Running Your Business At 200 Miles Per Hour? You Could Be A Catalyst Entrepreneur

ElizabethEntrepreneur

Entrepreneurs of every type and in every industry have the ability to make positive change in the world. However, organizing their work and life to maximize output and make the biggest impact takes intentionality, and if left to chance can lead to frustration and giving up. This is especially true of “catalyst” entrepreneurs. Catalysts are people who take in lots of information, see infinite possibility and can’t stop themselves from moving into action.

Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas believe that catalyst entrepreneurs require an entirely different method of energy management. They are the co-authors of the best-selling book Move Fast. Break Sh*t. Burnout. and co-founders of Catalyst Constellations and their clients include industry leaders and Fortune 500 companies, including Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, Adobe, Amazon and Kaiser Permanente.

Lovejoy and Lucas are familiar with catalysts and their energy needs, being in that category themselves. “Catalysts move fast and burn bright, but if they don’t take crucial steps to manage their energy appropriately, they run the risk of burning out,” Lucas explained.

The danger of “hustle”

Entrepreneurs, particularly catalyst entrepreneurs, are constantly in motion. While Lucas and Lovejoy acknowledged that it is necessary for entrepreneurs to go hard, particularly in the early days of starting a business, they explained that doing so can lead to burnout if it isn’t managed properly. “The notion of hustle is very real for entrepreneurs, so we can easily talk ourselves out of taking down time,” Lovejoy said.

Lucas and Lovejoy noted that many entrepreneurs aren’t entirely sure what the right steps to building their business are, so they are hustling in a lot of different directions. “This creates an extra energy drain, and entrepreneurs can feel like some of it

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Entrepreneur advice from a mom who built a million-dollar business

ElizabethEntrepreneur

Julie Berninger, 33, has tried many a side hustle. She’s kept a blog that’s brought in thousands of dollars per year. She’s had a podcast that, though was never an income stream, enabled her to meet hundreds of side hustle and financial experts. And her Etsy store, where she sells items like bachelorette party activity lists, brings in $1,000 per month in passive income.

After years of dabbling, it occurred to Berninger that she could teach some of the side gig lessons she’s learned. In 2019, she teamed up with fellow hustler Cody Berman, and the two founded Gold City Venturesa business of online courses focused specifically on building additional streams of income.

The two started with courses about freelancing, blogging and opening an Etsy store for printables like the one Berninger has. The latter has been their most popular course by far, and in 2021, Gold City Ventures brought in $1 million revenue.

Berninger, who lives with her husband and daughter in Massachusetts, quit her job in July 2021 to focus on the business full-time. Here’s her career advice for other entrepreneurs.

Work in corporate America

Berninger spent years working at companies like Amazon and MetLife. She recommends any entrepreneur spend time working in corporate America before diving in. “You’ll learn so many skills that really carry over to your own business,” she says.

Berninger served as a project manager at some of her day jobs, for example. “You learn how to work backwards from an end result,” she says. “You learn how to make a timeline, and you also learn how to manage resources.” The latter really helped in building out her businesses. Whenever she had a budget, she’d use it to hire freelancers to take on some of the workload.

“Whatever career field someone’s in, you

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