196. How Successful Online Entrepreneurs Stay Ahead: 7 Habits Revealed

Hustle is one of those things that's required to achieve big goals, but it should not overtake your life—remember, we’re building our business so that we can live.

If you’re wondering what it takes to really create a sustainable and profitable online brand using the Hint of Hustle philosophy—meaning we know it's gonna take work, but it doesn't mean it needs to consume ALL of our time and energy!

Today I’m going to share with you 7 specific habits that will set you up for success—these are not daily routines, tactics or strategies. Most of them are SKILLS that I see surfacing in the online space that separates those who are thriving from those who are constantly struggling.

So whether you’re crushing your goals this year and would like to continue the enthusiasm or you’re on a struggle train and can’t seem to gain traction— today's episode will help you: 

• raise your awareness level for how and where you're spending your time and where you’re focused with your thinking
• identify an opportunity for you to lean in and establish healthier mindset habits so that your business can thrive

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Transcript

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[00:01:26] Well, hey friend, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I have a little bit of a raspy voice today. I am, things are trying, I'm trying to get sick, but I am mentally saying, I will not get sick. I do not have time to get sick. Have you ever had those moments you wake up and you're like, Ooh, okay, it's trying, but it shall not prevail anyways.

[00:01:52] We might have a couple little, we just have a little bit of a different sound today and that is okay because sometimes we are going to show up and we're not gonna feel 100%, but it doesn't mean that we don't wanna show up, right? Sometimes we gotta rest, but sometimes we do have to step up to the microphone and that's exactly what I am going to do today.

[00:02:12] It is a beautiful sun-shiny day here in Portland. I tell you this cuz I just spent the last hour sitting on my patio, on my front porch and patio porch. I don't know the difference, one is wood, one is cement. I'm going down a rabbit hole. Now that I just said that out loud, now I'm questioning, I'm gonna have to go Google the difference between patio and a porch.

[00:02:34] Anyways, none of that's important, but I wanted to say I am resting. I am taking care of myself. I just took a wonderful, nice long break and this is the last thing I have to do before I close out my week, so that come Thursday and next week when you have the show hit, you have something great to listen to.

[00:02:53] Okay, that's great for some icebreaker banter. I wanna jump into it today cause I'm gonna try to make this relatively short. This is our first episode for the month of May and these next few weeks, as I mentioned last week, if you missed last week's episode, I really hope that one resonated with you. I got real vulnerable, sharing with you my recent discoveries on money mindset blocks that are have really limited my ability to grow in business, and I hope that was helpful for you and it got you thinking about some money stories that you might be holding onto. But as I mentioned last week, this month on the show, we're really focused on diving into entrepreneurship, specifically online entrepreneurship.

[00:03:37] What does it take to really create a sustainable profitable online brand using the hint of hustle philosophy, meaning we know it's gonna take work, but it doesn't mean it needs to consume all of our time and energy? Hustle is one of those things that's required to achieve big goals, but it should not overtake your life.

[00:03:57] We're building these businesses so that we can live. And so I know I talk a lot about speaking. I know that's the thing. I know, that's what I'm known for, speaking sales, but also my clients know that I'm a hell of a good business coach and I'm always thinking about business strategies, and if I can share some wisdom that I possess, right, that I've learned over my last 20 years working with entrepreneurs and working in entrepreneurial style businesses, I hope that it'll inspire you to create a more effective business, whatever that looks like for you but these next few weeks are really about building online sustainable businesses.

[00:04:37] Now, today what I really wanna tap into is working with entrepreneurs. So if you're new to my world, if you're new to this show, quick, little, quick little background about me. I am an online speaking coach. I help online entrepreneurs help them get their ideas and expertise out of their heads and talk about it in a way that really resonates with their ideal audience leading to higher authority, increased leads, more sales, more confidence, more parties across the board, but we all know that the best experts have the high degree of being able to articulate themselves well. So I'm a speaking coach, I'm a sales coach but above all really, I am a business coach. 

And really where this comes from is before I niche down into speaking and started my online business, I worked with entrepreneurs for the last 15 years prior to my business, so five years running my own business, 15 years prior. We're going on two decades folks of working with, and for, and as entrepreneur. That really was a terrible sentence after I just gave you a little hoopla about me being a speaking coach and having really good, effective communication skills so let's just pretend that didn't happen but the, here's the thing.

[00:05:46] I've worked with a lot of business owners from brick and mortar businesses, to professional services, to those in the medical space, to photographers, to lawyers, to CPAs, I'm all over the gamut. I've worked with a lot of different business owners and I've worked with a lot of businesses who have had great success. 

I've also worked and been physically in businesses that continue to struggle regardless of the strategies that they apply, regardless of the tactics that they implement, they seemingly continue to struggle. And one of the questions I asked myself years ago when I was doing business consulting for entrepreneurs, I just wanted to know like, what is the difference? Now, little, I mean, one of the things, so my old job, I used to run the training department working specifically with private practice doctors and their teams. 

So my team and I ran the training programs where we taught all of these businesses how to successfully navigate the patient process. Now why is it important? Essentially, ignore the medical piece for a moment. It was essentially consultations and sales, consultations and sales. That was the business model for audiology. The selling was for hearing aids.

[00:07:00] Now take out account, the medical aspect of it, running a business as you have leads coming in, there's some kind of sales process and then there is a sales and you take care of the customers. So what was fascinating was my team, we had developed the number one training platform based around the highest performing providers in the country. So we knew what worked for the most successful practices, and we developed the training program to teach all the other doctors and their teams how to do it. 

So the system, the strategy, the tactics, that wasn't the difference between those who were thriving and those who were constantly struggling. So the question is, what? What is the difference? That's what we're gonna dive into today, but the reason why I bring up that context here is because I see these themes, these habits I'm gonna share with you today. I see the same ones surfacing in the online space. 

So whether you are creating a brand online, to selling your courses, your membership, your coaching programs, your services, maybe you're doing consulting, maybe you have digital products, whatever that looks like. If you're selling your expertise online, there are specific habits that will allow you to be more successful. 

And before you freak out going, Heather, are you gonna tell me I need a morning routine? I'm not talking about those kind of habits today. I'm not gonna tell you about specific habits around how to organize your email, or how you prioritize your day, or what you do in the morning versus at night. I don't, like those habits, honestly, those are based around your own energetic flow, what helps you tap into your creative process, how you maintain productivity. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about are the habits, specifically, mentally as an entrepreneur that will set you up for success.

[00:08:51] Now, these habits that I talk about today, they're most likely not going to be the automated response for you. And if you have adopted these habits and you embody these habits, you'll probably be the first to say that it took some time for you to get it together with these so just note that these habits, a lot of them really are skills. 

So my hope today is to one, help raise your level of awareness for how and where you're spending your time and your thinking. That's number one, raise your awareness, and number two, help you identify maybe where an opportunity is for you to lean in and establish healthier mindset habits so that your business can thrive. That is the goal for today.

[00:09:36] Now, whether or not you have a business where you're like, crushing it this year and you're tackling your goals and you're like, yeah, I'm on fire so you're listening to continue that enthusiasm. You're looking for any hit that you can get to ride that momentum train. I hear you. I'm for you today. You're gonna freaking love this. 

And if you're listening to this and you're like, Heather, I am on the struggle train. I don't know what is even up right now. I am behind, I am, I lost on this project, like whatever degree, maybe you're in a dramatic mess right now. Don't worry, that's totally okay and you're welcome here. 

If you're struggling and you can't seem to gain traction, or maybe you're somewhere in the middle like that mediocre, like, ah, I'm doing fine, but I'm ready to like, be finer, this episode is really gonna serve you today because these habits, it doesn't really matter what size your business is and what type of business you have. These are gonna serve you, regardless, so I'm really excited to share them with you so let's go ahead and dive in.

[00:10:39] But hey, before we dive into today, this series here, a lot of these habits are ones that I adopted, been both observing entrepreneurs, right, as when I was doing consulting and coaching in a business years ago but these are also the habits that I realized I had to adopt to become a successful entrepreneur. 

Now, if you wanna hear the story around how I created the leap from the working in corporate for an entrepreneur into creating my online business and the lessons I've learned. I'm gonna link to an episode here that I did last May. I actually just listened to the episode and it's really damn good. 

I'm like, woo. You know, sometimes you do something and you're like, go back and you're like, shit, that was good. That was really good. People should know about it. I'm gonna link to an episode here where I talk about the four shifts that I had to adopt in order to get traction on my entrepreneur journey.

[00:11:29] When I first got started, I was doing more consulting one-on-one speaking which was great, but there is a shift that needs to happen when you want to start making money online in a more scalable way so I'll link to that episode. It'd be a really good follow up for this one today. That's episode 148 here on the podcast. You can find it in the show notes. All of these episodes, this one, next week and the following weeks, these are all leading up to, I wanna share with you kind of behind the scenes of what made the biggest difference for me  gaining traction online and a big piece of that was working with my now business coach, James Wedmore. 

He's got an incredible program, Business by Design. It is the program that changed the game for me, and from moving from, I was making six figures with consulting, speaking gigs, one-on-one services, cons, that kind of thing. 

I was doing well but there's a difference between selling your time versus creating scalable options online, and Business by Design to me was the center that taught me the marketing, the systems, the team, the behind the scene processes around how to generate leads and how to create those scalable offers online. 

He's launching that program here coming up in June. I am proudly an affiliate. I will be talking about it. No, you do not have to take the program but if it's something that you're like, yeah, I really wanna learn how to do it and you like the way that I run my business, if you wanna learn from the person I learn from, I'll be sharing more about it. 

As an affiliate, I'll have a bonus package and all those great things but full transparency, y'all. That's what a lot of these business things are around is I want you to understand how online business works so that you can make a smart decision around, do you have the systems to be able to set yourself up for success so more to come on that. I'll share, there's some links in the show notes of a couple resources, including some podcast episodes for James. He's got an incredible podcast. 

And spoiler, he will be coming on this show here within the next few weeks. I just talked to him. Let's see, on Tuesday, him and I talked through what we're gonna cover on there. There's also two previous episodes with James. He came on last year, so I'll link those in the show notes as well.

[00:13:37] Okay, let's jump into these seven habits of successful entrepreneurs, specifically online entrepreneurs. So habit number one, my friend, successful and effective entrepreneurs make decisions. This is a quick and easy one, but the habit of making a decision is a skill that you must embrace in your business. Now, you might be thinking, okay, Heather, that's like the dumbest, simplest thing I've ever heard, but you and I both know what it feels like to sit in decision. I had quite a few moments of this in between indecision over the last six months, specifically. 

Now, I've talked a lot about my business building journey this last year has been a huge lesson learned. Many of you know, I brought on a business partner last August and then decided to part ways with business partner in January, and I did an episode in February where you can hear all about my lessons learned from that but the moments that I finally made a freaking decision, that is when things actually started falling to place and happening. 

So the reason why this is habit number one we're starting here today is I see all the time with business owners in Facebook groups, in coaching programs, inside my programs, those business owners who sit in indecision are sitting in a place of going, I'm either gonna make the right decision and the wrong decision. 

And the point I wanna make behind this habit is it isn't that entrepreneurs make the best decisions. It's the fact that they actually make the fricking decision, and even when they get it wrong. What can happen is you learn quickly and you can adapt from it. That is why this is habit number one, making decisions and standing behind those decisions, even when they might not be the exact perfect way. You gotta learn to roll with it. 

So number one thing, my friend, to become a successful entrepreneur, you have to commit to making decisions. The longer that you sit in indecision, the more stagnant you will become. You can only make traction when you decide so you can move forward. Now, sometimes that means your decision is gonna lead you backwards, but at least you're in motion and when you're in motion, you're learning. So number one habit, make decisions.

[00:15:54] Number two habit, successful online entrepreneurs, they own their results and reality. Okay. What do I mean by that? Successful entrepreneurs are not looking to blame other people for their results or lack thereof. 

If they're not generating leads, if they're not hitting their sales, if they have unhappy customers, they're willing to say, how did I contribute to this? They own the reality. They do not ignore it. They do not pretend that it isn't happening. They do not try to excuse it away. They own it. They are accountable for it, and in that accountability, they can take responsibility and take action. So this one is very, very important. 

I want you to pay attention to this when things go wrong. Is your natural tendency to blame external reasons or other people for why shit went south? 

Now, sometimes it very much is external reasons. However, when we're constantly blaming other people or other reasons like, Ugh, my launch didn't go great cause my Facebook ads didn't work, or, Ugh, my launch didn't go great because the tech broke. 

I mean, those things all could be very well and true, but also is true is the reality that you waited to write your engagement emails, is the reality is that maybe you didn't send engagement emails to get people to actually show up live, is the reality that you scrapped together your offer the night before. 

I don't know if these things are true or not. I'm just making stuff up here, but what my point is, is successful business owners, the ones who stick around, take responsibility for their results or lack thereof. 

This is one of the things for me that I have an unwavering commitment to anytime shit goes wrong, even if it is obviously, obviously someone else's fault or some other thing's fault, like an external force. I still constantly ask the question, how did I contribute to this reality?

[00:17:57] Always, because there is always a way that I'm contributing, maybe it's a hundred percent, maybe it's whatever but the fact is, is the way of thinking when we talk about how we contribute to the reality, it goes both ways. And what I mean by that is we have, like, a lot of people have a really hard time taking ownership of when things go bad, except for when they wanna bad talk themselves, right?

[00:18:22] Like, oh, I suck, I'm terrible like, why can't I figure those out? That's not helpful, right? That's not helpful line of thinking. We wanna think about actual tactical things that we can do or contribute to, not just woe is me, what's wrong with me? 

But here's the other side of it is when we take responsibility of the lack of results, we also get to own the responsibility of creating the results, like get to celebrate. You get to say, damn, I did that, and how freaking good does that feel? 

Now you might be thinking, oh, Heather, I second celebrated myself, like I don't pause to do that and maybe that's one thing that you have an opportunity to do more is celebrate those wins. Also, this needs to be said, also celebrating others who contributed. When you celebrate, you step up and you give them credit to. 

I have a rule of thumb as a leader that when shit goes wrong, it is my fault. Publicly, inner, I always say like, how I did this? This is my problem. If tech breaks, it doesn't matter. If I did it, my assistant did it, my copywriter did it, whoever, whatever happened, I take ultimate responsibility for that error. 

But when shit goes right, I give all the credit to my people. I'm thanking my people. I am supporting the team. Now, the reason why I bring this up here is because when we shove off the blame on others, it robs us of this really beautiful opportunity to ask higher quality questions around how we can improve because running a business, it sometimes feels very emotional and kind of on a whim. 

But y'all running a business is all about trying things, testing, getting feedback, making tweaks, and doing it again. So when you take responsibility for your results, you have a higher degree to be able to tweak, adapt, and continue.

[00:20:11] Habit number three. This one here, oh my goodness, is so important. Please listen to me, friends. Successful and effective entrepreneurs, they know their numbers. I'm gonna look, I'm looking at you, friend. They know their numbers and I'm talking about the numbers that are necessary to know. 

So it's not just what were the numbers in my last launch, but they know their overall revenue. They know their targets, they know their monthly expenses. They know how much money they need to hit every single month to break even. 

I can't tell you how many business owners I have talked to that are unaware of how much money is going out the door every single month. And my friend, you can't take responsibility for your results if you don't or lack thereof, if you don't know what your results are and part of your results are knowing your financial numbers. 

Now it doesn't mean that you have to be extremely well versed in a P & L statement and your other financials forms and stuff in your business. I mean, you probably should learn those things, but I'm talking about simple numbers here. 

So are you aware of what numbers you need to hit to hit your goals? Do you know how many sales you need? This is a very simple one. In math, I call it, you might have referenced it. You heard me reference this before. I call it HoH math, HoH, meaning, H, O, H, Hint of hustle math. Hint of hustle is all around being efficient with our time. 

So for me, HoH math is knowing your numbers which is what's your revenue goal divide that by the price of your program to know how many units of that thing you need to sell. That is the target, and then you can work backwards if you know your conversion rates and your landing page rates. 

I won't go into that now, but you should be able to work out the math to say what activities do I need to be focused on to actually successfully and non delusively hit my revenue goal? 

If you don't know what that looks like for you, stay tune. We're gonna talk more about numbers and what that takes over the next couple weeks but knowing your numbers, that is fundamental to driving a profitable online business.

[00:22:23] Habit number three, filtering ideas through their business model. Let me say that one again. They filter ideas through their business model. Okay, what do I mean by this habit? 

Okay. Have you ever had a moment where you're online and you see someone trying a new launch strategy or trying out something new? You're like, Ooh, look at that secret podcast. 

Would that work for me? Or Ooh, interesting, they're doing a $74 workshop. I'm curious, $74. That's oddly specific. Should it be $37? Should it be $47? What about $162? Like what's the price point? Wait, should I end  with a seven? Should I end with a nine? What about a zero? Which one's more transparent? 

We go down these rabbit holes of questions, trying to dissect what other people are doing and constantly saying, would this work for me? What about that strategy? What about this strategy? 

It's exhausting, friend. The habit that I really want you to embrace today that will help you become more successful is knowing what your specific revenue model is so that you can choose marketing strategies or other business tactics that fit.

[00:23:33] Here's an example of this. If you have high ticket one-on-one services, let's say for you, you do consulting and your consulting starts at 5,000, 10, 20, 30, $40,000, right, to work with an organization. You have to ask yourself the question, okay. 

I, to hit my goal, I don't need a crap ton of clients. So when you think about marketing strategies, you probably don't need to be out there doing a bunch of webinars, trying to drive leads because numerically speaking, I'm going to actually hit two things here. 

Numerically speaking, you don't need volume numbers to hit your higher quality leads. Your consulting gigs, those are most likely going to come from referrals. I'll say this in a different, a different example. The type of people who might be booking higher quality consulting gigs from organizations, you have to ask the question, do they attend webinars? 

I don't know the answer to that, that you have to figure that out for you. But my point with this example here is I see too many times where somebody heard somewhere that they have to run a three-part challenge, or a webinar, or a certain kind of launch way when I work in backwards and what they're trying to sell is a one-on-one offer. 

What we need to understand is the marketing strategies that you apply should work for your business model. So if you're going lower ticket, if you're selling more digital products or courses, you need volume. 

So focusing on tactics and strategies that are gonna get more eyeballs on your business and getting them onto your email list is your number one strategy.

[00:25:12] But if you're selling high ticket, whether that's coaching programs, higher tiered courses, consulting services, those, you're looking for more sophisticated leads, and I don't mean sophisticated by like boujee and smart. 

I mean sophisticated, they're sophisticated buyers, which mean that they probably have a higher level awareness for their problems and they've tried some solutions. So how you get in front of them might look a little different. Is that more so where you're gonna lean into referrals? Is that where you're gonna do more like boutique style marketing, whether you're guest speaking in masterminds or running affiliate programs? Not for mass qualities, but for strategic relationships.

[00:25:56] I wanna pause here cuz I just rattled a lot at you, but what I want you to think about is a successful habit for entrepreneurs is they don't get distracted by the shiny objects. And they don't just, I mean, here's, we are always ideas, right? 

As entrepreneurs, we're always coming up with ideas but those who are in it for the long run, they know to filter those ideas through their specific business model which is why HoH math or knowing your numbers is so critical because if you don't know what your business model is, just think about what are the numbers you need to hit in order to hit your goals.

[00:26:33] Okay. Habit number five. This is a big one and one that I feel a lot of struggling entrepreneurs miss, and that is this prioritizing revenue generating activities. Okay. You might hear this and be like, yes, Heather, that sounds very logical, but let me ask you a question. 

When you look at your calendar, when you think about what you spend your time on each day, how much of that time, what percentage of that time is directly associated to revenue generating activities? 

Revenue generating activities could be sales calls. It could be you actually doing client work, delivering on programs or client work. It could be you generating leads. It could be speaking on podcasts, creating your own podcast. Think about how much of your time you spend actually directly tied to revenue results.

[00:27:26] Now, in that podcast scenario I just gave you, it could be pretty easy to be like, oh, well, I'm creating social media posts. Oh, I'm, I'm creating new videos, new content. 

The question for you to ask is, is your content currently equating to revenue? And if it's not, what we really wanna focus on, how do we fix the gap between content creation and lead generation, content creation versus lead generation? 

One of the biggest, biggest, biggest areas of opportunity that I see for so many course creators and and new coaches is they spend all this time creating content because they learned I have to create consistent content. I'm gonna create content, I'm gonna email my list, I'm gonna create content, I'm gonna post on social, I'm gonna email my list, and we get in this cyclone of creation which is beautiful. 

As entrepreneurs, we are creative. We need an outlet to do so. However, if you're missing that link between creation and lead generation, there is a huge opportunity here for you in your business because in order for you to be able to sell your products, program, services successfully, you have to have a list of leads.

[00:28:39] Now side note here, if this is one of those areas, I know this for me was kind of a struggle around, okay, I could create content all day long, but how do I actually generate the leads? 

If you struggle with like, what is the lead magnet that you create? How do you actually make this happen? Like if you haven't been able to nail in what lead magnet and what method actually creates consistent leads in your business? I'm gonna give a shout out. One of the resources that my coach, James Wedmore has is, he's got this incredible mini course called Your First 100 Leads. 

I went through this again last year. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's so good. So I'm gonna link to it in the show notes. I have a link specifically for you, that's gonna take you straight to that so that you can get your lead magnet going and you can come up with a process. 

He'll walk you through it around how to start generating leads. And that, by the way, if you're struggling to say, am I really dedicating time to revenue generating activity? 

This will give you the what to do to answer that question, yes. Okay, so that one I think is a really big one. I wish, I wish I would've prioritized this much earlier on in my business. 

If you have heard me talk about my story before, after I went through Business by Design, after I went through launching my podcast, I launched my first beta of my program back in the fall of 2019 to my baby nugget launch list. My email list at the time was like 136 email addresses. I wish I would have prioritized list building consistently much earlier. I just, that is my biggest, biggest thing. I'm not a regret person, but I wish I would have done it. You know that saying the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next best time is today. 

Yeah. A lot of marketers like to use that to tell you to grow your email list, but honestly, it's a banging on metaphor. We have to make this a priority, friend, especially in this world right now where so many people are leaning into ai. I'm gonna go on a little, left little side tangent here but we love the Sager side tangents, right?

[00:30:41] So I see a lot of people excited about AI. I see a lot of people fear for AI, a lot of questions around how is this gonna, how is this gonna disrupt the industry? Here's what I know to be true. 

People buy from those they have relationships with the ones that they know and trust. And when you develop an audience through your  podcast, but also directly through your email list, when you develop that relationship, you will always have an audience of buyers that they love your perspective, they love what you teach, they love your stories, they love the way that you do things, and they want the transformation that you teach. There's a reason why they follow you. 

But the thing is a lot of content marketing online, there's a potential down the road that it could start feeling more generic and so you starting your list now, establishing your thought leadership now, establishing your audience now, is probably the best investment you can make to hinge off any potential shit that flies down the road. 

I don't know what's gonna, I don't, AI isn't gonna replace people. It can't come up with the stories, it doesn't have the connection. It's gonna do a lot of great things. I use it a lot at my business right now actually but there's always a space and place for you. 

As long as you're willing to show up, but that time starts right now, friend. You gotta start building your email list, so if you need help with that again, grab that link, Your first Hundred Leads. It's a credible course. If you're thinking, Heather, I already have my first hundred leads, get the course, like, if you do not have a sustainable and scalable way to generate leads in your business, it'll help you.

[00:32:06] Okay, habit, we've addressed five habits so far. We have two left. So we've talked about making decisions, owning your results, knowing your numbers. We talked about filtering your ideas through your business model, and we just talked about prioritizing revenue generating activities. 

Okay, here are these last two questions, and these ones are probably the most important. Six, successful and effective entrepreneurs ask empowering questions. This probably will come to my longtime listeners as no surprise. I talk about the power of good questions. 

In fact, there's a very famous quote around the quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions. I think that came from Tony Robbins. If not, it was another person of development guru. Shout out to the original person who said that which is not me. 

The power of questions can transform so many things, and here's why our brain likes answering questions. When we ask a question, our brain constantly goes looking for an answer. Now, the challenge is most often the questions that people ask are disempowering questions, like why did that have to be me? Why did this happen to me? Oh, why can't I ever figure this thing out? Why won't I like, why can't I be successful? When is it gonna be my turn? 

These are all kind of negative kind of griping style questions, and it's not that I'm saying that you think this way, but I want you to ask yourself, how many times do you catch yourself asking questions that are actually not really questions. They're just disempowering statements disguised as a question. These are dragging you down versus empowering questions really speak to one of the skills that you have that is wonderful and that is your creative solutions. 

If you're an entrepreneur, I'm gonna say you're pretty creative in your problem solving and you might identify as a super creative person, but I would imagine that if you were in a scenario and you're like, it was really difficult to get out of, like, have you ever been in one of those escape rooms?

Weird. I know. Let me just talk about this. You know those escape rooms, the games you go for, like a team building activity or we used to buy them on Groupon. They lock you in a basement with a room and they're like, imagine that. You are a former CIA agent and you're captive with a group of people. Man, if you've never done an escape room, this is gonna sound super weird right now, but I think you know what I'm talking about.

[00:34:40] It's essentially this puzzle which you and a group of people have to figure out this puzzle to get out of the room. And don't worry, they let you out if you don't do it in the time. So, totally fine. Side note here to the side note story. I did an escape room with my old team while I was still nursing my second baby, first baby, I can't remember.

 Anyways, I was terrified that I would get locked in the room and I didn't have access to my breast pump. I was at full-time at work, so I had a breast pump and I was terrified that I was gonna, like, start leaking through my shirt or that I wouldn't be able to run to go pump when needed. Anyways, it was totally fine. Everything was good. My shirt stayed dry. Anyways, that was like my instant association with escape rooms. 

Anyhow, okay, coming back to the critical thinking and empowering questions in an escape room. Imagine you're in there with a person who every time you had a, an idea, they're like, no, that won't work or you're like, well, what, what about this? Like, what if we tried it this way? No, that won't work. And then you're like, what, what if we tried the lock over here? No, that won't work. 

We've all been around someone in our lives who is that person who's the drag or down person, but what's harder to identify, that's easy to identify. What's harder to identify is when we're actually that person and it usually isn't, oh, that won't work. Sometimes it is, but a lot of times it's those disempowering questions. And what I want you to think about is how can we start asking higher quality questions.

Now, higher quality questions is, how could this work for me? Asking, okay, what are six different ways that I can make this happen? How could this be a good thing? Okay, how, but how could we make it happen? How could this be working out for me? 

These are all very positive, optimistic style questions, but it's questions that lead to an answer where you start coming up with solutions. It doesn't mean it has to be the best or perfect or right solution, it just means we're coming up with solution which is getting us closer to action, closer to habit number one of making a decision.

[00:36:46] So what I want you thinking about is when you find yourself stuck in business, when you find yourself at a point where you don't know what to do, I want you to imagine that you're treating that moment like a period or an exclamation mark. 

It's, ugh, my launch was terrible. Ah, no one showed up to my webinar. Ugh. Oh, my numbers didn't happen. Ugh, I'm not saying that you talk like any of these things, but I just want you to put yourself in a picture around when something went wrong in our business, we typically end it with a period game over, and then we gripe about it or.

[00:37:20] We just changed subjects and move on. What I like to think about is how can we pause in the moments and ask empowering questions. For example, your webinar numbers are not as high as you wanted, Semicolon, what could we do or how could we increase our numbers in the next three days? That would stimulate a list of ideas. 

Now, some of those ideas are gonna be terrible but maybe one would work. What about how could this be a good thing? How could we deliver exceptional quality or exceptional value to those who show up, right? 

By not ending it in just a period and having game over, the thing is the thing. How could we now make it an empowering situation for us? This is what's successful and influential entrepreneurs do.

[00:38:06] So I want you to start really thinking about what are the kinds of questions you ask yourself? What are the kinds of questions you ask others of your mentors? 

One of my favorite episodes, I will link to it in the show notes. I talk about the difference between disempowering and empowering questions, and I give you some techniques to some of my favorite styles of questions that have served me really, really well. So we'll link that if you wanna get better at asking questions, especially if you're a coach, this would be a really great episode for you, so we'll link to that in the show notes.

[00:38:33] Okay. This brings us to habit number seven today, wrapping up our episode around some of the most successful entrepreneurial habits. Habit number seven is, I believe, impactful or, influential entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, the sustainable ones, the ones that I look to, not all of them. I'm not saying success is a measure of money. I'm saying success as those who are walking the talk and living the type of life that I admire and respect and running a high integrity business. But number seven, habit is they always choose impact over ego. They choose impact over ego. 

Now, ego is what feels nice in the moment. Ego is, Ooh, people like me. Ego is woo woo, I'm getting, I'm going viral. Woo woo. I'm getting all these likes on my Instagram reel. Ooh, look at all these comments or, Ooh, look at so-and-so is following me. Those are ego.

[00:39:26] Ego is trying to become the next like success in a program, right, because you wanna be that deemed person as the one who's winning. Ego is trying to land a podcast because you want to look good in front of your peers, but it's not necessarily gonna bring you any additional benefits, and it's not that these things are bad. 

But what I see is the most influential ,businesses, they're always focused on impact. How can I make this good, not just for me, but to others? How can I brighten the day for others? How can I be more service oriented for others? 

It's this idea around how do we put the experience, and the needs, and the desires of the people that we wanna serve? How do we keep that front and center? Not just focus on making money. 

[00:40:18] I know many of the habits I talked today were kind of number-y, so habits three, four, and five, or know your numbers, filter your ideas through your business model and prioritizing revenue generating activities. 

I mean, you run a business, you have to know how to generate money in your business but the businesses with longevity, they're focused on the long game. I saw, there was this really incredible audio that I saw on Instagram last week. I'm working on a reel right now. 

I don't know if it'll be out by the time I air this, but it talked about how, you know, we're in such a race, such a race to get to our goals. She's like, Ooh, I just gotta get there faster, faster, faster and I've learned that I am more focused on how the journey unfolds versus the timeline it takes to get there and that's because I am surrounding myself with people that I very much enjoy working with. 

I am working with clients who are doing incredible things. I am choosing feeling good and not burning my ass off by grinding through each day. I am choosing to enjoy the journey of building a business, and what that's taught me is it doesn't have to go on a timeline, and the thing that's really helped me embrace this is I see the impact that I am making every single day in my business whether you're a podcast listener, you watch me on Instagram, you are a subscriber on my email, or you're one of my clients in one of my programs. 

I deeply appreciate the privilege it is to be your mentor, to be your coach. The fact that you give me the microphone metaphorically, well, literally I have a microphone in front of my mouth every single week, but you come back to listen to what I have to say on my random rambles and side tangents upon side tangents, like that is an incredible thing and I also know the ripple effect, me stepping up to the microphone has. 

Someone will listen to this episode three years from now, four years from now. If that's you, by the way, circle back. I would love to know cuz that would make this episode really epic but I know the ripple effect and it's both the longevity in the future of this content that I create for those who are going to come after me. 

But it's also, I know that something that I'll say today, it's gonna unlock something in you and you are going to go have an impact for someone else and the transformation you help unlock in them is going to then have a ripple effect for someone else. 

It's this concept, if you've ever heard of it, the Butterfly effect. I am a huge believer of this, and this is why I am so focused on making an impact, and when I lean into that and I know my numbers, I know my revenue model, I prioritize revenue and generating activity, but my main focus is impact. The money comes. The money comes.

The challenge is when you are death gripping the dollar, when you're focused on how am I gonna earn it? How am I gonna hit that launch number? Where am I gonna get the numbers? And you're so obsessive with the numbers. You're losing sight of the freaking people, and my friend in this world we're living right now we need more focus on the people.

[00:43:39] And that's what I want you to leave you with here today is my, the entrepreneurs that I admire the most, the ones that I look to, one, one person that I follow that I freaking love is Jamie Kern Lima. 

She is the former, she's the founder and former CEO of, It Factor Cosmetics. She also  over the last few years, has really stepped up her game in as an author. She's been speaking at a ton of conferences. She's built a personal brand online. She is a billionaire. She's one of the first female CEOs at L'Oreal Cosmetics who is who bought It factor. 

I bring all this up because you watched Jamie for five minutes on stage or in an interview. I've had the honor of seeing her speak live virtually and in person multiple times and instantly you see that woman's heart. She cares about people. 

Now, she's also probably a cutthroat businesswoman. I mean, she built a billion dollar company from her living room. She hustled her ass off and she talked about the years where she freaking hustled. But where she's at now, she sees this ability to help other people by sharing her story, by encouraging other people to believe in themselves and others.

[00:44:53] In fact, the name of her book is Believe It. It's really good, by the way. She's incredible but I think about someone like her [00:45:00] or someone like Sarah Blakely, the CEO and founder of Spanx, both of these women. She started hers also from her living room. Both of these women are billionaires. 

They're highly successful, but if you watch them online, yes, they are wicked smart. They definitely know their numbers, they know the revenue generating, they all know the aspects of business, and I know these are both products style businesses, but I bring this up because the entrepreneurs that we look to, the ones that I admire, they really have a heart on impact.

[00:45:27] For many of them, it started with their customers then their impact led to how can I impact my teams and beyond that, now they have personal brands where they're impacting audiences all over the world by sharing their experiences and stories. 

And my friend, you're no different. It doesn't matter if you don't have a billion dollar company. Hell, it doesn't even matter if you don't have a million dollar company. Your experiences are so powerful and when you focus on sharing those, when you focus on being of service, being helpful, being relevant, focus on the people, help them with their problems, help them through the transformation in a way that, you know you can. Have confidence in that and the money will come, but you have to line up both. That is the takeaway of this. 

You can't just show up at the heart of golden serve and not have a financial model to make that work. You have to have a program, you have to have away from to pay you but once you have that in place, once you have that sales machine, that selling mechanism, then it becomes really fun because you can do what you do best, and that is to show up and serve the crap outta your people which I hope I model that for you every single week.

[00:46:34] I do. That is my, that is, I mean, I probably should ask you to gimme some feedback around about it, like, is it working? I don't know but that, that is the point here. 

Business can be fun, but the biggest takeaway that I want you to remember here is business doesn't have to feel stressful all the time. And just because you're not hitting the number you want or just because you're not right now have the business you ultimately want, that doesn't mean that you're not qualified or doesn't mean that you are not doing it right. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you are going to crash and fail. It just means you're learning, my friend. 

And part of learning is acquiring new thoughts, trying on new ideas, choosing more empowering beliefs for yourself, and making different choices of where you focus and spend your time, and I hope that this episode along with the other ones I referenced today, I hope this really serves you.

[00:47:28] If you're looking for a binge, go straight to the show notes of this episode and go in and and grab, episode 148 and then there's two other episodes I believe that I referenced today. Go grab them in the show notes. Do a little Heather Sager binge. 

I love it when y'all do that. I get told all the time that this podcast is so freaking bingeable and makes me laugh, and so happy, like, oh, so happy. We are approaching almost 200 episodes here on a Hint of Hustle, and it is just an absolute freaking honor to be your coach every single week. Thanks for tuning today. 

If you resonate with this show, can you do me a favor? It's been a hot minute since I've seen a couple reviews land on iTunes. So could you just take a quick screenshot, share with your friends? Take a moment. 

Just leave a five star rating. If you leave me a little love note, I would appreciate it. Oh so much. My friend. I'm grateful for you and I'll see you in the next episode.