Patricia Bright - Heart and Hustle

Here’s how I see it, whether we’re talking about finding a hustle IRL or building your brand online. The truth is, if you’re playing to your strengths, these should really be one and the same thing. This is important. Everything that I do, from my hair-extensions business to my clothing partnerships, works in synergy with what I’m doing on YouTube and my other platforms. The growth of my businesses has been natural because I’d already found what excited me and made me want to get out of bed in the morning. In fact, pretty much everything I’m going to say now applies as much to finding your business path as finding your space in the online world.

LIFE LESSON: As well as following your dreams, you want to find an equilibrium between your passion and your unique skills, while also appealing to an identifiable target market – or, if we’re talking about influencers, an audience. When you’ve managed that, you’ve identified a path that could be worth exploring.

Here’s another way of explaining that idea. There are lots of versions out there of this Venn diagram. In the digital world I replace Market with Audience. The sweet spot in the middle? That’s your grind:

Yes, you’ve got to have a PASSION for what you’re planning to put out into the world – you need to feel fired up, engaged, interested. What is it that sets you alight? What could you talk about for ages and not get bored? What would you be willing to dedicate all your free time (and perhaps, eventually, all your time) to? It might be making (and eating) great food. It might be running your own business. It might be being the best mother you can be. Only you know the answer. While you’re at it, ignore the naysayers. People can turn up their noses at other people’s interests. To that I say, who cares? Immerse yourself in what you love.

You also need to have the SKILL to back that up – that might be in the form of knowledge that you’ve acquired, because you’re so interested in your passion you learn everything there is to know about it. It might be in terms of experience, because you’ve spent so many hours, days, weeks, dedicated to actually doing it. Whatever it is, it’s not just a fleeting interest – you’ve got, or are prepared to get – the credentials. What does that look like? In my case, I was spending hours and hours on forums discovering everything I could about beauty and fashion and putting it into practise with my hustles. This was all before I started my YouTube channel, where I shared my passion for those subjects. Which meant I’d put in the time!

The third piece of the puzzle is: who’s your AUDIENCE, a.k.a. your market? Does anybody else actually want to share in the thing you’re passionate about? If so, who are they? Do you want to be an influencer in order to build on what you’re already doing in your professional life, speaking to your peers in your industry and impressing people who could give you work? Are you speaking to consumers, who might order your product or hire you for your services? Or are you leveraging your tastes and personality to build a following of supporters who like what you’re about as a person, with a view to launching a business that caters to them later on? They’re all totally legitimate options, but determine what’s important to you.

Once you know who your audience is, you can allow that to guide you. For example, if you have a blog aimed at fellow online business owners, it makes no sense posting photos that shout ‘Look at me, I’m a bad B on the beach’. It’s not related to your enterprise. Or perhaps you want to make you, as a personality, your product: do you eventually want to be able to partner with big brands, appealing to as many people as possible? Or do you only want to find a small sector of people who think exactly the same way as you – to find your tribe?

And if your audience is niche, and you’re worried that what you want to do online seems a bit obscure, or not mainstream? That’s totally fine! That’s the beauty of the Internet – you might not have anyone in your town who shares your passion for say, shark movies, but you’ll definitely find them online. You don’t have to appeal to everyone: I don’t. But I would rather have 100 engaged, enthusiastic followers, than 1,000 who aren’t that interested.

Try out your grind

You might need to try out a few options when you’re finding your grind. I’m a big believer in testing the water, be that IRL or online. You might think that something is your passion and, a little while later, realise you’re done with it. For instance, you know that I used to style hair to earn money. I loved doing it, but eventually, I got to a place where I couldn’t even be bothered to do my own hair, let alone other people’s. My whole attitude was: I need a break from this. I realised that as much as I had enjoyed it in the past, styling hair wasn’t something that I wanted to do for ever or even full-time. Yes, I had the skills and even the potential audience – or customers in this case – but it wasn’t going to be the right grind for me. I’d thought it was something that I was really passionate about, but I certainly didn’t want to go on to train to be a hairdresser.

So it’s important to cast your net wide and see what sticks, and what you connect with the most. If you think you’re going to spend the next five years reviewing eyelash brands online simply because you’ve decided there’s an audience who want that content but aren’t being catered for by anyone else, it’s more than likely you’re going to be completely bored. That is unless you can bring the passion, skills and knowledge to back that up. You’ll need the willingness and enthusiasm to really explore that segment of the beauty industry, so you can become an expert – the connoisseur! – of lashes. And if you can bring all that, great! You can be the go-to girl for eyelashes – the only one whose opinion matters.

LIFE LESSON: Passion alone is just one part of the equation: find the thing you’ll be willing to grind on and dedicate every hour of the day to.

Start off as a multi-hustler

I never tell people to just quit their jobs and start a business. In the same way, I wouldn’t recommend that people with an Instagram account suddenly jack it all in to rely on their social media output as their sole source of income. If you can make that work, great, but that’s putting a huge amount of pressure on you and there’s a lot of risk attached. My approach was much more softly-softly. As I said, at the start I had no idea that my YouTube channel would become my career. At university it was a hobby, not a moneymaker. I still worked my weekend job and did hair as well. Later, I made a few career moves, and continued with YouTube on the side. It is totally OK to do more than one thing until you’re ready to go all-in on your side hustle.

WHAT’S YOUR GRIND?

Ask yourself these four questions to help you discover your grind before you start putting yourself out there:

> What could you talk about every day and not get sick of?

> What would you do, or be interested in, even if you didn’t make a penny from it?

> What are you doing or do you know about already that you could potentially share with others?

> What could you keep on doing, without it feeling like a chore?

Once you’ve figured out your grind, that’s when you can start identifying your personal goals.

In the next few chapters we’ll be exploring how you can build your influence to help you achieve those goals. We’ll be looking at the ins and outs of social media, building and owning a profile and honing your content. Ever wondered about embarking on the influencer journey, or growing a brand online? Read on …