If you’ve ever felt caught in the rear-view mirror of your business, constantly looking back at “what was,” it’s time for a change. Dwelling on the past doesn’t contribute to your growth. Instead, fix your eyes ahead, embracing a future-focused approach that propels you toward success.
While the term “hustle” might evoke thoughts of burnout and excessive effort. In today’s episode Kristen provides the essential reminder of what hustle truly means. It’s about getting your head in the game, picking up your pace, and being ready to fully engage.
Here are a few highlights:
- The truth is, hustling isn’t about mindlessly running in circles; it’s about being future-focused.
- Complacency has become prevalent, it’s essential to acknowledge that success isn’t about things getting easier. It’s about getting better at doing hard things.
- With success comes embracing grit, hard work, and the sweat equity needed to elevate your skills.
- Standing out requires a thoughtful and strategic content strategy. It’s not just about selling; it’s about providing value and building a community around your brand.
- If every time it gets tough, you find yourself searching for the easy way out, it’s time to reevaluate your approach
Redefine hustle as a force that propels you forward, guiding you toward success through intentional efforts, hard work, and a commitment to continuous growth.
Entrepreneurship doesn’t guarantee immediate returns; it demands consistent effort and hard work. Valuing hard work means understanding that shortcuts rarely lead to sustainable achievements.
Right now, as a new year has just begun and your team is feeling motivated, excited, and ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty…This is THE perfect time to take advantage of the high energy and get your team in momentum for 2024. So, mark your calendar for Tuesday, January 23rd at noon CT and register for my FREE webinar: Lead to Succeed in 2024: https://kristenboss.com/leader-success-webinar
Replays will be sent to everyone who registers!
In the webinar, I will be covering:
- 3 things you CANNOT skip if you want to see your team reach their goals
- The mistake MOST leaders are making (and how to avoid it)
- The crucial leadership skills that will help your team gain traction and stay in momentum all year long
- …And more.
Introducing the Social Selling Leadership School: A 12-week Advanced Leadership Certification program for Network Marketers. This program was designed to give you everything you need to be a confident and transformational coach for the people you serve and help your team get massive results. This is the ONLY Coaching Certification program built specifically for the social selling market. Find out more and join the waitlist here!.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question/
Transcript for Episode #198: 2024 Time to Hustle
Kristen Boss (00:19): You are listening to the Kristen Bos podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Bos. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
Kristen Boss (00:57): Hey, bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I’m so excited to be back. I hope you enjoyed some of my favorite episodes at the beginning of the year, but this is my first live episode of 2024, and man, it feels great to be back. I got a couple weeks of rest. I did a ski trip with my family and went to Cabo with my husband and did some business masterminding there, and it was just so good for my soul. I’m excited to be back delivering fresh content for you. So this episode title, just want to laugh thinking about it. I’m sure some of you did a double take. You’re like, there is no way. Kristen titled the podcast, time to Hustle. Doesn’t Kristen have a book called Pivot to Purpose, leaving the Toxic Hustle Culture Behind, isn’t she Andy Hustle? Isn’t she about sustainability?
Kristen Boss (01:53): What is going on? Has Kristen taken a crazy pill? I assure you I have not, but it is a conversation we’re going to have. 2024 is going to be a year friends, and I want to talk to a very specific group of people and I want to challenge you on something. If you have been caught in perpetually looking through the rear view mirror of your business, constantly looking at what was, I want to invite you right now in this moment to let that go. To stop being the person who’s living in the past, the past of your business, the business that was, or what online strategies were working in 2020 or 2019. We have got to stop friends, and I want to invite you into really being future focused this year and thinking about where you’re going to take your business. Because honestly, looking in the rear view mirror, looking at what was, it rarely makes you feel good about yourself or your business.
Kristen Boss (02:58): So it’s time to fix your eyes ahead and start thinking about where you’re going to take your business. The reason why I’ve titled this podcast episode Time to Hustle, is because first of all, I want to just do a brief reminder of what hustle actually is because I think somewhere, and I’ve said this a lot somewhere along the lines, and I think it’s really been in the last three years, I’ve noticed that people are afraid of hard work, of really putting in the sweat and the grit and having the resilience that is absolutely necessary to building an online business. And I think a lot of people’s subconsciously equate hustle with hard work. And it’s so funny when I’m watching my kids play sports, my son is in lacrosse and sometimes he needs a little encouragement to move it along a little bit. So you’ll absolutely hear me on the sidelines going hustle, let’s go boys hustle.
Kristen Boss (03:56): And what I’m encouraging in that moment is like, Hey, get your head in the game. Hey, pick up the pace. Hey, don’t be caught on your back foot. Hey, look alive. Hey, be ready. Be ready. Be ready for the ball. Be ready to engage in the game. That’s really what I’m saying is like, Hey, engage in the game. Engage in the game. And this idea, I’ve watched too many people disengage from the game because somehow they’ve become disenfranchised or maybe disenchanted with how online business actually works. And if you didn’t have a business in 2020, then maybe this won’t apply for you. But if you had an online business during 2020 and 2021, your frame or your lens of business got skewed, and that was a time when things were different. And to compare your business of today, to compare your business to a time during an unprecedented global pandemic when everyone was doing things differently in the online space is simply unfair for you to do for yourself.
Kristen Boss (05:04): And it’s just unrealistic to compare your business of today to your business back then. But I’ve just noticed somewhere along the line, I’ve seen people get complacent and almost a sense of entitlement sneaking in being like, oh, I’ve already put in the hard work. It shouldn’t be this hard. But I will tell you as I have grown my business over the years and literally tens of millions of dollars behind us as a company, it’s just, I can tell you it’s not getting easier. I’ve just gotten better at doing hard things. Let me say that again. It didn’t get easier. I just got better at doing hard things.
Kristen Boss (05:47): Doing hard things didn’t go away with time. And I think there’s this illusion that people have is like, oh, I’ll just get through the hard part of my business and then it gets to be smooth sailing. And I don’t know how we have propagated that idea of like, oh, you just put in your time and then you could just relax. Again, I’m in masterminds with people that make tens of millions, 20 hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody’s like, well, I put in the work and I’m just going to sit on my pool floaty and just watch it all come in. They’re still engaging in the game, they’re still putting in the work, they’re still putting in the time, they’re still investing and thinking about, okay, how do I need to gain more knowledge or get the right resources or whatever it is. So we need to redefine what hustle is because my definition of hustle, and according to my book, it’s not the work.
Kristen Boss (06:39): It is who you are being and the work it is. What is your driver behind your business? Is it fear and scarcity? Well then yeah, it’s probably going to be hustling. And hustling is running with your hair on fire. Do now think later. You’re very reactive, you’re constantly putting out fires, and that’s when you’re very needy in your business and desperate and scared and terrified. You’re not thinking straight that is hustle, like this idea of, or even just hustling for your worth, hustling for people’s good opinions of you. That is what I’m talking about when we talk about hustle. What I’m not talking about and the part that I think we need to really lean into this year is grit, hard work of sweat equity, of doing things that are hard of putting in time and actually having to invest in our skills to level up.
Kristen Boss (07:32): Things have even changed in my business in the last five years, and I could sit there and complain about it or I could say, alright, well either who do I need to hire or what do I need to do in order to stay in the game, in order to engage with the game? And this year in 2024, I really believe this is a time for people to step up and decide, I’m ready for hard work. I’m interested in hard work. I’m not going to continually look for the easy way out, and I’m not going to be surprised when it’s hard. We have to stop acting surprised when it gets hard in our business. Like, oh, it’s just so hard. That is when I see people with shiny ball syndrome where they’re like, what else could there be? Because it’s hard right now. That’s when I see people look at other things because it’s currently hard in their business. And when you can become somebody who gets good at doing hard things and becomes better at doing hard things, you will continue to have ongoing success in your business. But if every time it gets hard and you immediately go to looking for the easy way out or trying to skate through it or not have to do the hard things, what you’re doing is you’re robbing yourself of valuable lessons that shape you into becoming an amazing business owner.
Kristen Boss (08:47): I am a good business owner because of my hard seasons, period. I’m not made by my successes. I am made by my failures and everything I tried that didn’t work and really having to get quite gritty. So the reason why we have to, I believe this year is the year of leaning in and working hard is I’m noticing a lot of people got very complacent with their audiences and what their customers that they have built in the last two to three years. And I see people selling to the exact same audience over and over and over again, and they’ve forgotten how to prioritize getting in front of new people, getting new eyeballs on their content, growing their audiences, growing their networks. Listen, your business is not sustainable if you do not know how to constantly grow your networks and grow your audience. My company is there as well.
Kristen Boss (09:36): We are always growing. We’re always thinking about how do we get in front of new people? How can we serve more people? And it’s ongoing. It’s forever and ever so long as you want to have a business, your job is to think about how do I get new people to lay their eyes on what I’m offering them? And so I see people getting complacent, being like, well, I have my customers. And hopefully, and I’ve noticed this too, this idea of, and I was coaching someone in the academy on this where they were saying, well, I’m just waiting. I keep posting because I’m waiting for people to catch the vision. I’m like, wait, wait. So you’re just posting to the same 300 friends on Facebook that you started your Facebook business or your business with and hoping that eventually everyone’s going to catch the vision and a hundred percent of your audience is eventually going to become customers?
Kristen Boss (10:24): What? No, there are some people that are never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to join you, and you have to be okay with that. You just have to get in front of the right people, people that are actually looking for your product, your service, your opportunity. And believe me, there are. But if you’re talking to the same person, I saw another person that said, oh, I’ve been trying to convince my sister to do this business with me for three years and she just can’t seem to get over the business model and her objections. I’m like, yeah, she’s not your person. Move on. It’s been three years. They still have the same objections, move on. Stop trying to convince the same person to suddenly change their mind. Eventually they’re going to come around on their own. But this idea of people, I am challenging people over and over again.
Kristen Boss (11:06): Like, Hey, this is the year of massive content creation. Content creation is how you bring new people to your business period. How you bring new eyeballs to your platform and to your business is through content creation. There’s no other way. So we actually have to dig in and this is where I see people have been complacent, like maybe your, I don’t know, I’m going to call it your lazy content strategy, got you pretty far in your business, but now you have to lean into intentional content strategy. I’ll tell you why. Because the online space is absolutely full of people trying to sell something. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is it’s not weird or taboo to sell something on social media. The bad thing is, is everybody’s selling something. So how do you differentiate in the online space? Well, you got to have better quality content than everybody else, which means you got to work at it.
Kristen Boss (12:00): It means you actually have to get good at content this year. You can’t expect to squeak by on subpar content and somehow get your way to six figures. Wake up my friends. That’s not possible. Not in today’s landscape. I’m also going to say this too, because we have ai, because we have things like chat GPT in the hands of anybody who wants it. This is where I’ve noticed people are getting lazy with artificial information or AI or tech or whatever. They’re like they’re expecting robots and AI to do all the work for them. But the thing is, is they’re not realizing, hey, there’s thousands of other people who can plug in the same content prompts to that robot and they could be pacing the exact same stuff to their content that’s just boring and vanilla. This is why I teach people, you actually have to deeply understand your customer content strategy and not just outsource it to a robot because it’s the lazy way out.
Kristen Boss (12:53): Is there a way to actually use chat GPT? Absolutely. And I’ll talk about that in a different episode, but I’ve just noticed you have got to stop looking for the easy way out, the lazy way out thinking like, oh, I could just, if I just consistency matters friends, but consistency and then working on your quality at the same time, that matters too. Some of you are consistent, but you consistently post subpar things that just aren’t good. Listen at the beginning, you got to start somewhere. You’re going to suck when you start out. But some of you haven’t improved your content game in a year or two years and it’s still the same boring thing and it’s still same subpar. I’m like, it’s not going to cut it in today’s day and age, my perfectionist listening to this. I’m not telling you like, Hey, if you can’t get it perfect, don’t post anything.
Kristen Boss (13:42): I’d rather you post something than nothing. But there does come a time when once you’ve nailed down your consistency muscle, you actually have to work on the quality. And so this is the work I’m challenging everyone to this year and why you can’t run away from what makes a successful online business owner anymore. And that’s somebody who works hard, who has intentional strategy, who works on quality and quality consistently, who doesn’t shy away from doing the hard. And I think this year we have to learn you. You have to find a love, a new love for hard work. If you don’t like hard work, we have to ask, why aren’t you willing to do the hard and have delayed payouts? Because that’s entrepreneurship 1 0 1. If you want to do hard work and work for somebody else and be on a salary, great. But if you want to put in massive hard work and you’re willing to have delayed gratification, that’s entrepreneurship.
Kristen Boss (14:40): And then eventually you’re going to have massive payouts on the hard work you put in early. But most people don’t have the patience to get through that phase. They’re like, I put in my hard work, where’s my return? Okay, to a nine to five if you want an immediate return. But as an entrepreneur, you have to realize I’m willing to put in the hard. And you guys, I think people forget how good they have it. And someone was saying like, Hey, in my social selling business, what if I buy product and it takes me? What if it takes me 30 days to turn a profit? I’d be like, wow, that’s like 11 months faster than most startup businesses. Like startup businesses. Usually their first year isn’t even in profit. Depending on where you start, like brick and mortar restaurants, real estate, it just depends. Most online businesses start with a deficit and take a while to get to profit.
Kristen Boss (15:26): And with network marketing, with social selling, you can get to profit pretty quickly, but let’s have realistic expectations of what it takes to have success in the online space. And it means hard work this year, friends. So I would ask you ask yourself, what is your relationship with hard work? Are you willing to do hard work? I remember guys last year in 2023 with my health journey, I realized that I actually had a fear of hard work around my health. I didn’t want to feel the physical strain of going to the gym and lifting weights for the first time. I didn’t want to be sore. I didn’t want physical exertion. I remember actually getting coaching around this. I remember telling a coach like, Hey, I have resistance to the idea of exerting my body. And my coach was like, well, of course we’re meant to conserve energy.
Kristen Boss (16:16): That’s just a survival tactic for our bodies. Our bodies want to slow down naturally because it’s all about conserving energy. So of course your body doesn’t want to expend energy. And so I had to really get myself on board with the hard work that would be required for the results that I wanted because you guys, I wanted to lose 25, 30 pounds. I wanted that. If you would say like, Kristen, what do you want? I would say, I want to lose 25 pounds. And then if you had to say, okay, are you willing to, or do you want to do the work that’s required in order for you to get that result? And I would’ve said no. I would’ve said, no, I don’t want to be in the gym five days a week. No, I don’t want to intentionally log my food. No, I don’t want to choose veggies more than I choose sugar now.
Kristen Boss (17:02): I don’t want all those things. I just kept thinking of all the things I would have to give up and what I didn’t want to do. And I think this is how people view their business with hard work. They’re thinking of all the things they would have to give up like, oh, do I have to give up tv? Do I have to give up reading time or my spare time or my nap time or all these other things. I’d be like, well, yeah, there’s going to be give and take. Now do you put everything on the altar of business and give up your entire life? No, I’m not. Again, this isn’t hustle. It’s just we have to get back to being people who value hard work, especially in the online space. And the reason why I feel so fired up about this is because I can’t go 30 seconds without scrolling where somebody is selling fast, easy money, and it just makes me so irate because there’s no such thing, friends, there’s no such thing as fast, easy money.
Kristen Boss (17:50): And whoever’s telling you that is telling you for a reason because they benefit off of it. Like if it’s easy, it’s sleazy period. So of course it’s hard when we don’t have a good relationship with hard work and we want to opt out of it and it’s uncomfortable and it’s frustrating and we’re putting in the habits and we don’t see a return on our hard work yet, and all of a sudden we are scrolling and we’re seeing everybody be like, make millions overnight, make 20 k, overnight 30 k, overnight, 50 k overnight launch this one thing and you have this, but that’s not reality. And so I would just say, are you sold on the hard work that is required to be a business owner? Are you sold out on the hard work that is required for the level of the dreams you want to achieve?
Kristen Boss (18:32): You have big dreams, great, you ready to do some big work? If not, let’s coach you around your big work. You either need to downsize your dreams or upgrade your work ethic period. So this year, it is the year of working hard. It is the year of leaning in. It is the year of saying, I’m going to go from subpar content to exceptional content. This is the year I’m going to focus on growing my audience. This is the year I’m going to build an email list. This is the year I’m going to really go out and network with people. This is the year. You just have to decide that. So friends, are you ready to do hard work this year? If you are, it’s going to be a fantastic year. But if you’re somebody who’s afraid of hard work, it’s going to be a tough year.
Kristen Boss (19:11): It’s going to be a frustrating year, and I don’t want that for you. So listen, we have a webinar happening this week, I believe it’s tomorrow. Check the show notes and it’s specifically around leadership in 2024. We’re calling it Lead to Succeed, and I’m going to be talking about the three mistakes I see most leaders make and what you need to do differently in order to get your team in momentum, keep them in momentum, and keep your team getting results this year. Because in this business, you can go, you can decent, you can go somewhere alone, but if you want to go far, you got to go with a team. So if you are interested in that, which I know it’s going to be an incredible webinar, I highly encourage you to go. We are also going to be talking about social selling leadership school because we’re opening up our first cohort of 2024.
Kristen Boss (19:55): So if you’re on the wait list, if you’ve had friends that are like, Hey, you need to be in this program, you’re going to want to come to the webinar because we’re going to be sharing that with you as well. I will also say last year we certified over 900 leadership students in our first year of leadership school. This year we plan on certifying 2000 people. And I know if you’ve been sitting on the fence and you’re like, is this for me? You need to come to check out the emails and we will see you there. We’ll catch you in the next episode. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. Review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to kristenboss.com.
