HerMoney Podcast: How To Take Your Side Hustle Or Job To The Next Level (Episode 168)

Trying to make the most of hermoney podcast take side? You are in the right place. Below we break it down in plain English, with practical tips you can actually use.

Key Takeaways

• We’ve had a handful of stellar (and free!) career coaching sessions on HerMoney, and this week we’re building on those learnings with a sess...
• Over the last 15 years, entrepreneur coach Ali Brown has advised and helped nurture the businesses of many of the women you see today online...
• Learn how to stand out online in 2019 and position yourself as a ‘category of one,’ understand tall poppy syndrome, avoid excellence burnout...

We’ve had a handful of stellar (and free!) career coaching sessions on HerMoney, and this week we’re building on those learnings with a session with entrepreneur coach Ali Brown.

Over the last 15 years, entrepreneur coach Ali Brown has advised and helped nurture the businesses of numerous of the women you see today online pulling in millions of dollars (sometimes 10s of millions) every year. Learn how to stand out online in 2019 and position yourself as a ‘category of one,’ understand tall poppy syndrome, avoid excellence burnout and master the 80/20 rule with your time. Then, in Mailbag, we answer your questions on how to create a budget in retirement, when young adults should get their first credit cards and how one woman can approach the guilt and embarrassment she feels around her financial success. And if you’re looking to purchase a home, and just can’t swing it financially? Stick around for Thrive.

P.S. We’re giving away two floor seats to almost every stop in the Rolling Stones No Filter Tour this summer, and we want you to win! Enter at https://hermoney.com/rolling-stones/!

Transcript

Jean Chatzky: (00:08) HerMoney is supported by Fidelity Investments. We want you to demand more from your money. So start by knowing what you own and what you owe. We’ll help you take the next step at fidelity.com/demandmorenow. HerMoney comes to you through PRX. Hey everybody, welcome to HerMoney. It’s Jean Chatzky. We are here in our studio in Manhattan and how numerous of you are ready to take your side gig to the next level? How numerous of you are ready to just take it hardcore, turn it into a full time gig. We are here with help. Ali Brown, entrepreneurship coach who has been dubbed the entrepreneurial guru for women. She’s one of Forbes women to watch, is here with me in the studio and over the last 15 years she has helped nurture the businesses of numerous seven, even eight figure revenue online thought leaders that you see thriving today. She’s also an angel investor with a special interest in women led ventures and she’s here in New York. Ali, welcome.

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Ali Brown: (01:29) I can’t believe I’m sitting across from Jean Chatzky.

Jean Chatzky: (01:31) Oh please.

Ali Brown: (01:31) Oh my God. I’m just girl crushes.

Jean Chatzky: (01:33) Oh, please.

Ali Brown: (01:33) I’m girl crushing because I’ve watched you on The Today Show for years.

Jean Chatzky: (01:37) Well thank you. Thank you. And thank you for coming in. I’m excited because I am looking for a little bit of a coaching session here.

Ali Brown: (01:44) Oh really.

Jean Chatzky: (01:44) No I am and I think a lot of our listeners are too. You know, we all have these, well numerous of us, whether we’re in a job or whether we’re running our own businesses, the thought that we could zest it up a bit, that we could supercharge it, that we’re not making the most of it. It definitely bothers me from time to time. And I’m sure it bothers some of them too.

Ali Brown: (02:09) Yeah. You know what’s funny today we went right by my last job.

Jean Chatzky: (02:12) Where?

Ali Brown: (02:13) The building’s gone, so I couldn’t, it was on 36th I think, and sixth Avenue and I was with my husband Brett, and I said, I got to go down the street and just look. And the building’s not there, but some of the things are, they’re still like the same little middle Eastern coffee shop and a few little things you remember from 20 years ago. And I mean that’s where I walked out the door that last day and made that decision.

Jean Chatzky: (02:33) Well, let’s get there by learning a little bit about what was happening in your life then before you set off to become an entrepreneur and then to coach entrepreneurs. What was going on?

Ali Brown: (02:44) Well, probably like some of you listening, what happened for me is I kept going from job to job and thinking if there was something wrong with me. But I was really just in that kind of place of being unemployable. I always wanted to change things. And by the way, your bosses don’t always like that, especially in a small business. I was like, we could do this better, we could do that better. And they’re like, just sit down, work on the newsletter. That’s why we hired you. And what shifted for me was my awareness in seeing these freelancers. I’d never heard of freelancers. And if you’re in the ad world or you’re in any company these days, it’s so prevalent. There’s people that come and go in their own schedules and then you find out they’re making more money. And this guy pulled me aside. He said, you know, you could probably do what you’re doing but make more money for it. And you know, these agencies hire people like you. I was doing copywriting. And so, okay, I don’t recommend this, but really within two months I was so excited and I knew I was pretty good at what I did and I thought I kind of had nothing to lose because you know, it’s your twenties. I had no kids, no pets, no mortgage, you know, a little fifth floor walkup down in the village. And I said, I’m going to try this. And I literally started knocking door to door at agencies and getting little projects. That’s how my first thing got going.

Jean Chatzky: (03:50) Was there a breaking point where you realized like, Oh my God, I cannot do this for these people?

Ali Brown: (03:56) At the job?

Jean Chatzky: (03:57) Yeah.

Ali Brown: (03:58) Yeah, it was when I realized I was good and I think women have that moment when the client calls you and says, this has been fantastic. We’ve never gotten this kind of work from this agency before, and in fact, I share this very rarely, but it was about six months after I left, that client was a big health system in New Jersey, found my number, called me. I didn’t even have a noncompete. These guys weren’t even that smart, this company. And she said, now that you’re gone, we have no reason to stay with this little ad agency. We want to hire you freelance for this project. And I said, you know what? I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be all right. That was like a, a project that would at least pay the rent for the year and cover some expenses.

Jean Chatzky: (04:38) You know, I had that moment too. And it didn’t become clear for me until you just said it, but when I was leaving or thinking about leaving Smart Money magazine to go to Money magazine…

Ali Brown: (04:50) You were an editor too, right?

Jean Chatzky: (04:50) I was a writer, but I was going for a significant raise and some more freedom, flex time. And I was nervous about my stint on The Today Show because I’d been working for The Today Show at that point for, I don’t know, three, four years. And I went in to talk to the producers and they were like, we don’t care about the magazine, we’re going with you. And that made me, it made me know my value.

Ali Brown: (05:20) Oh come on, you thought that was your cred. I get it.

Jean Chatzky: (05:23) Yeah. I thought the magazine was my cred and it turned out I was my cred.

Ali Brown: (05:27) Jean Chatzky is the cred.

Jean Chatzky: (05:29) So, that was one of the first times I realized that.

Ali Brown: (05:32) Yeah, I think every woman has a moment they know their worth, don’t they? That was a moment. It was a turning point.

Jean Chatzky: (05:39) So were you prepared financially when you walked out the door?

Ali Brown: (05:42) Oh no. By the way, do not listen to me on this show for financial advice when you are starting a business. But you know what, the way I’ve always been and I have say with some women what I’ve observed, and again, I do not recommend this, talk with your financial planner, talk with Jean Chatzky, but when their back is against the wall is when they will be the most courageous. And I still see that sometimes to this day, even with women in bigger places in their business. When they have to do it, when they have no other choice is when they do it and they do it big and they do it bold. And so for me, it’s been a faith walk and money has always been kind of this magical mystery tour that I never quite felt prepared for, for so numerous years.

Jean Chatzky: (06:32) You were broke when you walked out the door.

Ali Brown: (06:34) Flat broke, flat broke. There was one night I couldn’t take a $20 bill out. And, I didn’t share that story before until so numerous women said, thank you for sharing that because we don’t know there are those moments. And I said, those are the moments everyone else stops. And I decided to keep going because I knew it would be okay. I just kept thinking it’s going to be okay. I’ll go to the little Asian market on the corner and get a salad or something. I’ll be okay. You know, I’m not going to die. I’m not going to be homeless. I’m going to figure this out. And we forget that that is what entrepreneurship is like. It’s everyday waking up and making the decision that I’m going to make this work.

Jean Chatzky: (07:09) How did you get from not being able to pull a 20 out of the ATM to having that first client?

Ali Brown: (07:15) Well, I will say, I started moonlighting at the agency. Do they still call it that even?

Jean Chatzky: (07:25) I think I call it a side gig.

Ali Brown: (07:26) Yeah. I mean cause I got so excited about the potential that I went to the bookstore. At least there’s a Barnes and Noble still in the city. It’s nice to see that. I thought they were all gone. Got some books. I got one or two little projects. I joined a breakfast group and went in there, not talking about my job, but talking about my business. I was there as a business owner. I got some little projects. I got a brochure from a funeral home. I did a sales letter for a little jeweler. Like $500, $1000. Just here and there and pieced it together. And I think there’s a lot to be said for that I got used to talking to people and talking about what I did. What’s interesting now to observe with a lot of the women and doing the online businesses is I think they create all this stuff online to avoid having to go out and put on pants and talk to people. It’s an interesting world. Could do a whole show on this right now, but you really need to get used to talking about what you do and the value that you bring in person. I think it’s so critical.

Jean Chatzky: (08:19) When you’re talking about those women who are creating things on the internet, who are you talking about?

Ali Brown: (08:26) The worlds I live in, I’ve mentored a lot of women that you may see online now that do a lot of online trainings. Maybe they’re online influencers. Like a lot of these women and there’s a lot of women going into, you’ve probably seen this, coaching and online stuff. There’s coaches everywhere now. And I apologize partly because I helped invent this industry. And so, it’s just kind of a mess right now. And what you see is a lot of women starting a business and they think they think they need all this stuff, a website and something that people can sign up for free. And then you need to be emailing every day and you need to be on every social media platform and they get so caught up in what they think they should have. They forget what the core part of their business is and how they’re going to actually make money. That is why a business, the purpose of a business is to make money. You can have impact. It can have influence. You can do amazing things with that. But don’t forget that, if the business does not make money… I see so numerous women’s dreams fail because they forgot that fact.

Jean Chatzky: (09:23) If the business doesn’t make money, it’s a hobby.

Ali Brown: (09:26) It’s true. Or charity or something. Just call it something else.

Jean Chatzky: (09:30) Call it something.

Ali Brown: (09:

Final Thoughts

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