The Art of the Side Hustle: Blending Creativity, Business, and Passion
Many creatives struggle with the balance between artistic passion and profitability. But what if your creative side project could become a thriving business? Dava Guthmiller shares her approach to launching A Dash Of, a brand born from a love of food, storytelling, and curation. Discover how to align your expertise into a niche, test market demand, and build something that brings profit to your passion.
Too many creatives move through their careers taking whatever the industry gives them—climbing corporate ladders, following expected paths, and losing sight of what truly makes them different. In this raw and insightful keynote, we’ll explore the power of betting on yourself, the fears that hold us back, and how to reconnect with your creative identity. Whether you’re questioning your next move, considering going solo, or simply seeking more fulfillment, this talk will challenge you to stop playing it safe and start building a career on your own terms.
Key Takeaways:
- The Real Roadblock: It’s not your logo, brand colors, or pitch deck—it’s you. Why self-doubt is the biggest challenge to launching your next big move.
- Defining What Makes You Different: How to stop blending in and start embracing what sets you apart.
- Breaking Free from Industry Expectations: Why waiting for the “perfect moment” is a myth and how to create your own opportunities.
- Reframing Fear & Failure: Lessons from making the leap—what I learned about risk, rejection, and real success.
- Taking Control of Your Career: Whether you’re starting your own thing or rethinking your next role, learn how to move with intention instead of just taking what’s given.

Scaling a digital business from a one-person operation to a high-performing team is a challenge many solopreneurs face. Without the right strategies, growth can lead to inefficiencies, miscommunication, and burnout.
In this session, I will guide solopreneurs through the essential steps to prepare for team expansion while maintaining agility and focus. Attendees will learn:
- When and how to start building a team – Identifying the right moment to scale and the first roles to hire
- Delegation strategies that work – How to offload tasks effectively while maintaining quality and vision
- Systems and workflows for seamless collaboration – The must-have tools and processes to keep operations smooth
- Avoiding common scaling pitfalls – How to prevent growing pains that can slow down success

Great startups begin with great problems. But how do you train yourself to spot them? This session explores the art of problem sensitivity—the ability to recognize unmet needs, inefficiencies, and emerging opportunities before others do. Learn how to shift your mindset, ask the right questions, and uncover startup-worthy insights in everyday life. Whether you're an aspiring founder or an experienced entrepreneur looking for your next big idea, this talk will provide actionable frameworks and real-world examples to sharpen your problem-finding skills.

Most see innovation as generating ideas that can change the world. But few think of innovation as the practical implementation of ideas.
As a business, innovation is paramount if you want to thrive. But if you define innovation as simply having ideas, I’ve got bad news for you – ideas without execution are worthless.
So how do you know how to focus your energies and where?
If you want to build a business with the capacity to ideate great ideas and introduce new innovations into the market, here’s a helpful way to look at it.
