Getting Started With Your First Side Hustle

Sometimes the most difficult part about going down the entrepreneurial pathway is knowing where to start. This post is designed to give you a high level road map to spring board you to success. We'll talk about eight key actions you will need to take to get the most out of your first entrepreneurial steps from preparing yourself mentally to the tangible actions needed to establish a business plan and potential customer base. In future posts we will dive deeper into each of these topics and more. Let's get started!

1. Change your MindSet
The fallacy of adulthood is that we are absolved of all the self-doubts, knowledge gaps, or inadequacies of our younger selves by the magical hand of time. "The only constant in life is change"; With that change will come new obstacles, challenges, time-wasters, and nay-sayers (these can come as much from within as they can extrinsically). If you don't know how to weather change with a mind-set of GRIT one of four things willl happen:

• You will never succeed by mere lack of trying
• You will accept failure as the natural state when you don't succeed the first time or encounter obstacles and setbacks.
• You will fall into the comfort trap when elevating to the next level requires you step outside of your safe zone. Complacency is a killer and it claims creativity, mastery, and drive as its victims.
• You will not fully appreciate achievements even when you do attain them because of impostor syndrome.

Exercise

• Perform a pre-mortem. Get a paper and pen or on your laptop at the top put the header, "I want ..... but I'm afraid that.... ". Now make two columns. In column one: Write your wants in life and your business. In column 2 get ALL of your fears and concerns down on paper and fill this column out until you exhaust your list or get 10-20 of those fears out of your head and on paper.
• Getting the negative ideas out of your head and in your face gives you an opportunity to dissect probable from wild imagination. For the wild you can discount them as such now that you see them in front of you. For the probable/realistic, make a third column and write ONE (JUST ONE!) small thing you can do that could reduce the likelihood of that fear occurring or helping you cope with that fear if it does occur. Hint: Writing don't follow my business/ dream is not a valid answer... just erase it now if you put it in already.
• The purpose of this exercise is to first identify that some fears might not be as rationale to you when you step out of your own head and confront them face to face. For those that might be, there are always ways to control and/or recover even in worst case scenarios.

2. Pick your Niche (Not just target market. It is what services you provide.): Use below to determine complexity of entry into your niche and to determine if it is still the niche you should/ want to get into:
   • Determine your experience level or knowledge level of the niche. What you know, need to know, don't know you don't know.
   • Determine your passion level in the niche. You are going to spend a lot of time developing this business. Make sure you are interested in your niche.
   • Determine the problem you are solving for in your market
   • Determine if there is profitability here.
   • Are people willing to pay for this solution.?
   • Can people afford you? What would be the ideal amount of money you would like to make from clients or sales? Be realistic, but ambitious.
   • Determine the barriers to entry. Are there certifications required? Legal barriers? etc...


3. Landscape Analysis
   • Who is your competition? Find other industry leaders doing what you do or parallel markets.
     • What do you see them doing that you like. What do you see them doing that you don't like?
   • Is there profitability here? Find their numbers.


4. Cultivate your Expertise in your Niche
   • What makes you different?
   • Why should clients want to come to you for instead of having you search for them?
   • What is the plan to polish your craft, execution, and deliver to customers
   • What is your passion story? This is the narrative that explains to people and yourself why you do what you do in a way that spurs infectious interest in the product/ service you provide
   • What is your pitch? Think of it is as pared down version of your passion story. 2 to 3 short "roll off the tongue" sentences about what your product/service is, what it does in a way that makes people know why they should want it.
   
   
5. Build your general business plan
   • This is the how and this may end up spilling both into week 2 and requiring ongoing tweaking/ adjustment for the execution piece
   • Hint: Use backwards planning- What is your End Goal, What are the Milestones to demonstrate progress towards that goal, What are the objectives within each milestone, What are the weekly/ daily smaller bite size actionable steps to master the objective?
   • 5 Gs:
     1. Get it out of your head (that means get it on paper or somewhere else tangible).
     2. Get it in a Project Plan.
     3. Get it Calendared.
        1. This is important and easily overlooked. If you are jamming 20 actions steps and/or objectives into one day on your schedule while juggling asks from your full time job and personal tasks, you will keep hitting a wall and get discouraged when you can't complete all or most of the tasks you scheduled for that day. Be realistic in your schedule.
     4. Get yourself an accountability measure.
     5. Get Started


6. Build a Point of Access to your Business or If you already have a website audit it:
   • Website Should Have
     • Home Page
       • email opt-in should be in here.
       • You need an auto-responder as well. See ConstantContact or MailChimp.
     • Services
     • Blog (but only if you are disciplined about posting written/ video content)
     • About us
     • Contact Us


7. Learn Basics of Intellectual Property and Copyright Law
   • See my second set of notes for some high level introductory topics


8. Make a sales script (if you need it)
   • These are just talking points for converting leads to customers/ clients


9. Develop your Follower/ Potential Leads Base
   • For now this is just a list. Put EVERYONE in it who could be potential lead. That doesn't mean just someone who would potentially be interested in what you are doing. It could be just that person who might have a friend of a friend who is interested, or might do business in another field with potential clients, etc.


I hope this road map gets you off to a strong start! Please feel free to comment, up vote, and/or message me if you have questions or enjoyed what you read.