The essential guide to giving your side hustle its best start
The essential guide to giving your Side Hustle its best start.
Starting your own side hustle takes commitment and guts. You need to do it in a way that gives you your best opportunity for success.
When you are already busy dealing with life, finding even an extra 30 minutes a day can seem like an enormous challenge. Deciding to commit time, your energy, your family’s energy and perhaps financial resources, can feel like one of the biggest decisions in your life, but the results can be life changing.
A bit like writing a book, most people think they have a side hustle inside them. A lot like writing a book, most people’s side hustles will sadly remain as ideas, dreams, aspirational conversations, and started but unfinished projects.
Everybody will have their own unique reasons for not starting or not seeing the project through. Whatever the reasons are, they can probably be split into two categories, valid reasons and excuses.
It’s okay, although it hurts badly, to give a side hustle a go and for it to fail for valid reasons. That in many ways is the path to entrepreneurial success. Most entrepreneurs have failed a number of times before succeeding. But, to fail because you never gave yourself a proper chance is just wasting your time and money.
I hope that in reading this, you are at least one of the big group who would like to start your own side hustle. If you’ve already started, are well into it, and succeeding, then my intention is that this blog will remind you of some good habits.
If, however, you are at the start, or still in the thinking phase, then the purpose of this blog is to get you moving in the right direction. You need to start with good habits, not just intentions. You need to give yourself your best opportunity to give your side hustle your best effort.
When I work with people who are looking to start a new endeavour, business, or side hustle, I get them to do the 79-89 review. The evidence is clear. Those people who understand their reason why, when committing to anything, are more likely to stay the course. The 79-89 review is an exercise to help you to clarify, upfront, to cement in your mind the reason why you should start this effort. If you want to do your own 79-89 review, go to our YouTube channel and watch our film showing you how.
Once you are clear about why you want to start your own side hustle, you need to work to set the conditions for your success.
By the way, I think right now is a perfect time to start a side hustle. Online business continues to grow. New and small businesses can find markets and sell products and services to an international audience in a way that has never previously been possible. The costs and barriers to entry, and thereby the risk involved in failure, have never been lower.
Setting the conditions to deliver your best effort
It turns out that the path to building good habits is rarely down to motivation. Were it so, many more of us would be slimmer. Unfortunately, motivation like fuel can run out.
In his book, “Tiny Habits”, BJ Fogg shows that we are far more likely to achieve success if we identify the behavior we want to habitualise. We then need to make sure it’s achievable. There is no point in aspiring to do yoga for six hours a day if you cannot guarantee six hours. Finally you need to ensure there is a trigger event, like an alarm clock, to make you do it.
At the heart of setting the conditions to deliver your best effort, you need to plan and create tiny habits which will keep you going and make you take your steps forward.
Control the Controllables
People say that so often but, what does it mean? In this case, it means controlling the distractions which will jump in and divert you. According to the University of California it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus and get back on task whenever you are distracted. Preventing distractions and allowing yourself to do a quality focussed period of work will mean you are using your time most productively.
Think about two sources of distraction which you can control, external and internal.
External distractions occur when you respond to the actions of other people. The need to respond to your children, to have to feed and walk your dog, answer your phone, or go to hockey or football training, are all everyday life events which can distract you from your side hustle. You need to work out a system which either gives you useful periods of time around them, or where other people take on the responsibility.
Internal distractions are those self-imposed ones. If you have lots of tabs open on your computer, and constantly sneak a look at some of them then you are permitting a distraction of your making. Likewise answering your phone. Put it on silent, or turn it off while you are working. Close unnecessary tabs.
I like to listen to audio books, but have realized that I can’t do that when I’m working because I keep on being distracted by what is being read.
Identify periods of time when you will get on with a task, close the door on the outside world, and can turn off distractions. Have the discipline you have when you go swimming. For that 30 minutes in the pool, swimming can be your only activity. Treat your side hustle with the same importance you give to an important part of your daily schedule.
Pomodoro tomatoes are plastic timers used in kitchens. They are shaped like tomatoes. To help you focus, get yourself a Pomodoro Tomato or any other timer and set it for 25 minutes, and don’t allow yourself to do anything other than the task until it goes off. Why 25 minutes? Well it turns out this is long enough to focus without tiring and losing natural focus, it’s a manageable time, and you’ll be surprised just how much you can do in that time.
At the end of that time period, you can get up, knowing you have taken a step forward, and have that cup of tea, and get on with everything else which is happening.
See your side hustle as a sequence of small steps to success.
Sometimes it can feel like there are a million things you have to do. Maybe you have a “To Do” list which runs to pages. All of this can be another massive distraction and de-motivator.
You need to understand your reason why, and what you want to achieve with your side hustle, but limit your to do list to no more than seven things. When something needs to be added, you must cross one out, preferably having done it first.
Breaking your list down into seven things means, if you do just one of them a day, you will empty your list every week. That’s progress, and it builds real momentum.
Setting yourself the target of doing one task a day makes the scale of your side hustle feel achievable. If you manage more tasks then these are bonuses, the celebratory extra jump forward.
When you identify what the task is make sure it is specific. The task, “send emails to everybody on my list” can seem massive, unless they are grouped in a single mail. Setting your task as, “send an email to person x” is more achievable, allows you to focus on that single task and get it done.
Do something every day. You are more likely to achieve success through consistent effort and work, than through irregular surges.
Set Triggers
Build triggers into your daily routine which make you do something towards your side hustle. For example, when you have your first tea or coffee of the day, use that as a trigger to make you do something. Perhaps it will be the trigger to make you send an email, and will cause you to complete your first task straight away.
Celebrate when you have done your task, even if it is just a smile or fist punch. It actually helps your brain to understand that this is all a good thing and one you should continue.
Focus only on the tasks that will bring you success
Billionaire financier Warren Buffett once asked his pilot, Mike Flint, what his top 25 goals were. When the pilot told him, Buffet said circle the five top ones and forget about the rest. His message was to focus only on the real goals and critical tasks. Having too big a list is a distraction.
Not all tasks are equal.
Whenever you think of a task ask yourself these questions:
- Will it earn money? Not all things earn money immediately, some tasks may be a part of product development, but you need to understand whether it adds to your product and potential sales, or does not. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it.
- Will it re-pay itself? If so, how quickly. If it won’t re-pay itself then don’t do it. Spending money on fancy logos and letterheads may seem an important part of developing your brand as you start off, but how essential is it? Ask the tough question.
- Should I get someone else to do it? If it is a critical task for which you are unqualified, like accounts, then yes. If it is a critical task which will free you up to a more important, money earning task, then yes. You have to balance the cost to your business of you doing it over someone else. Perhaps you could build your own website, but will you do it well enough, and could your time be better spent meeting potential clients for example.
- Do I need to do it now? We often get on with the tasks we like, ignoring the others, even when there is no time imperative for them. That’s fine if nothing has a time imperative, but that is unlikely. Understand what is important and when the tasks need to be done, in real time and in relation to other tasks.
Measure what you do
When you measure what you’re doing, you are keeping your finger on the pulse of your side hustle. Recording it on a daily basis means you should be able to identify where success is coming from, and spot any bad trends, before they take root.
If you find out that, despite your best intentions, you are not managing to achieve everything you want then it will help you to understand what is getting in the way. Possibly your habits, behaviours and triggers are failing and need to be adjusted. Perhaps your marketing is not sufficiently focused.
You will probably start off with imprecise measuring, giving you less than clear results. Don’t worry, you can, and should, change how you measure and monitor what you do. The daily habit of looking at what has been measured will cause you to move towards identifying what are your key business indicators.
Taking on a side hustle can be a lonely challenge at the start. As you measure your performance, you need to be honest but not to the point of self-destruction. Accept that sometimes things will not work out, some days you will struggle to do what you set yourself despite your efforts. Give yourself a break.
The most important part of your approach to your side hustle will be managing your energy. Remember you are doing it for a good reason.
Find a Mentor
Having said that you may start your side hustle on your own, try to find someone who you can talk to about it. This may not be your partner. Ideally you need someone who has been through it themselves, understands what you are trying to do, and can give appropriate advice and support.
Sometimes you will find these people through networking. If you have a full time job as well, then it may be someone in your existing workplace who understands what you are doing. It could, however, be someone you approach and ask to act as your mentor. They may charge you for their time, but if well-chosen they could be one of your most important investments.
How Side Income Planet can help
Please, make use of all of the free information on our website www.sideincomeplanet.com. There are also plenty of pointers and links to resources and providers, use them.
If you are interested in any coaching or mentoring, please send us an email enquiry to hustle@sideincomeplanet.com. We can’t and don’t work with everyone but will certainly respond and have an initial chat with you.
