I love talking about side hustling! It’s a great way to make extra money while diversifying your income streams. But even though side hustling has a lot of upside, it can easily go no where fast without the right guidance. So here are some things you can do to get your side hustle off to the right start.
get feedback early
Did you know that nearly 20% of all new businesses fail within the first two years? With all the new businesses popping up, 20% probably doesn’t sound so bad, but by year 5 this number reaches 50%, and continues to grow as the years progress.
So what makes businesses fail?
It turns out that the top reason for business failure is selling a product that the market doesn’t want. To not fail then, you need to quickly find out if the market wants what you’re selling.
Believe me, this is hard and your ego doesn’t want you to do this. You will probably come up with several excuses for why you’re not ready to push it out there and get feedback.
But if you really have a viable product, letting people test it out will make it 10x better. In fact, testers will tell you whether you delivered to their needs, that way you don’t waste time creating stuff that no one wants.
Here are a few resources that can help you test your product:
- UserTesting – get video recording of users testing your product
- Reddit – search within your target niche and find out whether there is a desire for your product
- Google KeyWord Planner – “a keyword research tool that allows you to find the right keywords to target for display ads, search ads, video ads, and app ads.” -Google
- Google Consumer Surveys – “offers pay-as-you-go and enterprise solutions to help you get the business and consumer insights you need to make better decisions.” -Google
- Facebook Ads – “Facebook Ads work to help your business reach 2 billion Facebook users worldwide based on their location, age, gender, interests and more.” Tip: run ads with identical graphics and different titles. See which has the highest click rate.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Make sure to get feedback from people that you’re actually targeting. Don’t go asking friends and relatives who don’t fit the demographic that you’re trying to market to. It will be a waste of time.
don’t focus on internal goals
So many side hustlers focus on their own internal goals, mainly because it makes them feel accomplished. Statements like the ones below sound nice, but what value does it create for the customer?
- “I shipped 20 packages by our deadline…”
- “We made 15 sales calls today…”
- “I spent 5 hours working on my business today…”
Your customer doesn’t care that you spend 5 hours working or that you make your daily call quota, they care that you are bringing to market a solution that solves their needs or wants.
In the end, you get paid for value. So focus on how much value you create.
Study Failure
If there’s one shortcut to side hustling success, it’s finding out how, when, and why others failed. What kinds of actions made their side hustle fail? Were they consistently working at it or kinda half ass about the whole thing? Did they get feedback from the market early and often? Were they too afraid to take risks? Did they have enough starting capital? Was there ever a budget? Did they ever create a business plan? Did they stick to their business plan? Get to the root of why they failed and do the opposite.
Know Your Pain Points & Hire For Them
If you’re doing everything by yourself, you’re probably making lots of mistakes. It’s not that you’re not trying hard enough, it’s just that many of those tasks fall outside of your core skill set.
You need to figure out which parts of your business are highest priority, and of those, which are not your strengths. With that in mind, think of ways to hire for those weaknesses instead of trying to do more.
Here’s an example: Imagine you’re a side hustle blogger, who sucks at web design. You want to build a blog that readers find useful, but always struggle with coming up with a good design layout. Should you buckle down and take a $10 course on web design?
No!
It might sound reasonable from a money standpoint, but the highest business priority is bringing awesome content to your readers. Taking an online course just to learn how to design this one website doesn’t add a lot of value. Plus you’d have to spend hours to become any good. Simply buy a web theme and move on!
Seriously, this was the hardest thing for me to accept, but once I did, I felt huge relief. Hire things/people that are better than you. It’s not defeat, it’s business genius.
Get Quick Wins
Getting a quick win gives you the psychological boost needed to get even more things done. Do enough of these easy tasks to get moving on the real tasks that bring value to your customers.
Remember, its about bringing value to the customer, not our own internal goals.
Have a Daily Stop Time
You need time to rest and refocus. You can’t have consistent energy if you’re constantly working.
One low cost tip is to set an alarm on your phone. Seriously, I’ve literally set an alarm on my phone that reads ‘Wind down!’. Its my reminder to start wrapping things up, and it has helped me tremendously. I now have enough time to rest and continue early in the morning, when I can get more thinking work done.
You’ll notice that once you start doing this, you become more productive, and feel less like things are happening to you. So do this. It really helps. 🙂
Side hustle for a better life
Lastly, the whole reason you’re side hustling is to build a better life for yourself. It’s important that you don’t become so obsessed with side hustling that you ignore other aspects of your life. Plan vacations. It keeps you accountable for getting things done on time and it gives you a much needed break. Schedule time for chores & personal upkeep. Don’t get so caught up in building your business that you forget to keep both you and the house clean. 🙂
Side hustling isn’t easy but the payoff is huge. I hope these tips help you to stay the course and build an awesome business that makes you millions!!! 🙂 Until next time…
