Hi, and welcome to another episode of Outspoken. You're joined as usual by journalists Amy and Sophie Torber. Unfortunately Kate's not here because she's doing work with the thirty sixers, but Sophie and I decided we wanted to do a business related podcast because Sophie and I run a public relations firm called the pr Bible, which we're actually set.
To rename Almi soov.
Yes, we have been deciding on a name for the past couple of weeks and we finally come up with one that we're happy with and we will review it at some point, but we've registered it, which is really exciting. But we're already at the end of January. So we wanted to share some motivational tips on how to get your twenty twenty started doing something that you actually love. And I think so many of us find ourselves in
careers that we might not be passionate about now. I think so many of us find ourselves in jobs that we might suddenly lose a bit of passion for, and so I think we were put in a really difficult position in twenty sixteen where we still loved what we were doing, but we were unable to do it. For those who might not have heard our first episode of Outspoken, we were reporters for Channel seven for a number of years and it did come to a point where we had to do, well, we're forced to move on.
And do something else. Let's just say so.
For me, I had to get a job immediately, so I'd never really considered doing PR before. And I think it's worth mentioning that there were issues surrounding why we couldn't get another job in journalism. So maybe go back and listen to episode one and that will get you up to speed if you're really interested. But I suppose we had to try and find something else we were passionate about, or we had to look further to other
industries that our degree related to. Yeah, and we weren't really in a position where we were that passionate about PR or content creation to start our own business, because we were very much in the mindset of journalism. So I found a job at a local PR firm and Amy got a job at Mix one or two point three doing their content creation. But I think we can safely say they were jobs where we didn't really feel fulfilled.
We weren't happy.
Yeah, I just remember having that Sunday night dread, and I think a lot of people listening may be able to relate with that. It's just where you're like, no, I can't go back, and every Friday you'd look forward to, oh my god, it's going to be the weekend, and the weekend would go so quickly and you'd be back
at doing something you hated. I used to get the biggest dread on Sunday afternoons, and it's just that feeling in the pit of your stomach, and that's when you know you really aren't enjoying work and you're not somewhere where you feel motivated. It was hard during those times because I previously had a job which I loved, and although there was sometimes a bit of dread, it was more anxiety that came along with being a reporter because
you might not have known what you were doing. I really did love the majority of people I worked with, and you felt like you had a career there, and then when that all ended, it was about re establishing what we actually liked doing. So I think that those jobs in a way were really good because it showed us that we really didn't want to be doing that, and we didn't want to be working for somebody else, and you do really lost when you don't have that
inspiration anymore or that end goal. Like for us, our goal was to become a reporter, and we got there, and then obviously it was to better ourselves in that field.
And when you're in this new field.
Where you don't really know what your end goal is, it can be quite depressing. Well, when I was working at the radio station, that's where I decided that we
both needed to do something that we actually loved. And I think although public relations wasn't necessarily our passion to begin with, and that's not why we did a journalism degree, it slowly became such a desirable career because one we could run our own business, we could set our own targets, so the idea that we could actually have a say how much we earn as well was also really desirable. The thing I loved is we've worked for a number
of dickheads. Now I have to say that a number of dickhead bosses, a few lovely ones as well, But when you've worked for a dickhead, there's nothing more gratifying than being your own boss and calling your own shots. Well, when we decided we wanted to start our own business and not work for dickheads.
As you're talking about.
It was really hard to work out whether we could do it as a side hustle, and in your circumstance you couldn't because you're already working for a PR firm. But I think if people are listening and they're thinking about starting something up, sometimes a side hustle is such a good idea because it does take a lot of hard work to launch a business, and there is a
lot of risk involved. And I think at the moment it's become really a popular thing to be an entrepreneur and to run your own business, but there are some realities of running a full time business. We would love to talk to you guys further about. One question I get a lot from people is how did you break the news to your boss that you were starting up your own public relations firm?
And that can be the case.
That could be the case for a lot of other people, even if your side hustle is perhaps unrelated.
It is that moment where you've got.
To put your I mean, because it is kind of a dream on the table, and you do feel silly because you don't have it all worked out a lot of the time, I mean, but it's supposed in your instance it was quite awkward because your boss might have seen our company. Sorry, your boss might have seen our business as a threat to her business. So how did you navigate all of that? And what would be your advice for someone who is starting up a business that
might actually rival the one they're working at. My advice would be that you've got to do what's best for you at the end of the day. I had been working at this public relations company for about a year, and I wasn't motivated or being appreciated there, and I didn't think that I owed it to my boss at the time to explain that I was opening up and
other public relations firm. Now, there were a few bigger elements to that, because I was running a huge campaign at the time, and I was worried I wouldn't get to finish that off for the client's sake. So you were worried that her reaction to you saying, Hey, I'm leaving to start this business. You thought she might react by saying You've got to leave immediately and this business
would be left in the law reach. That's right at the same time, we were set to do this as a side hustle, so we thought we locked another work to do, which didn't actually turn out, so our side hustle turned into a full time muscle. Yeah, but my advice would be you don't owe your ex boss the world. What I ended up doing was saying to my boss that I really wasn't passionate about what I was doing.
I wanted to explore other opportunities, and then before we launched the business, I followed up with an email to let the person know that we would be starting our business, and that was not received well. I think that's a really important point though, talking about other people's expectations of you, and I think at the end of the day, you're
ultimate happiness is the most important thing to you. So you shouldn't let the fear of, say telling your current boss that you're going to start a business or a side hustle. It shouldn't stop you from actually doing what
you love. And I think a lot of times people will often be worried about maybe what their friends might think of them or their family, And I know in our situation it was quite funny because we of course had told our mum and dad that we were thinking of launching a business, but it was kind of in the really early stages, and as we mentioned before, we thought it was going to be a side hustle and we had this other opportunity lined up and that would
be our main income source and that ended up falling through. But thankfully for us, our mum and dad were in Europe at the time, so it was kind of good because we didn't have the stress of having to have that conversation in person, even though we were what twenty eight or something. You do always think, oh, my gosh, what are my parents going to think. I think there is a lot of judgment as well well for people who are older and have always worked in traditional roles.
For other people, I feel like younger people get it a bit more because with this world of social media, there's so many opportunities to work from home or work from your own small office and to build an empire. But I think for a lot of older people it's not something that was done back in the day. That is so true, and I feel like the Internet, as you say, has made it more possible for us to be able to have these kind of opportunities. And one question that we get asked a lot is how do
you go and actually get new clients on board? So it could be new clients. If you're a videographer and you've got a company or sort of any business, it really relates to how do you get those first clients or customers. And I think that was our biggest struggle because it's really hard to get people on board when they've never heard of your company.
So one thing we did was we offered our.
Services for a really reduced price for one of our new clients, and who was a netballer and she was a and it was probably our smartest move because she is well known, so she obviously told other people that she enjoyed working with us, and then other people saw us working with her, so it legitimized our business. We also did free videography work because I was trained up as a video journalist when I was at seven and
we thought, oh, well, lots of businesses need video. Well, I think you've got to be really careful about doing free work. I'm in two mindsets about it. I think when you're starting off and if you don't have much experience in the field that you're working in, it is a good idea to do some form of free work, but I think you can back it up by asking about doing a collaboration. So, for example, just say your side hustle is a florist and someone wants free flowers
for an event. If you say, okay, I'm happy to write them for free. But then you say, but I want to do a collaboration with you, whereby you promote my business on your social media. I think that's a healthy exchange. Also, I think if it's with a huge, huge company, it's a really good idea to do it. And at first you might be thinking, well, this business obviously has a lot of money they could be paying me.
The thing is, if you've got no experience or your business is new, aligning yourself with a big business is one way to get other big clients on board.
So I would highly.
Recommend hitting up some big businesses and saying you're going to do some work for free for them. Going back to your question about how to get new clients on board when you are a new business on new customers, I think you've also got to fake it till you make it.
Yeah.
I mean with us, we used a lot of our previous experience in journalism to help us. But at the same time, you've got to get your Instagram account running, you've got to get your website up. You've got to make your business appear that it's been doing it for longer than it has. You don't have to point out
to people, oh, you're my first client. I think one good tip for people who are starting a business to make it look legit, as you're saying so, is to ditch your email address that's at hotmail or at Gmail. It is so cheap to actually just get a business email address connected to your name, your business name. I mean, that was one of the first things we did, because if you're emailing someone from a Gmail account, you're instantly your emails instantly going to be deleted.
You also have to draw.
Upon any contacts that you have made in your professional.
Career as well.
There's always someone you could probably think of to reach out for advice. It's all about being confident and making those connections again or reconnecting with people. That's what we did when we first started out business. Sometimes it is just jumping on the phone or meeting face to face because sometimes this email stuff just doesn't work. Also, I think some people make the mistake of sending out emails
which are clearly copied and pasted. So I think it's easy to get caught up in that and to think you're being efficient by doing that. But sometimes it's so good if you just spend an extra five minutes looking into a potential client, you know, if they're a business, looking what they do, what's past events they've done, and then you can mention something personal in your emails that actually looks like you've taken the time to know what that business does. I think it's important too to make
sure that you have set up the business correctly. Now you were very good at this stuff. Now could you talk us through how you set up our business. The thing is I knew nothing about setting up a business. I was just a journalist. I didn't really know much about business. I knew that eventually one day i'd like to have one, but I never looked into it. And that's where different government business sites help you, because they do give you the steps to setting it up, but
some of their advice is so contradictory. They do have a chat function which I found really useful, but I think if you are looking to set up a business, The first thing you need to do is to actually register your business name, and there is a site where you can check the availability of your business name, so first try and find out.
I think that was really hard for us.
I mean, we actually hate our business name now and as we said, we're changing it for those who might be wondering, our business is the pr Bible, and along our two year journey we have discovered that probably wasn't a great name to come up with. We've been asked on several occasions whether we're religious. We do so much more videography work now, so we feel it doesn't really
reflect what we do. But at the same time, it really helped with our SEO and for those wondering it was because of places like the Bierley Bible or the lad Bible. That's kind of the concept we were going with. Yeah, but it's also easy. It's easy to sort of put off your business because you can't think of a business name. So I think sometimes it is just a good to just go, okay, I can't think of it, like this
is the best I can come up with. At the time, that was the best business name we could come up with, and at the end of the day. There are so many businesses out there with weird names that probably sounded weird to begin with, but now because of branding, and they've been around for ages. You I mean Google. If you told me that you wanted to call our business
Google Sophie, I'd be like what. And we have to We have been doing a lot of research about the sort of names for business because we are rebranding.
As we mentioned.
If someone is at home listening to this thinking of coming up with how to come up with the name, one of the biggest tips is to use a two syllable word, not a three hint that might even give people a hint of what our name is going to be. The other important thing when setting up your business is obviously registering an ABN and a tax file number and working out if you want to be a sole trader,
a partnership or a company. So SOF and I are a family partnership, and that's really great for us because it means that at the end of the financial year, we're purely taxed on whatever we have each earned, so rather than if you're a company, you also get taxed on your earning. So it's really important to look into that I think one thing that one thing we've learned
as well is it is so important to get contracts shortage. Yeah, sometimes it's hard because, especially in a job like public relations where your relationship with the client is everything, sometimes you can get in a situation where you feel it's awkward, Yeah, to make them sign the papers. At the end of the day, you look like a good business owner if you're being professional and dealing with things in a professional manner. Well, ultimately it makes it less awkward if they don't pay,
doesn't it. One huge tip as well is you do really have to manage the back end of your business because you can feel like you were getting all this work done, you're absolutely killing it, and then you can look at your bank account and you've got no money
in there. Because you've also got to remember the a lot of different businesses that you may be working with, they all run on their own rostering slash finance system, so you've really got to get on top of making sure your invoices are in at a particular time and
sending reminders. If they're late, just follow it up. Also, another one is to set up if you don't have an account's team, which we didn't have initially is to set up an email that looks as if you do, because if you're dealing with someone face to face, it can be so awkward having to ask for money. So set up and accounts at whatever your business is, and you can send emails from their obviously your invoices and
that kind of thing. And I think another important thing to remember is when you start a business and it's your full time business, you are not going to earn very much in your first year. So if you were wanting to take that risk and invest your time and money into a business, you probably should have a safe amount of savings that you can potentially live off if the business doesn't take off. In our first year, we earned a modest amount that we could live off, but
we had to rely on some of our savings. And so what you'll find from year to year is you easily double your earnings from the first year the second year. Once you're established, it just becomes easier and easier, but
it will take time. I think the best piece of advice is to also make an appointment to sit and speak to your accountant, because they are just a wealth of information, and our accountant in particular he sat down with us and made us aware that businesses don't earn that much in the first year, and I felt like that was kind of good to hear, because sometimes after the first year you can feel like a failure because
perhaps you weren't earning what you were before. But owning a business is a process, and that's the most exciting thing about it is you have control over how much money you can potentially earn. And for those of you who might be listening that maybe aren't in the position to throw themselves into the deep end and launch a full time business, I think side hustles are really important for us to delve into a little bit. As we said, we thought the pr Bible was going to be our
side hustle, but it didn't turn out that way. At the moment, this podcast is Sophie and My side hustle and also Kates. It's something we love doing and one day we hope it will grow bigger and bigger. I think what's amazing is how lucky we are to be living in twenty twenty when we have the Internet and the ability to be able to run a side business successfully. If you think back to when your parents were your
age they didn't have the Internet. It wasn't that easy just to start up an Instagram business or sell stuff on eBay. So if I were talking about a little bit, because for those who listen to the podcast, they'll know that I've been a big fan of Facebook Marketplace recently, and I suppose that is the most simple side hustle one could have if you're looking to earn a little
bit of extra money. So I did some quick sums and I worked out if you were to make one hundred dollars a week just by selling the old crap you had around the house or going to a garage sale and flipping something, you would make an extra five thousand, two hundred dollars a year.
So that could be.
Your holiday fund, that could be your home loan's fund. I don't think you should be telling people the same, especially those who live in Adelaide, because you're going to have some competition for your garage sales and flipping. I think that is some good advice because at the end of the day, a lot of people say, how do you find time to have this side hustle, But the real answer is, well, if you're wanting to do a side hustle. There's obviously some passion involved and some dissatisfaction
with what you're doing at the moment. So if it is your passion project, you were going to want to spend time doing it. I think it takes a certain
person to get excited about flipping things. So it's quite funny because I was going on and on and on about, oh my god, I made ten dollars from ten cents flipping a Cruella Deville Dalmatian plastic toy, and I was going on and on to my boyfriend Dale about it, and it actually motivated him to start his own little side hustle, which is him selling Wii games.
And he he's got a.
Great job and he loves his job, and I actually think he's getting more excited about hunting down the we stuff because we were getting so excited about making ten dollars when really we could make so much more doing our other jobs that we were just getting such joy out of it, as well as obviously flipping things online and searching on Marketplace. There are obviously a wide range of different side hustles you can have, and some people obviously start a side hustle with the hope of turning
into their full time career. I think a side hustle is sometimes a really good way to start a full time business because one, you can see if you enjoy it too, you can see how well it is traveling.
And three, sometimes.
It gives you the potential to keep in your safety zone so you still have a regular income coming in.
Yeah, that's right.
And if you are interested in having a side hustle, I suppose you need to work out if there is any money required to back it. So, for example, if you're launching a T shirt business, you are going to need funds to be able to get the shirts made and printed and all of that kind of stuff. So
maybe that's more of a high risk side hustle. So you might want to look at having a side hustle that involves potentially being a freelance writer, or you could be an uber driver on the side, or you could rent your room out for Airbnb if you wanted to make extra money. But you could do so many things. You could write an ebook and then use your time marketing it, so there's endless opportunities of things you could do. And how's this, Sofie, If you made just two hundred
dollars a week extra on your side hustle. That's a saving of ten two hundred dollars you could be making a year moving back to running your own business or having a side hustle. One of the realities is that you are probably going to have a home office at some point, and when you first start, that can seem like the most exciting thing in the world because you don't have to go through peak hour traffic, you can work in your pajamas. You know, there's all these positives.
But then at the same time, you've got to give yourself some discipline because even though you're working from home, that is your full time job right there.
And the thing that I faced.
Personally was this in built guilt about the fact that I was working from home. You get I think some people get jealous when you say that you work from home, but the reality is so different.
And that's the thing.
When you're working for someone else, you're on someone else's time, so you can chat to your friends at work it doesn't matter. But if everything is depending on you, you're going to work fucking hard to make sure it's the success. And the thing that I found as well is if I'm putting my name to something, I want to do a really good job of it because that is representing you, especially if it's your business.
So I think the.
Best thing you can tell yourself is to just try and rid yourself of that guilty feeling. I mean, who cares if you're not driving through peak hour traffic. Perfect If you're feeling guilty about it, get up a bit earlier and use.
That time to add to your business.
But also you do have to think about all the time that you do waste at work, whether it's gossiping with your work friend, going and getting a coffee, having an extended lunch break, as you said, driving in peak hou or traffic. You think about it, and all that time that you could waste normally at your old job, you can make up so much time in your new job. I think you do also have to have some barriers
up though, because it is a professional working environment. So you know, if you're living with a partner or a sister or whoever it may be, and they're like, oh, why didn't you get a chance to do this whilst you're you were home all day? No, I'm sorry, you're
at work all day. So you do have to have that lineup, and I think that's where it is important to build yourself some form of permanent work space, whether it's an office or a designated spot in the house to work from, because then you do feel like that is your time to be working. I mean, I hear some people work from their bed, and that just makes
it feel sick. It's like when you're at UNI and they're like, oh, never do your assignment from your bed, because you have no distinction between sleeping and working.
I remember when I was at UNI.
I used to do my assignments on my bed and I'd be like, oh, you mean working solidly for half an hour, you deserve to rest your eyes for a few minutes. And then I'd wake up and it would be like an hour and I would have been asleep for an hour, and I remember Mum would always be like, I'm so proud of you for studying for so long, and I feel so bad. I used to be the worst. It was when Facebook was so popular, and I'd be like, Okay, I'll do half an hour, I'll write a paragraph and
then I'll go on Facebook. I do like your point of setting up a dedicated work space, because when you do start a business, you can find yourself working longer hours and if you're sitting on the couch, working from the couch, I've been guilty of that before. When you go to turn off your computer, you kind of feel that you've not left your workspace and you can feel
all dizzy and gross. And I think it's also important to learn to switch off, because when you do run a business, you get so passionate about it and you can find yourself working longer and longer and then not having that time to switch off.
I think it is also worthwhile.
I mean this probably applies more to women than men's actually.
Get ready in the morning.
I think there's nothing grosser than sitting in like pajamas all day.
That's what I used to do at Uti, and you just felt gross.
It is amazing how much more motivated you are if you are in nicer clothes. That being said, I do think that you have to sometimes take on board the perks as well of having your own business. And I know the reason we wanted to have our own business was to also be happier people. So, as we said, we weren't really enjoying what we were doing, and we
felt like having our own business. We could be our own bosses, set our own time, and also provide ourselves time to work on other side projects that we were really passionate about. And so obviously one of them has been this podcast, and another is another project that's kind of a secret project that we're working on. So I think you also need to take an account to your happiness if you're just working away and working away, and normally when you start a business it's just you or
another person you can get in your own head. You need outside influence and so sometimes it will get stuff you're working in our home office. So so we need to do this a bit more. We need to go and have meetings with each other out at a nice spot down at the beach. On the other hand, people do also have to remember that you are probably going to work harder than you've ever worked. You shouldn't just start up a business in the hope that it'll be
less work, less hours. You can call your own shots, because if you're working in a business where you have clients, instead of having one boss, you've probably got ten fifteen different bosses. Well, we hope that does give you some inspiration to potentially start your own passion project, and we hope it hasn't come across us lecturing you, but we thought some of you might be interested in some of the background on starting a new business or getting motivated.
For a side hustle.
Feel free to hit us up on our Outspoken Instagram DM if you do have any questions about starting a business or a side hustle, because we'd love to help you out in any way we can.
Should we drop the new business name or keep no?
So next week so if and I are going to be creating some content and some branding around our new business name, which we're so excited about. And if you have enjoyed today's episode, we would absolutely love it if you could share it on your Insta story. Our Instagram account is Outspoken Underscore, the Underscore podcast, and we are the same on space. But we do love seeing your Instagram stories. It does make our day and if you really did enjoy it, feel free to leave us a
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