The Hustle - 🙉 149m people tried this at least once

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Next week is HubSpot’s global week of rest, where we get a much-needed, weeklong R&R. 

I’ll be doing some high-quality doom scrolling soul searching in Cape May… and finally catch up on my audiobook list. 🏖️

Gentle reminder to everyone – especially those busy building a business – take care of yourself, and rest when you need to. 

Don’t know how? Keep reading. We’ve got you covered. 

– Cyan

In today's email…

• Listen up: audiobooks are a $2B business
• How to slow the heck down and still crush your goals
• What we’re surfin’, from a $50m/year side hustle to Red Bull’s marketing playbook

Let's dive in!

📈 SURFACE MORE TRENDS

And turn them into startups. See our trendspotting playbook for exactly how to dig up what’s next, and 50+ tools that make research and analytics easy.

🚀 WHERE TO BUILD NEXT

Sound investment: tap into the $2B audiobook boom

Have you listened to an audiobook lately? 

If so, join the club — you're part of the 38% of Americans who listened to an audiobook in the last year. 

The market is turning up the volume as demand heats up: 

• Sector revenue grew to $2B in 2023
• Over half of US adults (149m people) have tried an audiobook once
• r/Audiobooks have 243k subscribers and growing

Source: Subreddit Stats

The momentum behind the medium makes it prime time for entrepreneurs to get in on the action. Here are three ideas to get you started:

1. Focus on discoverability

With so much new audio content flooding the market, discoverability is a huge challenge.

Some of the top questions in r/Audiobooks are recommendations, both for book titles and narrators. 

There’s an opportunity to build a social app dedicated to audiobook aficionados. Let them:

• Discover new titles via community
• Share recommendations with friends
• Rate books and narrators

Or even become “influencers” by publishing their own playlists. 

You can also create curated audiobook collections, like a monthly “mystery box” based on user preference and listening history. A subscription service would do well — 63% of audiobook listeners last year subscribe to at least one.

Alternatively, make an app that does audiobook synopsis and summaries for on-the-go learning, like Blinkist.

Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

The microlearning angle will play especially well if you niche down to specific genres:

• History/Biography/Memoir (+22% YoY)
• Health & Fitness (+20% YoY)
• Kid-friendly books (77% of parents say audiobooks give their children a break from screens) 

2. Audiobook recording studio 

There’s no denying that AI is crashing the audiobook narration party in a big way.

But before the machines fully take over, there are still authors and narrators lending their real voices to bring stories to life. 

Why not create a cozy audiobook recording studio up for rent? 

Deck it out with a basic recording setup, a soundproof booth, and quality audio gear, then charge by the hour. Depending on location, you can charge $60 - $180 per hour. 

Market your services to local voice artists, self publishers, and anyone looking to narrate or produce an audiobook affordably. 

As part of your studio package, offer a vocal coaching service for an additional fee. Voice actor videos on TikTok racks up millions of views, indicating a high level of interest in learning the craft. 

3. Audiobook-adjacent experiences

Book clubs are as old as time. But modern audiobook clubs can go beyond a couch and a glass of wine. 

Start your own club with unique, member-exclusive events — keep reading to see how you can channel the audiobook craze into awe-inspiring experiences. ✨

👽 OUR LATEST OBSESSION

How to slow the heck down and still crush your goals 

Is it just me, or did any other grown-ass adult ugly cry to Inside Out 2 in the theater this week? 

Real talk, this movie wrecked me with its depiction of anxiety. 

The frazzled hair is on point. Source: The New York Times

At the end of the film, Anxiety literally spun out of control because it was trying to do too much, too fast, worrying that something catastrophic would happen if it slowed down.

Entrepreneurs are intimately familiar with this feeling. Sifted’s 2024 survey found that 76% of founders experienced anxiety, and 85% have high stress. 

Running a business is hard enough. The seismic shifts across industries in the age of AI gave founders even more reason to over-stress… and overwork.

Perhaps because of this, 39% of startup founders and small business owners we surveyed rated “work life balance” as their biggest challenge, trumping any other option. 

Source: HubSpot Original Research

We’re not here to be your therapist. But as a newsletter with a huge network of business builders, we can assure you that it’s 100% possible to slow down, and still crush your goals. 

Here are three tips: 

1. One task at a time

We suck at multitasking and lose up to 40% of our productivity when we try to convince ourselves we don’t.

Just. Stop.

“You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once,” says Gary Keller, author of The One Thing. 

Companies need to consider rolling out high-level organizational change one initiative at a time. 

We get it — the pandemic forced most companies to pivot like a drunk figure skater, but this is your friendly reminder to finally take a breath. 

Read the full blog to check out simple daily tactics that can inspire more focused work from your team.

2. Purposeful pauses

Rest periods are just as vital as work periods.

Research published by Microsoft shows that even a 10-minute break between meetings can significantly reduce stress. 

This is your brain 🥚. This is your brain on relentless Zoom calls 🍳. Source: Microsoft

Stress leads to poor decision making, so it makes great business sense to give yourself and your team rest between meetings.

Meditation, mindful eating, and a general attitude of "drop work when the surf is up" are all forms of self-care you can try to break up busy workdays.

Bill Gates swears by his annual “think week,” where he retreats to a cabin in the woods to reflect and focus on creativity.

We don’t all have a bougie cabin, but there are other ways to press pause on tech. Keep reading to get all the practical steps to inject intervals of calm into your team’s (and your own) workflows. 

🗂️ OPEN TABS

⏰ Time out: Why completing tasks too soon is just as bad as procrastinating

🧠 From X: Use Shaan Puri’s decision-making framework to check yourself

💸 Watch: This $50m/yr side hustle is on track to make $1B by 2030

🐂 From the CMO: The marketing plays behind Red Bull’s $16B success