Here’s how to start a side hustle and become your own boss.
No matter how rewarding your full-time job may be, starting a side business and eventually becoming self-employed is even more fulfilling than great pay and benefits.
This is especially because a side hustle can be the easiest way to eventually build your self-employed income and become your own boss, while the security of your full-time job remains within reach.
Starting a side hustle not only augments your income but also creates career-changing opportunities you might not have normally stumbled upon. Indeed, many side hustles have resulted in new jobs, valuable relationships, and long-standing associations.
However, building and promoting a side hustle to significant profitability with a limited amount of time outside of your full-time job can be strenuous. It takes commitment and the willingness to get very creative and sketchy daily.
If you want to choose the path of entrepreneurship, there are many reasons you should start small with finding great business ideas. This shouldn’t be farfetched as a long-time hobby can already motivate you to grow a business around things you love.
Indeed, the prospect of making more money on top of your regular pay is a powerful incentive, especially in a volatile economy.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at 10 steps that will help you get more traction, while you keep your full-time job and the only source of dependable income.
1. Take stock of your situation
Don’t begin to create from the point of confusion, but from calm. Look for a good place to ask yourself valid questions about your income and finances. Largely, this is about understanding how much money you need to pay your bills with a cushion for extras.
Also, take careful stock of where you are now as your side project can fill the gaps. Now that you have a sense of what you need in terms of income, assess the work you’ve been doing, and find ways to either carve out revenue streams.
2. Identify your areas of interest and skills
To get quick results, you need to back your side hustle with relevant skills, experience or industry knowledge. After all, business success happens seamlessly when the right skills and passion come together.
For instance, many people monetise their skills by offering graphic design tutorials online. Also, some creatives have profitable freelance side hustles as copywriters or content creators. If you lack key skills that relate to your interests or the side hustle you want to start, there’s no better time than the present to learn them.
3. Validate your side hustle with at least one paying customer
While your side hustle idea may appear incredibly great and disruptive to you, how your potential customers perceive it can be different. In other words, you need to validate your side hustle idea with a paying customer before going a large way into the business. That way, the risk of creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist is largely diminished.
Above all, several studies have revealed the “lack of market need” to be the major cause of start-up failures. Most probably, you’re nurturing an idea that not so many people will find to be of value to them. If that becomes the case, there will be no practical justification for the resources (time, energy, effort) you invest in building, regardless.
To avoid this occurrence, be sure to validate whether your product or service will gain traction in the real world. A quick way to achieve that is to get objective feedback from potential customers – ask them to join a waiting list, pre-purchase your solution or hire you as a service provider. Drop ideas that aren’t getting any positive response and consider more feasible opportunities as you go.
4. Project your differentiator
Unless you’ve created a totally new product or service that’s not easily imitable, chances are you’ll be positioning your side hustle against other established businesses with existing market share. Certainly, competitors will try to outperform your product or service, attract as many of your customers as they can, and look for opportunities to innovate past you.
To reduce or prevent the risk of being outweighed in the market, all you need to do is capitalise on your value propositions as well as your competitive advantage. Your competitive edge can be anything that makes your business unique. It comprises the things that make your customers choose you, and keep coming back for more. E.g. low pricing, sales tactics, good customer service, user-friendly features, strategic relationships, intellectual property, and other specific factors that clearly differentiate your brand from other players.
5. Set clear goals
Although it’s commendable to dream big, making your side hustle a success will absolutely get you nowhere if you aim for the end zone straight out of the games. You need to start small and develop incrementally towards the actualisation of your larger goals. After bringing on one satisfied customer, it’s time to get your second and then your third, fourth, fifth, and so on.
If you begin by aiming for 10,000 customers instead of just a few, you’ll unavoidably get too overwhelmed with structures and everything that needs to be in place before handling that many customers. In my experience, having realistic goals that are attainable on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis helps you develop positive habits and train yourself for success.
6. Set milestones that’ll take you towards launch
Draw up a simple action plan that lays out key milestones and deadlines that’ll guide you from start all the way to launch date. A good, viable side hustle idea should be launched, monetized, and iterated. Don’t obsess over trying to build the perfect solution when you’re not sure what exactly your customers will resonate with most. Otherwise, you’ll just waste precious time, trapped in a perennial dream state. Stick to your deadlines, tell friends and family about them, hold yourself accountable, and don’t allow yourself to make excuses. Then perform the actions needed to move from one milestone to the next. Again, never aim for perfection because it will bog you down and prevent you from ever launching anything.
7. Delegate work outside of your expertise
By now, you know your strengths. The reality of side hustle is that you’re not going to be good at everything all the time and you shouldn’t want to be. That generally means some of the skills needed to efficiently run your side hustle must be found elsewhere to free up your time to continue doing only what you’re best at within your business.
For example, you might be good at digital marketing, but your graphic design skills will easily turn off your audience instead of getting them glued to your message. To prevent this, do the things you are good at and work to outsource everything else. I recommend not even trying to learn new skills in the immediate term unless they strongly relate to what you’re interested in and the needs of your business altogether. Outsourcing your weaknesses is more affordable in the long run as the value of your time increases significantly. Most importantly, it’s also an effective and easily implemented alternative.
8. Ask real customers for critical feedback
Without feedback from your initial customers, you’ll expose your side hustle to the serious risk of failure. You may be planning to build a product that doesn’t do the best possible job of solving your customer’s problems. Without objective, external feedback, you’ll likely execute the plan; invest a considerable amount of time, money, and effort in the process, only to lose all those valuable resources in the end. Make a habit of internalizing feedback (good or bad) and you’ll force yourself to continually improve your solution as you progress.
9. Avoid getting fired from your full-time Job
Of course, you’re not expected to work on your side hustle during company hours, nor use company resources to advance your own pursuits. Not only is it unethical, but also a likely breach of the employment terms you signed when you began your job. Make it a point to honour every term in your contracts and to consistently deliver excellent performance at your day job even while having your side hustle pick up momentum. Compromising your quality of work and reputation in the office will prevent you from re-engaging and even potentially partnering with your old employers once you go full-time as a business owner yourself. More importantly, violation of contract agreements can lead to disciplinary and even legal action that is capable of putting your employment at risk; I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.
10. Build a sustainable flow of customers before quitting your day job
It’s common knowledge that most entrepreneurs have a healthy risk appetite, but you shouldn’t plunge into anything without having a decent chance of success. My advice is to never leave your day job until your side hustle is providing you with a sustainable, growing cash flow more than what your day job pays you.
Moreover, have at least six months’ worth of savings for both personal and business purposes to pad yourself in the likely event that your business doesn’t grow as quickly as expected. Remember that having excited customers and translating them into revenue in the early stages of your side hustle is your clearest indicator of future success.
Achieving success with your side hustle
So far, the data still shows that most new businesses have a pretty low chance of achieving success. However, that shouldn’t deter you from pursuing more meaningful self-employed work. While aspiring entrepreneurs with a strong drive can look to side hustle as a stepping-stone toward financial freedom, the best time to build a business is when you have a full-time job that covers all of your living expenses. Think of your full-time employment as hedging against the risks you’re taking as you test the viability of your side hustle.
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You’ll find a lot more bite-sized ideas that will improve your chances of success.
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