Whether you are starting your very first company or you are an established business owner looking to develop a new income stream, creating a side hustle can be the ideal way to get a new business venture started. By developing your business as a part-time side gig, you can greatly reduce the personal and financial risk that comes with starting a new business from scratch.
If you are eager to get the ball rolling with your side hustle, here are 4 strategies to enhance your chances of success.
1. Monetize Your Passion
The quickest and easiest way to get a side hustle going is to start with something you truly enjoy doing, you are already good at doing, and that provides value to those around you. By turning something you are passionate about into a money-making venture, you’ll likely have the motivation to see things through when the going gets tough, because even when you are not making any money, you’ll still be having fun.
If you are working a day job, find something you enjoy doing and for which you already have the skills, experience, and industry knowledge. For example, if you work in marketing and really enjoy creating your company’s digital media, you might launch your own e-newsletter or graphic design service.
But first, be sure you aren’t violating the terms of your employment agreement with your current employer. As your Personal Family Lawyer® firm with business planning expertise, this is something we can help you with to make certain your new venture doesn't get you into any legal trouble.
If you already own a business, find ways to generate new income streams from your current operation. From affiliate marketing to consulting and creating new digital platforms, there are an array of different options to choose from for creating new revenue sources. Not sure where to start or which options to choose? We can help you with that.
2. Validate Your Concept With Income And Feedback
Studies show that nearly half of all startups fail due to a lack of a profitable market. This highlights the need for you to validate your business concept with paying customers before investing too much time, energy, and money—or quitting your day job. Your side hustle idea may sound like a winning concept to you, but your potential customers might not feel the same way.
By attracting just a few paying customers, you can not only validate your concept, but you will also be able to solicit vital feedback. By getting honest customer feedback, you can make adjustments to your initial concept to ensure you’re producing the ideal version of your product or service.
Oftentimes, your initial concept will evolve through several iterations before you land on the winning one, so be flexible and willing to go with what actually works, not just what you think will work. If you’d like to have a brainstorming session to discuss the marketability of your product or service before you bring it to the market, give us a call, and ask about our LIFT Start-Up Session.
3. Minimize Your Startup Costs
One of the biggest advantages of launching a side gig is that you often don’t have to invest much—if any—money to get your operation off the ground. If you already own a business, you can leverage your existing legal, insurance, financial, and tax (LIFT) foundations, as long as they are already well established.
If your business doesn’t already have its LIFT foundations in place, meet with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® firm with business planning expertise to get these systems established before you expand. And if you are starting a side hustle from scratch, you will want to consult with us before you launch to get those basic foundations in place.
4. Develop A Schedule And Stick To It
If you are already running a business or working a 9 to 5 job, you will likely have limited time to work on your side hustle. That’s why it’s called a “hustle” after all—you have to hustle to make the venture pay off. This is where time management is critical.
First, you’ll need to determine how many hours you can spend each day on your side gig, and then block out those times using Google Calendar or another time-management app. To give the venture its best chances of success, find the times of the day when you’ll have the most focus and energy. Whether it’s setting aside extra time in the morning, evenings, or weekends, tailor your side-job schedule around the times when you’ll be the most productive.
From there, make those work times as non-negotiable as your day job or primary business venture. If you simply work whenever you feel like it, you are unlikely to make progress, you’ll get discouraged, and your venture will most likely fall apart before it has a chance to take off.
We have a proven process, called Money Mapping, we can take you through that will help you map your income needs, your available time, and then allow you to use your calendar wisely to ensure it all works together. Contact us for details.
Create A Solid Foundation
One way to maximize the time and productivity spent working your side hustle is to streamline the tedious—yet critical—daily tasks involved with running any business. From keeping financials and creating legal agreements to managing taxes and insurance, these things may not be very glamorous, but ignoring them can seriously stunt your budding business—and even lead to financial ruin if you are sued or audited.
As your Personal Family Lawyer® firm with business planning expertise, we can support you to ensure that you have the foundational legal, insurance, tax, and financial (LIFT) systems in place, so you can focus your time and energy on growing your side hustle. At first, you probably won’t need anything super extensive, but you’ll at least need the basics, and we offer exactly this kind of support with our LIFT Start-Up Session.
Schedule a Start-Up Session with us before launching your side hustle—or if you’ve started but have yet to set up LIFT systems, or if you’re simply not sure if your systems have been set up properly. From there, as your side hustle grows, meet with us again to implement the full suite of systems offered in our LIFT Foundation System & Toolkit. Contact us today to learn more.
This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer®. We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer a LIFT Start-Up Session™ or a LIFT Audit for an ongoing business, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule.
We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.