As many of you know, when I first started my blog I was studying full-time and working part-time. When I finished studying, I was working full-time whilst trying to grow my blog. And it wasn’t easy!
Gaining momentum can be challenging when you only have a couple of hours each day, but it can be done! Over the last five years I’ve done my fair share of experimenting and have had to figure out how to make the most of the limited time I had – and in this episode I’m sharing it all with you.
If you’ve been struggling to make time for your side hustle (or maybe you haven’t even been able to begin), listen to this episode to get my best advice on how to use the limited time you have.
If you want my help growing your blog, make sure you find out more and sign up for my Grow Your Blog Workshop by clicking here. Registration will close strictly at midnight (EDT) on Friday, 29 June 2018 and I’ll be teaching you everything you need to do to set your blog up for success (as well as how to deal with fear of judgement and perfectionism).
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Listen to the episode on the player above or anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 33 of The Smart Twenties Podcast!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hi, and welcome to episode 33 of the Smart Twenties’ podcast. My name is Sam Brown, and this is a podcast where I share personal growth and life advice for women in their 20s. And today, I’m going to be chatting about how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job, which is something I have a lot of experience in, because I was doing that for years at some points to great success at some point to no success. So I feel like I’ll be able to share a lot with you because I have been good at it and bad at it, but I just want to quickly mention before I get into it as well, that this Sunday, I am doing a live two-hour online workshop called the Grow Your Blog workshop. If you have been struggling to grow your blog or you’ve had a blog and you abandoned it or you’re wanting to start and you haven’t yet, but you want to know exactly what to do once you started- in this workshop, I am going to be sharing the strategies that I have used to grow my blog.
And these are the ones that have had the most impact because if you’ve got other shit going on in your life, you probably haven’t got enough time to try everything. And if you’ve been looking at Pinterest, then you will know that a lot of advice is conflicting and it’s very hard to reconcile at all. So, I’m going to be sharing through five years of experience. The things that have really worked for me that all going to be things that are still applicable now, they’re not strategies from like five or ten years ago. So, I’m going to be sharing that.
I’m going to be sharing how to deal with feeling disheartened and discouraged, how to deal with the fear of judgment, which is something that a lot of people have as the main thing that’s holding them back. How to do with perfectionism and to procrastinate and to want everything to be perfect before your blog goes live or everything to be perfect before you tell everyone about it, and just how to get around that. So you can actually put in the work that you’ll need to do to grow your blog. So if you want to find out more about it and sign-up, registration is closing strictly at midnight Eastern Daylight Savings Time on the 29th of June.
If you’re listening to this recording closely after it’s come out, that’s going to be very soon. So you can go to smart-twenties.com/workshop to find out more and sign up, and I would absolutely love you to join me. The Start Your Blog workshop was such a huge success, and I’m so excited to be doing a follow-up workshop. There’s also going to be one in about three weeks time that will be Promote Your Blog workshop where I’ll be teaching you how to use Pinterest and Instagram and different social media to grow your blog in that way, to really just promote everything that you’ve been doing, but it’s so important to do the work on your blog so that when you’re promoting it, you actually have somewhere to send people to and you’re not just promoting something that doesn’t really exist or that wouldn’t entice people once they get there.
So I’m also going to be talking in the workshop, the Grow Your Blog workshop about how often to post, what to post, how to figure all of that out, how to find your voice, so smart-twenties.com/workshop make sure you sign up before registration closes because I will not be opening it once I have closed it.
Those who emailed me of the Start Your Blog workshop registration close know that I do not open registration once it’s been closed, I’m very strict with that and it’s just because I want to be true to my word that there’s this deadline and it’s for practical purpose, which is if you’re going to be doing the workshop, then you need enough time to get the workbook and all that kind of thing. So, 29th of June, at midnight Eastern Daylight Savings Time is when registration is closing. I’d love you to join me.
So in this episode, I’m going to be chatting about how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job and just giving you some advice around that. So my situation at the moment, I feel like I’m still kind of doing this in a sense. So I quit my full-time job in March 2017 and I had been working part-time hours at one of the hospitals here in Brisbane.
I worked 24 hours on that job per week. I just work in the afternoon- the late afternoons. So I have all of my day until about 3:00 PM to do my business stuff, and then I go to that job and then I don’t let myself do anything once I get home from my job at about 8:30 because that’s when I hang out with Steve and I relax. We watch Netflix and do all of that sort of thing. So I’m still balancing my business with another job. But before that… So, up until March 2017, I was working full-time in accounting in an Insolvency Accounting, I did Law and Finance dual degree at uni, graduated in July 2015, and so I worked in that for up to two years and so I started on my blog in August 2013. Just trying to give you timelines here if you’re not familiar with my story.
So, I started my blog in August 2013. So, August 2013 for the next couple of years, I was blogging, trying to grow my blog while I was working full-time, and then I quit my job and then now I have been blogging while working part-time, so I’ve always kind of had something to balance it with… But I want to give you my tips on how to do it with a full-time commitment. So full-time work, full-time study- whatever it is, I know how challenging it is. It just feels like there’s no time in the day to do anything, especially if you’re trying to do something creative.
I just found it so challenging after being at work or studying for a whole day. Actually, it was easy balancing it with study because I was a crammer, I would have at least… And, there was good uni holidays, so I would have more time. Though on uni holidays, I was working nearly full-time hours at my jobs that I had, so I never really had no jobs to be going to… Or nothing else to be doing, but when I was studying, I would often just blog instead of study and then just scramble before my exams and my assignments to get them done.
But the first thing I want to say is to have really clear goals and create tasks to work on. So for quite a while, I didn’t have this and that’s where my blog wasn’t growing at all because I was quite directionless, like I knew vaguely where I wanted it to go, but I didn’t have set tasks, I was just so in my own way, I had so much self-doubt out, I was so scared of what other people would think, even though I know I knew about my blog because I hadn’t told anyone because I was so ashamed of it.
I just really didn’t have this clear direction and a clear set of tasks to work on. I spent a lot of time procrastinating, a lot of time fiddling with formatting, editing, over-editing blog post. It was just really a struggle until I actually gave myself some clear goals and the time that I did that was actually not until April 2016 when I signed up for a course called Your First 1K by Mariah Coz of Femtrepreneur.co. I don’t think that course is actually available anymore. It was about how to create an online course, and it was when I signed up for that, I was like, okay, I’m actually going to be taking this blogging thing seriously. I’m so sick of being in my own way, I’m so sick of struggling so hard and not having anything to show for it. It was like that for years, and once I had that and it was so helpful to have the clear direction from her about what to focus on, that I was like, I’m just going to do whatever she says. I’m not going to question it, just follow the formula and I’ll see if it works.
And I did that and it did seem to work and I just had these set tasks to work on. And by the way, if you’re going to be doing the Grow Your Blog workshop, I am going to be giving you guidelines. What to do, say, will definitely help with this step, but it is so important to have clear goals and tasks to work on, even though something is better than nothing, if that’s something that you’re doing can be with a purpose with direction, it will have a big impact on your side hustle, and it will also really help you with saying, determined and committed and motivated because it does actually feel like it’s going to add up to something.
So just really making sure that you have clear goals and tasks and that for me, at least to catch myself when I was procrastinating to catch myself when I was over-editing and spending hours and hours for-manning things, which felt very important. It’s not very important.
And I was just doing that so I could avoid doing the more uncomfortable things like publishing the blog post. So have clear goals and tasks to work on is number one. Number two is, have a dedicated time of day for your side hustle. So this is challenging if you’re working full-time, but it can be done.
So for me as well, in April 2016, when I signed up for that course and I got serious about blogging what I said to myself was really that I needed to wake up early because before that I was just hoping that I’d magically get things done after I got home from a full day at work or before that I’ve been hoping that I get it done after getting home from uni and it just didn’t happen.
My excuses were so much louder at the end of the day than they were at the start of the day, and when I was waking up early, and this for me has made a huge difference. When I was waking up early, I didn’t procrastinate or I didn’t do any outright procrastination. I did do- I’m sure some hidden procrastination, which is like over-editing, formatting, all of those comfortable tasks that weren’t necessary, but I didn’t look at social media or anything just like I did not wake up this early to just sit on my phone or to be distracted or whatever.
And so, I was waking up at 4:00 AM and I would blog until 6:00 AM, I would go to the gym and then I’d go to work, so I had to be on the train at like, quarter past 7, 7:30 from memory. And I don’t know if I’d recommend 4:00 AM. It did help, definitely, but also because I want to hang out with Steve that night, I was very sleep-deprived, and I just feel like I wasn’t the nicest person like when you’re sleep-deprived, you’re just grumpy AF and I was… And I just felt my eyes just felt like they were burning all the time. And it’s funny because you can really- humans are very adaptable, you can really adapt to little sleep. But now that I actually focus on being well-rested and have put a lot more effort into that, which is something that I’m still working on definitely, but I really do make an effort now to get seven and a half hours of sleep is my ideal.
When I feel tired on some days, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I used to feel like 24/7, I don’t know how I did it’ but we’re adaptable, we can do it. Yeah, I don’t know if I’d recommend 4:00 AM, but if you can even get one hour in the morning every morning, I’ve just found that if I do it before I do work, study, whatever, then I’m using my best creative energy like I’m someone that in the morning, I just find it easier to think than I do at the end of the day.
Some people are night owls love doing all of that at night. Whenever you find is the best time of day whenever you feel freshest, give yourself at least one hour is ideal two to hours. It might be hard to do more than that, but it does make a difference when it adds up day after day after day.
And I’ve been listening to a lot of Jim Rohn lately, as you guys might know, because I have mentioned it, and he talks about these things that is easy to do and easy not to do, and a lot of the very important things like eating healthy, for example, are easy to do, but they’re easy not to do. And I think that having one to two hours a day is on your side hustle is easy to do, but it’s also easy not to do it.
So I have been thinking about that a lot lately, because when something’s easy not to do, I’m like, ‘Oh but this also means it would be easy to do’ and a lot of the time that is the case, that it is pretty easy to do it but it’s just also easy not to do it. So have a dedicated time.
I just found it so helpful because when I was just relying on, I’ll see how I feel, it never happened. I’ll see how I feel after work, or I hope I’ll have time, that doesn’t ever create more time. It’s okay, I’m waking up at 4:00 AM, I am and doing it for two hours or whatever time it is, or I’m doing it as soon as I get home from work the next hour, I’m going to stay in my work clothes so that I don’t know, I find it once I get changed into my pajamas, I’m like okay, chiller now, but if you’re like, I’m going to get home from work, I’m going to stay on my work clothes, I’m going to sit at the kitchen table, I’m going to work on my blog for an hour– that makes a huge difference.
Easy to do, easy not to do. So give yourself a dedicated time. Don’t make it anything crazy, don’t say, I’m going to wake up at 3:00 AM, I’m going to wake up at 2:00 AM. If you are just starting to give yourself dedicated hours, only give yourself one to two hours. Anything more than that, especially if you haven’t been in the habit of it before, it’s probably you’re going into a habit of an all-or-nothing mentality. It needs to be 3:00 AM or I’m going to wake up at the minute I need to for work. So, just ease into it. I know that if you’re in a similar mindset to what I have been that it’s not going to be tempting to ease in, it’s much more tempting to be like, I’m just going to wake up at 3:00 AM, but just ease yourself in.
Number three, is to really look after your health. For me, health stuff, especially sleep, but also exercise. That’s kind of the first off to go when I get stressed about time when it’s also the stuff that really keeps me the most sane, especially exercise- I mean sleep, I’m human. Even though I could function on little sleep, I definitely wasn’t my best self. And I know some people who don’t get much sleep say that they can function really well on it.
But now that I have been someone who believed I could function well on little sleep and I’m actually now a well-rested person. It’s like night and day. It’s so different. Just not having that foggy feeling in your brain, but you can get used to it. As I said, we can really adapt. Humans are very adaptable and we can adapt to little sleep, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you can’t.
So, focus on still getting enough sleep, eating healthy, exercising, whatever it is that really keeps you going because it is a long game. Having a side hustle is a long game. I’m not going to pretend that you just start it and then three weeks later, it can be your full-time job though it could maybe but for most people, if you’re only getting in a couple of hours a day, it does take a little longer, which means you need to have some stamina. And that comes from looking off to your health.
And I am just preaching to myself right now. I feel like I’ve been pretty good at looking after my health lately, but it’s always something that I’m working on and reminding myself about, especially in nutrition, I feel that I’m getting a lot better with sleep. I love exercise and I’m in quite a habit with that. But with nutrition, I do enjoy eating healthy, but I do have a sweet tooth and Steve and I- this is a sign right now, but we actually have this drawer that we always have stopped with at least five different choices of chocolate and lollies or candy. If you’re in the US, we call them lollies.
And whenever we watch Netflix, which will always just be only at night, we just have this drawer of stuff. And we just eat it like we’re on a candy store and I just have been doing that a lot in the last few weeks and just can feel physically the effect of it.
So I’ve just been working on not doing that every single night, but having it be more of a treat. The reason we got into that was because for Steve’s birthday was actually in 2016, so nearly two years ago, I went to Woolworths and bought every kind of chocolate and lollies. I think I spent about maybe a hundred dollars. I’m just like, it’s really fun. I just got everything and gave it to him for our snacks, and then once I did that it became a thing, and then we were always just eating all of these snacks every night and going through them very quickly. As you know, it’s easy to eat a lot when you’re watching something.
So that’s one thing I’m focusing on at the moment, is really my nutrition. Getting it back in check. I do eat healthy a lot of the time, but I just find it’s all those little treats that aren’t really adding anything to my life. And yes, it tastes good in the moment, but when I feel bloated and gross for the other 23 hours of the day, it’s not really worth it.
So anyway, that’s just a side note. But looking after your health is really important when you’re balancing different things. And at the moment, I’ll be talking about this more in my next podcast episode or one that’s coming up soon. I’m going to be doing monthly updates just because I’ve decided not to be posting my daily vlogs. I thought it’d be fun to just do like a chatty monthly update on my podcast instead. So I’ll talk about this more on there.
But I have signed up for a co-working space because I was just super struggling with working from home because I need to be around other people and I always go a little bit stir crazy. I’ve been finding that when I’m at home, I’m not really relaxing. I feel like I can’t relax because it’s also my workplace, but then when I’m working, I’m mostly doing the laundry and I’m looking at the fridge and I might be cleaning, it might be like, I’ll paint my nails and it was just- I’ve never 100% in there either. I’m never fully relaxing or I’m never fully working, so I’ve signed up for a co-working space and I’ve been enjoying it so much so far. Well, I’ll talk about it all more in the next episode, but I’m at the moment getting into a routine and I want to treat that like it’s a job.
So as I was saying, the last step, have dedicated hours for your side hustle. So I’m establishing dedicated hours for my business that I’m going to be at that co-working space. I’m going to be there for everything except recording podcast episodes. Right now, I’m at home, it’s a Saturday morning, it’s 8:55 AM so I’m about to go there after this, but I am really setting these dedicated hours. But also trying to get into a new routine.
I used to go to the gym at lunchtime when I was working full-time in the city and I loved it because it just felt like everyone in the office would be in this slump and when I went to the gym, it just really broke up the day. It completely removed me from the office and otherwise if I wasn’t going to the gym I tend to just have lunch in the office, so it really got me out of it and I just felt I was much more energizing the afternoon because I had worked out and I just really enjoyed it, and then for some reason when I quit that job instead of working from home, I didn’t even think it was an option anymore to go to the gym at lunchtime, I just thought it was super inconvenient.
But anyway, the habit or the routine I’m testing at the moment- and I think it’s great to think about routines as testing them instead of like, this is for life, like for the next couple of weeks, I am getting to the co-working space at 7:30 AM leaving at 1:30 going to the gym at the moment, I’m still going to my gym that is like a 30-minute drive away from the co-working space and near my house, so I’m driving away back towards near my house to go to the gym and then driving into my part-time job after that. So I’m going to be testing if I’ve got a gym near the co-working space… so I’m going to try that out.
But anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you are doing that like I’m trying to really focus on not cutting back any sleep. How can I eat as healthy as possible because just a whole new routine maybe in a different place where one I was at home, it was so easy just to have everything with me because I’m at my house with the kitchen.
So I’m really focusing on that a lot myself at the moment as well as establishing dedicated hours for my business and also getting really clear about the goals and tasks that I’m working. I’m going to be talking about that more in the episode that I’m going to do on the 4-Hour Workweek because that has seriously helped me. So yeah, as I said, I’m so working on all of these, and that’s what I’m doing at the moment, but I will be sharing more about both of those things in upcoming episodes.
So, number four, I’ve just written surrounding yourself with like-minded people is such a great way- I guess it’s not really how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job, but it’s how to keep yourself going with your side hustle why you’ve got a full-time job or you’re full-time studying.
In the very early days of my blog, the people I surrounded myself with were podcasts, and I just listened, I didn’t have anyone in-person, but listening to podcasts, I just really felt like the people that I listened to when my friends and I know some of you guys email me or DM me and say that you feel like that about me and like we’re just chatting over coffee, which by the way, I love getting messages from you guys so much, and when you tell me that it’s just like you feel like we’re catching up. That’s what I wanted it to feel like I don’t want this to be a super polished- when people just read out this list I’ve written down. And it just sounds like they wouldn’t actually say it that way if you’re catching up like I don’t want it to be like that.
I have random thoughts; I go often in tangent some thoughts don’t actually have an end to them. I just wanted it to be like, if we actually met in real life, which one day I hope that we will. Then this is what they would be like to chat with me, but anyway, I didn’t have anyone back in the initial days and I was too scared to meet anyone because they don’t have to tell them I had a blog, so I just listened to a shit ton of podcasts and it really helped me.
I don’t know if without podcasts I could have or would have started my blog because they are what spared me on and kept me going, just putting those people in my every day and hearing them talk about how they persisted through the initial stages, helped me so incredibly much.
So if you don’t have anyone in your real life that is doing the side hustle and you don’t know where to meet anyone, find some podcasts- podcasts are amazing as you probably know because you’re listening to a podcast, so find some podcast. It doesn’t have to be people who are doing exactly what you’re doing. So you say you’re signing a book- it doesn’t have to be people that are also blogging. I don’t listen to actually that many bloggers. I just listen to all sorts of people who are doing something creative, who were doing whatever it is they want to be doing. Doesn’t mean they need to be their own boss; they can also be an employee. Just anyone who’s actually trying to enjoy their life and not winging about having to pay the bills that who I want to listen to.
And especially if you’re spending all day surrounded by people who are very much in the 9-5 mentality and have given up on themselves, not that working a 9-5 job, I’m not saying in any way, shape or form that that’s what it means to be working in a job for someone, not at all, but there are people that who would really love to do something else, but just haven’t mustered up the courage yet.
And it’s challenging when you’re around a lot of people who have given up on their dreams, to really foster and nurture yours. So podcasts are amazing and you can also go to meetup.com and find events. I’ve gone to a few different entrepreneurial ones, look for conferences or whatever in your city. You don’t even need to be talking to other people even just being surrounded it helps like at the co-working space just hearing other people on calls and doing certain things just makes me feel like I’m part of it. Whereas when I was at home, I can’t hear anything here, I can just hear the birds and the trees blowing. It’s nice, it’s really nice, but it’s not like I don’t feel like I’m in it, I just feel really removed.
Surrounding yourself with like-minded people is so powerful. And if you do join the Grow Your Blog workshop, or if you joined the Start Your Blog workshop, you already know this, there is a dedicated Facebook group, the Smart Twenties’ Bloggers Group where you can get my advice about your blog and anything like that as well as other people in the community if you want to meet people like I made blogging friends initially, and that helped so much, and it just kinda started. I kinda remember, I didn’t think it was through Facebook groups back then, but I would just see other people who were commenting on bigger blogs and then I would go and comment on their blog and after a while I might email them and we just have this back and forth and it was super helpful and really just made me not feel like a widow who wanted to blog and it can feel like you’re a bit weird if you don’t know anyone else in your real life, and it really helps to have people around you that are going to make your goals feel normal. So that makes a huge difference. Balancing your side hustle with your full-time job isn’t just about productivity. It’s also about mindset in a huge way, and that’s something that really helps.
And the last thing I want to talk about is investing in yourself… investing in tools, investing in training. It really helps if you haven’t got a lot of time to spend on your side hustle, then you can spend money to move things along more quickly. So whether you’re investing in someone telling you exactly what steps to take, so you don’t have to figure them out like what I’ll be doing, in the Grow Your Blog workshop, I’ll be actually just telling you, ‘Do this, do this, do this, do this’ instead of you having to waste all of your limited time to try and figure it out yourself or you can invest in different programs that might automate things.
There’s just so much power in investing in yourself. And also, I just found as well that when I really started investing in my blog was when it started to change and it was the investment- like that stuff did make a difference, the stuff I was investing in. But also, the mentality that when you’re investing in something, you’re much more committed to it actually happening to actually be worthwhile. And when you haven’t put any skin in the game, it’s really easy to just not really care about the results so much.
And I also just want to mention quickly, I got a question from… I think it was Ivanna in the Smart Twenties Bloggers group, and she was saying she’s really worried that it wasn’t going to be worth it all this time. It does take a lot of time to have a side hustle, to start a blog. And she’s just worried that it wasn’t going to be worth it, that it wasn’t going to pay off. And what I said to her was basically, isn’t it interesting that when we’re worried something will be a waste of a time, our answer instead of trying to do nothing- our answer is, instead of trying to see if it could work, our answer is to do just nothing and be like, ‘Oh well, I don’t want to waste time’ but times are ticking, it’s going along anyway and you can either really invest in something and act as if it’s going to succeed and do all of those things, or you can give up on it, but the time’s going to pass anyway.
And if you haven’t got a great alternative, then why not just give it a go. And I also said to her… I don’t think anything creative is ever a waste of time, that’s just a personal belief that I have, but I don’t think something needs to actually be received critical acclaim or to be well-renowned to actually be worth time. So many things that I do no one’s read, no one’s cared about. But I enjoyed creating them or I learned something in the process of creating it and I couldn’t have created, for example, this podcast if I hadn’t done all the things I did before it that no one read because all of that did have a purpose, it helped me creatively and I also got satisfaction and enjoyment from creating it even if no one was reading it.
So I think that investing in yourself is huge because you will be much more committed and you can really fast-track things but also if you’re there, thinking like is it going to be worth it? Look, I can’t tell you if it’s going to be worth it, you have to make it worth it, it’s not something you’re just waiting and see if it’ll be worth it. You create whether it’s worth it or not, and that’s in your control. And obviously, some things are out of our control, but you can control the effort and you can control enjoying the process, and learning the skills and all of that kind of thing.
So I just wanted to mention that as well because I just thought it was so interesting that her answer to it- maybe being a waste of time was instead to do nothing which seems like a bigger waste of time to me to do nothing, but I know that I have convinced myself a very similar things before and that it’s very easy to actually- and it’s something that perfectionism definitely makes us do… we create exactly what we’re trying to avoid, so we’re trying to avoid wasting time. So we wasted on purpose.
We try to avoid feeling disappointed and like a failure so, we fail on purpose. We literally created now so that we can feel a bit more in control of it than have this mental anguish that comes with putting ourselves out there, and maybe we will get the results and maybe we won’t because that calls all sorts of things into question.
Anyway, I think that investing yourself is definitely something that’s very important. One thing I love, as well about working my part-time job… also, it’s great to not really have this attachment to leaving your full-time job. Just think that for a long time, I’ve been really attached to wanting to leave my part-time job… really from a place of insecurity that I’m not actually a serious entrepreneur or businesswoman or blogger until I can say it’s my full-time thing, but lately I’ve really worked on changing my mindset around that, and I really enjoy the part-time job that I have. I enjoy the people that I work with, I would be really sad to actually leave, but it was this insecurity of like, if I’m not a full-time business person, then I’m not legitimate, I’m not good enough. It was just really this insecurity, but I’ve really done the work to change my mindset around it, and I have just been grateful that because I don’t actually depend on my business at the moment for any money. I haven’t actually paid myself a cent ever from my business. It all just gets reinvest in.
If you have a full-time job or a part-time job, then it means that you can explore creatively what you might not be able to explore, if you were relying on that for money. Because I think that some people say, when your back against the wall and you have to make money, that’s when the magic happens, but then at the same time, it may force you to make a lot of short-term decisions that you necessarily wouldn’t make if you had a longer term view. I think it’s always important to have the longer term view, but if you are working full-time or part-time and you’re not dependent on it for your income. It is great to invest the money, some of the money that you are making into your blog.
I know that someone in that group asked me: What have I had to sacrifice? I think the question was, I have to sacrifice buying clothes and all of that, and I was just like, ‘Oh it wasn’t a sacrifice. I was investing.’ It’s a much bigger pay off to buy a program that can help me automate my blog than it is to help to buy something I might not even wear in a month, so I just never really sort as a sacrifice.
And I guess that’s really a mindset thing too, like I didn’t see it, like I didn’t see it as I was missing out on other things, I just saw as I was investing in my business and in myself, as you guys know, I probably already that I think blogging and having a business is the best personal development tool.
So any money that you’re investing in your blogger business is really money invested in yourself as well. But it’s just, yeah, a mindset thing instead of seeing it as like you have to sacrifice something to see it as, you’re investing it and you’re invasion in yourself.
I see that it’s really important and if you haven’t got much time, you can pay for things that will help move along. I didn’t invest heaps of money, like I’m really talking a few hundred dollars here and there. And initially, it wasn’t even that much, I eased into it for sure, but things did really only start to change once I started spending money. It’s the same thing like if you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I want to start a blog, but I’m not sure if I want to actually spend the money on a domain, and I want to just start a free blog like WordPress.com so that I can try it out.’ And yes, that is a good idea in some senses, but in another like when you haven’t paid for it, you don’t really have any commitment to it.
And I’ve had a lot of you guys email me and say you’ve started a lot of free blogs and you’ve never really committed. And I think part of the problem is that they have been a free blog. There’s really no skin in the game. So it’s always a good idea, I think, to put some skin in the game, you can ease into it, of course, and do it at your own risk level, but it really makes a difference to actually do that. So just thought I would share all of that with you.
If you are interested in joining my Grow Your Blog workshop, make sure you do go and find out more at smart-twenties.com/workshop and you can sign up there. It’s only $9 and I’m just going to be giving you a step-by-step what to do to grow your blog, what’s had the biggest impact on my blog, and on the blogs of other bloggers that I’m friends with and how they set up your email is how to start getting readers, how to deal with discouragement and fear of judgment and all of that kind of thing. I’m really so excited to be doing it.
So make sure you go and sign up for that, I would love to see in it. I hope this episode has been helpful. You can find it, the show notes for it at smart-twenties.com/episode33. Hope you have a lovely day and I will talk to you next time, bye!