CFO of Life #92: Unlock Your Potential - 5 Steps to Launch Your Side Hustle Dream

Sometimes we all feel stuck at work, like we are not growing but still doing good things.

I know you have felt it and I have been there myself. But one of the many ways to escape that is through a side hustle, regardless of what it is. A side hustle can help you scratch the itch of doing something new, as well as learn, grow and maybe make some extra money.

But starting a side hustle is hard, stressful and ambiguous, that’s why this week’s article will answer the key 5 questions you need to consider before you start: What side hustle should I choose? Is there a niche that I can occupy? How do I start and what do I do?

What is the minimum thing that I need before talking to customers? How do I validate that people want what I want to do?

This will be done through the 5 key points of learning: 1. Why you should be excited about side hustles and the motivation to do them

2. Finding Your Niche

3. First actionable steps and the MVP

4. Realistic Roadmap and Key Considerations Before Diving In

5. The Power of Community and how to test what you want to do Now, let's tackle those common roadblocks that often trip up aspiring side hustlers and help you manage those mental blocks.

1. Motivations for side hustling

There are 3 main reasons to start a side hustle - to make more money, pursue your passion project or develop a new skill, or in a rare occurrence - could be motivated by all 3 of those. There is no right or wrong answer, it is all about what drove you to pursue a side hustle. Many people who are motivated to make more money might need to pay off some debt, or they might want to build their emergency fund, start saving for a great vacation or accelerate their retirement.

Others choose this as a motivation to build their hobbies and make them into a source of income. Imagine being great at woodworking, you can always take your artistic passion and inspiration and start creating coffee tables, chairs, cabinets or anything your heart desires, this is a great way to feed your passion for creativity and make some good money. 

Last but not least, you might want to use your side hustle as a way to learn new skill and test the waters outside of work. You might want to become better at communicating with people and bring them on board with your ideas. So you can start reselling items, just as I did 12 years ago. 

I wanted to become more comfortable talking to people, so I started importing goods from China and reselling them. The commerce lasted for a year or so, as I needed to go to university, but it taught me a lot about sales and handling complaints.

No matter what your motivation is, don't forget that it is all about you and your goals!

At the same time, no matter what business you start, there needs to be a need for it. So, you need to find your niche and validate the need.

2. Finding your niche

After you decide to start, you need to understand if there is a market for what you plan to offer. 

This is easy, you can do desktop research or you can do customer validation, the best approach depends on the products or services you want to offer. 

Regards of what it is, you want to do a deep dive into the current offerings on the market, try to understand what they are missing,  what they are doing wrong and how that can be serviced.

If you are lucky, you can maybe find some really, really good. Ideally, that good thing would be a clear part of the market that is either ignored or underserved. 

Imagine a city without a pizza shop and a reasonably big Italian population. Or a beach resort without an ice cream shop. Those are the obvious niches that fill a market need and guarantee that you have a business from day one.

But not everyone would be lucky to do so, that is why you need to take a few small steps and create an MVP to help you test the market.

3. First actionable steps and the MVP:

MVP is your Minimum Viable Product: Or the most basic version of the side hustle that you can create within a minimum amount of time and with minimum commitment. That way you can have your basic version and test the waters with any potential clients.

This could be a 1-page description of your service, a 3-D printed prototype of your product, a survey to capture your needs or a pop-up restaurant that serves the food you want to sell. It is a way to dip your toes in the water and see if it is too cold and if there are any fish that will bite.

Interestingly, everyone is excited to start, but no one wants to do the work. That is why people say that overthinking has killed more businesses than it has started!

But no matter how much time you invest in building your MVP, it will pay off! At the same time, you should not rush and create something sloppy and you should not take years to perfect it. It is all about balance and string gold with enough information and enough vision.

When I was preparing to start this blog, I spoke to more than 30-40 people from different industries and different walks of life. It showed me how everyone has the same problem, we never got told how to handle money and what to do with it. This validated everything for me.

4. Realistic roadmap and key considerations before diving in

No matter what you do, you should always consider what needs to be done to start and create a roadmap. This should include a deadline of when you want to launch, what you want to achieve, who you need to contact, what you need to cover and what needs to be created. It would all depend on your chosen side hustle, but I would not put the start date further than 3 months from the day you decide to go all in! At the same time, you need to consider the following things:

Time Management

Schedule dedicated side hustle work hours to avoid burnout and maintain work-life balance. I do this on my commute to work, to the gym and on the way back + 5 hours on the weekend.

Prioritize tasks effectively - identify urgent vs important activities to ensure you're working on the right things first.

Workload Management

Be realistic about your capacity - don't overload yourself and risk jeopardising your full-time job performance.

Start small and scale gradually as you build momentum and refine your side hustle, so you don’t bite more than you can chew.

Delegate tasks if possible to free up your time and prevent feeling overwhelmed, that will allow you to leverage the time of people who are already experts in what they do.

Financial Considerations

Research potential startup costs associated with your side hustle (e.g., website fees, materials).

Understand if and when there will be tax implications for your side hustle (consult a tax professional).

Consider potential financial benefits - how will your side hustle contribute to your financial goals?

Legal Considerations

Research any permits or licenses required for your specific side hustle in your location.

Ensure your side hustle activities don't conflict with any contractual obligations in your full-time employment, or you might find yourself in a situation where you quickly need to start to monetise your side hustle!

5. The power of community and how to test what you want to do:

This is the biggest untold secret of starting a side hustle! Any community that you a a part of can help you test the idea, but also serve as your first clients. They would probably give you some tough love, but also help you spread the word out. At the end of the day, we are 6 steps away from reaching anyone, but we need to start that first link in the chain for everything to work!

Now, here are some ideas about where to look:  

Online Communities: Online forums on the topic of your side hustle, Facebook groups or subreddits. Those are some of the best places where you can find like-minded people to test your product and help you grow.

Local Meetups are a great place to meet your future customers and talk to them. It will help you learn what they like about your product and what they don’t. That way you can quickly build up your MVP and find your first customers!

Just imagine that the moment you post on an online forum that has 10,000 active users, you can have 10,000 people instantly interact with your product, and you can wake up the next day with 10,000 new clients!

Or you can go to your neighbourhood BBQ and find your first client for that window cleaning business you want to start. Or you can charm them with your cooking skills and find the person who wants to pay you to teach them to cook or roast dinners for them and their friends!

Before we end, let me conclude all of this with a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today”.

So, if you want to start your side hustle, the best time was yesterday but the second best time is today!

And to help with this, next week we will look into a long list of interesting side hustles and what connects all of them!

Thank you for reading! All comments and topic suggestions are highly appreciated. Post #92 in the series CFO of Life #si #personalfinance #CFOofLife