Welcome to the wonderful world of the side hustle. You have your dream group home going, but you don’t quite trust it to feed your family yet, so you keep your day job. Meaning that your morning, evenings, nights and weekends are often occupied with working on your group home business. Does it sound brutal, right? Well, keep reading because I want to break down how you can avoid drowning in this situation. It is more than possible to succeed at this, but you’re going to need some strong discipline. You are about to start one heck of a journey!
The Type of Discipline You Need
One time Warren Buffett was golfing and the people he was golfing with asked him to make a bet for $1 and he said no, and it shocked them. Warren Buffet has built billions in wealth so for him not to bet one dollar was pretty insane. His reason was simple, he said:
“I NEVER break my discipline.”
Here is where we separate the players from the talkers, the fakers from the real deals because discipline will tell the story. What Buffett was saying is that he has his rules to investing and gambling on golf goes against those rules, so he will not do it.
Jay-Z said a similar thing when he was talking about his music. He said that while everyone has changed their music style and lyrics to match what other people want, he never broke his discipline over the years. He has always stayed true to who he is, and as a result of doing this, he never had to lose his fans due to changing for a new reason. Most rappers only stay relevant for a few years but Jay- Z has been around for decades now.
Why Discipline is Key to Pull of Two Job Life
Discipline is what will keep you and your dreams in line when things get hard. If you want to run a successful group home AND not get fired from your full-time job, you need to understand that it will get hard. I am not writing this article to pump you full of sunshine. The article is strictly meant to prepare you for the day of battle that is coming.
Do you often stick with your diets? When you say you’re going to workout, do you do it? When you say you’re going to spend one hour per day learning about group homes, do you do it? These are the type of things that showcase your discipline. How do you measure up? You’re here because you say you want to learn about group homes but are you actually going to stick with it and read these?
Discipline Builds Confidence
Everyone knows confidence is key and this is why we talk a lot about getting momentum quickly. The worst thing you can do is start a business and not have the confidence to make it successful. Confidence will be why you make more phone calls, and never take no for an answer. The problem is that too many people don’t understand where confidence comes from.
Confidence does not come from talking or even acting confident. That is just a fake bravado that will soon be exposed. Confidence comes from preparation. Think about this. If there is a football game coming up and one team spends their time training for the two months to get ready. While the other team chooses not to practice at all because they are the defending champs, which team do you think will have more confidence coming into the game? It will be the team that has prepared and worked hard because they stuck to their discipline.
What Does This Have To Do With Your Group Home?
You will need to be able to work an insane schedule if you want to survive having two jobs. There is no way around it. You can’t just wake up when you want, come home and go to sleep because you are tired! There will always be more work to be done, and you will probably be as tired as you have ever been throughout your life. You will NEED to bear down like nothing you have ever done.
How to Survive With a Group Home Side Hustle
Wake Up Early
Sleeping in must become a thing of the past. The side hustle life is actually how I got out of corporate America. I was working my ass off at this job, and I hated it and knew that I would quit. To get out of it I started a custom made tie business with my wife, to help get me out of that job that was wasting my life. I started waking up at 5:00 AM so I could get ready for work, dress and then still get to work on time. That was not enough time, so I ended up moving it up to 3:00 AM.
Your read that right! I started getting up at 3 in the morning because it was my only way to get the amount of work I needed to get in before I left for work. This was stage one of developing my discipline as an entrepreneur. I am not saying you have to get up that early, but you do need to put in some time working before you head to work.
Use Your Lunch Wise
Now I am not saying you have to work through it, but you should use it to check up on some different things because you need to know what is going on with your business and by lunch, there could be a lot of updates.
Build Your Team Quickly
If you are going to work, you need to at least hire one person part time or have a family member that can go and check up on things. The great thing about working is that it gives you some steady income to invest in your business. It also means that you are forcing yourself to build a team and this is not bad.
Where many entrepreneurs get trapped is when they run their group home full time, and they become used to doing it all alone. In this situation, it can often become difficult to hand the reins over to someone else. You can never be a passive business owner until you can officially pass that torch.
Dominate Your Weekends
If you have been the type of person that says TGIF, I can promise you that is over! There is no more weekend fun; the weekend is just time to work on your business. That is all your weekends will be. Prepare your family and friends for this reality as early as possible and stick to your discipline.
Eat High Energy Foods
Many people underestimate the energy that will need to maintain this lifestyle. A poor diet will sap your energies quickly; you need to stay as energetic as possible by eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies in your diet. Eating more fast food because you are busy is quick ways to lose your energy faster and not be able to sustain throughout the day.
Instead of sleeping for hours when you do get tired, concentrate on having 20-minute naps at most. You can also do research into different sleep cycles if you are brave. There are ways to feel recharged and spend less time sleeping, but you’re going to have to make some changes.
Workout Daily
When a lot of people think of working out, they believe they have to spend hours doing this. It is also really easy to push working out off because you are so busy. Resist this temptation and stick to your discipline. There is no better way to increase energy than to get your body moving.
Every day I in the evening when I start to get tired I get on the ground and just do ten pushups. I can do much more than this, but the point is just to get some energy and not to use it to get fit. It is simple things like this that you can use to inspire you to workout.
Use Hate to Escape
I don’t like to use the word hate, but we can only be motivated to make a huge change in our life when we HATE where we are. I know some people that have gone from extreme poverty to success and what they all have in common is a HATE for where they currently are. They did not like the fact that they shared a bed with eight siblings. They did not like the fact that they had no food in their fridge and they went and took action.
One of the biggest enemies to greatness is satisfaction. Many times we can lie to ourselves and say that we like what we have and where we are because we think that it is gratitude. Thanks and satisfaction are different. Gratitude is just being thankful whereas satisfaction is being ok with where you are. One makes you happy but keeps the drive, the other leaves you with no drive to improve. If you don’t like your financial situation, you need to say that. I went to the grocery store one time and tried to get a carton of eggs and had insufficient funds and on that day I never said again because I HATED that feeling.
What Do You need?
The last discipline that you’re doing to need is spending every day dedicated to learning about this business. You don’t want to start and have to figure it out as you go when your time is most valuable. You want to get inside the membership as early as possible and build that discipline so you can have even more confidence for success. Our books are a wonderful place to start this journey.
