Financial Feminist - 253. Stop Making These 5 Side Hustle Mistakes with Mal Rowan

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Save your seat inside Business Bootcamp! Your COMPLETE roadmap to go from idea to income: ⁠herfirst100k.com/business-bootcamp  Building a business on the side isn’t easy—I’ve been there, hustling before and after my 9–5, wondering if I’d ever make enough to quit. In this episode, I’m joined once again by my friend and fellow entrepreneur, Mallory Rowan, to break down the five biggest mistakes side hustlers make that keep them stuck, burnt out, and broke. From struggling to define your audience to falling into the “do it all” trap, we’ll share the exact shifts you need to make if you want your side hustle to actually become a sustainable business. It’s time to stop spinning your wheels, lowering your prices, and wondering how to grow beyond those first few “friends and family” sales. We’re going to give you the clarity you need to finally move forward. Mallory’s links: Website: https://malloryrowan.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malloryrowan/?hl=en  Business Bootcamp: herfirst100k.com/business-bootcamp  Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/side-hustle-mistakes/ Looking for accountability, live coaching, and deeper financial education? Check out our exclusive community! Join the $100K Club: https://herfirst100k.com/100k-pod   Our favorite travel and cash-back credit cards, plus other financial resources: https://herfirst100k.com/tools Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Special thanks to our sponsors: Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Indeed Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/FFPOD. Rocket Money Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD. Quince For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to Quince.com/FFPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Netsuite If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at NetSuite.com/FFPOD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We were both running our businesses as side hustles. Yes. What did that feel like? Not great. My hair loss, my chronic pneumonia, all those things would probably agree that it was not fun. I mean, I didn't have that dramatic of a situation. But I think mine was just, there was not enough time in the day. And I also just kept being like, when can I quit my job?

I'm not ready to quit my job yet. The business isn't there. And then I would have people ask me like, how's the business doing? Are you ready to quit? And I'm like, emotionally, yes, I've been ready to quit emotionally since like day two of corporate. But I'm not there yet. So in this episode, we are breaking down the five shifts to get unstuck. They're going to be practical. They're going to be actionable. And they're really, really important if you feel like you've hit a wall with the side hustle. It's not growing. You're not seeing the amount of money. You need to be baking. Maybe you've got those initial sales from friends and family. But how do we move into that next category. You know we love a good deal on this show. So I am giving you all of our incredible sponsors deals up front with a little more information on the rest of the episode. This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Squarespace, Rocket Money, NetSuite, and Indeed. Need a new website, whether it's a brand portfolio or store, Squarespace makes it easy. Head over to Squarespace.com slash SFPod and use code FFod for 10% off

your first purchase. Stop paying for subscriptions you forgot about. Rocket Money finds and cancels them for you. Go to RocketMoney.com slash FF. pod to take control of your finances. Running a growing business, NetSuite helps you manage it all in one place. Download the free CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash FFPod. Indeed is the number one job site and a global leader in job matching and hiring. Get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash ff pod. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures.

See for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. So before we get into those five shifts, let's talk about the traps that we see from coaching thousands of entrepreneurs. So the first one is they don't know what to do next. What's happening there? A little decision fatigue. Yeah. It's feeling like sometimes that one wrong move is going to end everything. Instead, you could probably make a hundred more mistakes and you would be fine. And you probably need to make some more mistakes. Yeah. And sometimes it's just maybe you've done those initial first scary steps and you just don't know what's next. Yeah. I think that second one is like what got you here is not going to get you there. Yeah. Kind of what we were talking about with those friends and family sales. You know, maybe you get what we call those lucky sales, those first few of people being supportive. And then you might have to change things up to how, for how you want to continue to grow. So I'll tell you a quick story with that. I was doing one-on-one money coaching in 2019 when her first 100K had rebranded and we were starting to get some traction. And I was sitting down. And I was sitting down. And I was sitting down. And I was sitting down.

with people, you know, one-on-one at a coffee shop to, like, review their money and do audits and teach them what a Roth IRA was. And it was starting to become pretty profitable. But I was running out of time because I was meeting, you know, for an hour or you could do like a three-hour package with me. I was running out of time to do that one-on-one with people. And I killed my best-selling product. Now, that was temporarily a very stupid decision, right? Because it immediately squashed the amount of money I was making. But I realized, oh, in order for this business to scale and to make enough money in a sustainable way, I have to kill my best-selling product because what got me here will not get me there. I had to reinvent that as a workshop.

So I went from coaching to a workshop where I could basically teach everything I was teaching in coaching, but virtually to 50 people. And then charge them for that. And then that became a course. and that became the book later, too. Yeah. So I think that that's one of those places where, you know, for me, very definitively, oh, I was getting stuck, even though it felt like, oh, I'm making good money. Yeah. It's not going to be sustainable, though, long term.

And on the flip, I feel like one of the other reasons people feel stuck in their side hustle is they're not making money, right? Yeah. There may be continuing to push up against that wall, and it just feels like no matter what they're trying, it's not landing, and they can't really solve why that's happening. Well, it's the confusion of, like, what to sell definitively. Like, I think, again, when you first start a business, you're like, I need to make money. So I'm going to be everything to everybody. And I'm going to give everything. So I'm going to give money coaching and I'm going to give money coaching and I'm going to give, I don't know, business coaching and lifestyle coaching. And then it's not selling.

So I'm just going to lower all the prices. Yes, I'm going to put everything on sale. I'm going to do everything on sale. I must be charging too much because I'm not getting anyone reaching out. I'm not getting any dogs to walk and I'm a dog walker. So I'm going to do it for the free or like two cents. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's talk about the shifts to get unstuck. Let's talk about that first one. Yeah. So we need to do a refresh of our audience, our brand, our customer. What does this look like? Yeah, I think there's often a disconnect happening there where, you know, we've got that initial branding. We figured out, we've done a launch. Maybe we've even been in business for like six months, eight months, whatever it might be. But at this point, you've probably gotten more clear on exactly who you want to serve. Maybe there's a sub community that's actually, you know,

know, a fraction of who you thought you wanted to serve. I think for me, I talk a lot about personality being a factor for a customer. We talk so much about demographics and people will be like, I don't care if they're 18 or 24. But thinking about who's the type of person, especially if you're going to have an online business where we do make marketing content, you need to connect with those people. So I think doing that refresh of like, can I get even more connected with who my customer is. Yeah, I was going to say inside my customer. And so I had to quickly change the word coming up of my mouth. Can I get inside my customer? Yeah, could I get further inside my customer? No, I mean, it's what happened to me. So, 2018, I was making like a couple thousand dollars a year. Like,

it was nothing to write home about. It was not getting to me, getting me closer to my 100K goal. It was a lot of strife and stress because I was trying to do too many things. So when I rebranded to her first 100K, like it was very obvious who that was for, right? And that single-handedly changed the entire business because, like, okay, we have men in the community, but it's very clearly for women, right? Her and then first 100K, I wasn't teaching people how to get their first million or their first 200K. It's like, okay, we're doing basic starter personal finance largely. And so I think that that helped so much both for me to define what the vision of the company was. Like, I'm talking about money.

It's, you know, it's inherently feminist. it's for women plus and also customers immediately understood this is for me or actually no it's not and that positioning that repositioning was the most helpful thing I did when I was still side hustling oh absolutely even our first business being in powerlifting we could have been just another fitness brand but by focusing on power lifters that really differentiated us and then we went one step further of okay well we want powerlifters who have minimalist sense of style because a lot of the powerlifting brands were a bit more like skull and heavy metal vibes. And so we had a specific design aesthetic that our audience connected with. And then on top of that, we had a socially

conscious aspect. So it was like you could say we were a powerlifting brand, but once you looked at it, we were getting more and more refined on who that really was for. And that's what really gave us the growth that it did. Yeah. So one of the easiest things you can do if you're feeling stuck is redefine who your customer is and specifically how you serve them. Absolutely. So when we come back from a word with our sponsors. We're talking about the second shift to get unstuck in your side hustle. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. One of the biggest things I hear from people who want to be business owners is they don't know where to start. They're like, I don't know what to do. I'm so overwhelmed. I want to start this business, but I need a logo and I need

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C-N-C-E.com to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash ffpod. Okay, so number two, we need to find your quickest win offer. So what we mean by this, this is not a big launch. This is not like your full suite. This is not spend six, nine, twelve months on something huge and brand new. This is just like start with something that is fast to deliver and testable. Yeah, and that first shift, it might be the positioning, right? When we're talking brand and customer,

whereas in the second shift, it might be more actually about the offer. And it might be time to test a little bit of a shift to your offer. And that's what we're really looking at here. So yeah, like a one hour workshop or a session. Yeah, like five day challenge. I love anything live, whether that's a live workshop or doing something one-on-one where you can really collect feedback from people, especially this is more on the service side. But if you can get that live feedback, if I'm teaching something and you look, confused on Zoom, I'm getting that feedback, right? Sometimes it's not just asking them after the fact if I had sent you an e-book. And I was like, how was then? You're like, it was great. And you're like crying and sweating because it was so overwhelming. I wouldn't know, right? But having that live feedback, that's why we really like these like quick, what can you put together and what's a little revamp to test maybe that new direction you're feeling. So if you're a product-based business, would that look like, I don't know, like a flash sale or something like that? Yeah, it could look like a pre-sale actually. Yeah, smart. So if

you were thinking, okay, we make t-shirts, we're thinking about doing a water bottle, we did this a lot with even colors of products because we're like, do people want bright pink things or no, right? And instead of ordering 500 units, you can either pre-sell them if you want to really verify and

guarantee that. Yeah, or alternatively just serving your audience would be another way with that. But I definitely think having yeah, a pre-sale of something is really great way to also make sure if you have cash flow issues or just your early on and you don't necessarily have that cash flow, it allows you to secure those sales, which is really exciting too. Okay, number three is something that I think you

and I are really good at that we see successful entrepreneurs, like you have this trait, which is like seeing business and making money almost as a game. Yeah. Which is like, if I can pull this lever, what happens? Yes. And I do this a lot with my team even now, and I especially did it when I was side hustling, which is I would just set like many challenges for myself. So I would say, okay, buy, you know, it's a week until the end of the month. How much money can I make in that week? Yeah. Or like next month in 30 days. Yeah. I'm going to try to make 500 bucks or a thousand dollars. Especially if you're early in a business, people talk about forecasting or projections. And for me, that felt like, how the fuck am I going to do that? I was like, I'm just pulling numbers

out of a hat. But then I decided, well, why don't I actually pull numbers out of a hat? Right. So it would be like, you know, maybe there's a week left of the month. And let's say we'd done 20K in sales in that whole month, we might go, could we do 30 or 40? Yeah. And for side hustlers, it might be, I've made 200. Totally. How do I make 500? Totally. Yeah. And so, um, it really pushes you into this territory of going, ooh, well, I can't do what I've been doing because that won't magically make an extra big amount appear. So it really forces you to start thinking more creatively. There's a really great exercise I'll throw in for you where, um, I call it the six solution theory where there's at least six solutions to any problem you're facing, especially

the ones where it feels like there's only one answer. And so this is something my partner and I actually kind of like learned through real estate and then basically said double it. You know, with real estate properties, some people look at having three different exits if they're buying a property. So that was something we learned. And I'm like, I kind of love that because it really would force us to go like, oh, well, what's the third? And so in my business, I always look at what's the sixth solution. So if you said, make a thousand in my business this month and I've only made 200. If you looked at what are six different ways to make that thousand. Somebody's going to go, I'm going to discount my stuff. Yeah, I'm going to do a sale. Which you can do. But when you discount something, then you

have to sell a higher quantity. And I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that. Well, and what would be a great flip is I'm going to throw in a bonus for the same price. Or I'm going to do a bundle. That has a limited time. Yeah. I'm going to do a bundle where I'm putting together three of my things, but maybe the cost is okay on the back end, and it's going to up those sales. But I think, like, I don't know. In my head, it's like a dog walker, but it's like, I'm going to give you, if you pay up front now for three months of my services, I'll give you a discount, or I'll give you. Yeah, if you lock in six months instead of the month by month we're on, right? So when you do those, think of those six solutions, it really forces you to get more creative,

maybe talk it out with a friend, look at other business models. Chat, GPT, actually, is a great, great solution. here find those options of how could I look at this problem differently and also the nice thing is maybe with the six you're like wait I love three of these ideas and now you have three tools that you could use for the next launch and the next launch and the next launch so you need to ask what's the easiest way I could make this money with what I know right now yeah and then how would you execute that totally okay so number four speaking of actually how we execute I was trying to segue yeah it's perfect The thing we hear for side hustlers, the thing we both experience is like, but Tori, I don't have enough time.

Mallory, I have children. I have a really demanding job. I'm trying to like make this work. Yeah. So we have to create a timeline we can actually stick to. And we have to get honest with ourselves about what that timeline actually looks like. Yeah, I'd rather it be long for you than to make it, I'm going to start a business in the next seven days. Yeah, yeah. I use social media as an example for this a lot too. It's like if you don't have capacity to post five times a week, but you want to post five times a week, what most people do is they start posting five times a week and they maybe make it through two weeks at most. And then they crash out. It's like, it's like, it's like, cool, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to try to run a half marathon every time I'm at the gym.

Exactly. You've got to start smaller. So after that crash out, then people don't post anything for three months. Right. And now we've lost all of that time. And the momentum. Yeah. If we were realistic and said, I have capacity right now for one good post a week.

And then you did that for the next six weeks. And then you felt like you could do that in your sleep, then you're going to go two posts a month, right? So I think if you can learn that timeline and actually respect it, when you say the gym, there's, I love this example in James Clear's Atomic Habits. But he says, like, if we went to the gym once a week and we weren't going last year, that's 52 times more. Right. And if you told somebody like you could get a 52X, you'd be like, that's amazing. But then for some reason we go, well, that's not good enough because other people are. going three times a week, right? So I think just looking at your current situation, as you're

someone who doesn't work out right now, once a week for you would be incredible, it would be a 52x, look at that for your business too. If you're not posting on social at all, if you're not landing any clients. Or if you have only one hour to spend this week on getting that website up or doing whatever you need to do to build a business. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. I think my bonus tip here too, when I was trying to manage my time as a side hustler, everybody told me like, block, you're calendar, right? Like block a specific amount of time. And there was sometimes I'd get home from work and I'm like, I had a really shitty day. Boss made me feel like shit. The train got canceled. So my commute was triple the amount of time. And like, I just want to watch Netflix and eat my dinner and go to bed at

nine. Yeah. And the time block I had for the three hours I was supposed to work on my business, like that didn't happen. Yeah. But there was some times where, you know, I'd be trying to get ready for about at 10, 10.30 and I'd get like this little boost of energy. And I started realizing I had to follow my energy when I was trying to build my business. Now, there were certain times I had to get things done on a timeline, right? But there were other times I could be like, okay, I don't have the energy to do that now. Yeah. But I know I'm going to feel better tomorrow if I go to bed now. Yes. And I'm going to figure it out. And I think following your energy was something that was really, really helpful for me when I was trying to juggle all the balls I wanted to juggle. Yeah. As opposed to actually very strict boundaries

with myself because I knew I would still keep my commitments. Yeah. I love to use my to-do list to support that. So for me, it's like a daily to-do list. There's one thing on the top and I have to start with that thing. So if my energy or my time runs out, at least that one thing's covered. And I've also started where I just have like a like a task dump, which is separate from my to-do list because the to-do list is only things that I tackled today. And if I don't get to something, it has to be tackled by the end of the week. And that doesn't mean like I'm working over time. It actually means I'm really filtering the to-do list. So I have this task dump over here of all the great things because sometimes when we're working, right, we're like, oh, I'd love to do this cool campaign on social

meeting. We have all these fun ideas. It's stressing you out. So you're trying to get it down. And then every week you're feeling bad because you're like, I haven't done that idea yet. But if you just put it over in the dump, some people call it like a parking lot, right? Yep. Yep. But I think keep your to-do list really focused on what's going to move the needle the most. Yeah. And then that's going to really help you just naturally find that timeline you were talking about. So I need everybody to answer. Like, what's your next right step in the time you've allotted?

So whether it's the next hour, the next three hours, the next week. I think that's great. So when we come back from a word with our sponsors, we're talking about how to get unstuck from the traps that often pop up for new business owners. So stay tuned. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. I'm hiring an assistant. We're hiring a marketing manager. And finding good people is a challenge, finding not only good people who are able to do the job you need them to do, even more challenging. And that's where we have used Indeed.

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Just go to Indeed.com slash ffod right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. dot com slash ff pod terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need as a business owner and as a CEO part of my job is to tell the future part of my job is to look into my non-existent business crystal ball and figure out what's coming next is a recession on the way is inflation going to keep going up and until somebody invents an actual crystal ball where it's definitive not just me making educated guesses net suite by oracle is here over 42,000 businesses have future-proof their business with NetSuite by Oracle. It's the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR all into one fluid platform. This is one of those

tools that I am so excited to use as we continue growing our business, as we continue to try to tell the future and to anticipate all of the business problems. This is the way that you're going to find solutions. NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities as a business. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at net suite.com slash ff pod. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash ff pod. NetSuite.com slash ff pod. Okay. Our last place people get stuck. Entrepreneurship is very isolating. Yep. It's a very, it's a very lonely experience to build a business.

and especially when there might not be people around you who are in the same stage of life or who want the same things. And then I think the nice thing about working in like a corporate environment and having co-workers, hopefully that you, at least one that you like is you can like go to their desk or slack huddle them and be like, hey, the water cooler. Can you give me feedback on the, yeah, the water cooler. Can you give me feedback on this thing? Or like, I'm stuck here.

Can you just talk this through? Can I talk this out? And that doesn't really exist when you're an entrepreneur. So I think our fifth one is you have to surround yourself with people who are also trying to be business owners. Yeah. Who are also side hustling, who are also building. The fastest way to get unstuck is not to like consume more content and like try to learn more. It's like to actually connect with people and to like get support in. answers. Yeah. I think a lot of things happen when you connect. It validates and normalizes your experience. You feel seen and we all want to feel seen. Absolutely. You can just directly ask. We talk a lot about how much things are just Googledable. But it's also very helpful to ask someone, hey, you have a business,

which website did you land on? You know, which email platform? I mean, I love if someone else has done the research, go ahead and tell me your favorite things you want to tell me and you know what I mean? I'm in a podcast mastermind. Yeah. The amount of conversations that are just like, hey, what course platform is everybody on? Who does everybody use for lawyers? It's like, what do you use for this USB thing? Literally, that's like half the conversations in this community. It can be the smallest things, but it's like you just lean on each other and you can ask those questions. And those are like the small ways you can, there's no real shortcut when it comes to actually building those things. But sometimes those small shortcuts can be really helpful if you don't have to spend the time researching

the email platform because your friend has a similar business and you guys are open to chatting. And I think for me, too, I didn't have any mentors at the beginning of the business, like, again, who were in my life, who I could call. It was a lot of, like, watching people online build businesses. And, like, even the reason you and I got connected is, like, I DM'd Mel on Instagram. Yeah. I literally slid into your DMs and was like, hi, do you have a mastermind that you like? And what I meant by that question was, will you join a mastermind with me? I heard you're in a mastermind.

I have some questions about it. And I said, yeah, if one of the questions is if I'll be in one with you, it's yes. And I was like, oh, great, because that was my real question that I didn't ask. But, like, I think that that part is the most isolating is like, okay, I don't feel seen or validated. I don't feel like there's no support of the community around me. But also, who's the person who's a little ahead of me? Yeah. Who can tell me what to do.

Yeah. I'm at a fork in the road trying to decide. Yeah, do I put things on sale? Do I work with, do I take on new clients, even if I don't have time? How do I find more time? And it's like, this is why we created a business boot camp. Like, this is why we created a thing because I want everybody taking the escalator and not the stairs. Oh, yeah.

I want everybody learning from all of our mistakes. So, like, for me, it was I was working this night to five that I didn't really love and enjoy and then trying to build HFK on the side. I did all of the five things we did. just talked about, which was like, okay, I was gaining more support from people. It was defining who my audience was. I was very quick to, you know, test new things and figure out what worked and what didn't. And that was, those were the reasons I scaled. Yeah. I quit my job in October of 2019, so just before the pandemic, started running HFK full time. And I think in January, I made like $20,000. And I was like, oh my God, this is more money.

that I've ever seen in my entire life in this short of period of time. And now it is what it is. It's a multi-million dollar business that affords me all of not only financial freedom, but time freedom and the ability to do work that is actually impactful. I love that. Well, and for you, it was burned out. Yeah. Hated your corporate life. Yeah. Well, I burned out from my business. Business, yes. I mean, from doing all the things. From doing all the things because you didn't have a mentor, shameless plug. But like, it was like, it was, trying to do too much. Yeah, absolutely. And I think for me also going from that first business to the next ones and really navigating how I wanted to build differently and asking a lot of questions

around that and finding the right resources. We talk about this too of, you know, there's a lot of advice out there that probably won't fit who you are and how you want to run your business. Oh, the amount of bros, but even we get like people who are like, have you heard this? And we're like, yeah, we've heard it. Yeah, exactly. So I don't want to listen to this, dude. Sourcing the right people that you aspire to be similar to. Yep. Or even just exploring different paths and really, yeah, gaining that information from people you trust. So let's talk about business boot camp because we did it a couple years ago.

It was so cool because we had a couple hundred people who joined who either didn't have an idea, literally started their businesses, or who were side hustlers who just made those tweaks and those optimizations to get where they wanted to be. A lot of those people kind of had one foot in, one foot out, not sure, you know, doing it a bit in the background, but decided they wanted to take it more seriously. Yeah. So it's a two-part workshop series plus a bunch of other goodies. So the first workshop, we're calling build the thing, which is like refine. Yeah, you got really fancy. Build the thing and sell the thing. Build the thing and sell the thing. So build the thing is refine and validate your idea. So everything you need to both focus in on that idea, make sure you're talking to the audience you want to talk to, spending your time where it's actually useful. and not wasting time where it's not. Yeah, I would say those first three shifts we talked about, actually. So, like, the brand and customer, refining that. We're really looking at what is a offer. You can, whether that's your first offer or coming up with a tweak to a current offer.

And even things like the money goals, we talk about things like revenue, costs, pricing, and how to navigate that, how to navigate those sales goals we talked about. And that's a question we hear all the time. Like, how do I price myself? Yeah. So we're answering that. Okay, so workshop two is sell the thing. So how do you market and sell your offer without feeling?

slimy and icky, which is another question we get. Yeah, we're going to talk about social media. We're going to talk about email, refining that messaging, all of the elements that you really need to get it done. So this idea with business boot camp is that we're getting you from idea to offer in less than 90 days. So we also have a 90-day roadmap. So you're not guestworking. You're not trying to figure out what to do in what order we're giving you a very specific launch plan. We don't like it to be overwhelming if you're just sitting processing the information. So you'll have access to the replay if you ever want to go back to the workshops. But also you have a workbook that you can complete as partially as you're listening but also after when you walk away

it's going to make sure that you can really take steps with each piece of that and that 90 day plan is going to make sure that you have that realistic timeline obviously you can edit a bit for yourself if you want to go longer but we really positioned it in a way that should feel comfy for you so all of that is included in our general admission ticket so we've got the two workshops the replays the 90 day roadmap we also have a VIP option for folks who are like I am serious. I want to start making good money. I want to actually get my shit together. So the first one is we have coaching after both workshops with Mal and I. It's going to be an exclusive group. We only have a certain amount of VIP slots. And so we're doing like a mixture of kind of like

business slash marketing audits with answering some questions. Yeah, deep dive into a few more topics that I think people who are a little further along might like to hear. Especially one that I think side hustlers care about, which is like, how do I know how much money I need to be making? Like, how do I actually get to the point where I know how much money I need to be making and can get there so I can quit my job and run this full time, if that's what you choose. The second thing that I'm really excited about is this extra session that we're doing with our teams where you can get questions answered. It's like an accountability session. So if you get stuck as you're going through it, we're going to help you come back, refine what you're doing.

Yeah. And it's space out after those workshops, too. that nice accountability piece of like you have time in between to dive a little bit deeper. So you probably will have some of those other questions come up. Yep. I'm also throwing in my How to Grow your Instagram workshop. Yes. I normally priced this at like $400. Yeah.

We have a lot of cool marketing tools for the VIP. So like you said, your workshop. Yep. We've got the viral content checklist. Yep. We have a five-day email funnel. So if you want a launch template, it's like a template and script, whether that's for launching a new product, launching maybe this offer that you're testing out. That's a really, really great resource, too.

We also have my media pitch template I'm throwing in of like how to get podcast interviews, how to land, you know, big press so that you both can build your credibility, but also get the word out. So the media pitch template, this incredible community member named Melissa bought it. I actually still follow her. She creates candles that are like she is Latina. And so it's focused on like they're just really cool names and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so she said, if you don't already know about Tori's Media Kip template, you should. My business and I just got featured on every local ABC station in the country. She said, I was able to pitch my local community journalist and highlight my small Latina candle business during Hispanic Heritage Month, which is so cool.

And then Michelle, who's another entrepreneur that I have worked with, she took the How to Grow Your Instagram workshop, and she said I went from averaging 2,000 views to getting 80 to 160,000 views. And then she also applied it to TikTok. And so she was like, I was getting like two million views on TikToks too, which is so cool. Yeah, really great resources packed into that VIP. Yeah, and you have somebody who launched an offer on Instagram, like without a sales page as well, which is so cool. Yeah, so some of the marketing stuff that we're going to teach you, she used those social media tips to just do her launch exclusively through Instagram with a smaller page. She was able to test and validate the offer that she wanted to do. She was able to have a wait list so that the next time she offered it, she would already have people signing up.

And it was all without doing sales page or anything like that. So especially for the people who maybe what's getting them stuck is a lot of the tech side. It's a really great example that you don't have to dive into all that stuff. Well, I think you told me she had like eight spots. She sold 10. Oh, she sold 16 or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she, I think she had eight spots.

She ended up welcoming 10 people, but she had like 17 people total with the wait list. Oh, cool. That's so well. Okay. Oh, and recently did a TED talk actually. Oh, casual. Yeah. Real casual. So my lawyers are not going to like, so you come to business boot camp, you will get a TED Talk. Just kidding. Results not guaranteed. Okay. So when we talk about everything business boot camp, we're going to do a rapid fire like FAQ of like, is this for me? Okay. So what if I don't have time, Mallory? I'm going to be real with you. If you don't have time for the workshops. You don't have time to be a side hustler. You don't have time to be an entrepreneur. Yeah, which I think you do. So I kind of just don't believe you. I also, if you can't make it. it to the workshops? So you get a replay. So, okay, cool. What if I've never sold anything?

You can only learn by doing. Absolutely. Yeah, you don't have to be a salesperson. I had never sold things before. Well, and you're a side hustler, right? I shouldn't say that. I probably sold things. You're like, I've sold my soul many times. I was like immediately doing an inventory in my head. I was like, I planned prom and stuff, so I shouldn't say that. I'm sold from tickets. Okay. And if you don't have time as a side hustler, like this is something that's going to help you figure out Are you wasting time on things that you shouldn't be wasting time on? Yes, if you have limited time, this is going to give you the roadmap and the things that are worth spending your time on. Yep.

If somebody's going, I don't know if I'm ready to take my side hustle full time. I don't know if I have the right resources. Yeah, we were just talking about a really great quote for ourselves, too, that Ready is not a feeling. It's not a decision. I think our realization that, like, if it's not a feeling and inside out, then it can't be a feeling. And I think I'm going to use that now as my touchplace. A little, yeah, a little icon and inside. No, it doesn't have a job in that little office they have.

It's just the button. Yeah, it's actually those other feelings coming together and making that decision. Yeah, you're worried about failing, you're worried about maybe you won't be perfect. It's like, okay, maybe you won't be. You probably won't be. Yeah, and if you've already been dabbling with your side hustle, right, maybe you're that one foot in, one foot out, I think you kind of owe it to yourself to actually give it a real shot. Yeah. And also, you're listening to this episode because you're stuck.

Yeah, exactly. Let's help you get on stock. As we're wrapping up, to reiterate, you are not behind. You are not, like, missing some secret sauce that, like, somebody else has that you don't. Yes. Unfortunately, we would sell it, and we would sell it for a lot of money. We would sell it for a lot of money. You're thinking, like, somebody else has the degree.

Somebody else, like, knows something. Like, okay, I'm listening to Malintory. They know something I don't know. Yes. The only reason we know things that you don't know is because we went for it. We tried. And we've been running this for 10 years. We've been doing entrepreneurship for 10 years.

I just watched a TikTok of this person who sold their company for $54 million, which obviously is not going to be all this. But I absolutely love, they made a video. And it was like the 40 ideas I built and failed at before getting there. And what I loved about it was all over the place. Like it was like an app for this thing and then we're making phone cases. And then we tried this wellness thing. And then I went back to the phone cases. And then I started a coffee shop.

Yeah, and I think it's such a good testament. Oh, there's a really great quote I love to you. That's like sometimes we're judging our success as failure, but we're just in the middle of succeeding. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like if you looked at, um, Josh's going to kill me. I always forget which basketball player it is.

LeBron James. That's the one I can name. Caitlin Clark. Sabrina and ask you, I'll name the women. I can keep doing that. Okay. Angel Reese. I do this every time.

But one of them wasn't doing so great. college ball. Now, Icon. That's a great. And more in business boot camp, just like that. The short version. Oh, God. So my TLDR. Yeah. You just need a plan. You need some support and you need to take imperfect action. Imperfect action beats an action every single fucking time. Yeah. So we would love to see in business boot camp. It is incredibly excessively priced. Like, we are actually nervous that it's too cheap. And that sounds like a marketing, like we are actually, we had. Yeah. Four one-hour conversations about how we're worried it might be too cheap. But it's because we see so many people want to be entrepreneurs.

Yeah. I think we did a survey over half of our five million people in our community want to be on an entrepreneur someday. We wanted to take out that element of the hurdle. We want to make it an easy, yes. We want to be like, yep, you're going to come. You're going to learn a lot. We've tested this. Mal has private coaching clients.

She's been doing this for years. We've ran business boot camp together. Yeah. I have people, we just had somebody come up to us on the street the other day and was like, I'm thinking about doing this. And we're like, we literally sold her. We were like, here's all of the things, everything we just told you in this episode. So we would love to see you there. We've got the link in the description. It's going to be a fun time. Yeah, it's going to be great. I can't wait. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First

100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit Financialfeministpodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to her first 100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf,

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