Hi you, 

How are you on this Monday afternoon? You might answer with something bright and cheery about starting hard on this week's hustle, radiating an energy that you do or don't feel. It's more likely you're wondering what success feels like - or if this hustle will ever become something more.

A lot of us have been working on side projects and income streams so you've probably been seeing those hit ads on Instagram or Facebook that read like this: 

• How to Grow Your Instagram Followers the Real Way
• How an Email List can take Your Business to Six-Figures
• The 1# Business Course for Entrepreneurs who are Serious about Success

Many of these are kind, personable, successful people who will offer to teach you any number of tricks of the trade. Most of this is legit. They could sell you their knowledge and it will likely educate you in helpful ways. I can recommend a few as excellent resources. 

But here's what it whisper-screams to me, and maybe to you. 

"These people are on top of their game and you're still 153 notches down the totem pole. You're not there yet. You might never be there. You might end up working a 9-5 for the rest of your life... you should be doing something different." 

<cue discouragement>

In other words, they're not always relatable or approachable because they're teaching from a platform way above mine. They've got the how-to's but they're no longer in the struggle. They've got half a mil followers, a best-selling book, a humongous fiddle-leaf fig plant, and a recommendation by Gary V.  I've got:

• out of bed
• a blog
• half a chocolate croissant
• <checking> Nope, no NY Times Best-Selling book yet
• the hustle that won't quit

THE HUSTLE THAT WON'T QUIT

It's really hard work. If anyone has got a grasp on reality they're not trying to start their own business because it's easy - you do it because you want something more than easy. For many people it's ok to work for someone else. I'm not just saying that, I work for someone else right now and love working in that environment. Honestly, I don't love the work, but I could work there for awhile longer and my life would be perfectly fine. 

But I also want to copy-write and eventually write books. So I'm learning the ropes of entrepreneurship. No one becomes an entrepreneur by trade (unless they teach) but they become one because it's necessary to the process of realizing a goal. It's empty talk if you don't have something concrete to do, and are willing to do things that aren't your forte. That's what being an entrepreneur is: taking risks outside one skill set. 

It's hard to find the courage to figure this stuff out on the fly, and you can only buy so many "how-to" courses. They always have good stuff to learn, and boy have I been learning, but I never relate to them because we're in such vastly different places. They miss capturing the mental hardships of different stages of "not quite there" and how to push past it to find success. Especially for introverts. 

Awhile ago I was part of a thread on a marketing group talking about aspects of being an entrepreneurial introvert that are hard to overcome. 

• Making phone calls <grins>
• Learning how to market yourself 
• Learning how to market yourself without feeling like a phony.

I've been wanting to somehow address this but I kept waiting because I didn't feel I had the authority to teach. And I don't. However... 

I'm here. You're here. I'm showing up, you're showing up. So I thought. Maybe you might actually want to hear from someone still working at it in realtime, not from a platform of #partnering #ad with Anthropologie and publishing with the New York Times, but still a few notches up from Ground Zero. 

Maybe we could both go on this ride together. 

If the struggle of being introverted in the business world rings true with you, I invite you to join me via email to talk about it. It's a very specific topic, so I wanted it to be something you could subscribe to instead of adding to the chatter of web conversations where not everyone might be interested. To keep it simple, it'll be a weekly email, sent straight to you to await your leisure or the third cup of coffee, for reading and growing together. 

We all start somewhere. 

Cheers, 

L. Raine

**All titles are fictional and are not intended to represent any real courses or titles.