How to Be a Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur With Rachel Brenke
Lindsay (00:25):
Welcome back to another episode of the book, your dream clients podcast today, we're with Rachel Brenke and we're chatting all about being a multi-passionate business owner and how to balance all of the things you're going to love this episode. Rachel has such great advice. So sit back, relax and enjoy Rachel. Thank you so much for being on the book, your dream clients podcast. I am so excited you're with us today.
Rachel (00:53):
Oh, I am thrilled. Thank you for having me.
Lindsay (00:56):
I'm thrilled to be chatting with you again. You guys. I was on Rachel's podcast. When was that? Last winter?
Rachel (01:05):
Recording in during COVID. So like the whole, like life has stopped all time has stopped, but we had a fabulous conversation then, and I'm excited to do it again.
Lindsay (01:15):
Yeah. Awesome. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience and tell us all about what you do and who you serve.
Rachel (01:22):
Okay. So my name is Rachel Brenke. I am a business strategist and intellectual property attorney. I'm also an entrepreneur. I own multiple businesses outside of doing online services for creatives, fitness professionals and hi podcast. I write books, I'm a mom of five. My husband was in the army. We have three puppy dogs. I really try to serve a lot of people that are very similar to myself, primarily moms or just females who are looking to have something of their own, whether it's a full time business for themselves side projects or just hobbies in kind of the online creative space.
Lindsay (02:09):
You are one busy woman, Rachel.
Rachel (02:12):
Well, I don't do it all at one time. Be aware of that, right. It's many years in the making.
Lindsay (02:18):
Yes. Well, okay. So that must be part of your personality. You like to do all kinds of you like to, did you always kind of dabble in things or did you always know what you wanted to do and you just did what it was?
Rachel (02:30):
No, I mean, I'm super motivated when I locked into an idea, the downfall is I have lots of ideas. I'm like, Ooh, shiny. And even now my team will be like, no, we have no more cheaper rates available. No, I just, a lot of what I do came out of what I was already doing. So I got into kind of the education business consulting space because I was trying to run an online apparel store from home. The backstory on that is I had cancer really young. We only had one kid at the time husband was deploying in and out and I wanted to be present and available for our son, be able to heal from cancer and knew I wanted online business. But going through that, there was a lack of information on the internet, which even imagine what that's like, because now, you know, you can log on and get 10,000 results from one search term.
Rachel (03:24):
And, but at the time, a lot of that wasn't available. And so that kind of the whole idea of having to learn legalities and learn strategies and all of this to run that first business transitioned into me, helping others do it. And then my businesses, if you look at it, I've kind of siloed into different niches. They're all things that I've done or interested in. So like one of my legal blogs is for photographers cause I did photography. Neither one is for fitness professionals because I compete in triathlons. And so it's, I have a lot of passions and a lot of ideas, but they mostly aligned with things that I personally am interested in also. So
Lindsay (04:09):
What does everything kind of fall under? Like what is that one thing that let's say you had a really good idea, that light bulb moment. And when you check in to see if it aligns with what Rachel is, what is that one thing that okay, it aligns with that I can go forward. What is that?
Rachel (04:25):
I mean, well, first the team going, do we have time or not? And if we do, then we look at it and see, does it fit with any of the specific brands, the different silos that we have. And even though they're all different industries and niches, the common theme is what we just talked about a couple of minutes ago, like who I'm trying to serve. And I'm really trying to emphasize quality of life over business, even though I love business and also protected in strategize business. So if it doesn't fit within that type of umbrella, I typically won't do it. However, like I also write children's books and that's a perfect example because I don't have anything else to do, but it's a side project for me. And so that's one of the examples that it doesn't really fit in with any of the brands because the end result, the book is really kind of a novelty book.
Rachel (05:26):
They're all written within these different brands. Like there's one for triathlete, moms, photographer, mom, et cetera, but they're not an actual educational tool. You know, they're just fun to have. So that ends up being a side project whenever I can get around to it. Like my last book walk that I'm currently doing has taken almost a year and a half just because it's not a main project because I'm definitely one of those people that have knows and qualify. So you can be focused on what you want to focus on, but like the book idea, it didn't fit into anything, but I had this passion and excitement for it. So I didn't want to just drop it. So when I, you know, life ebbs and flows. And so when it's on a down word period, we're have a little bit more time is when I can go back to the, that side project without having it say no, since it doesn't align with my ultimate goal,
Lindsay (06:21):
I love that you do what you love to do, and you're not holding yourself back from giving yourself joy because all of these things obviously bring you joy. So like for me, I need to just have everything and I need to just centrals to centralize and simplify it and have it very basic. That's how I can run the best. So how do you keep all of this balance of you and your family and all of your businesses? How do you balance all of that?
Rachel (06:48):
Well, I don't, the, the term balance kind of always has rubbed me as like with like a barb in the side, because I feel like balanced can never truly be achieved, you know, with ebbs and flows of sometimes you have more time for one thing than others. And at the risk of sounding cliche, it is all about being as intentional as possible. You know, there are times where I'll find myself working more than I should. And my husband kind of have to like reign me in saying like, with, I joke about the team, sometimes I'll get excited and take on too many projects or appearances and they'll be like, all right, you need to bring it back. And so it's having people in your life that can give you those checks and balances. But also, I also think I thrive because I have so much going on in my calendar.
Rachel (07:34):
Just like you just like everyone listening is a finite number of hours. And so I sit down and fit my calendar to be that I only do certain things during certain times and everything else feels in around that. And if the day, you know, and those things are priority, like family self care exercise required meetings that, you know, I'm doing taxes, that kind of stuff, spin everything else kind of fills in around that. And if it doesn't fit, then it doesn't fit. But it spoke to me a while to understand that at the end of the day, if I don't get everything done, that's okay. And even some nights I'll start awake and I'm like, Oh no, I didn't do X, Y, and Z. So I feel like if you are, I don't think you'll ever achieve a balance. I feel like you're all, you just have to keep yourself in check and have other people help you do that and have the tools in place to try to keep it as consistently balanced as possible.
Rachel (08:27):
You know, one point with this, all that I'm doing, and we hinted at this earlier, I didn't build this all at once. So like I started with one business, built it up and I essentially copied and pasted the processes that I learned on that one and workflows into the next. And so it's, it's become easier. Air quotes. Can't see me. It's become easier each time when I'm building something else because we fine tune and do a lot of, of analytics and metrics. And before we go on onto the next project, that way it's seamless takes less time. So I have more time for family quality of life better.
Lindsay (09:08):
I suppose you can compare it to a launch. If you, when you launch the first time, it's the hardest because you're doing everything from scratch. And then after that, it gets easier and easier if you recycle the entire process. Do you agree?
Rachel (09:20):
Yeah. One of the problems that I have found myself falling into is you have the process. You don't want to redo the whole thing, but if you're not doing the right view and objective evaluation of the metrics, then are you going to keep using the same thing? And it's just going to be okay over and over. You know, you really have to commit to making sure you go through that second portion, not just the build, but the reevaluation portion, because you don't want to copy and paste something that's mediocre while it may be getting results. You don't want some, just be copying and pasting something that's mediocre over and over. So, you know, you have to really make sure you commit to that second phase, I guess, before you replicated again.
Lindsay (10:07):
So do you find the people that want to work with you? They have that same passion. Would they have several passions in mind? Do you attract those people?
Rachel (10:17):
Oh yeah. One of the struggles that I run into, I feel like we're in therapy session here. I'm laying on the couch. One of the struggles I run into in many of you guys listening may do this. If you're a, multi-passionate also is I have so much going on. Sometimes I feel like my messaging can become muddled, right? It's not as clear as it could be. And so I've, that's one of my struggles that I've tried to emphasize to people and had different platforms to have clear messaging. And so that is some, I routinely also work with, with clients that work with me to make sure that, you know, like for all my different brands, they all have their different social media. They all are. They're on different websites so that we can be as specific as possible there, but also still like juggle the balls of all the different passions.
Lindsay (11:11):
Yeah. So when they come to you, what's like the main thing that they're struggling with, that the common denominator of all of your plans,
Rachel (11:20):
Two main things. One is kind of like the messaging we just talked about. They feel like they're not able to communicate exactly what they do, right? They're not able to attract that customer, client avatar or effectively communicate their unique selling proposition clearly. And then the other one is deciding what, which passion to focus on first. You know, for me, I have some of my brands that are way out perform others, but I'll get a little burning in my stomach for one. I like the slacker performers. I want to work on them and I have to force myself to say, no, you need to work on, you know, little tweaks on the bread and butter so that you can reinvest money. And not as a big, less than that. I also work with many clients that come to me once we get the messaging stuff, situated on all, you know, your different brands or different products, whatever the molds and multiple variables that you have going on is then exactly what I just said, because we want to make sure that we're being as clear and effective with each of them.
Lindsay (12:26):
I think that goes with people who just have one business and they can't find their messaging. And that's so hard because I think the first thing that they tend to do is kind of look at someone else's messaging and try to mimic it and their own little thing to it. And it just comes off weird and it doesn't feel right. And so whether you have one business or several businesses, I find that can be such a huge problem. And what do you, what's some good advice you could give that person.
Rachel (12:55):
I mean, it's really nailing down who you do want to talk to like your customer or, you know, your dream customer, your dream client, who you're wanting to talk to and bring in and who you're wanting to polarize away. And I still get it all the time. I'll get comments on my social media. Well, I wouldn't want to work with a lawyer and written jeans and I'm like, yeah, but the hundred of these other people do that means I've been very clear in my messaging when I polarized one person away. That's when you know, your messaging is working very clearly, conceit, polarization and attraction. And if you're getting too much of the wrong people, then you call us to make you step back and go, okay, I'm getting all these clients, but they're not in their dream clients. Why is that reverse engineering back to the formula?
Rachel (13:43):
Am I talking and very specific in my mind of who that client avatar is? And then what is my unique selling proposition actually thing, because it's hard when we're doing this all the time to think that we're being clear. And because we're doing it, we nerdy know the foundation of what we offer and all of that. And you know, and people come and see your website, your Instagram, wherever on social media, they may have not seen all your 500 other posts. You have to be very clear where that unique selling proposition and the messaging. So if you're getting people are not your dream clients, look at that second portion of the formula and go, okay, what is going wrong here in this USP? And really messaging is all about trial and error. And it's just exactly what I walked through here. Who do I want to attract? Who want to, who do I want to repel and who am I actually attracting? And if I'm attracting wrong, I need to redo the formula.
Lindsay (14:42):
Hmm. That's such great advice. And I definitely see that happen a lot with my students when they're just starting, if they just don't know what to say. And when they do start talking about themselves, it feels so awkward. Cause they feel like, I almost feel like people are judging them or thinking that they're weird for talking about their business, especially when they're just starting and almost as if you're you're a fraud. Does that come up with your clients too?
Rachel (15:08):
Yeah. And my tip would be, if you're not going to cheerlead for you, who's going to, especially when you're in the very beginning, I mean your mom, but come on. Right. But she's probably not on Instagram sharing about you. But really it's funny. I had somebody close to me a couple of years ago, say to me that I wasn't humble because all my posts were always about me and what I could offer. And it kind of took me off guard. I was like, am I not being humble? And, and there's, there's a fine line between humble and conveying your messaging your about yourself. But you have to, you have to strip that off and understand that you can show up confidently portrayed who you are without coming off like a braggart. And again, if you don't tell people, how are they going to know?
Lindsay (15:54):
Well, and I feel like if you think that's how you're going to look, you're going to attract to the people who will say that to you. I mean, it's all about confidence when it comes down to it, it's all about how confident you are in yourself. And then it comes into, well, how much inner work have you been doing on yourself? And usually it's none and that needs to be touched. Definitely. so I love to hear how you, you're so busy and I don't want to say busy. You have so much in your life that you're taking care of. Would you want to share with us the nonnegotiable things that you do for yourself and your business?
Rachel (16:31):
I work out every morning. I have two cups of coffee. First. That's a nonnegotiable. That's where everyone's health. And I work out for at least an hour every morning, because if I don't do it in the morning, it's not going to happen. So in normal life, I said, we're recording this during the coronavirus Corona virus crisis. So I'm homeschooling five kids right now, but we normally, I would get the kids off to school and I wouldn't be able to work out. And after me, it's a non negotiable. It's my team we'll even joke. Did you get your run in today? Because I'll be a lot more high, strong, and more like just ready to go and not being able to focus as much. And they see it ICS. And so that I hate to use the term self care because it's not just self care. It's life care. I'm able to be a better manager. I feel like I'm a better spouse. I'm a better mother when I'm able to commit to that. So that's definitely non-negotiable. Other nonnegotiables, maybe on the business side of things is also continuing education. I try to set up side time every week to further my own education, a podcast, reading a book, audio book. Those are the biggest, Oh, and family time and date nights are obviously big family nonnegotiables. Also.
Lindsay (17:51):
I love it. I have three kids and date nights and are kind of not a thing right now, but even just like simple, simple things like watching something before bed or making popcorn or just something simple at home, it doesn't have to be this extravagant thing. I found that that made such a difference in my business. Taking time off makes such a difference when you're just starting and you hear that advice, you think that's crazy. But I have, for me, it was such a game changer.
Rachel (18:20):
I think people underestimate the small things that you can do. Cause I've always shared people. Yeah. It's really important. You do date nights, you go work out and they either don't have time. They don't have co you know, cake covers. They don't have money to go out or to go work out and there's stuff you can do in your home. I mean, for the longest time I didn't work out videos. Like now I run. So I'm outside and for that portion, but even the other night at the beginning of this week you know, obviously we're sheltered in place that we've not been able to go anywhere. My kids sat down to eat and my husband goes, come upstairs, come upstairs. Of course I was freaking out thing. I was getting like, yeah, news about something. And he had set up like up in our room, a little table for two and just a special meal.
Rachel (19:09):
And that was our, it was like a 20 minute little date, you know? Cause the kids were still awake and everything, but it was, it was a nice brain refresher to forget like what everything else is going on. And so even if you're in a situation where you felt burnt out for work, you don't have money. You may be putting all your money back into your business or into your family. There's still small things. Just by, he pulled out one of the fancy tablecloth, I mean just like little things like that. You can gauge you improve and still get kind of that refreshed feeling.
Lindsay (19:38):
Oh, for sure. The little things fill my cup more than big things every time, especially if it's at home, cause I'm a home body so we can just stay home. I'm excited.
Rachel (19:48):
And then you can change clothes.
Lindsay (19:52):
I love that. Okay. Rachel, you shared so much good stuff and we have a lot of multi-passionate people in this space, so they want to hear more about you. Where can they go find you?
Rachel (20:03):
You guys can go to the mothership website, which is RachelBrenk.com. There you'll find the podcast and links to all of the different brands that I do have including also my law firms. If you guys have any questions about anything you can submit to the contact form there, we have a chat box. I also have all the social medias and I'm the only Rachel Brenke. So you can get ahold of me anywhere.
Lindsay (20:25):
Amazing. Thank you for spending time with me today or tonight, whatever. Whenever you're listening to this rate, the Rachel, this is so fun and it was so good to talk to you again.
Rachel (20:35):
Thanks for having me.
Rachel Brenke, is the head attorney behind TheLawTog®️ - the legal resource for photographers, RachelBrenke.com, FitLegally®️, and the host of The Business Bites Podcast®️. As an MBA, business consultant, multi-state licensed attorney, she knows the ins and outs of what goings into running a business AND how to legally protect yourself.
Not only does Brenke have real world entrepreneurship experience, but she combines this with her intellectual property law and business knowledge to provide a one-stop resource to help protect your business. Her resource is currently helping creative industry professionals all over the world initiate, strategize and implement strategic business and marketing plans through various mediums of consulting resources and legal direction.
With hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, TheLawTog.com has become the go-to legal resource in the industry. Pair this with the international stages that have held TheLawTog’s teachings, you’re sure to learn a lot from Brenke.
Brenke’s experience and teachings have been featured on CreativeLIVE, WPPI, Professional Photographers of America, Business Insider, TedX, International Business Times, and more.
As a mother of five, Army Veteran spouse, Team USA Athlete, and IronMan competitor - she understands that life is busy, and we don’t have time to mess around. Disclaimer: I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer!
Websites: https://rachelbrenke.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RachelBrenke2/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelbrenke/
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