by Lisa Cybaniak
Have you been working a side hustle, dreaming of turning it into your full-time gig? Maybe you’re at the stage of realising you’re not happy with the work you’re currently doing and are teasing yourself with the idea of starting a side hustle.
Today we’re talking about turning your side hustle into your full-time gig by understanding successful goal setting, the power of negative motivation, why overcoming fear isn’t the best approach, and of course, what is!
Mike McDonnell is an award-winning high-performance mindset coach who helps side hustlers take the leap, leave their jobs and go full time in their businesses. He uses his experience having cystic fibrosis and diabetes and running two lifestyle businesses until burnout caused him to assess and change his life.
Meet Mike McDonnell
He knows exactly what it’s like to step up and out of his comfort zone in order to rise above his limitations by finding strength within them. While living with his two health conditions, Mike realised from an early age how ‘different’ he was from everyone else. He was singled out, bullied, and even told from doctors all the limitations he would face in life. But along the way, he realised that he had developed certain skills and ways of thinking that allowed him to still go after what he wanted.
Now he helps inspire entrepreneurs with his story, empowering them to realise their limitations are stories they’ve created in their head.
I mean, how often do you catch yourself telling yourself that you can’t do it, you’re not good enough, you don’t have enough experience, or any other number of negative talk designed to keep you stuck? A better question perhaps is, how often are you speaking to yourself this way without awareness of doing so?
What’s your evidence for this? Are you sure you haven’t just made it up? Perhaps it’s a tactic you’ve designed to keep yourself safe, in a perceived state of comfort, when really, it’s an excuse to not take a chance on yourself.
Mike is laying it all out for you today, outlining seven tips that will get you right on track to not only go full-time with your side hustle, but shift your mindset in the process.
Are you excited to learn Mike’s seven tips to make this transformation for yourself and your business?
So, let’s dive right in!
What direction are you going?
Mike reminds us of the saying, “One step towards the basket is better than ten around the side”. Therefore, his first tip is to know what direction you’re going. Have a plan and take the time to acknowledge the movements you’re making towards the goal.
General trends for your side hustle
This goes nicely with Mike’s first tip. He suggests you by okay with a general trend in the right direction. That means that even when you’ve had a bad day, or even week, knowing the general trend means you won’t allow that bad week to keep you from having a great 3-months.
Be okay to change
Mike went an entire year without making any goals (more on that later!). Even so, Mike says if you are a goal setter, then give yourself consequences for not achieving them. That negative motivation can sometimes fuel you further than a positive one. He also suggests that you allow the goal to change, which is far different from failing to reach the goal. Priorities change, as does your mindset. When you start ticking things off your list, your confidence grows which may allow you to realise you can play bigger. Role with it.
Achievable time scales
When you are setting your goals, make them achievable! This isn’t just the end goal you want to reach, but the time scale in which you plan to reach it. If it’s too far away, you’ll lose motivation quickly. Also, Mike believes that the further away your time scale, it can make it feel like it’s impossible to reach, which sets you up for failure. Of course, setting your time scale too close and you leave yourself open to overwhelm, as well as a sense of failure before you’ve even started.
Experimentation with your side hustle
Okay, remember me saying Mike spent an entire year NOT setting any goals? He didn’t just meander about in life for that year, rather he did 4-6 weeklong experiments with himself and his business. Whatever worked he ran with and whatever didn’t work, he let go of and ditched.
Forget the past
Just because something went wrong, or not according to plan, before doesn’t mean that’s the way it will be this time. When we focus on how things turned out last time, we hold back and avoid trying it out again. As Mike says, you avoid showing up as your worst self by not showing up at all. And that is a recipe for business disaster. Mike suggests you ask yourself what would it mean if you did it? What would it mean if you didn’t?
Stop overcoming fear
Instead of trying to avoid fear, or conquering it, Mike says we should be allowing ourselves to feel it so it will motivate us! We don’t have to overcome it. Fear does what it takes to keep you there, stuck and unchanging. Instead, allow it to motivate you by doing something that scares you every day. Just keep in mind that there’s no reason that scary thing must be earth shattering. It could be sending an email!
More from this episode
How much do you love that concept of fear doing what it takes to keep you there, stuck, not changing? I think it’s a fantastic way to look at fear so you can shift how you deal with it, instead using it to motivate you.
Mike talks about so much more in this episode, from the power of negative motivation to the lessons he’s learned from dealing with his health conditions and how to figure out how to not let negatively stop you.
I’ll leave you with one of Mike’s statements that we all should be aiming for in business: “Give people something they feel uncomfortable about getting for free.”
Press play on the episode above – you don’t want to miss this!
You can follow Mike on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also check out Mike’s website to learn more about him and his business.
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Voice over credit: Shari Vandermolen. Shari is offering a free download of one of her songs to the fans of the Life Like You Mean It podcast! Just visit www.GiftFromShari.com and tell her where to send it. Shari’s debut album is available for streaming on all the major platforms including Spotify and iTunes.
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