5 Things to Remember As You Pursue Your Dreams
Happy birthday, Hustle Sanely! 3 years ago on September 14, I sat at my kitchen counter and opened my Etsy shop called Hustle Sanely to sell digital planners while I was in SLP grad school.
To celebrate Hustle Sanely’s birthday, I want to share 5 lessons that I’ve learned since starting my biz...and YOU KNOW how I feel about giving you tangible action steps so OF COURSE, I’m sharing these 5 things in a way that you can apply then to whatever you’re pursuing too.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 important things to keep in mind while you pursue your dream
5 important things to keep in mind when pursuing your dream:
01. Give yourself space to feel your feelings but don’t make decisions in the heat of the moment.
You may remember it quite well -- last year for our 2020 paper planner launch, our first-ever paper product launch, we actually had a little legal hiccup with the name of the planner....AFTER we’d already gone to print.
I will never forget opening the email from another planner company (it was a very kind email by the way) and sliding down my bathroom wall and sinking down to the floor. The email basically said that if we sold any paper planners with the word “hustle” in the name, they would take legal action. We had just printed 500 copies of the then “Hustle Sanely Planner” and I literally felt like I was going to be sick on the bathroom floor. I remember my palms shaking because I thought for sure, we would have to toss all 500 of the planners that we had just paid a pretty penny for (it was the biggest business investment we’d made so far) and eat the cost.
My mind wandered into panic and disappointment because I figured we’d have to trash all of the planners and we didn’t have time to print new ones. I was so upset about potentially letting the hustle Sanely Squad down because as y’all know, we create these planners together via polls and DMs over on Instagram. Y’all had been on this planner creating journey with me and were just as excited as I was to see our creation come to life! I vividly remember calling my husband, and it was a straight-up miracle that I didn’t cry at all during this, telling him what happened. He encouraged me to let myself be upset for a bit but then to brainstorm some solutions with him when he got home from work.
So I did that. I let myself be super bummed and throw an adult tantrum for like an hour then I picked myself up and decided that no matter what it took, I was getting the planners into your hands. I grabbed my sample planner and a butter knife to see if I could scratch off the gold foil title of the planner on the cover. And I could. Once the inventory arrived, my husband and I spent 2 straight days scraping gold foil off of the cover of 500 planners. I will never forget that.
And as you know, the planners made it to your hands, wooo! And this year we have a brand new name for the planners - The Peacefully Productive Planner™ - and I love it so much!
If I would’ve made a decision about what to do in the heat of my emotional wreckedness, (not a real word, but ya know) we would’ve thrown away the 500 planners and only offered a digital version of the 2021 planner.
So, again, lesson 1 when you’re pursuing your dream: Give yourself space to feel your feelings but don’t make decisions in the heat of the moment.
02. If your actions are aligned with your vision, trust that you’ll reap what you sow.
Ooooof this one still hits home as something that I am learning even 3 years in. It’s so incredibly important for you to be clear on your (emphasis on your) vision when it comes to pursuing your dream. Why? Because it can be reaaaal tempting to look around and see what everyone else is up to and compare your progress to theirs. But you cannot do that if you want to reap the good fruit of your labor.
Which real quick, let’s unpack that statement - what does it mean to reap what you sow? It means the work you do will pay off.
I like to think about an apple tree. Imagine picking an apple off a tree and taking a bite of it...it’s juicy, crisp, a solid apple. Do you think the seed that grew that whole entire apple tree was planted the night before? HECK NO!
The seed for that tree was planted years ago.
The roots had to grow deep into the ground.
The tree had to actually start sprouting from the dirt.
Then that seed that was planted that is now a little tree has to be watered and tended to.
THEN after taking care of that apple tree for years, you got the fruit from the work that you did all that time.
A standard or full-sized tree can grow up to 30 feet tall and can take six years to bear its first fruit. SIX YEARS Y’ALL.
Some of us give up after 6 minutes if we don’t see fruit from our labor! Listen to me...things take time! Growing a business, brand, audience, your skills in the classroom, whatever does not happen overnight, period. Sometimes I forget that I have only been doing this for THREE YEARS. I am just starting out - I am still a beginner! There is so much left to learn and grow into! So what taught me this lesson?
I'm gonna be real with ya, like I always am, anytime I found myself “being inspired” by someone aka copying something directly...not products or anything but trying to mimic their launch strategy or something like that, it almost always flopped.
And I think that’s because I was trying to skip the planting, watering, and nurturing phases and jump right to being the big tall tree with the sweet ripe fruit. I didn’t want to put in the years of work - I wanted the results yesterday, lol.
Well, here’s the deal -- if you plant chia pet seeds, you’re gonna get a little chia pet plant. But if you want to grow a huge apple tree that bears sweet fruit, you better be prepared to do the work that comes along with that: planting, waiting, nurturing, waiting some more, nurturing some more, and then experiencing slow, sustainable, healthy growth!
So catch your own vision, hold onto it, plant it, nurture the everliving daylights out of it, and be patient and trust that the work you’re doing will
One of my favorite scriptures is Galatians 6:9 and it says: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. That last part...IF WE DO NOT GIVE UP. We won’t be reaping a dang thing if we quit showing up and throw in the towel.
So again, lesson number 2 to hold close when you’re pursuing your dream is: If your actions are aligned with your vision, trust that you’ll reap what you sow.
03. Take the time to build a solid foundation so you can grow sustainably.
Now this one builds off the last one but I thought it deserved its own number because not doing this when I started my business almost caused me to quit a year after I’d started.
At the end of 2019, I almost quit Hustle Sanely. I was legit laying on my couch googling “Lululemon assistant manager” positions because I was burned out from being spread so thin. I didn’t have a foundation - I didn’t know who I was serving exactly or why it mattered or how I could help them.
I had my hand in 15 different pots trying to figure out what worked, what I enjoyed, etc. But having your hand in 15 pots at one time is really hard when you only have 2 arms, you feel me?
In 2019, I launched the first Hustle Sanely courses, the podcast, the paper planner line, I was doing one-on-one coaching, I had the merch store open with t-shirts and mugs and hoodies. Not to mention staying on top of all the social media and emails. It was A LOT all at once.
Y’all probably know if you’ve been listening to the show for a while that I started Hustle Sanely on accident - I didn’t plan for a digital planning Etsy shop to turn into a productivity empire, you know? I hit the ground running and when anyone asked for anything I added it to the list of what Hustle Sanely offered.
It was great for income but HORRIBLE for my mental health. Oh and real quick, The 5 Keys to Hustling Sanely and HS5 were born in 2020 -- and I have no doubt that part of the underlying inspiration for them came from my 2019 burnout.
So how do you build a solid foundation when it comes to your dream?
Like I said earlier, know:
~ WHO you are serving
~ HOW you are serving them (aka specifically how you can offer solutions to the problems of who you are serving)
~ WHY you are serving them
You gotta catch your vision, remember? I took a step back. In December 2019, I took some time to BREATHE, clear my mental declutter, and get clear on the vision for Hustle Sanely’s future. I didn’t do the podcast or any social media for that month. I didn’t release new products. I didn’t coach or run any live courses. I spent 4 weeks pruning my business so that my energy went into areas that I actually wanted to grow instead of me trying to haphazardly grow 15 different things at once.
Now I still have multiple big AF goals for Hustle Sanely but because I went back and established a firm foundation, I can stack these things on over time without the whole thing crashing down on me. There is a big difference as far as the approaches go.
So again, lesson number 3 to remember when you’re pursuing your dream: take the time to build a solid foundation so you can grow sustainably.
04. Make it a priority to meet people who “get it” because it can be lonely otherwise.
I don’t really feel like this one needs much explanation but I’m telling you that there is so much power in community so don’t sleep on it. Get yourself plugged in with people who are working toward similar things as you are.
I have other friends who own online businesses that I can talk to when I need encouragement or have ideas that need to be fleshed out and given some perspective. If you try to pursue your dream all by yourself, you’re gonna get super lonely and the chances of you giving up when you don’t have support around you are a lot higher. Be bold and put yourself out there to meet others.
If you’re an entrepreneur, initiate a mastermind.
If you’re a teacher, invite a few of your colleagues to dinner one night.
If you’re a mama, schedule a playdate with another mama you meet at Target.
I think a lot of time we wait for community to fall into our laps but if everybody does that, there’s gonna be a lot of waiting and not a whole lot of community going on.
So again, the 4th lesson to remember when you’re pursuing your dream: Make it a priority to meet people who “get it” because it can be lonely otherwise.
05. Spend your energy focused on stewarding well what you have instead of striving for what you don’t have.
Okay another storytime: Before Hustle Sanely, I was running an online brand called The Social Speechie - some of you might remember that from my SLP grad school days. Well when I started The Social Speechie Instagram account, it took off. I mean it was growing like wildfire...in less than 2 years I had over 20k followers on Instagram which was a lot for me. Think about...sharing your SLP grad school journey is a pretty niched-down niche, ya know? In my opinion, it’s easier to get eyeballs on your account when your niche is super-specific. With Hustle Sanely, my target audience is much broader...women who are overwhelmed and don’t wanna be. That’s a big number, lol.
Fast forward to now, my growth on Instagram is SO much slower than The Social Speechie days you guys. My follower count ebbs and flows and man I used to let it eat me up, thinking that I made a mistake in pursuing Hustle Sanely full-time because clearly because my Instagram follower count isn’t going up I’m failing at everything right?
At the beginning of 2020, that’s legit how I felt. I could not wrap my mind around why my account wasn’t growing. And it ate me up. It was so frustrating and at times I didn’t even want to show up on Instagram because it felt pointless. Now I’m gonna tell you right now...my Instagram account still grows at the pace of a snail BUT the difference is my mindset and heart posture are totally different.
Now, instead of focusing my energy on who isn’t in front of me (aka following my page) I focus on how I can create the best content for the people who are there in front of me.
Now I think about it like this...if I had 500 people in a room to hear me coach but I was expecting 1,000, would I excuse my language, half-ass the presentation? UM NO! I would give it my dang all because I want the 500 people who are there to get value because they deserve that.
Stop focusing on sales that aren’t coming in or follower numbers that aren’t going up and put your energy into what sales are coming in (make more products like that or offer more services that) and creating content that blows the minds of the people who are following you.
And here’s a statement that can make it applicable to just about any dream: when you steward well what you have, more follows. Being a good steward just means taking good care of what’s in front of you.
So one more time, the fifth lesson to carry with you as you pursue your dreams: Spend your energy focused on stewarding well what you have instead of striving for what you don’t have.
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 098 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic:
