Embracing & Scaling Side Hustles and Women's Entrepreneurship with Aviatra's Jill Morenz

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started. All right, welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Kyle Stevie is probably working or running around with his kids on this long, long weekend. This is probably going to come out a little later, but this is the 4th of July weekend and it is crazy. In Cincinnati right now we have Taylor Swift in town. We got a sold out Reds game. Everybody's taggating, everybody, yeah, everybody. It's wild. There was a line yesterday for Taylor Swift merchandise.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Just the merchandise, not the tickets, even.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Yeah, it was good, wow. But I mean, I go to crazy sporting events too, so I can't make fun of it because I, yeah, I'm kind of a fanboy for sports too. But anyway, yeah, jill, welcome to the show, jill Morance. Thank you, yep, jill.

Speaker 3: 1:09

Morance.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Yeah, yeah, we're happy to have you and you're at Aviatra. Is it Aviatra or Aviatra? Aviatra, aviatra, okay, aviatra Accelerators, yeah, aviatra, accelerators. So I know two people who were at the accelerator. So one of our tenants, mavis Lineman, who is downtown. She runs Delish Dish made by Mavis, which is a packaged goods company, and she's killing. It just passed a million dollars in revenue and she was on the podcast too, of course, right. And then my cousin, laura Borski, formerly Laura Teague. She sold one company twice a babysitting app that she built with a friend of hers and they rocked it out. She sold that a couple of times. Now she's off to doing bigger and better things. She's doing mobile tanning, so they will come to your house. I love that they bring the sun.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Exactly, it's called Mobile Glow, so if anybody's out there, check it out. You want to get a tan. You're in the Cincinnati area. They got you so awesome stuff. So, joe, huge thing. I mean you're working with the public library. We got connected through the library, even though we probably should be connected before this anyway, but I was really excited about what the library had to offer. I didn't know, and I kind of grew up in a library because I went to school and over the Rhine and it was like the only thing to do down there. So I went down there. But it has evolved. The Cincinnati Public Library, but then the Kent County Public Library, I think, is the number one public library in the state of.

Speaker 3: 2:34

Kentucky. It's in the top 10 in the country, wow.

Speaker 2: 2:38

And it's just like I can walk there. I can just go down the street and just enjoy all the benefits of being at that library.

Speaker 3: 2:44

And this particular Kent County Library in particular is really embracing that. How can we serve businesses and job seekers so they're really creating a niche for themselves with a lot of innovative programming and just tons and tons of one-on-one services, too, to help people get jobs and help businesses succeed.

Speaker 2: 3:01

So they're really I mean, they're being a corporate partner. They're doing some of the stuff that the city itself probably doesn't have the capacity to do.

Speaker 3: 3:08

I agree, and the state, and supplementing things, you know, and they're because of the way that libraries are with offering free everything. Well, a lot of that, you know. All of their programs are free and so it's very accessible.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I think one of the biggest problems with libraries in general is people don't appreciate things as much when they are free. It's weird you give them all this stuff and it's free, for God's sake and then they don't appreciate it. Like if I gave you a free car, you wouldn't appreciate it as much as a car you had to work and pay for. I mean.

Speaker 3: 3:34

I would still appreciate it, you would still appreciate it. Yeah, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 3:39

But it's like it's weird the way people are and the way psychology is. It's true.

Speaker 3: 3:43

But you got all those assets, yeah, and we're fortunate, of course, to have wonderful libraries in our area. I know there's a lot of areas in the country that just don't have the tax dollars to support them as well as we do, so we're very lucky.

Speaker 2: 3:54

And I think we have one of the lowest illiteracy rates in the country and we always have us and Pittsburgh, I think the two of us. Yeah, Pittsburgh, I know football thing, but we've always been at the top of the list because we have such an expansive library system.

Speaker 3: 4:12

We have Reddy Cuffington too, which is helping.

Speaker 2: 4:14

Exactly, and so the Cuffington library, which is right down the street from me, is a big deal and being able to offer all those things, the makerspace, I think, is one big thing, right, Internet access, et cetera, et cetera. But the makerspace in particular allows people to create side hustles. Yeah, absolutely, and they also have classes and you actually go down there and you teach these classes I do, and you teach a class side hustle without the hustle. Yes, and you talk a little bit about what made you want to create this. I mean because you run an accelerator or a women's accelerator program which has been crazy successful. Thank you, and I mean personally.

Speaker 3: 4:55

I know two people who've been successful coming out of it. We have more than 350 alumni.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Wow, yeah, 350. I actually know more people who've become successful, too, out of that program than any other accelerator program in Cincinnati. That's wonderful, and I was just at an event for Alloy yesterday. I was there, were you there, okay?

Speaker 3: 5:13

I was there at the time. Yes, it was so. Aviatra, as you said, we serve women entrepreneurs. We provide education and connections and resources to help them start and grow their businesses faster and with more confidence. And I personally have had a side hustle for about 15 years and I had interior design consultation and firm, because my degree is actually in interior design. Oh, and I had that for about 15 years. And then I had a side hustle, most recently helping people do email marketing and website copy, and so when I took on this role at Aviatra, which I love so much, I felt like we had programs for women who already had a business or who were seriously thinking about starting a business. But I felt having had a lot of success and enjoyment of having a side hustle myself. I really wanted to talk about that because it's a way for people to dip their toe into entrepreneurship and then potentially grow their business into something that will eventually support their family, perhaps, if that's what they want, that's right.

Speaker 2: 6:21

That's right, and it doesn't always have to be, I think people, there's this misconception that everybody has to have a high tech fast growing startup.

Speaker 2: 6:30

And it's in as someone who went through that, all the way through a sale and all that. It was not easy and I was more of a. I was the marketer, the designer, I did a lot of the heavy work up front, but my two co-founders ended up going full time with it, and the amount of time that takes and the amount of networking you have to do and talking to people and the pitches like the high stakes pitches, the pitches constantly trying to raise money you're raising, you're spending more time trying to raise money than you actually building your product I believe that, which is crazy. So here you are, out here doing all this work, dedicating probably five to six years of your life, which is probably the maximum you should do but dedicating all that time for something that has a 75 to like 90% failure rate.

Speaker 3: 7:17

But the States love it and there's a lot of state support in Ohio and Kentucky for the tech accelerators and tech businesses, because when they do hit it big then it's a lot. It's really exciting for the States and there's a lot of money that comes back into the economy from that. And we certainly serve women who have tech businesses, but more I would say a greater percentage of our women that come through our programs are doing Main Street businesses, so they have little shops, brick and mortar, they're doing service businesses, they're doing part-time businesses or food businesses, and so that's an area I think that gets a little bit overlooked by some of the States and some of the other programs, because those are the kinds of businesses that really drive the economy and the fabulous high tech.

Speaker 3: 8:06

Yes, the fabulous high tech, amazing success stories are wonderful, but the ones that really drive it are the plumbers and the little shops and the restaurants that everybody comes to in the dry cleaners. And these businesses that everybody uses and needs and it really also makes does provides a sense of community and a sense of place in wherever they happen to be located, the little neighborhoods. I mean, who doesn't have their favorite neighborhood with the charming little shops and little restaurants that they love to visit?

Speaker 2: 8:33

Left bank coffee.

Speaker 3: 8:34

There you go, perfect example. Yes, that's a perfect example.

Speaker 2: 8:39

But you've got those kind of places and you've got those kind of things, those, those community I mean things that have been in community since civilization was a thing. Yes, I mean essentially right. And now you've got these high tech startups and everything. Everybody wants this high tech startup to be in their community. It's not for every community, right. Not every community is going to have the next Microsoft or the next you know whatever Uber or something pop up here.

Speaker 3: 9:00

That's why they call them unicorns. Right, there's not that many of them.

Speaker 2: 9:02

They're rare. Exactly what's great about this is that it getsass weight facility happening. You can put a lot of resources, money, time, city money, state money, all that federal money into trying to grow these things. But are we here in Covington, kentucky and in the Greater Cincinnati area? Are we going to be able to compete with Silicon Valley? How do we make ourselves stand out from a Silicon Valley? What kind of brand do we say, hey, why come to Covington In Kentucky, of all places? Well, I'm in San Jose right now. Why would I go to Covington?

Speaker 3: 9:39

You know, I think what they're trying to do initially is keep the people who are potentially the starters of these amazing businesses who already live in the Midwest, keep them here rather than lose them to the coasts, and so I think that's our initial thing.

Speaker 3: 9:54

And then, of course, inviting and trying to entice and invite people here from the coasts and from the bigger cities. But, yeah, I think the better bet is to keep our homegrown people here, the homegrown talent here. It seems like gosh, they're already here. Why don't we just keep them here instead of trying to get somebody to uproot their whole life and come here? And I will say that the ecosystem in our region is really quite strong and they are doing a great job of bringing investors to our area and showcasing the businesses we have here, so that the investors aren't just investing in things elsewhere. They're aware of what we're doing here and the companies that are being grown here, and so that is something we have going for us and there's a lot of effort toward that, although it might be easier if you already live in Seattle to get a tech.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Oh, 100%, I mean, that's why it's like they write $3 million.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yeah, there's a lot of talent there. They write $3 million checks like it's nothing, and getting some of these old tightwad Germans around here to write a check is a pain in the butt. But also there's this article and I just found it today six fast growing states in the South are now adding more to the national GDP than the Washington, new York Boston corridor. For the first time, there is no signs of it going back. That's exciting. Yeah, it's a shift. Right, you follow the money, these kind of stats and these kind of trends. They interest me. What can Cincinnati learn from some of this stuff? Well, you've had a $100 billion wealth migration shifting from US economic centers to the South. $100 billion, like the amount of money that, the amount of income tax that has moved into Miami. I think it was $17 billion in 2021 shifted from all over, wherever it came from, to just Miami. That's incredible.

Speaker 3: 11:52

So what is Miami doing? Yeah, what are they doing to attract that?

Speaker 2: 11:57

Weather. The COVID restrictions, I think, were one thing that just kind of drove people over the edge. One thing I heard is that you had a bunch of people who were already going to retire and move to the South anyway, and I think the numbers could be skewed. You have to look into it. These people were going to retire in the next two to three years. Well, you had two to three years worth of people just say, okay, covid, all this other stuff, I can't walk outside whatever. I'm just going to move to Florida now. So is that trend going to continue? I don't know, but they do have a very vibrant startup scene. You've got a lot of people from California. You had Citadel just recently. All the money. How does that affect kind of the stuff that you do? Having these people, especially wealthy people, no state sales tax in Florida, moving down to places like that, does that create a challenge for you or is that something where you say there's an opportunity?

Speaker 3: 12:54

Because we help women get started and grow their businesses to the point where they can access capital. So we don't have a ton of investor pitches and that sort of thing coming right out of our program. There's some other accelerators that take them to that level right after ours.

Speaker 2: 13:11

Like a blue north or something like that would be one maybe.

Speaker 3: 13:13

So blue north is a connection, is a connector, yeah. So, for example, one of the programs that works really well after ours is Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses accelerator, which is at Cincinnati State, and so their criteria to be in that is advanced from ours. So ours is you can be a smaller business and then after you grow a little bit and have at least two full-time employees and a certain level of revenue, then you can be in the Goldman Sachs program. So it just kind of builds. And then there's the tech accelerators like Generator and that sort of thing and that really connect people to the investors that you're talking about.

Speaker 3: 13:55

But I think it's very possible, especially with all the technology that we're using today, to meet and connect with the investors wherever they are. And so StartupSensei Week is in October and the people at Syntefuse are doing a really good job of recruiting investors just to come for that week and meet all the startups that we have in this region. So it's exciting and I think it's possible to have them. I certainly see that it affects the cities and the states when you have that much concentrated wealth, but it doesn't mean we can't attract the investments here.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Yeah, and I know, like Lightchip Capital, they're very involved. One of them is down in Miami full time because of Black Tech Week and things like that that they brought up to Cincinnati from Miami. So they're still very involved down there. But having people from our ecosystem who are down there and in these places kind of saying, hey look, there's stuff going on in Cincinnati, there's stuff happening up here, there's, you know, and I've been doing the podcast here for you know, 140 something episodes every week, you know, sometimes twice a week. And one thing that I've discovered if I run ads about side hustles, it's almost like people in Cincinnati don't care about side hustles.

Speaker 3: 15:13

Oh, wow, I think that's.

Speaker 2: 15:15

I can't be right I know, I don't know why they're not like clicking on my stuff, but if I do it like I get a lot of clicks from LA, from Seattle, from London. Maybe it's the cost of living, I think that's what it is. I think there's a thing where it's like I just kind of need one job here because it's so cheap right, I don't need to do this or I don't need to do these other things. We're in Miami or any of these other cities. It's like I have.

Speaker 3: 15:40

I can't buy groceries if I don't have a second job.

Speaker 2: 15:42

I mean, what's a one bedroom apartment in New York cost what? $4,000? I mean, if you're in Manhattan, I mean even now, if you're in Brooklyn, I mean it's, it's crazy, it's, you know, a closet, for $4,000 a month. So I, and it's not getting any better because housing, you know, inventories are so low, et cetera, et cetera. There's a bunch of reasons, you know. Guys could look it up and find out why things aren't going to get any better anytime soon.

Speaker 3: 16:04

But I think I'm still good here in the Midwest if you want to move here.

Speaker 2: 16:07

It's awesome in the Midwest. Come up to the Midwest. We got, we got resources. Look at this. We do. Indeed, what is the reason for and I could tell you why I love side hustles, but what is the reason for your interest in side hustles? I mean, you guys are already doing this program where you're encouraging women to go out on their own and do something for themselves, do something for their families and and be an entrepreneur, and we need more of that. What? Why the side hustle? Why why not just stick with? You know high growth startups, like everybody seems to want, right.

Speaker 3: 17:20

Well, you know, statistically women aren't the ones who start up high growth tech businesses. Of course there are. So one of the things that we talk about in the side hustle without the hustle workshops that I do is you know, I love to ask everybody there what do they think is the difference between a side hustle and then something like driving for Uber? And really, what we usually come up with is with a side hustle, you're building something for yourself. It's not a second job. It's building something for yourself that you can then grow and develop however you want to.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Interesting. I need to update some of the slides in my video now, because I got some like Uber Eats delivery people and like yeah, no, that really makes sense.

Speaker 3: 18:05

But that's more of a second job, even though it's not technically, because I guess it because of the structure of it.

Speaker 2: 18:09

You're 1099.

Speaker 3: 18:10

1099, right, but do you have your own business as an Uber driver? Not really.

Speaker 2: 18:16

But yeah, I mean that actually makes the less sense I've ever thought of that, that those are really. I mean, when you boils down to it, you spend a lot of time doing that, so that's not really a side hustle. I mean, I do Turo and I don't spend much time doing Turo. I'd consider that a side hustle because all I got to do is drop a car off to them or they come here and pick it up.

Speaker 3: 18:34

But there's a little more ownership there, I think because you own the car right, I mean you're yeah, you're building something for yourself.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Yeah, what are some of. So you know, Turo, I think, is really what it does really well, for me at least Airbnb.

Speaker 3: 18:49

TaskRabbit is something else that you know. If you are somebody who can do things right, Like I, kind of could start, could turn that into a concierge business where, if you're running around and helping people move, or picking up their dry cleaning for them, or dropping off their dog to be at the groomers or whatever whatever you're doing on the TaskRabbit, that could be turned into some sort of a concierge service if you wanted to.

Speaker 3: 19:10

It's kind of that's almost like a toe dip into toe dipping into entrepreneurship, right it's like doing kind of finding out where, where is the demand, how do my skills match up with that demand, and then perhaps starting something of their own to to really make it their own.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, now that makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, even with so real estate. For example, like I you know, I'm essentially just trying to help people up here buy second homes in Florida, like I did. Okay, that's a good niche, I mean with Airbnb's. So it essentially pays for your place, so you can actually afford it. You don't think you can afford it, but yeah, you, you buy them in these condo buildings that are built for it. Essentially, right, that could be a potential side hustle because you own the building. Yep, you can. There's a valet spot so you can put a car in there. You get turrored at the same time. So now you're making six, seven hundred dollars a month, but the building manages it for you. They're actually doing the work. Yes, the valet could pick it like drop the car off for the people or they could just walk downstairs.

Speaker 3: 20:06

The one thing with that is you're dependent on the Airbnb platform. Yes, so you know some people I know put it on several things like Verbo and Airbnb and whatever else there is out there. Book it maybe.

Speaker 2: 20:17

Yeah, there's Bookingscom. Oh, there's like 10 of them now.

Speaker 3: 20:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:19

I mean even Expedion, all those you can put it on, not really.

Speaker 3: 20:21

Mm-hmm, but you are still dependent on those platforms. So you know, if you perhaps also had your own vacation website, that you could count like that. That you control right? You have control over the amount of advertising that you do and the types of services you offer and all that I mean that would. That is a more of a challenging thing to break away from, because Airbnb and all those other places are these incredible search engines for people who are looking for that specific thing and it's kind of hard to pop up when they're searching for a vacation stay.

Speaker 3: 20:55

But another example would be like Etsy an Etsy vendor, so somebody who makes something handmade, let's say handmade jewelry, and they put it on Etsy and Etsy.

Speaker 3: 21:04

You get discovered on Etsy. But of course, if you've ever been on there, you'll notice if you find, let's say, I search for a very specific person, like I know what their store name is on Etsy. I search for them and I'm looking at their piece of jewelry and then along the bottom of the screen are six other vendors who sell very similar jewelry. So Etsy is like hey, all we care about is that you buy something. We don't care that you buy from this person. And so the strategy for Etsy is to have your own website and all of your traffic drives, all the traffic that you try to generate with your Instagram posts and your networking and all of that you send to your website so they can buy there. And then you also have an Etsy presence so that random people who are searching for something on Etsy will find it and buy it from you. But then you're not spending your money and your hard work and your social media and marketing efforts to send people to Etsy.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Why would you?

Speaker 3: 21:59

spend all that money. Plus, you're probably advertising on Etsy, like Etsy has its own ads and it wants to push you up and if you pay, them, yeah, and sometimes you don't have a choice because there's some typical programs where, if you make certain round of sales on Etsy, they automatically charge you because they include you in their advertisements.

Speaker 2: 22:17

Oh, 100%, and so now you're helping to build their platform.

Speaker 3: 22:23

And everybody else is business on Etsy, so it's not bad to have that. But then if you're building your own business with your own website, your own e-commerce space to send your marketing efforts to you, that's the better bet.

Speaker 2: 22:38

That's way better bet. Well, we just recently did an Etsy thing, so I created some listings. I created a listing and my wife created a listing and what we did was we went to mid-journey, we created seamless patterns. So I did these floral, japanese watercolor patterns and I did eight of them. Right, and I you know you can go into what is AI. Oh, it's the best. So then you create these because I think you keep 93% of any digital product that you sell on Etsy.

Speaker 3: 23:04

Oh, that's exciting.

Speaker 2: 23:05

Yes, when a physical product that was like 50% or something they steal from you, I call it stealing. But if you make these digital price, you know crafters and people will go on there and they'll look for these patterns that they could put on tumblers or they can put on a set of sheets or a t-shirt or a hat or something like that. So my wife yeah, so my wife made some Disney inspired because we can't do. Disney. Oh no.

Speaker 2: 23:31

Yeah, you don't want to go down that road. Yeah, don't want to upset Disney, especially when their stock's hurting right now. They're definitely coming after us looking for some money, like the tax man almost. But you know, you put these digital things up there and then you can use a product called Upscaler, which, instead of going into Photoshop and like adding pixels to something, which is just going to make it look even worse Upscaler I did it, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 23:52

Oh well, upscaler actually uses, you know, its own little AI technology and it will double the size, quadruple the size of the image, because what you get out of mid-journey is not high-res. Okay, so you have to use one of these things and make it better, and then you can sell it. You know they have to be 12 by 12 at 300 dpi.

Speaker 3: 24:11

Whatever it is, and then match up on every side right, so that's seamless.

Speaker 2: 24:15

Yep, and then you have there's a pattern maker tool that you can. You can upload your pattern and then you can say I want this six up, six up at 12 inches, 300 dpi, and it will make it a big pattern for you. So we've got those up there. We've had I don't know 200 people or something. Look at the store. Nobody's bought anything yet. But I hear the trick on Etsy also is put as much stuff on the store as possible because the more stuff you have, the higher the likelihood somebody doing a search is going to find your stuff if you're using consistent keywords.

Speaker 3: 24:47

Yeah, that's about the tagging and the keywords. For sure, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:50

Yeah. So what are some of? I mean, I like the Etsy thing, I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 3: 24:54

I think it's kind of a low-hanging fruit type of thing Great If you have handmade product or vintage product absolutely.

Speaker 2: 24:59

Yeah, I agree, and you know what you're doing and I think if you've got a process, you can get through that process pretty quick. Once you put it up there, it's there. Yeah, especially if it's digital, like you did it once, yeah certainly that.

Speaker 2: 25:09

Yeah, yeah, you did it once and now it's. You know I'll do it again. Yeah, but if I want to, I can come in on the weekend again, like me, and my wife didn't spend about four hours building out these patterns, but that's one type of side hustle. You know, there's a lot of people, I think nowadays too, that want to be like influencers or whatever. Yeah, they want to, you know, be the next TikTok star or whatever.

Speaker 3: 25:31

And that's boy. That's another case of building something on somebody else's platform, but nonetheless, yeah influencer is a reasonable side hustle.

Speaker 2: 25:39

But actually you can. If you become an influencer of any sort, you can then leverage that to sell your other stuff.

Speaker 3: 25:48

Yeah, Like you're an influencer.

Speaker 2: 25:50

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I mean it's not, it's not super great, but it's, I'm not, you know you set the leverage yet. Yeah, yeah, I'm not Taylor Swift, but yeah, she got people standing in line out there. But how do you? Yeah, you can then use one of those platforms to build your credibility, whether that's being an influencer on TikTok, on Instagram, whatever, or building up your store on an Etsy, where then you can send people back to your store to buy new stuff, because maybe the exclusive stuff is on your store.

Speaker 3: 26:21

Yeah, that's a great way to use it when you, where there's no other comp I said, to use the real estate term, right, there's no other comparable product there. Yeah, Although that's that's a little challenging to create if you're not doing something really unusual like what you're suggesting. But I think with the side hustle, you know, we this little workshop that we do it's an hour and a half free workshop that we do. A lot of them at libraries and wherever I'll, I love doing them. I'll. I try to do a couple of months, but right now I have them scheduled. There's three more scheduled this year. I'm sure we'll do many more.

Speaker 3: 26:55

And the concept there is side hustle without the hustle. So the without the hustle concept piece of it is based on being really focused. You know, entrepreneurs, people with entrepreneurial minds, that usually have a billion ideas, and when they settle on one thing, then they have a billion ideas for that one thing, and it's very easy to get distracted, of course, and prevent yourself from taking action or taking consistent action, because you're always chasing the next thing. So I have that problem myself. So I get it.

Speaker 2: 27:26

And what is your personality type?

Speaker 3: 27:29

Like my oh Myers-Briggs.

Speaker 2: 27:30

Yes.

Speaker 3: 27:30

Okay, I was going to look that up because I remember that you talked about that. Oh, and every episode. Yes, and I forgot to look it up. Okay, so I'm an extrovert and I'm more feeling than thinking.

Speaker 2: 27:42

ENFP maybe? Yes. What's the introversion? Or it's a intuitiveness? Oh, intuitiveness.

Speaker 3: 27:49

I don't know what, I don't know what. Well, people who yeah, I'm an ENT.

Speaker 2: 27:53

P and we definitely are all over the place Okay, as you can tell on this podcast, but we are all over the place and we, we have ideas and then we move on to the next idea and next idea. And I told my wife the other day I said, hey look, I said, yes, I have a lot of ideas and you know, it seems like I don't do, I don't get anything done, but I actually do a lot more than most people.

Speaker 3: 28:16

You know, like you've got people that are like but you have like 20 things that you're doing some things with, instead of one thing that you're doing 20 things with.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Yeah, or or I have like 30 ideas and maybe I do five of them right, like I actually do five of them when most people have one idea, but they get so bogged down on the minutiae of it that they never even do it.

Speaker 3: 28:37

Exactly so. That's the big part about without the hustle. So you know, I always counsel people just to take a notebook and write down all their ideas separately. Don't lose them, because your mind is constantly coming up with all these amazing things. So write down.

Speaker 3: 28:50

But then the process that I have, which helps people learn how to start their side hustle business in seven days, is every day you have a specific couple of things to focus on and you know, a lot of times people don't necessarily do seven days in a row. They'll take like a week to do day one or something like that. And so you there's very specific decisions that you have to make in each day and then you make those and you keep focusing and you build, everything, builds on everything else, and then by the end you have a business that is actually has a chance of starting. It's not just like, hey, I'm going to sell jewelry, I start jewelry. I mean that's an easy way to do it and there you are. But there's, you know, more to having a successful business than just having a product.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Oh 100%.

Speaker 3: 29:30

So so that's that. That's what what I think is is really helpful is to have this sort of method and process that people go through so that they can kind of reign their imagination and all their ideas in.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Oh yeah, and I think you know what one good thing about a side hustle is to it can just be you. You don't need a tech team. It doesn't do their job. You don't need to start a landscaping company with five people and three of them got drunk last night and didn't show up. Right, right.

Speaker 3: 30:03

I mean, this is you and lawns yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:05

You're yeah, you're mowing yeah, You're mowing lawns. You're you're making candles and selling them on Etsy. You're doing whatever, but people don't understand. I tell, like startup people this all the time, like you have no idea how much marketing costs. Like, if you don't, yeah you would know.

Speaker 3: 30:20

I know, yeah, I sell it. That's your business.

Speaker 2: 30:21

Exactly, but but it's like you, the amount of money you have to spend just to build awareness about what you've got, which is why it's good, if you have a high tech startup to you know, to innovate something like Chatchapiti did, right, being a space where there's nobody and you're the only one. Oh, sure, the unicorn again. Yes, yeah, and you're the unicorn, but that you know, that's not always the case, like there's always something out there, yeah, and then you have to spend a bunch of time telling people why yours is 10% different than this other thing that they already know about. Oh, but, but ours is Well.

Speaker 3: 30:54

I use candles as an example fairly frequently because it's something people can imagine, right and, and it's a sent in candle. I can imagine making it, I can understand how to price it, because it's based somewhat, you know, to a large degree on how much my materials cost and then how? But the different, how do you differentiate? Right? That's part of your story, part of your brand story, like why did you choose those specific scents? What does each one mean? Does it each one have a special property? How did you choose, you know, putting it in a mason jar versus a beautiful handblown glass jar, the woodwick, a plainwick, a beautifully designed hand calligraphy label versus one that you just printed on your home printer, right and so, and that's all fine, like there's a market for all of them. I mean, good Lord, the candle market is insane and you wouldn't think we need more candles, but apparently we do.

Speaker 2: 31:42

There's an entire store that just sells candles, Like I figured everybody just goes there.

Speaker 3: 31:48

And so, the idea being, there's plenty of ways to differentiate yourself. You just have to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it, and then how to communicate that. So, day one, we talk about what problem are you solving? And because, as you I'm sure know, and many people, many of your listeners know, that every successful business solves a problem. So, if you're talking about candles, what is my problem? Well, I mean, is it a life and death problem? No, it's really not. But you know, I would like my living room to smell nice. There's my problem my living room smells like a cat. A cat, right.

Speaker 2: 32:21

So that smells like vanilla cats yeah exactly.

Speaker 3: 32:26

So what are we going to do about that? Right, and so then you build, because it all comes down to the problem, and you have to really, really deeply understand the problem that you're trying to solve. And sometimes, for people who I want to somebody who came to my side hustle class is just learned how to do power washing, which apparently is more difficult, or at least to do it well is more difficult than just holding the hose and pointing it at your concrete.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Yeah, but the equipment is. Oh my God. This was like one of the best I tried to tell some UC college students. Start a pressure washing thing, start power the next four years. You guys are going to build this pressure washing thing, especially in the summers when you don't have anything going on anyway.

Speaker 3: 33:02

Yeah that. Or like striping parking lots. I mean stuff like that, picking up trash at parking lots for businesses. These types of things. They're not glamorous, they're not sexy, but they're really needed and people will pay.

Speaker 2: 33:14

We need plumbers and electricians.

Speaker 3: 33:15

The owner doesn't want to go out and pick up trash on their own parking lot. Nope, they have other things to do. Make that your business, have a whole bunch of clients, right, that's a perfect thing. So this guy that was doing the pressure washing thing, he said it's actually, you know, more complicated to do it right and there's different products and different techniques and all that. And so like, yes, of course you could do it yourself.

Speaker 3: 33:32

But and we were talking about that's part of his competition is everybody's hose that they have at their house, right, they put their thumb over it and they're like, oh look, I'm fresh watching. Yeah, but if you want it done right and better and have it last longer and have the mill do not reoccur so quickly and all that, you need to hire somebody. And so part of it's that education and differentiating yourself and understanding more deeply what the problem that. So for him, he's solving this problem of, well, I pressure wash and then, like, two weeks later it looks pretty dirty again and the mill has already started again. Okay, that's a problem. Somebody's getting out there so spending their like, precious weekend hours pressure washing this dumb area that keeps getting milled dude, and then he's got to do it again in a week. Well, or you know a month, they're done with that. After several times of that, I bet they're looking for somebody to hire.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:25

And so deeply understanding that it's not that I want to just want to clean driveway, it's that I want to clean driveway. So my problem is dirty driveway, but dirty driveway. I don't want to have to have you come back again in a month. I want you to do it, and it's going to stay for this season. So I'm, you know, scheduling right. I'm busy person. I may have more money than time, so then that would be something too. I don't have the time to do it myself. I don't have the equipment. Do I want to buy a pressure washer? No, not really. So then I try to rent one, but there, every time I go to home, do you want to rent one that's already taken that day and you know on and on like. So you really understand these, the problem that you're solving. And then the next question is well, who has that problem? And those are your customers.

Speaker 2: 35:09

Well, like I didn't even know this, but you know because I grew up in Pryce some people just do whatever they want with their lawns. But you know, when you go to a neighborhood, you go to an ugly neighborhood, you go to a nice neighborhood you got. Go to an ugly neighborhood. You got brick houses with paint chipping off of them. Right, pressure washer needs to come in there, but they don't have the money to spend on something like that. Now, if you went to a nice neighborhood, everything looks manicured, everything looks nice. You could go to a neighborhood that was maybe built up in the 60s and you've got like moss practically growing on the siding and it looks terrible. Well, they have no association. They have nobody saying, hey, you have to clean your house. But these nicer, newer neighborhoods with associations will make it. They're mandating it. Yes, they're making you do it. So if I was a pressure washer, I'd be looking for neighborhood associations.

Speaker 3: 35:59

Perfect, Then they're going to recommend you potentially to everybody. Or you know, you get one client there and then you put a yard sign in their yard and all their neighbors are like, oh, I totally need that. And they're calling you Then I think there's a special assessment.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Maybe everybody gets their yard pressure wash or gets their house in their driveway pressure washed every three months.

Speaker 3: 36:19

That reoccurring thing? Yes, I was just talking to somebody, you get a description. Yeah, she was, she has. She puts out these bids and if somebody for what she does, and if somebody says, well, we're going to go with a cheaper company, we'll let you know, and she's thinking you're going to have a terrible experience because the cheaper companies are there's a reason why they're cheap, they don't have good employees, etc. Etc. And I said, well, do you call them back in three months? And she said I don't. And so there's an area for opportunity.

Speaker 3: 36:43

Call back and say how's how? How was that decision? Are you happy with that decision? Because I'd love to work with you. Let's reopen the conversation.

Speaker 2: 36:50

We were. Just I was talking to a guy at the at the alloy thing last night and he has a company where, essentially, you get paid to send people into his ecosystem forever, like, as long as those people in the ecosystem they buy stuff or whatever, you get paid. Right now I can't remember the number you threw out there, but you said there's so many, like billions of trillions of dollars of like unpaid referrals that are out there. So if you think about, like affiliate marketing right, that's a system that was set up to capture sales from a specific source, yeah, from from the fact that these people are recommending your company, recommending your service to somebody. But, like what you just said, that was, how do you get paid off of? And some people do like life changing or business altering ideas that the owner themselves hasn't even thought about.

Speaker 3: 37:41

Right, right, like I mean we do it for free, but you're doing it for free, but that's okay because we're a nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 37:46

Yeah, yeah. So you're doing it and just giving these ideas away. And this is like, yeah, a bell went off in her head and she was like wait a minute, holy. Yeah, this has changed my business.

Speaker 3: 37:56

And it could, it really could, yeah, yeah. And because then you know there's, there's, there's a large pool of people, her potential customers, but it's, it's limited, it's it's limited at some point, and so if she went to all the trouble to get a meeting with somebody, don't let that die, Right. And so, and I, and it's one of those zig-ziggler numbers games thing where you know it's like every 100 people you talk to, you know one of them would be sales.

Speaker 3: 38:20

So talk to 500 people and you have five sales and you know there is.

Speaker 2: 38:23

There is that Well, and also across what 10 times more money to to find a new customer than just keep an existing customer.

Speaker 3: 38:30

Exactly and in this case she already has a report with them that just because they went with the cheaper company, that's okay. Yeah, she knows what that's going to result in, Especially in Cincinnati, we got a bunch of cheap but after you learn, you know, after the Germans learn hey, that thing fell apart the first 10 times. I do like quality, yeah, so yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 38:49

You gotta be able to sell the quality again. Know your customer, they're cheap, but they like quality. So hey, make up your mind. What do you want? You want? You want this thing for $5?. You want to spend $100 and actually get it done, right?

Speaker 3: 39:00

But they probably will. If you put it to them like that and you have the opportunity to talk directly to them instead of them just Googling prices, you know, then you have that opportunity to explain it Like yes, this vacuum cleaner, like, let's say, a Dyson, it's $400. You'll literally never have to buy another vacuum cleaner.

Speaker 2: 39:15

No. So yeah, we got Dyson, it's great. Yeah, yeah, and we just get. We need to get paid off that referral we just made. By the way, dyson if you're listening, Dyson. Dyson. There we see it. We just need a couple free vacuums.

Speaker 3: 39:26

That's all we're asking, just a couple free vacuums.

Speaker 2: 39:29

So I had an idea. So I said Covington is its own little place, like it's like the Brooklyn and Cincinnati. Everybody says Brooklyn and Cincinnati, covington, and people, you know, even people from Covington, north, Kentucky. When somebody says, hey, where are you from? I'm from Cincinnati.

Speaker 3: 39:43

Like I'm from Cincinnati area, right, it's so much easier to say it because it's like this way. It's so much easier for people to know where it is right.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Well, people still don't know where it is. The people that cause flyover country still don't know where it is.

Speaker 3: 39:52

Despite the fact, there's like 3 million people in this metro area including Dayton, but anyway, most of their goods come from this area At 100%.

Speaker 2: 39:59

Yeah, like this is why milk's cheap here and it's $5 and it's $10 in Hawaii. But how do we set Covington apart? How do we make what you do, what Blue North's doing, what the Covington business council's doing, what the library is doing? How do we brand something? And here we are, in the town of marketing and branding. How do we brand something into the heads of people as to why they would come to Covington in particular, why come here? So you know, this kind of seems like a place where, if I'm a craftsman, if I'm an artisan, if I'm a like a bohemian type person, this really is kind of the Brooklyn of you know all the fancy life, exactly the white collar big business, the Procter and Gamble and Kroger 4,500s are across the river.

Speaker 2: 40:54

They're across the river right Over here. This is where it starts right. This is where the creativity is and the crazy ideas, and so I was thinking I was like, why wouldn't we brand Covington the side hustle hub? I don't think there's a side hustle hub anywhere in the country.

Speaker 3: 41:11

Okay, I love that idea and I will do everything I can to support it. I love it. That's amazing. Yeah, how many, how many of these workshops can I teach? I'll teach them every night.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, and I want it like. So. I want this and your place and the library. These are the hubs. Right, these are the centrifuges and people. If you're not from Cincinnati, you don't know. But centrifuges are essentially the startup hub of the Cincinnati area. It's where you go to find everybody else. But if you come here, what are the hubs? What Covington is the hub?

Speaker 3: 41:40

Well, one of the things that Covington has branded itself is you know, no, what is it All? Character, no chains. And so there are a couple chains, but mostly it's all you know. Family owned businesses, individually owned little startups, brainwell and those kind of places.

Speaker 2: 41:56

They're alumni, right, yeah, and they're awesome, and they did some of my signs in here too. Yeah, they're beautiful.

Speaker 3: 42:00

So yeah, so I like I love the side hustle hub, and one thing that that you know your listeners may not realize is and this was really startling to us we had an event, since we are focused on women entrepreneurs, we had an event this spring and it's we called it the Wobcrawl, which stands for women owned business crawl.

Speaker 3: 42:16

So it's a Wobcrawl like a pub crawl, but less pure pubs. So we started listing out the women owned businesses in our neighborhood. So we're located in downtown Covington, in the adjacent neighborhoods, mainstrasse, and there are more than 40 women owned businesses just in that two mile little crazy piece of real estate. And a big reason for that is is that it's relatively inexpensive to rent a place here, and there's a lot of variety of places also. So there's, you know, beautiful storefronts and then there's little offices, much like in your building, where you could have a business and have it, you know, like incubate, so you're incubating before you grow into a bigger space, and the city offers a lot of incentives for rent, rent assistance for new businesses, and I think that it could be in addition to the side hustle hub. It could be the women owned business hub.

Speaker 2: 43:13

A 100% could be. We would love that. Well, and I think, too, women look at places like Covington and they say, like men are like I want to go out to the burbs and that fancy new, shiny building with the glass and blah, blah, blah. Women will look at these, these, this unbelievable older architecture, and they'll say, I mean, you're an interior designer, right. You look at that and you see the beauty in it, the craftsmanship in it, and you're like the character. The character, yes, and you're like this will be perfect for my business. I will make this thing so cute. It's going to be disgusting.

Speaker 3: 43:46

It's the Aviature. It's adorable. Our office is absolutely adorable.

Speaker 2: 43:48

Yeah, are you guys still on Pike Street? Yeah, yeah, okay. So I know, right, we're here, but you know you'll look at it and you'll say I can make this awesome, right, and we need those types of people, those types of creative people that will go in. As a designer myself, you know, that's kind of the same thing when we live in a house from 1880, I think it's when our house was built. This building was 1930. I think it was built. But you look at these things, you say that needs to come back to its original glory.

Speaker 3: 44:15

Yes, and, luckily, Covington.

Speaker 3: 44:17

so I used to work for an organization called the Catalytic Fund which helps Gene Shore and I was five years there and they help developers bring these buildings back in a very high quality way rather than just sort of a flip, and that has had a huge effect. And all the effort that the city is making and the county is making has had a huge effort on the restoration of these beautiful buildings so that you can put them back into full service with residential on the ground level and residential on the upper levels and commercial on the ground level, because that supports. And that's just good neighborhood design?

Speaker 3: 44:57

Yes, and we're exactly. I mean, of course, originally you know the butcher would have his shop on the first floor and live upstairs with his family, so that's how it was, and now you can have it rented out and support, as you just said, support the building costs and make it a little bit more feasible.

Speaker 2: 45:12

And I should come to the Catalytic Fund first before I go doing that upstairs because we got a old hall.

Speaker 3: 45:17

I know you do. I want I just huge hall up there, yeah. I would love to have an event there.

Speaker 2: 45:20

Yeah, you should have.

Speaker 3: 45:21

You should go to the catalytic fund what in a million? And a half dollars to do it. I'm going to be calling you.

Speaker 2: 45:26

Hey, gene, help me out. I need a million and a half dollars and I don't want to pay these 9% interest rates or whatever the world's going on. But yeah, so I should. I should totally call her. But yeah, I mean, you got Mavis downstairs rocking roll and we're filled up up here, that's good. You know, half the time nobody comes in. I don't know why they just pay rent and don't come in. So that's what, whatever.

Speaker 3: 45:45

They just want the cash of being with Adam.

Speaker 2: 45:46

Yeah, I guess, are being in Covington and they need an address in Covington. That might be it, actually, but maybe that's something we need to do. So, hey, you got a. You got a space in Covington because you needed an address. You do business here. We got a law firm here. They just needed they're doing business here. They got billboards up now they needed a physical address here, but nobody comes in. So why?

Speaker 3: 46:06

I feel like that's not right for Covington in a way, you know, like want some people here coming down and like walking to the restaurants for lunch and stopping somewhere for a happy hour and grabbing coffee in the morning at left bank and yeah, going to left bank, or so my thing is this Okay, so who do I get in here?

Speaker 2: 46:23

that's like that. Who do I get in here that's going to come in, do stuff? It's side hustlers. It's people who are, yeah, doing you know something on the side, that's. And then I was even thinking, like real estate wise, we lost over 300,000 real estate agents last year because they don't have enough business coming in and the real estate market essentially crashed. So what are they doing? They're doing nothing. They quit real estate and they went probably back and got a job. But what if you had side hustles? So say, real estate was your core business and it was at the bottom of your of your career pyramid, your side hustle pyramid, because real estate is kind of an old side hustle, you know. So you have real estate at the bottom. Real estate market's not doing good, that's fine. You got your Etsy store yeah, that's fine. You're doing Turo, that's fine. You got three rental properties, you know whatever it is, but teach them to build this thing that supports, or maybe it's, an upside down pyramid.

Speaker 3: 47:13

Yeah, and you can try to have it be somewhat passive so that they can. When the real estate market is hopping, then they can really focus on that, because that's the bigger money, I'm sure. But then flipping it when the real estate market is not, then the pyramid inverts and then they're focusing all their efforts on the pyramid.

Speaker 2: 47:31

See. The pyramid could invert, See. Look at this. You just changed the game again.

Speaker 3: 47:34

You just put out an axel and you spin it.

Speaker 2: 47:37

Flipped it. Yep, yeah, so that's the thing it's like. So let's look at the resources we have here. So I really want to use this podcast as a way to push this out to people. At the same time, you know, and say, hey, look, you know, there's side hustles. We've got we've got a group here that encourages side hustle. They teach aside hustles. But look at the resources. I mean we've got the side hustle podcast. I've got the space here. You've got your space. The library has a great maker space. How do we take this and actually put it out there that this is a thing? It's not just these big businesses that are going to come here for an address. It's people that want to be here. That the artisans, the people that change neighborhoods, that convert neighborhoods from down in the dumps to you know what Brooklyn is now you know, how do we get those people here, how do we promote it?

Speaker 3: 48:26

Well, I think we should work with the cities. You know, I think, I think, certainly, I think Covington would be very open to that. Their economic development department is very creative and open to new ideas. I think the surrounding cities would be as well. The river cities are very cool.

Speaker 2: 48:40

Oh, they're awesome. And Dayton, they're doing great stuff down in Dayton, you know, all the way up and down the river and it's a challenge. I think at Kentucky, because Kentucky is, you know, what should be. One big city, is like five cities, yes, you know, and it's like three counties and everybody has a judge executive and he's like the king. This person is like the king. It's very complicated here.

Speaker 3: 49:03

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, different fire stations, police stations, different, you know, school districts, a billion different school districts, which I know was common, but different governments, different, everything. So yeah, it's very challenging, but I think and that's one of the reasons why the catalytic fund was even started was to be kind of be the development department for the little cities that couldn't afford to have anybody on staff to do it. And I think we, you know, you and I could just band together and we'll just create a side hustle culture, we'll do some stuff.

Speaker 2: 49:31

I mean it has to be, it should happen, and I think it'll do. It'll help Covington, because now you'll be branded something. I mean, don't you know, if you've got a big company you want to come to Covington? That's fine, come to Covington, right.

Speaker 3: 49:42

Well, but you come to Covington because it's cool. And why is it cool? Because of all these people that are doing amazing things. If it weren't cool, nobody would want to come down here. I mean, they wouldn't want to look at the businesses here. There's been so many, like CTI down at River Center. You know, came here from across the river because Covington is cool, it's walkable, it's charming. There's really great little restaurants none of you know, most of which aren't chains and just really fun things to do here, and so your employees can actually find an affordable house or an apartment to move into parking is possible right, like all these options, yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:14

I mean we have 45 parking spots here, so I mean I could have side hustlers in here. And we got $99 a month and you get 24 hour access to the space. Wow, well, you just come in at any time and then you get our coffee. Drink up all of our coffee, if you want and that giant bag of Cheetos?

Speaker 2: 50:27

Yeah, exactly, I got that bag of Cheetos in there. Who would say no to this Make up for the coffee that the other people are drinking because they just locked their door and just come in three times a year, or whatever that's right.

Speaker 3: 50:36

All that coffee is just going to go stale if y'all side hustlers don't come out here and drink it.

Speaker 2: 50:40

Yeah, so what do you want to see in this side hustle thing? What do you want? What's I mean? You're not doing this just you know, because of whatever.

Speaker 3: 50:47

Yeah, so you know, our whole goal is to help women start and grow their businesses. So if this is a way, I see this as kind of a way for women to. I mean, these workshops are for both women and men, but our paid programs are for women, and so I see it as a way kind of a top of the funnel thing, like people come into the ecosystem of entrepreneurship by attending one of these free workshops and they start their side hustle and they learn some stuff from us and then come to some of our events and then maybe eventually they'll be ready to do some of our paid programs and then we've fulfilled our mission by helping women start and grow their businesses. So I think it's and you know, men come into this program. We want men to be successful too. That's just not our specific area of focus.

Speaker 2: 51:30

Yeah, and that's. It's not really necessarily a problematic thing for starting businesses. Yeah, I mean yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:36

So people ask me fairly frequently you know why? What struggles do women have, you know, compared to men, for starting businesses? And I think the starting the business isn't the thing. It's equally difficult, slash easy, depending on your point of view, to start a business for men or women, but when it really comes to the to the gender disparity is when you try to access capital. So this is an interesting and startling statistic. So in 2021, out of all the small business loans that were given across the country, only 5% went to women, even though women own 30% of the small businesses.

Speaker 2: 52:12

What do you mean? And also, I think during COVID more businesses were started by women. During COVID I mean it was crazy, it was like that's absolutely true.

Speaker 3: 52:21

Two or three times as many it was nuts the statistic, probably because a lot of them, you know, worked in service businesses, service industry, that this is where they weren't working. So they're like I got to do something and so that was an opportunity for them to do that, and that's wonderful, and we were still working with some of those businesses today and you know, all across the all across the region.

Speaker 3: 52:39

I mean, for some of them that was a blessing, because it got them out of this indentured servitude, Exactly Well yeah, and then you're dependent on whenever you have a W2 job, of course you're dependent on that other, on that company and, as we saw, those service, everything that was public facing, obviously had to close and that's.

Speaker 3: 52:56

You know, it was what. It was right that you had to, we had to do that, but it affected so many people and that's as you say, it kind of broke them out and gave them this opportunity like, well, dream something, a dream bigger, and, you know, create something for yourself, and so that's that's where the that's, so the access to capital is really where where we see the disparity, the gender disparity, but also, I think, it depends on the industry. So we I was speaking with a woman who owns a cleaning company and she said she's actually wanting to hire a man to do the bids for her commercial jobs because oh, interesting, because it's like a guy like people think of that as like a guy's like work with your hands or whatever.

Speaker 2: 53:41

Because it's commercial. Yeah, because it's commercial. Or it was residential, fine, yes, it'd be the women.

Speaker 3: 53:45

Yeah, yeah, but for the, for the commercial things and the men kind of treat her for somewhat disrespectfully and she thinks that that a man wouldn't have that issue.

Speaker 2: 53:56

There's still some of us out there not acting right Like yeah, definitely. And I think too, you hear a lot of, I think, women also, like we need to encourage them to think big, to think growth, think big, think more than just you're. You know a little thing. Like we always say, turn your side hustle into your main hustle, right?

Speaker 3: 54:15

Yes, although a lot of women start a side hustle because they want to have a lifestyle business which allows them to stay home for the, with the kids or you know, be available to pick them up from school.

Speaker 3: 54:25

But the idea of thinking big is absolutely right, Like hang in when you're in that season and then when you, your kids are in school full time or whatever you know, whatever other lifestyle changes happened to you, whether you're an empty nester, then you can really you'll have all this track record and all this, all these lessons that you've learned and data that you've gathered over the years of doing it as a small side hustle, and then dream as big as you want to dream, because you have your processes honed by then.

Speaker 2: 54:53

So, yeah, we need more women. So, guys, we're, like, I think, programmed to think I'm going to take over the world. I'm going to take over the world, I'm going to make sure my family's good.

Speaker 3: 55:03

Why wouldn't I take over the world?

Speaker 2: 55:04

I mean, that's what we kind of did so. Yeah, but that's our mentality is like I'm going to start this thing, I'm going to scale it, it's going to be a $10 billion company, like that's how we're automatically thinking, where you're saying kind of like hey, women are thinking I'm going to start this lifestyle business, maybe a side hustle, and that's actually makes them maybe even better suited for a side hustle. Are those businesses investable? Right, like can I invest in that business? Because it's not something that, as an investor, I'm going to look at and be like wow, this is going to be the next $5 billion business. This is a lifestyle business.

Speaker 3: 55:35

Right, and that's exactly right. That's it. That's part of why you don't see a lot as many women owned businesses getting those big investments, because they're just not starting that kind of business and do they want that they couldn't. Like women are starting men, but that's not what they're going for, and so yeah, like if they start if they start, though let's say, they start a catering business in Maymus's example, and she's killing it. She's absolutely killing it. And now that's I would. That's investable.

Speaker 2: 56:05

That's 100% investable, Like she could probably scale for sure. And she. And the crazy thing is is the business is there. Yes, the people, the workers, the helpers, the people that need it. That's the problem now, and trying to figure out how to get.

Speaker 3: 56:21

But because she's been doing it for a while, she really does know the kind of person she wants.

Speaker 3: 56:25

She's not you know when you're starting, a lot of times your first or second hire is not exactly who you really should have gotten, but you just weren't clear on. You know from yourself, in your own head, what you were looking for. Not that there was anything wrong with that person, necessarily but it wasn't the type of person that you really should have hired. Well, Maymus, for example, has that honed down. She knows exactly the type of person she wants, so she doesn't make any mistakes anymore.

Speaker 2: 56:48

Hire slow, fire fast. That's right Exactly, and I don't think she has a problem doing that.

Speaker 3: 56:53

So no, I think you're right, she's, and that's another talent she's honed. I'm quite sure she's rocking it out oh 100%.

Speaker 2: 57:00

So we need more people like that that are just grinders. They hustle, they grind. And she's had kids. Yes, I know she's got two kids. It's not like, she's just not. You know, she's as motherless. You know grinding. I put my career aside, sir. I put my family aside so I could go do this thing. No, she's doing it all. Yeah, and it's possible, and I, you know, but she's grown a team right.

Speaker 3: 57:22

When she started she was cooking out of her own kitchen in her house and she had no team and she was doing it full-time on top of her full-time job, her full-time W-2 job.

Speaker 3: 57:32

And then a couple of years later, after she went through our program, she was able to move out of her home kitchen into a commercial kitchen. She had her first employee and she had quit her day job and a big piece of that is just well, a lot of the huge piece of it was her network that she developed over those with our help through that, those first two years of experts and funding sources and customers and the resources. And then the understanding two of her own business, like the business plan and her financial projections and that sort of thing, what types of funding she could access, and then growing that has because she had put in all that time. Now, yeah, she's absolutely going to take it wherever she wants to take it because she has that team and that's how she can do it. She started small and then when she had kids, it's okay. I mean she's still working like a crazy woman, I'm sure.

Speaker 3: 58:26

But she has a team, though you know she doesn't have to be there for every single event because her team is there, whereas before she did have to be there for every single event. When that's what makes a business. Exactly.

Speaker 2: 58:35

Investable, You've got to get yourself. You got to work yourself out of the business. Work on the business, not in the business, right, and that's the whole thing. And my wife's actually struggling with that right now because she owns a spa and it's like how can she try and find people? She got tons of applications, but it was a bunch of the people during COVID that were kind of like on unemployment and they just had to fill out an application yeah.

Speaker 2: 58:55

So she had a lot of those type of people and it's been hard for small businesses to last two or three years and a lot of them.

Speaker 3: 59:02

You know, maybe the pool of employees have started their own business.

Speaker 2: 59:07

That's the downside of side hustles right.

Speaker 2: 59:09

It's like, oh crap. Well, like, okay, now people are running Airbnb's. There's no houses available, so there's always a downside. There's always a winner and a loser, essentially, and whatever is going on. So, yeah, now you've got, we're encouraging people to do side hustles, and now you know, papa John's or LaRose is down the street, can't find employees, because these guys are making five times as much money as they get. Maybe, or they're trying to, they're trying to, but they're trying. They're doing something for themselves, right, they're trying to do something, and if there's a market for it, then you're filling a need in the community.

Speaker 2: 59:40

You understand that problem that you're solving. That's right. I mean, do people need more pizza?

Speaker 3: 59:44

I don't know, but apparently people need this guy's talent, but yes, that's right, right, yeah, so as long as there's a need.

Speaker 2: 59:51

So what are the outcomes Like? What do you want to see come out of this? You know you're doing all this work. What, ideally, would you like to see? What kind of wins would you like to see?

Speaker 3: 1:00:02

Just more women starting businesses, you know, and not just starting them, but starting them in a smart way. So not just, like I said, it's fine if you make necklaces and you put them on that scene. That's your, that's the extent of your business. But I think you might be disappointed with the results that you get if you haven't gone back to the beginning and kind of like I teach in my workshops, starting with what problem are you solving? Okay, it's a necklace, but you're still solving a problem Like I need something to go with this outfit, or I need for you.

Speaker 3: 1:00:36

You know, you, I need a gift for my wife. So there's various things. You know, I need a very personalized thing. I need a locket that has I can put my sweetheart's picture in. You know, whatever it is, there's a problem that you're solving or I need that you're filling. You have to really understand that, so that all of your, so that you know who you're talking to. So right, who has that problem? And then from there, how do you talk to them? So I would, if I'm trying to sell you a necklace, I would probably not say, hey, look at my necklace, do you want to buy it? I would say, for your next Valentine's Day. Here's the perfect present for this special woman in your life and pitch it to you. That way, that's right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:12

That's right.

Speaker 3: 1:01:13

And so the whole thing all hinges on the process here. That we teach in this workshop is start with the problem, then you figure out who has that problem, then you figure out how to talk to them and where they are, and that's the marketing right when are they and how are you going to talk to them?

Speaker 2: 1:01:29

Yep, yep. And then you use chatGPT to write up a marketing pitch, and three personas that's absolutely right.

Speaker 3: 1:01:34

Then you use Adam's tricks for chatGPT.

Speaker 2: 1:01:37

Chatgpt is amazing, Dude chatGPT is made is do inside hustles so much easier. Like what you're talking about is finding your audience. You put in what you do. You say, hey look, chatgpt, I'm trying to do some personas. Anytime, like a proctor in Gamble or any smart marketing people come up with a new product. They do personas. Who am I selling this thing to? So you generally create, say, three personas. You've got to set it up and you've got to create these things, but you can use a chatGPT to do a lot of the work. That's interesting. Yeah, you had to pay for it back in the day.

Speaker 3: 1:02:04

Yeah, well, that's absolutely right, and what we teach in everything that we do is this idea of especially with a side hustle. That's another one of the beautiful things about a side hustle is you can pivot so easily. I tell people to look at it like pretend you're a scientist and your heart isn't in every single thing that you're doing. You're stepping back and you're looking and evaluating and saying, okay, where, who are my customers? Maybe they're not who I thought they would originally be, maybe they're older, maybe they're younger, maybe whatever. Yeah, who's actually buying this? So there's a great example of this A woman I worked with when I was doing the email.

Speaker 3: 1:02:44

I used to have a side hustle doing email marketing and when I was helping working with her. She's an artist and she's so talented and she can work in any medium. You know how artists are. Oh yeah, they're just amazing. But what she had decided to focus on was computer, like she would do everything on computers.

Speaker 3: 1:03:01

They're very cool looking drawings of muscle cars. So she had these fabulous, really cool images of muscle cars and she would do like grr on the license plate or like buzz If it's a horn, it, dodge horn it, or something you know really cool. She could customize them, make them whatever color, she could make it look like your dream car. So she would take these things and print them on metal and they were really cool and she would take them to car shows and all the guys you know there and of course obviously there's women car people too but and so all the people that were at the car shows were loving her work. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. She made very few sales. Comes to realize, you know, when a car guy has $400 extra, what is he going to spend that? On? A car? Something for his car, not an image of his car. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:03:48

And so her actual target audience was the people that buy gifts for people that love cars, yes, but the sad part of the story is, by the time she figured that out, she was so burned out and tired that she shut the whole business down.

Speaker 2: 1:04:04

Oh, my father-in-law would love that.

Speaker 3: 1:04:06

Yeah Well, he wouldn't pay any money for it. You'd have to buy it for it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:11

My wife would have to buy it for it. Well, Jill, this has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on. Hopefully you don't have to fight traffic through the Taylor Swift concert to get back home.

Speaker 3: 1:04:20

I mean, if I do, I have a purple cowboy hat so I can just blend right in.

Speaker 2: 1:04:23

Oh, there you go. Yeah, I got to get from here to Mount Auburn somehow, so I'll have to figure that out. But yeah, I appreciate you coming on, we're going to do the side hustle thing. We're going to figure that out. Yes, we absolutely are.

Speaker 3: 1:04:34

If anybody's interested, can I give the URL? Oh, give all your stuff, yeah, yeah, so it will. And AVHRI is avhraorg A-V-I-A-T-R-Aorg Everything we have there. And then our side hustle without the hustle. We have a special URL for that. So it's side hustle without the hustlecom. And we have a downloadable PDF on there of our one-page business plan, which is you know, a lot of people think a business plan has to be this big document that has all kinds of spreadsheets attached to it and you know a lot of. If you're going for funding, it does. But just in general, I find that it's. It really helps people clarify their thinking. And the format is basically what are you going to sell? Who are you going to sell it to? How much are you going to charge? You know that kind of thing. Really simple, but it's a downloadable one-page business plan that they can get on that page.

Speaker 2: 1:05:20

So, oh, I love it, just get it down on paper. Exactly Get it out of your head into something physical.

Speaker 3: 1:05:25

Yes, there's a living document, but it's very helpful to have, as you say, just get it out of your head and get on paper, and then it's clear and you can decide your next steps.

Speaker 2: 1:05:32

Yeah, and guys look in the show notes, the description. We'll have these links in there as well, so you can, you can check that out and if you're in the Cincinnati area, definitely come down, get with Jill, Get this side hustle without the hustle course.

Speaker 3: 1:05:45

Yeah, it's free. And it comes with a workbook Hour and a half. Yep, yeah, love to have you.

Speaker 2: 1:05:48

Yeah, yeah, and she's a non-profit, so I mean she's going to give you all this stuff for nothing. That's right. So you know, start taking advantage of these free things. Exactly Not everything that's free is worthless. This is great stuff, guys. So, yeah, get down here, turn your side hustle into your side hustle and Jill, I appreciate it. Thanks for being on the show, it's been awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.