you can learn a little bit about where magic can actually help. So, yeah, that was great.

Yeah, I love that tie in. It's going to be great show.

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Free magic. That's it. Free magic. Yeah, man. All right, well, now I'm ready to learn about all kinds of.

Yeah, yeah. I'm ready to small business, man. Let's do it.

I'm ready to small business too. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 301 of the Small Business Show.

It is, and I say this a lot now, it is 80% mindset and 20% everything else. And so if your mindset is out of alignment, as in if you don't believe that you can get to a thousand a month, you won't get 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Right. You might see little bits of success here and there, but unless you are actively focusing in on your mindset, as in you are sitting there doing everything that you can to get your mind aligned with the strategies and everything that you're actually taking action on, then you won't see success. And I see it time and time again. I so I would say it's that 8020 rule. So 20% of people who go through and just follow the system and just keep doing it and keep know working on their mindset see success. 80% of people who start don't. And the.

So we all know small businesses come in all shapes and sizes and you know, as builders of companies, sometimes we want big teams of people, employees, multiple locations and others. Like I'm doing right now, we are being solopreneurs and we want to create that charmed life just on our own, without those other responsibilities. So joining us on the show Today is Lise Cartwright, founder of Hustle and Groove, author and creative business strategist. I love that title.

I like that term. Yeah, me too.

It's really cool. I'm totally stealing that. Lise, she's built her success around creating content for herself, her own company, as well as helping small businesses create, you know, really compelling messages, empowering others, you know, to build revenue streams that. That can really give you a lot of flexibility and freedom in your life. And I'm excited to talk with her today. Lise, thank you so much for coming on the small business show.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. That's a great intro.

It's true. I'm totally jacked. I mean, we. We have a little back, a little history. Lisa's been our coach in helping us with some of our publishing stuff, which is great. Excited to kind of delve in deeper and learn all her secrets today. And one of the things that really interested me when I was doing some research here was looking at your LinkedIn profile, and you mentioned the term the magic, and you say it as magic's always been a part of your life in kind of a unique way. Can you expand on that, talk about why that term is important enough for you to feature it on your public profile?

Yeah, I think it really stems back to when I was a child. So I'm the eldest of five kids, and my parents always focused on things like magic. Right. They were just like, everything is possible. Everything is magical. So the word magic is loaded for me, as in, it has so many more meanings beyond just magic that you might see in a Harry Potter movie. It's about, like, wonder, joy, all of those things. And so I live and breathe it in everything I do. So I put it on there because I'm. It's not. It's just such a core piece of me that it would seem weird not to have it there.

Yeah.

That's so cool. Even I love in your email signature where it just shows yourself laughing out loud. And I think that's just a great message of. And it's really authentic, you know, to stating who you are. And. And I think it's compelling. When did you first realize that you could create your own business built around publishing and becoming an author?

Yeah. So that would be back in 2014. We had just got married, and at the time, I was freelance writing. So I'd been a freelance writer for a few years up until that point and was looking for. The next thing I knew that I didn't want to be freelancing. For the rest of my life. I didn't, I didn't enjoy writing about tires and mortgages and everything under the sun. I can literally write about everything, but I wasn't enjoying it, so. But what I did enjoy was writing. I have no degree in writing per se. It's just something that I've always done. I've always been a writer. I've always had a diary. It's always been the way that I communicate the best. And I, as a side, complete side note, I joke with my husband all the time. Just like, hey, when we're in the middle of fight, can you just give me a moment to just go write down my response so that I can get it out the right way? Because I'm not always super quick on my feet. But give me a. Give me half an hour to write it down and I'll get everything across.

So when you say, when you say you were freelance writing, were you writing for, like, news publications or writing as like, bespoke pieces for people that. That weren't your byline?

Yeah, no. So I was the, the latter. The. I was essentially ghostwriting for businesses, so doing blog posts, white papers, content for their website, that type of thing.

Gotcha. Okay, so it wasn't like you were building a career as a, an, an article author or a journalist. You were. You were just writing the things people needed to be written. Got it.

Exactly. And I think now people would. More would call that a content strategist or something along those lines, more than just I'm using air quotes that you can't see. Freelance writer. Yeah. So I'd been doing that for a good couple of years and really was just like, what else can I do? I feel like I have so much knowledge and information that I want to share, but I don't know the best way to do that. And it was around that time that I started taking notice of self publishing and seeing a few people who were in my world, as in, I was on their email list and I was getting their emails who were doing this. And I thought, what would that look like? And I think it was around July 2014 that I joined self publishing school and was the first student to go through the program and launch my first book. And from there, and really at the time, I had no idea of what was possible, just that I wanted to give it a shot, see what it looked like. But after I published that first book, I was hooked. As in I loved the adrenaline of writing a book and then launching it out into the world so much so that for the next two years I was a full time author where I wrote and published a book a month for two years solidly.

Yeah. That's insane. Well, which kind of leads me into this. So you have about 30 books published when I was counting them last night on Amazon. It's incredible. So did you find success right away with your first book or did it, did it take you a while to kind of figure out a system that, that would work for you?

Give us some background, Honestly, and I'm saying this, and I know lots of people are going to be upset, but honestly, the first was a huge success. I could never have imagined the success it would have. And what I, and what I term as success might not be what YouTube says, but within the first two months I was making a thousand a month just from that book. Just from.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And it was relatively easy, but that was back in 2014 when self publishing wasn't super well known. So it's a little bit as with anything now, you have to really differentiate yourself and you really need to have content behind you, you need to have followers, you need to have kind of an email list. You can have that initial success with the first book in the first 30 days. But if you, if you're not, if you don't have systems in place to follow up, to follow through, then it dies a very quick death at like day 31. It will literally just Dr. Drop in. Amazon has moved on to the next best shiny object. That's how Amazon works. But yeah, so that first book did extremely well. And for the following 12 months it held at a thousand a month with very little effort on my part. And that's what I'm saying. People are going to be like, ah, I can't believe she's saying that. But the landscape changed, right? 2015, 2016, 2017, things started to change. More and more people became aware of the fact that they could now self publish and it was relatively easy. So it's easy to self publish. The difficulty is in selling, right? So it's easy to self publish to launch the book out on Amazon. The difficulty is then in the marketing. And I would say that's probably the biggest issue. No matter what platform you are using to get your product out there, marketing is always the thing that makes it tricky. And so it's just about learning what that looks like. But so yeah, so to kind of back back up, the first book did really well. And then because it did so well, and Amazon loves authors who do fresh content that's Why I was doing a book a month because I was doing that. I was earning 4 to 5k a month because I was publishing a book a month. Amazon, you know, that whole rising tide lifts all ships. That's exactly what that looks like. And that can still be achieved today. Right. If you, if you're sitting there listening to this and you're like, I love to write and I want to make a full time living from it, all you need to do is, there's more to it. But essentially all you would need to do is make sure that you're publishing a book a month and you're six.

Fascinating.

So, yeah, yeah, this is interesting because you, you define success, right? You said, okay, I've got, you know, I want to make a thousand dollars a month. And. Or you started making a thousand dollars a month and now that was success for you. Right. And, and you were able to move from that and you took a system that worked to get you there and then you began to replicate it or expand upon it so that you could move from $1,000 a month to $4,000 a month or $5,000 a month. Right. And that we, we preach this all the time here, find the thing that works for you and when you have success, great. Now replicate, replicate, replicate. Right? That's the system part. And that's great. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah. And I mean, I see you talk about that on your, on your website a lot. And you know, this thousand dollar a month side hustle and you know, talking about definitions of success, sometimes people look at those, oh, that's not that much money. But I always argue, hey, you know, to Dave's point, if you can make a thousand bucks, you can make 10,000. I mean, and you know, how successful do you think? You know, you've worked with lots of people. How successful do you think people are getting that mindset and migrating from that initial whatever it is, 500 bucks, thousand bucks, up to those higher dollar numbers, do most people stumble on it or do they get beyond it?

Yeah. So it's interesting that you say that, Shannon, because it is, and I say this a lot now, it is 80% mindset and 20% everything else. And so if your mindset is out of alignment, as in if you don't believe that you can get to a thousand a month, you won't get 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Right. You might see little bits of success here and there, but unless you are actively focusing in on your mindset, as in, you are sitting There doing everything that you can to get your mind aligned with the strategies and everything that you're actually taking action on, then you won't see success. And I see it time and time again. I. So I would say it's that 80, 20 rule. So 20% of people who go through and just follow the system and just keep doing it and keep, you know, working on their mindset see success. 80% of people who start don't. And the only thing that is the difference is mindset, nothing else. So it's not about skill, it's not about how much money you have in the bank. It is 100% your mindset.

Yeah, I love hearing that because it makes me feel like I know what I'm talking about. I agree 100%. It is so true.

And, well, it has proven true for the three of us here. Right? So. So for 100% of us here, it is true. There's no reason it can't be true. For you listening out there that, like, that's the lesson to take away. Certainly there can be other things that can get in your way, but without the mindset, you are in your own way. So get out of your own way and then worry about the other things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom used to tell me, whether you think you're going to fail or you think you're going to succeed, you're right. You know, it's getting beyond that. And, you know, one of the things about the self publishing thing I've learned for myself and things that I've done is that I think you have to really believe in what you're writing, at least for me, because, you know, we struggled a bit with our small business show guides that we're working on because we've always talked about how can we put our podcast content into other forms to broaden our reach and everything. But. And we brought in an editor and did some kind of stuff. But I think part of our struggles have been really getting in and doing the writing, which neither Dave and I have had time to do. And so I think we've both kind of been like, okay, we've got an editor, they're doing the transcription, they're putting the book together. And I've come after publishing a couple of books and working on our third. I've come. I think I've come to that point. Do you think that's an important part of it as well, or am I just making a. Of an excuse?

No, I do. I do agree. I think that it's. It's Everything. And I. This is something that I do every week where I'm sitting down and asking myself the question, do I feel aligned and equipped to do whatever it is that I'm planning to do the following week? So if, you know, I'm actually writing a book at the moment, and so every time I'm sitting down, I'm like, am I excited about this? And if that's not there, then why, why try and push through writing? And I'm saying this with the very clear voice in my head of a time when I've said, you just have to sit down and write no matter how you're feeling. However, I have now learned how I work best. And that is why that's something that I always say to people. You have to try lots of different things to figure out what works best for you. For you. And so for me, I've now learned that I need to start by asking myself that question. You know, do I feel equipped? Do I feel aligned with what I'm working on? And, you know, bottom line, am I excited? And if that's not there, then it's reflected in what you write, in what you produce. Right. And I'm saying this because October, just this last month was my worst month ever, ever, because I was so out of alignment and I ignored everything that I would normally do. You know, there was a lot, there was just lots of stuff going on and it reflected in everything that I did. And as soon as I realized that and got back on track, it within 48 hours, completely turned around. So the last week of October surpassed the entire month of October. Right. And so I'm saying this to say that yes, if you, from a writing perspective especially, you might already have existing content and you might, you know, like you're saying you're getting it transcribed and you've got an editor, but the buck stops with you as the author. You have to go back through and make sure that the message, the voice, everything like that is exactly what you're wanting to present.

Yeah, that's great advice. So what if you're just no good at writing? Can you still have a content type business? A side hustle? Is there ways to do it if you just, you know, you, you have lots of ideas, you've. You're successful at certain things you'd like to share, but you just don't have that capacity? Is there, are there ways around that?

So I don't, I don't think there is anyone that is not good at writing. It's more about you being able to get your message across. So if you're, if you're more sitting there going, I'm a two finger typist. Right, right. You can speak your book. You don't have to physically sit there and, and type it. There are ways to get your words out, but it still needs to be your words. Right? So writing is words. So how you get the words down onto a digital paper, right into a document doesn't matter whether you're typing it, whether you're speaking it, it just has to be your words. And as long as you're clear on who you're trying to help and how you're trying to help them, then how you get that piece of content to be, you know, out in the world doesn't matter as long as it's your words. Does that make sense?

It does. And I like the way you describe it. You know, I often try to tell myself what problem am I trying to solve here? You know, kind of to your comment about who are you trying to help? You know, because if not, if I'm not solving some problems for somebody, maybe it's not worth writing this, maybe I need another topic or something like that. But I think that's great. And I like, especially now there's such great technology that can transcribe your stuff and even though it may be stream of consciousness, you can go back and edit it and everything.

Editing is easier than writing for sure. So. Well, no, and, and so to your point, Lisa, just speak and have it transcribed and then you've got something to work from. Even if you throw it all out, like at least you've got your ideas and you've, you've now iterated on them from there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's so much easier to refine, have a working document than it is to sit in front of your computer and go, I have no idea what I'm going to type. And particularly if you're not excited about the typing piece. I have lots of people who tell me, they're just like, I don't enjoy sitting in front of the computer. You know, I much prefer to read things and tweak and do all of those things. And you know, that is when recording it and getting somebody else to transcribe it is your body best option.

Yeah, that's good. We've had some pretty good luck too with transcription on the fly. Like with Otter Otter AI as a service, it's like 10 bucks a month and it's pretty good. We use it for transcribing the podcast. So, you know, people Listening. They can try. That is there. You know, we, we wrote a book about mistakes. Of course we talk about here on the show. Is there a single, you know, biggest mistake you think people make when trying to become a successful author? Do you see it over and over?

Yeah, I think what, and I think it just goes to any business. I don't think it's necessarily unique to be an author. But what I see, and this is more from a nonfiction perspective, not necessarily, not fiction, that's a whole other ball game. But from a nonfiction perspective, the biggest mistake I see people make is not being super clear on who they're trying to help. And sitting there going, I have this amazing idea that I want to share with the world and it's going to help other, each, everybody. And we all think this, right? We all, like I'm saying this, sitting here going, I have this amazing book that I'm writing and it's going to help everybody. But I know that if I try to write it as if I'm trying to help everybody, it helps nobody because nobody connects with that message. Right? Nobody connects with everybody. We all care about ourselves. And so when we are searching for information, when we're searching for a solution to a problem, we are specific in how we search. So I'm always saying to anyone that I work with, you need to have a very clear picture about who it is you're actually trying to help, right down to, like, having a visual picture of what they look like. I'm a huge fan of if I can't, if I don't, you know, can't think of anybody. I will go to my favorite TV programs, and I typically go to Friends or Gilmore Girls, and I'll use, you know, Rachel, Phoebe or Monica or Lorelei as my avatars. Right. As the people that I'm writing the book to. And just by doing that doesn't mean that you are actually excluding anybody. It just means that more people are attracted to it and more people resonate with what you're saying. Saying versus the I can help everybody and then you help nobody.

Yeah.

That is so smart. Right? To a specific person. Not by name in your book, obviously, but, but yeah, in your mind. I, I, I do that when I'm writing articles on the web all the time is, yeah, I'm talking to you. Even when we do this podcast, I'm thinking about a person. Not the same person every time, but there's someone when I'm sharing advice. Yeah. Makes it helpful for sure.

Easy.

Yeah, it's easy. And it's Easier. Yes.

Yeah. We always, we always say, you know, the riches are in the niches. So if you're solving a. It could be a very niche problem. You know, I wrote a book about selling on a specific social commerce marketplace and, you know, it's been very successful for me because it just focuses on that thing. And that's, that's good advice. I want to talk about your business now for a little bit. There's. I see lots, I get emails, I see them on LinkedIn, I see them on the web of people like, hey, we'll help you start a side hustle. You know, we'll be your coach, your consultant, you know, people pushing their services. How do you get, you know, how do you get your clients? How do you get, you know, make hustle and groove stand out? And is there a specific niche that you focus on?

Yeah. So I am number one. If you're listening, you've probably already picked up that I have an accent. That helps. Right. It helps for me to be able to stand out because I sound different.

Yeah.

Straight away. So I definitely use that to my advantage. But I think the thing that has really helped or has helped me grow my business is being authentic and just being real. And this has been a lot harder for me to do because I am naturally not someone who would share when things aren't going well. Right. I'm definitely someone who soldiers on and always has a happy smile on her face. But that actually doesn't help my audience. And so when I read the book the Go Giver, highly, highly, highly recommend it, One of the, the very first law, they have these laws of stratospheric success. The very first law is the law of value, which is that you give more than you receive in payment. And I really took that on board and went, okay, how can I really make sure that I am serving the people that I'm trying to help? Because ultimately I got into business to help people. And so I was like, well, that means I can't just share all the rose tinted, amazing stuff. I also have to share the messiness. And as soon as I started doing that, I had so many people resonating with that. And then I do a lot of. I have a private Facebook group where I go live once a week where I just teach for free. I'm a huge believer in just being able to empower and inspire. So I do, I focus on that. I'm just always focused on helping. And the money side of things just always figures itself out. And I've had that recently, in the last couple of weeks, where I've had people say, hey, Lise, I bought this from you because you always help. You're always willing to go a little bit above and beyond to make sure that the people that you're working with are. Are successful. And so literally all I. All I would say is just actually coming from a space of helping and serving first has been the number one thing.

Yeah, that's. That's awesome. That's. And it's authentic, you know, like you said. And it makes you feel good. Right. The more you give, I think, the better our lives are. And this, it is real authentic. So along those lines, good times, bad times. One thing I find when I'm trying to write and finish a project, sometimes, you know, the motivation is challenging for me. And I always, on my to do, I have a to did list that I keep every day of what I got done. And it's real easy for me to push the writing part off when other things come along. What do you do, you know, to keep that motivation up, keep your productivity and how do you measure it to know, well, okay, I got done what I needed to get done today. Yeah.

So if we're specifically talking about writing, like, if I'm. If I'm really focused in, on. On writing, it's the first thing I do, right. As soon as I get up, the number one thing that I do before I do anything else. Because you can only have one priority in a day. Like, it's so funny. I was reading. I can't remember where I was reading, but there was. They were, you know, analyzing productivity and talking about priorities with ies on the end. And they were saying that the word priority is singular. It does not mean multiple things. And I think it came about in the industrial age. I'm not doing a very good job of remembering it, but it was just. It made me just go, huh? We talk about priorities all the time, but the reality is you can only have one thing that's the most important thing. And so I have, you know, I have my planner that I sit down at the beginning of the day, but I've also set it up the night before where I've gone. Okay, if nothing else gets done tomorrow, what would be the number one thing that I would feel like I had, you know, hit everything out of the park? And so if I'm writing, that is generally that. That thing. And so that's kind of how I measure it is that just that I got it done and it doesn't matter how many Words that that might have been. I typically set an hour aside if I'm writing, and then once that's done, everything else is just gravy on top. Right. Like, it's. That is the number one thing that's done, and that is whether I'm writing or whether I'm creating something else. Whatever is my number one priority is the thing that I do first before anything else happens.

That's great. Yeah, that's a good definition where that, you know, there is only one priority at a time.

I keep reminding myself that, yeah, it's tough.

It seems like a good thing to have on a sticky nearby. Yeah, it's tough.

Boy. Distractions when you're trying to write are just param, you know? Oh, it's crazy for me. Okay, so we talked about mistakes that other people make. How about yourself? Are there mistake. Is there a mistake that maybe you made as you were trying to build your business that taught you something that really has stuck with you?

Absolutely. That was last year. I mean, I've made plenty of mistakes, but the one that sticks in my mind the most and the one that I talk about the most is last year, around July, I, for whatever reason, just got swept up in this coach in her world. I loved everything that she was saying, and I bought her coaching program, which was $9,000, so not a. Not a very cheap thing to do. But what the mistake was was allowing her to tell me how to run my business, allowing her to say, do this, do this, do this, and you're set. And getting three months into that and going, holy crap, none of this aligns at all. None of this is what I want my business to look like. I've just spent $9,000 on this to learn that this is not what I want. And I'm saying this because, you know, last year was a really weird year for me, and I had. I stopped doing the things that I knew I needed to do. As in, I stopped taking a beat to just reflect. Every week I do this, I sit down on a Friday, and I just go, okay, is everything feeling good? Am I feeling good about what I'm doing and what I'm progressing on? Or have I gone off on a tangent and followed some shiny object? Because that happens all the time. But I had stopped doing that. I had stopped doing jst, which is a mindfulness practice called just sit there. And I can go into that in a second about what that looks like. But so it stopped doing all the things, things that I would normally do to be aware that were all Mindset based. I'd stopped doing all of those and allowed somebody else to tell me how to run my business and to tell me to do all these things. So note, by November 2019, I had created a business that I did not like at all. And when I realized that I had made that mistake, it was a double edged sword because I also mean, okay, well, I'm responsible for this, right? Having that conversation with my husband was very difficult. So, yeah, babe, I just spent $9,000 on something that one, didn't work and two, I'm not going to use at.

All to some cost. Right?

Yeah, right, like at that cost. But then also realizing that I was also the person that could turn it around, that could make a complete change. And it was at that time that I realized that I wanted to focus on creating a business that was easy and fun. And so my filter now, for any opportunity that comes my way, for any idea that I have, is, is this easy and fun for me? Right? Easy and fun for you is going to be different for what's easy and fun for me. So I'm constantly filtering that through. And so it took me about two months to really reset and get myself back on track. But now my business is exactly how I want it. But, you know, I fell off the wagon in October where I stopped doing those things again and everything got off track. Everything completely out of alignment. For the first three weeks of October, I made $00, right. Because I was out of alignment. I was, I don't know what I was doing. It was like just Mercury in retrograde. I don't know. But it, I had just stopped doing the things that I know I need to do to keep my mind clear and focused on the things that I need to do. So when I realized what I had done, it was like I said, it was 48 hours and I literally made the money that I would normally make if I was doing the things that I would normally do in that last week. So I'm saying, yeah, that it taught me such a big lesson. And so now I can still fall off the wagon. Right? We are not perfect, but now I'm far more aware of when stuff like that happens so that I don't allow things like that to, to kind of continue to go forward and, yeah, spend it.

Go ahead.

It sounds like you've, you've, you've just articulated the value of intention, right? Like, you know, it's very easy for us to get caught up in the things that just drag us along. And like you said, if, if you don't take a beat and stop and look, wait a minute. Am I doing the things that I want to be doing or I need to be doing? Hopefully they are both the same thing, but sometimes they might differ. But. But, you know, just that the value of intention being applied even in small amounts to just sort of nudge the rudder can make a huge difference and often very quickly make a huge difference. So, yeah, this is great. I mean, it's not great that October sucked for you, at least the beginning of it, but. But it's great that you figured it out, and it's especially great that you shared this with us because it's. It's valuable. It's a valuable lesson for us all to learn, even if we've had to teach it to ourselves before. We will all forget at times. And it's okay. You just get back. Don't worry. Like you said, Shannon, don't worry about the sunk cost, because that's what it is. Move forward and go, yeah, we've all been there. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we will be there again. Like, that's the thing is the best part about learning the value of the first sunk cost, or even the most recent sunk cost is it allows us all to better identify more quickly, identify the next thing that we've done that is now a sunk cost. Because once you can get past it, then you're free. Right. Then you can do the things that you're going to do. It's going to happen. We're going to make mistakes. It's okay.

Yeah. Talk about this JST term you used. I'm intrigued.

Yeah. So I'm not someone that meditates very easily, but I know the value in just being right and just sitting. And it was actually a coach of mine who had talked about it, and I was just. I just kind of pushed it to the side because it's like, just sit there. That just seems so, like, obvious. But the power is in the simplicity. So when I actually did the practice, which is very simple, you literally go to a quiet space. So you cannot be around any one else. You need to be on your own. So I've often said to my clients who have kids, if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom, so be it. And you minimum want to do this for 30 minutes, 60 minutes if you can. If you can kind of take it. And I'm saying this because you'll see what I mean in a second. So 30 minutes on a timer. Now, ideally, you want your phone somewhere else, but if you're using that as your timer, which I do, I put it on the opposite. Opposite side of the room so I'm not tempted to pick it up and start scrolling through Instagram or reading my email. So I put it out of arm's reach. And then you simply sit wherever is comfortable, whatever that looks like. So no music. This is literally just silence. And you sit there for 30 minutes. Just sit.

That sounds very difficult.

Yeah. The first five to ten minutes, I will not lie, are hard. Right? As in your brain. My brain does this. It goes lis. We have these many things on our to do list. We need to get moving. Right? Like, let's go and do the stuff. How are you just sitting there? But once you kind of get past that, you. Your brain then starts to go, huh? We actually have some space to process things. And so the first time I did this, I didn't ask any questions or anything like that. I literally just sat there and just waited for whatever came into my brain and I wrote it down. So that's the other piece. Having pen and paper is helpful because you will get some ideas. Like inspired ideas will just come to you without prompting. But now what I do is a little bit more structured. So my JST practice looks a little different. I go first thing in the morning for a walk along the beach, and that is my jst. Now, yes, I'm passing people, but I'm not engaging them. And it literally, within two minutes, my brain is in a space of all this amazing stuff just starts coming to me. And I don't have pen and paper with me, obviously, but I have my phone and I use voxer, so I vox myself all the ideas. So this morning I had about five things come to me and I just literally pick up my phone and record whatever it is that just came to me and then continue walking. And just by doing. Now I do this every single day, but if I'm ever struggling, I will do it more often. Right? So there have been times where I have done jst up to five times in a day to get clarity and to process through, but it's allowing that space, that quietness from. For our brains, which are geared to problem solve, right? Our brains are geared to problem solve. So if you ask the right questions, it will problem solve everything for you.

So you. Have you ever tried. They call them isolation tanks or sensory. They call them sensory deprivation.

I haven't. I want to.

So what you described is like, you would love an isolation tank because it is exactly that. Taken to the next level. Because what I find in the tank is, you get that you can't write anything down. You can't even log anything. But I actually, but I found that the drive home from the tank is where I use something like Voxer. And the ideas are all still there because what will happen when you, when you're completely disengaged is you'll see the ideas go by and then, and then they stop and that, and it takes a while. For me, I have to spend 90 minutes in the tank to get to the point where I have like 15 or 20 minutes of what I call clear thought. And, and it is truly the absence of thought. Right. Just, you know, your brain, like you said, does all, it throws all the things at you that it wants to throw at you and you just sort of let it, and you just let them go by and then there's nothing.

Yeah.

And after that is when the ideas come flooding to me, you know, and I, of course, driving, I can't write them down or type them, at least not safely. So I've learned to capture them as voice messages. But.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, that's great.

It's fascinating. I mean, I like the idea that you can go walk around or go do something. Just sitting there, my head might explode. But if I could physically move and think like that, that's, that's fascinating. I love it. So we're really focused on the action part of small business. We love, we think it's really critically important that you take action every day. Is there, is there an action item that you recommend to, you know, your clients when you're working with them, something that you could share with our listeners today that, that they could do to implement, whether it maybe it's jst, but something that could maybe help them make a difference in their day to day.

Yeah. So I, I, that's exactly what I, I say to people, is to do jst, to like to start your day off with that, just to give you, just to kind of give you the clarity, particularly if you are struggling. Right. Like, let's all agree that this year 2020 has been crashing.

Yeah.

And, you know, I, I can remember back to March, April, and I can remember doing. And that was when I was doing JST five times a day because I felt completely immobilized. Like I just had zero idea about what I should do, what I could do, what anything was even going to look like, that I couldn't make decisions. Like, I really struggled to make a decision. So JST was the only thing that really, really helped me. Plus I also discovered human design and if you're familiar with like MBTI and those types of things, human design is like mixed level and incorporates both astrology and science. It's a very interesting way to kind of understand your personality, but it goes through a lot of different things. But what I really loved about it was that it helped me understand what my decision making process was for me to be able to go, yes, this is a good idea. No, this isn't not a good idea. And it's different for everybody because human design is your type will always be different. But now once I kind of went through that, I mean, oh yeah, when, when something is really good for me, it's like I feel it and it's just like, yes, do it. And then when something isn't good, it's like the same thing. I feel it, but it feels gross. And when I learned how to do that, that's when I realized the mistake that I made, you know, last year. Like all the signs were there, but I completely, completely ignored them. And so, yeah, JST and really understanding how you work, right, like understanding what makes you tick so that you know when something is just the most best thing for you, right. Versus something that isn't. And so my, you know, decision making process is very much in my gut. But I have a friend who I can't remember what her type of is, but her whole decision making process happens in her head. And quite often what will happen for me is if I'm doing something and it's out of alignment, it's because I'm up in my head versus trusting my gut. So yeah, so JST and human design combined are the things that I do on the daily and I recommend everybody does with questioning, right? Like asking the right questions. That was the other thing that I see with JST is asking the right questions. And those questions are like, particularly if you're struggling, if you're not sure what you should be doing. The question that I ask whenever I'm in that space is what's my immediate next step? That's it. What's my immediate next step? And wait, because your brain will be like, cool, this is what you need to do. And then also I sometimes will go, what's the opportunity here? Right? Like if I feel like something might be a good fit but I'm still un uncertain, then I'll ask that question. And then the third question that I kind of resort to is how does it get any better than this? And that's, that's what I do. So yeah, so those are, those are the things that I recommend.

Good programming. I like that. Wow. Yeah, it's very good programming. You know, there's a lot of stuff to digest on this, on this show. I'm going to go back and listen to it while I edit it and pick, pick it apart. Some great tips. You know, Dave and I have loved working with you. We hope to continue to do that. Thank you for coming on the show to talk and share your experience and the self publishing world and the everything else that you're involved in. What's the best way for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about Hustle and Groove?

Yeah. So I thank you guys so much for having me. I've super enjoyed it. But yeah, if you just go to hustleandgroove.com you will see on the, on that homepage right at the top it says come and join the empowered Hustle community. And that's the, that private Facebook group. We're 1 4k strong at the moment, so feel free to come in and join and yeah, just it's an empowered space. Empowered. And the word Empowering is my 1 word. If you haven't read even Carmichael's book, your one word highly recommend it. So everything I live and breathe and do is filtered through that word empowered or empowering. So that's why it's called the Empowered Hustle Community.

That's fantastic. Well, thank you again and we, you know, please come back, keep us posted on how things are going and we look forward to keeping in touch with you.

Thanks guys.

Well, I agree with almost everything Lee said when she said there's no one out there who's a bad writer. Writer. I, I, I feel like I might have a couple of examples that I've encountered over throughout my life. But, but everybody has a voice I think is the message there. And you need to find a way to get what your voice is saying out to other people.

I agree.

And that's yeah, yeah.

And I think the, the biggest takeaway for me on the self publishing is that even if you don't have visions of becoming a bestselling author, having a book or more published under your name that you can hand out, give to people. You know, I didn't know that when she became a published author on Amazon they will link to your blog. So your, you know, your blog updates feed into Amazon. It's one more great way for search engine optimization. There's so many benefits to it. And the other thing I really love about her business is that once she finds, figures out something that helps her own business. She markets that out to everyone else. So if you. She talked about building a list and getting followers. Well, she's got a couple of courses up on her website@hustleandgroove.com, where she focuses on, hey, here's how you build your list. Here's how you get your followers. Yep. And it's such a great way. What's that term, you know, eat your own dog food? Sort of.

Well, yeah, you know, and I've, I've of sort certainly found that to be true for me. I just wish I was smarter in doing it with more of the things that I've created for myself. In fact, you know, my favorite mistakes are like, you know, I wrote our own content management system. Why I didn't market that to other people is still beyond me. But, you know, like, but the things that I did do for myself and then for others are the places where I've had success. I mean, it's.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, you can only have, like, to her point, one priority at a time, which I really, I think that's what it is.

I think that's right. In fact, I'm going to take that as the.

Yeah, no, that's cool. And we would love it, folks, if you enjoyed the show, if you would make it a priority to go give us a review on your podcast, directory or player of choice. It's what drives our show, gets us found in the search results so more small business owners can benefit from hearing from us. And we appreciate your support.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, take a minute and think about how you can get to leading that charmed life, because that's what it's all about here. And we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening, everybody.