Side Hustler's Perspective with Scotty.D.Russell

3 Crucial Lessons for Your Creative Pursuits During & Post-Quarantine Life has been a rollercoaster since shit started hitting the fan in early March. If you’re like I am, your entire routine was tossed to the curb, flattened by an 18-wheeler big rig truck, and then washed into the sewers with rats and poop. You’ve had to learn how to respond, adapt, and evolve when this adversity caught you with...

Lincoln Design Co. Shares Their Identity Process + Logo MAYhem Special In the world of design, April Showers don’t bring May Flowers...they bring a heavy-hitting logo-centric May episode.  My Lincoln Design familia is back for Round 3 for a special Logo MAY-hem Edition (Round 1: EP 41 , Round 2: EP 155 ). Lincoln Design Co., an industry-leading juggernaut, crushes the dopest identity systems, bran...

James Lewis on Creating Engaging Content That People Share Like Crazy There are 3 important lessons I’ve learned along my creative grind: Your creative dream won’t manifest overnight The process is more important than the destination Being consistent and willing to fail leads to breakthroughs OVER TIME If you can embrace these truths, then you have a wildly successful creative career ahead of you....

Josh Sullivan on How to Build a Successful Creative Business Whose path are you following right now: The path of someone you highly admire and draw a lot of inspiration from? The path you’ve been blazing on your own terms? No doubt, success leaves clues...but I’d advise you to steer away from building your creative empire based on the coattails of someone else’s achievements. You can take inspirat...

Melinda Livsey on How to Attract and Serve Your Ideal Client and/or Tribe It’s extremely hard to gain traction and see progress if you’re not sure: Who your work, product, or service is for What your secret sauce is that sets you apart The value you provide and why someone should care Regardless if you’re a side hustling artist, designer, or freelancer, these should be top of mind if you want to w...

Meg Lewis on How to Thrive by Being Yourself in Your Creative Work Meg Lewis is a rad freelance brand designer, motivating mentor, creative cheerleader, and wicked dancer who injects fun into whatever she touches out of Minneapolis, MN. I respect and admire the impact she’s making on the world through her books, videos, workshops, and talks titled Full Time You...and a new workshop called Find You...

In-Q on Inquiring Within - Working on Yourself Means Working on Your Art Have you ever been so passionate about something that no type of struggle, rock bottom, or gutter can keep you from pursuing it? That’s how it played out for today’s special guest, Adam Schmalholz aka In-Q, a national award-winning poet, spoken word juggernaut, storytelling savant, and multi-platinum songwriter for artists li...

Pt. 2 Getting Creatively Unstuck - Side Hustler’s Coaching Student Special Picking up where we left off last week, we close out this Side Hustler’s Program Student Spotlight Special with part 2 of the coaching call. For those who missed last week’s episode, I suggest listening to that first because I break down what the 3-Month Side Hustler’s Coaching Program is all about. Just know it isn’t a cak...

Side Hustler's Group 2.0 on Niching Down for a Season and Creating an Instagram Hashtag Strategy I have another Side Hustler’s Program Student Spotlight Special in store for you today that’s coming atcha in 2 parts. First off, what is the Side Hustler’s Coaching Program? This is a 3-month Group Coaching Mastermind between a select handful of applications all across the world. This is a premium pro...

Mike Jones on Serving The Bigger Picture and Cultivating Community Are you tired of hearing me say that relationships are everything? Even if you are, I’m going to continue to beat this drum, especially in terms of getting out of your bubble and doing everything in your ability to attend a conference. I started doing some research on this thing called Creative South. I was a year into Perspective-...

The Secret Sauce Blender | Making the Perfect Personal Pan Pizza Imagine you’re baking a pizza...of course, what a Scotty thing to say, right? Except in this scenario, the same crust, cheese, and toppings are provided to you and everyone else. What’s going to make your pizza truly stand out from the noise is the sauce you make for the pizza. What’s the secret to making the secret sauce that’ll kee...

Hellcats on Building Your Brand and Growing Your Audience Before Slanging Merch It seems everyone and their grandma wants to start a clothing line or slang merch these days (I say this because I’m guilty of both). I get it, you want to see your work tangibly exist and find its way into the little nooks and crannies of this planet. It’s dope to manifest your idea in your noggin’ to something you ca...

Matt Dawson on Making Priorities and Building Communities I’m going to say something that may strike a nerve. It may even put a bad taste in your mouth when you think of me… However, I say this because I truly do give a shit about you and your future goals. I say this because it used to be me, and I realize how I was really just in my own way. If there’s something you want to do or accomplish, say...

Why You're Missing Your Breakthrough I don't care about your religious or spiritual beliefs (but I respect and welcome them all). I want to know if you're the type of person who believes in signs? (No, I'm not referring to M. Night Shyamalan's highly underappreciated 2002 science fiction film  Signs .) When I'm talking about signs, I'm talking about the signposts of life—your gut/intuition/heart a...

Iron Bean Coffee Company on Creating Raging Fans Around Your Passion I’m big on connecting the dots, so I can understand how my past experiences influence my current actions, beliefs, and mindsets. If you know me by now, you know how open I am about growing up severely tormented and bullied. In fact, I had bullies all the way throughout college. Being bullied made me crave acceptance, which I thou...

The Phases of Your Creative Side Hustle...in My Opinion I want to preface this preface of today’s interview: I’m speaking solely from experience here on my philosophy on the phases of your side hustle. I think, early on in your hustle—once you truly accept you’re a creative and you’re figuring out what direction to go—that experimentation and trying new things is important. I think of this as Phas...

Lincoln Design Co. on Hiring Yourself & Leveraging Your Side Hustle Which type of person are you? The type of person who just shows up at your day job to get the work done so you can clock out, go home, and binge some Netflix or watch hours of cat videos/people falling down? The type of person who can’t turn off the love for creating so you work on things you love outside of work (aka side hustle)...

Dina Rodriguez on How to Build a Thriving Community Around Your Art I don’t care what anyone says, but every one of us, whether we know it or not, is creating a personal brand. Every interaction we have, every post we publish, and every action we take begins to design what we show the world and the people we are trying to repel or attract to our tribe. When you’re self-aware of this, you can use i...

Lisa Congdon on Standing Out, Imposter Syndrome, & Your Artistic Voice As creatives, why do we make things so hard on ourselves? Why do we stand in our own way and block ourselves from chasing what we really want? It’s like we’ve been given the keys to the Ferrari, but we talk ourselves out of turning on the ignition and pressing the gas to go (I realize new Ferraris most likely have a push to sta...

A Christmas That Changed My Life I remember it like it was yesterday—two years ago to this date on Christmas Morning 2017. Emily and I had just gotten back from Christmas at my parents, and we were opening our stockings (and giving stockings to our cats Lucy and Flora, of course). She had been acting weird all morning and even left early to go to Walgreens for a “last-minute stocking stuffer.” Aft...

Stay In Your Own Lane & Create Your Own Wave It’s so easy to get wrapped up in what other people are doing or to give into the temptation to jump on the latest trend. One of the hardest things to do as a creative is to go with your gut and pursue work that’s true to you. I like to call this staying in your own lane instead of swerving into someone else’s and riding their wave. I feel this is self-...

Steering Your Ship with Clarity & Confidence I’m hella proud to say that we’ve made it to Episode 150. There seems to be a massive shift every 50 episodes in the message and direction in which I’m steering this ship. The more I continue to niche down and follow the direction of my internal compass, the more clarity and confidence I continue to find The more clarity and confidence I find, the more...

Winning the War in Your Head With tomorrow being Thanksgiving here in the States, I wanted to take a second to just say thank you for giving the show a chance and sticking with me as the show evolves. There’s a lot of creativity-based podcasts, resources, and content out there...I know my style and approach aren’t for everyone, and that’s totally okay! Just know it means the world to me that you v...

Football Coach to Creative Coach This one is special today, and it's the longest episode I’ve ever published but for a good reason. If you’ve followed my story, you know I have a background in coaching football. I reluctantly started my coaching journey in college after playing two years and then blowing out my back twice at Wartburg College in Cedar Falls, IA. Even though I was bitter, I stayed o...

Tinlun Studio on Leveraging Failure & Passion Projects to Thrive & Survive So many people love pizza but hate the crust. I’m here to tell ya you gotta learn to love the crust . The first few bites of a slice of pizza are when you’re high on life and things seem to be working in your favor. The crust is the low moments of adversity and failure. You can’t have pizza without the crust, and you can't...