Episode 168. How to Plan Your Week as a Side Hustler: Chill AF Solopreneur (Part 1)

For many side hustlers, learning how to manage your time to maintain work-life balance is top priority. This is vital to not just the success of your solopreneur business and personal brand, but also to your overall wellbeing.

This is Part 1 of a 4 part series, where we focus on how you, too, can build a chill AF solopreneur business and lifestyle. This series is dedicated to those of you, myself included, who want to build a highly successful and creative business as a solopreneur, and at the same time, have a very relaxed, stable, and comfortable lifestyle.

In This Episode:

What to focus on in your business as a side hustler
Lessons from my side hustling days that allowed me to live a relaxed lifestyle outside of work
How COWORK & CHILL with Cheryl (CCC) can support you as a side hustler
The support, coaching, tools, habits, etc you need in place to facilitate taking action on your business this week
The full breakdown of a week in my business, including the hours I work and exactly what I do as a side hustler (including Pen & Paper Time)

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Managing work-life balance as a side hustler

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In this particular episode, we will talking about:

1) what you need to do in your business on a weekly basis as a side hustler

2) examples from business during my side hustling days

3) the support, coaching, tools, habits, etc, you need in place to facilitate taking action on your business this week as a side hustler

4) an hourly breakdown of what I did in my business on a typical week, back when I was a side hustler

On the next episode of this series, we will talk about How to Plan Your Week as a Full Time Entrepreneur. In Part 3, we will talk about How to Create a Relaxed Lifestyle While Growing Your Business, such as taking breaks, self care, and going on vacation while growing your business.

Finally, Part 4, Feeling Stagnant in Business, Inconsistent Income, and Other Q&A’s, will be a Q&A where I answer your questions about being a chill AF solopreneur and sharing the behind-the-scenes of my business and life that you all want to hear more about.

By the way, if you have a question that you’d like me to answer or if there’s certain behind-the-scenes you want to hear more about, you can drop your questions at this anonymous form.

With that, let’s dive into today’s conversation on how to plan your week as a side hustler and be a chill AF solopreneur.

To start the conversation, let’s unpack what exactly you need to do for your solopreneur business on a weekly basis, particularly if you’re a side hustler.

What to focus on in your business as a side hustler

Broadly speaking, I see two major categories in how I spend my time when it comes to my business

Build your body of work to 1) become known for your thought leadership and 2) share your work/sell your offer.
Actually working with the clients who have paid you and delivering on the offer you’ve sold.

When it comes to building your body of work to become known for your thought leadership, I currently recommend for side hustlers to pick one social media platform and one long form content platform.

What I’d choose in 2024 is LinkedIn and a video podcast, which you can then extract the audio and upload to audio only platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Now, how exactly do you showcase your thought leadership through your body of work, let alone build thought leadership?

Here’s what I’ll offer: What do you want to be known for in the next 1-3 years? → After you’ve decided on what you want to be known for, start to build a body of work to support that showcases your ever-expanding thought leadership, and be relentless in sharing your unique thought leadership.

Perhaps, the question of “What do you want to be known for” feels really daunting. Maybe you’re thinking how the hell do I choose just one thing? What if I want to be known for several things? Or maybe you’re on the other end of the spectrum and have zero idea what you want to be known for.

If you are having a hard time streamlining what you want to be known for, I’d suggest talking about all of the things on your mind and just try. Specifically, give yourself maybe a temporary practice run BEFORE you decide on what to zone in on.

For example, write 10 LinkedIn articles for practice, then commit to something. Or do 10 podcast episodes. Or commit to showing up on Instagram for 3 months just to talk about anything and everything. Give yourself practice and play around with the topics that might interest you.

On the other hand, If you’re still figuring out what you want to be known for, I suggest starting with the following:

Your story and lived experiences
1. ex: Cheryl started off in late 2018/early 2019 by sharing her decision to quit law school, how I navigated my parent’s disappointment and disapproval, etc.
Your opinions about the world at large
1. ex: Cheryl talks a lot about her 3 philosophies on how to create your own version of success: 1) Sometimes, creating a life that you’re proud of is NOT what others expect of or want from you. This means you have to stand firm when pursuing what you truly believe in and always take full responsibility for your decisions and actions 2) It is okay if people don’t support you in the beginning. Stay committed to your vision and goals 3) Ultimately, creating your dream life, career, and business is a choice you have to make. There’s no right or wrong. Just make a decision and move forward!

I suggest starting here because these are your “truths” – No one can argue with you about how true they are. These are your stories and viewpoints!

For both camps, when you start to get more clarity on what it is you want to be known for, a content framework I typically suggest is:

What are stories you can tell?
What are ways you can help your client?
What are your opinions about either 1) your work or industry 2) life or the world at large?
What are ways you can document your work-in-progress, behind-the-scenes of your work, how you’re growing both personally and professionally, etc?

When it comes to building your body of work to share about your work and market/sell your offers, what I recommend for side hustling entrepreneurs is to focus on selling only one offer for at least 6 months. Build your identity and confidence in your ability to sell that one offer for 6+ months.

Here’s why I suggest selling only one offer for at least 6 months:

First, You need time to understand your strengths in selling, the areas you want to improve on, and how to address questions or objections that your audience has about working with you → Changing your offer isn’t going to change or improve your marketing and sales skills.
Second, It takes time to understand how you want to help people. But if you keep changing your offers, it’s harder for you to gain clarity on what you’re good at and hence what refinements to make in your offer.
Third, it also takes time to build brand awareness and demand for one offer alone. But if you keep flip-flopping around offers and continue to create a new one, it’s a lot harder to build up the reputation for one signature offer.

Honestly, from my three years of side hustling, I found that I really needed to stay focused and streamlined in what I chose to do in my business given that I have a limited amount of time I could dedicate to my body of work and marketing my offers.

On the other hand, when you actually have clients who say yes to working with you and pay you, now you’ve got to deliver on the program or service. This is an obvious non-negotiable for any business owner.

Depending on what sort of service-based business you run, whether it be a coaching business or a web design business or anything else in between, the tasks required of you will ultimately differ and depend on the nature of your work and craft.

That’s it! Even right now as a full-time entrepreneur, my business hours are spent on these two brand categories of business related activities.

To summarize:

1) Build your body of work to become known for your thought leadership and also to share your work/sell your offer, then…

2) Actually work with the clients who have paid you and deliver on the offer you’ve sold.

Lessons from my side hustling days that allowed me to live a relaxed lifestyle outside of work

I want to share a few key lessons I gathered during my side hustler days which allowed me to still live a pretty relaxed lifestyle outside of work during my side hustler days. It’s also paved the foundation for today and how I live my life, now as a full-time entrepreneur.

Back in 2019, when I first started my business on top of my full time job, I did everything possible, including Instagram (IG) stories, IG lives, IG posts, Facebook (FB) lives, FB group, email newsletter, freebies, emails, LinkedIn, YouTube, Podcast, and working with clients… all on top of my day job.

Naturally, I struggled in my business, mental health, and personal life.

Very quickly, I burnt out and stopped my business from around August 2019 to around February/March 2020.

2020:

When I restarted my business in March 2020, I committed to only showing up on Instagram. I also started to reduce my consumption of content from other business coaches, and challenged myself to share more content based on my own opinions and lived experiences. This allowed me to create Instagram content on a daily basis that I am really proud of, without feeling like I “have” to get inspiration from other coaches.
Later, in October 2020, because I was developing my own voice and ideas via Instagram content, I wanted to start a podcast. This wasn’t on my agenda for Q4 2020, but in August and September 2020, I was enjoying content creation (for Instagram) SO MUCH that I decided I would love to go deeper and longer via a podcast.

That said, I want to peel back the curtains even further.

Throughout 2020 from March to November 2020, I was not booking any discovery calls for my signature high ticket coaching program at the time. (Quick disclaimer: During the Summer of 2020, I did work with clients in a much smaller coaching package, but I started to sell coaching packages at a higher price point around August 2020).

Long story short, I signed zero clients during that time, but December 2020 was my first 10K month ever. And January 2021 was another month where I created 10K in sales as well.

What’s the lesson here? I would like to attribute this result to how I spent the many months prior to December 2020 to focus solely on creating my best content ever.

For example, by committing to doing daily Instagram content, that alone gave me so much practice and confidence, so much so that I wanted to create even more via the podcast.

And now, the podcast is the reason why most of our clients decide to apply and join our signature coaching programs.

The lesson? One small area of improvement can create massive changes in other areas.

All in all, for side hustlers ESPECIALLY, since you have a full-time job outside of your business on top of everything else going on in your personal life, the primary takeaway I want to offer is: Focus on mastering 1 or 2 things at a time. There is no rush to master everything. Small tweaks alone can lead to massive results.

Honestly, focusing on JUST the basics, it works.

But more often than not, side hustling entrepreneurs get impatient and bored from doing the basics and making small improvements, over and over again.

So I really hope that this is a lesson that you’ll internalize in your business, especially if it’s important to you to create a relaxed lifestyle outside of your business and full-time job.

How COWORK & CHILL with Cheryl (CCC) can support you as a side hustler

This is where I want to make a nice segue and tell you about a fresh new offer that’s PERFECT for solopreneur side hustlers such as yourself who want to have both a successful business and a chill AF life outside of work.

Introducing COWORK & CHILL with Cheryl (CCC). This is a 3-month 1:1 experience with one primary objective to support you in becoming a chill AF solopreneur who gets SO much done every single week.

It is for the solopreneur who has invested in all the coaching programs, workshops, and courses on business, marketing, sales, and content, but you’re struggling to:

1. Hold yourself accountable to all the things you said you’d do for your business

2. Figure out what your unique voice is (and showcase that in your content)

3. Get everything done without sacrificing the other parts of your life that matter to you (ex: rest, social life, health & fitness, doing artsy things, volunteering with cats, etc.)

This is precisely the gap that CCC is designed to fill.

In CCC, there are no video modules that you have to spend hours and hours digesting.

Instead, it’s you and me in a chill AF digital room (or in-person, if you’re also based in Singapore) to hash ideas out and translate all of your brilliance into content pieces that are ready to go.

Together, we will put our big, beautiful brains and hearts together and build your body of work quickly and efficiently, with creativity, boldness, and impact.

Here’s how to gauge if CCC is for you:

You want to NOT sound like every other entrepreneur giving out generic or basic how-to tips.
You want to learn how to organize your ideas in a way that is not just clear and structured, but also very engaging for your audience.
You want someone to tell you if you’re writing the right thing, if this sounds clear enough, and if what you’re talking about is too basic or generic.
You want someone to give you tailored feedback and tell you what to improve on.
You want help getting all your best ideas out of your head because you lowkey don’t feel like what you have so far is good enough.
You want to be more confident in your ideas and the stories you want to share because honestly, there’s a LOT you want to say… But you’re scared to share it.
You want accountability – Someone who can kick your ass and put you back on track for your audacious 2024 dreams and goals.

If you check off most of these boxes, I’m pretty darn sure that CCC is going to change the game for you.

Whether you want to leverage CCC to help you create superb podcast episodes, or you want to focus on something else (ex: Blog posts, emails, sales pages, LinkedIn content, Instagram content, etc), all of that is totally within the scope of CCC.

After all, this program is meant to be your creative and strategic content partner

For all the information on the program and how to join, you can head on over to https://cheryltheory.com/ccc.

I’m SO excited for you to join me inside CCC, and honestly this is SUCH a fantastic offer for those of you who are side hustlers, ESPECIALLY if you’re a side hustler who wants to build your business in a super chill and relaxed way.

The support, coaching, tools, habits, etc you need in place to facilitate taking action on your business this week

Besides joining CCC as a way to support you and your solopreneur business, I also want to emphasize, especially for side hustlers, to include in their daily or weekly schedule some sort of mindset and energy routines, tools or practices.

Because, in order to help support YOU, the business owner, in taking action on your plan and action items for your business, you need to take care of your mind and body, which are literally the driving force behind you being able to do the action items you planned out.

This is going to looks different for everyone, but here are some examples to consider include:

Having weekly exercising and movement in your schedule.
Eating foods that nourish your body, rather than drain you.
Doing regular self-coaching and getting coached.
Going to therapy.
Putting on a nice OOTD, doing your hair, etc in the morning rather than staying in your WFH clothes.
Creating an aesthetic workspace in your home that’s dedicated to you to work on your business.
Daily walks and getting fresh air on a daily basis.
Getting quality sleep at night.
Having a morning routine or wind down night routine.

This may sound simple and “cute and nice”, but we cannot deny the importance of our body as a vessel to help us create results in the business.

Taking care of our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing is necessary as the CEO of your business. If your body and mind aren’t performing at its best. If you’re feeling sluggish all the time. If you’re always wallowing in self doubt or worrying about when you will sign your next client… That tells me that you may want to allocate more time to leveraging certain mindset and energy tools and practices first, before pushing and taking action.

We can’t outperform an exhausted body. We can’t outperform a mind that is in a heightened state of overwhelm or anxiety about your business.

Afterall, we are human beings with a human body and human brain and mind at the end of the day. And from what I have observed, the most successful entrepreneurs are also very adamant about taking care of their brains and bodies because they understand that they need both to take quality, consistent action overtime.

But more than that, besides showing up for your business, let’s be honest, you also need your mind and body to be relaxed and joyful in order to enjoy your life outside of work and business.

This matters both for your business as well as your capacity to really life a chill AF solopreneur lifestyle.

The full breakdown of a week in my business, including the hours I work and exactly what I do as a side hustler (including Pen & Paper Time)

Now, to tie this episode together, let’s go over a breakdown of a weekly schedule that is inspired by my own schedule back when I was side hustling in 2021.

First, when it comes to building my body of work to 1) become known for my thought leadership and 2) share my work/sell my offer.

During 2021, my body of work was primarily built upon podcast + Instagram. That said, if I was side hustling now in 2024, I’d do podcasts and LinkedIn. And where possible, I’d do emails as well, if my capacity permits.

In 2021, I was doing the following to build my body of work to both 1) showcase thought leadership and 2) sell my offers:

Creating original content for IG stories: 30-min x 7days = 3.5 hours
Repurposing your favorite IG stories that week into 4x IG feed posts: 15-min x 4 posts = 1 hour, up to 1.5 hours
Creating 1 weekly podcast episode = 4, sometimes 5 hours if I end up expanding on certain topics more than usual

Overall, I’d suggest spending around 8-10 hours, more or less, to build your body of work, become known for your thought leadership, and share about your incredible work and offers.

I know what some of you might be thinking, “But Cheryl, that sounds like too little time for content and marketing. It took me way more than 1 hour just to create one post for IG!!!!!!!!!”

First, yes, content might be taking you a lot longer right now compared to the schedule I’m suggesting. But being quick and efficient at content WITHOUT sacrificing the quality of your work, is really just a skill. And skills can be practiced and honed.

So keep practicing your content. Keep practicing writing content in your own voice. Keep practicing sharing ideas stemming from your own thought leadership. You WILL get faster at building your body of work if you continue to practice it week after week.

When I first started my podcast in 2020, I was spending a minimum of 6 hours per episode to write, record, edit and upload my episode. My episodes were typically 20 minutes long.

Compared to today, it takes usually 4 hours, no more than 5, to write my outline, records, briefly edit and then upload the episode. And now, my episodes are typically 30 minutes long. I now also do both an audio podcast and video podcast, whereas in 2020, I was only doing audio.

So I hear you. Right now, it might feel like your body of work is taking a long time. I get it. But trust me, you’ve got to keep practicing this skill to get not just better, but also faster.

This is also why I created the COWORK & CHILL with Cheryl. It’s truly a PERFECT offer for side hustlers and solopreneurs who feel like their content is taking wayyyyy longer than they’d like, and you’d love support to get much faster at creating content and marketing, without compromising on the potency, impact and clarity of your work. Seriously.

If you’re committed to getting a LOT done inside CCC and then have the rest of the week to live a chill AF life, come join me inside CCC. All the details can be found at https://cheryltheory.com/ccc.

Now on the other hand, there’s also the time spent working with the clients who have paid you and delivering on the offer you’ve sold. That will be additional hours each week outside of the 8 or 9 hours that we just discussed.

For side hustlers, I’d recommend no more than 8 (max 10) hours a week, beyond the 8 to 10 max hours spent on your body of work.

When I was a side hustler, I would allocate around 16 (no more than 18 usually) hours in TOTAL per week to my business. This included time spent on coaching calls with clients and time spent on building my body of work, building thought leadership, and making invitations to work with me.

Coaching calls with my clients will depend on how many clients I’m working with at a given time, but this usually looks like 1 hour of coaching per client, and maybe some in-between-call support.

One more thing I strongly recommend is to incorporate Pen & Paper Time on a regular basis into your schedule as a side hustler solopreneur. I’ll explain more about Pen & Paper Time in the next episode of this series, which is all about planning your week as a full-time entrepreneur.

But for now, what I want to share is that back in 2021, this was my first 6-figure year in the business, even as a side hustling solopreneur.

I think one of the biggest contributors was becoming known for my own unique “thought leadership”, concepts or frameworks, and the depth and quality of my content. This wouldn’t have been the case without incorporating Pen & Paper Time frequently into my calendar. So I’m very excited to talk more about Pen & Paper Time in the next episode of this series.

There we have it! How to plan your week as a side hustler and have a relaxed, chill AF life as a solopreneur.

To summarize, the weekly schedule I strongly recommend for side hustlers is spending around 8 (no more than 10) hours on your body of work, and around 8 (no more than 10) hours on client work/program delivery.

This is the schedule that I followed back when I was a side hustler, and although it did take some time for me to get faster and faster at my body of work. When I arrived at this weekly schedule, I was able to create a balanced lifestyle where I got to grow my business, work on my career, and also live a relaxed, chill AF lifestyle.

Next in this 4-Part series will be How to Plan Your Week as a Full Time Entrepreneur.

Then, in Part 3, we will talk about How to Create a Relaxed Lifestyle While Growing Your Business, such as taking breaks, self care, and going on vacation while growing your business.

Finally, in Part 4, we’ll be answering questions collected from you all and sharing the behind-the-scenes of my business and life that you all want to hear more about.

If you have a question that you’d like me to answer or if there’s certain behind-the-scenes you want to hear more about, you can drop your questions at this anonymous form.

Sounds good? Awesome. Let’s get to work.