Build a network of high-value network-building advocates!
In addition to helping you find the best side hustles, building your team of team-building advocates has more benefits than you may realise!
Build trust by building your personal tribe of high-value partners.
Consistently and proactively build your personal tribe of high-value partners to introduce and bring new high-value partners to the collective table.
It’s then so easy to introduce those you’ve introduced to other high-value partners. Proactive network-building means you can create significant opportunities for collaboration without expecting immediate personal transactional benefit.
Pursuing a “give-first strategy” results in business transactions of higher quantity, value and quality (especially in the medium to longer term).
Discuss your side-hustle ideas with others you respect.
People who have “been around the block” a few times can give you the benefit of their experience and wisdom. Often, they will make valuable suggestions.
It is so important to quickly earn the trust of people you respect.
One way of doing this is demonstrating your ability to help them make great connections.
When you promote others you trust, they will often reciprocate.
When you eventually launch your own side hustle, there is almost nothing more worthwhile than having many high-value partners advocating for you.
If you have built trust by helping your partners, many will reciprocate.
Be clear about what you want to achieve before you ask for help/advice
The best place to start is to determine why you want to create a side hustle – what are you hoping to achieve?
For example, how important is it that your side hustle can
Generate increasing amounts of income with decreasing amounts of time required to earn that income?
You may have some great ideas, but are they what the market seeks?
For example, if you launched a website around “side businesses”, would it be as successful as a website about “side hustles”?
What would happen if you “pivoted” before you even started based on input from others?
That could mean you achieve dramatically greater success before having to learn from your own “hard” experience.
“A smart person learns from their own mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.”
It’s also been said that “We don’t know what we don’t know” (How true!).
Light-bulb moments can make such a tremendous difference.
What’s it going to take?
There is so much “noise” when you search the net – it can be overwhelming!
I’ll build your website. I have the ideal marketing strategy for you. Have I got a deal for you?
Whom can you trust?
Well, you know you can trust someone who has earned your trust.
Those you trust often earn your trust by helping you without expecting an immediate return.
Often, they want to partner with you rather than see you as their “customer”.
They will often give you “hard” advice, knowing it will benefit you and you’ll appreciate them “being straight” with them.
Expect to find these people in the tribe you are building.
Plan to become the kind of person others can trust.
In Conclusion: consistently engage in network-building (not just networking) with others who share your values so you can
Build trust by helping others make their ideal connections.
Be the first to give without expecting immediate transactions.
What’s the difference between a side hustle and a start-up?
A side hustle is about you as an individual.
On the other hand, if you are part of a start-up or scale-up, you are usually part of a team of financially committed partners whose objective is to create and market a new product or service.
So, what are the differences from your point of view:
A side hustle usually has far less risk because
You are employed – which means you are not initially relying on your start-up as your main source of income.
The need for capital investment is usually much smaller because your start-up can start very small and gradually scale.
Start-ups and scale-ups often seek debt or equity funding to get their venture off the ground quickly.
However, many businesses fail and those that have provided financial guarantees may lose assets (such as their homes).
In a side hustle, you only have yourself to argue with!
This may be a lot more significant than you realise!
In a start-up or scale-up, there are often vastly differing opinions about strategy, level of borrowings, the number of hours each partner is prepared to invest and so on. Such differing opinions often create stress and discontent – especially when the results are not going according to the original plan.
Urgency and stress
You’ll often hear the terms “rate of cash burn” or “length of runway” in a discussion about a start-up. In other words, how long before this venture needs to make money before it either “goes bust” or needs to do another round of “capital raising” (usually also associated with a further dilution in the equity of the founders).
This accounts for the stress that the Founders of many start-ups experience.
In general, this is not usually a major stress for most side hustles.
Reward
It is often thought that in order to achieve outstanding rewards, you need to be prepared to take great risks.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
The first thing to remember here is that when you are a side hustle, you keep all the rewards.
Also, you can collaborate over time with many others giving you great leverage (especially when you proactively engage in building your network).
If you start with the objective of ensuring your side hustle creates “increasing income with decreasing amounts of time required to earn that income”, you may well develop a side hustle that more than replaces your income over a 4-5 year period. In this case, you may be able to scale it further and/or sell your side hustle for a significant amount.
In other words, your personal reward may well be much higher than that associated with your share of a successful side hustle (which may difficult to liquidate).
Entrepreneurial Attitude
While both side hustles and startups involve entrepreneurship and working outside of a traditional 9-5 job, they usually differ in terms of their scope, goals and level of risk.
Those with an entrepreneurial spirit are often drawn to the idea of ditching employment and starting their own business instead.
But is it safer and smarter to find a side hustle that has the potential to produce increasing amounts of income with decreasing amounts of time required to earn that income?
And what if your side hustle could more than replace your current income in four years?
What if that side hustle required no borrowing and minimal ongoing expenses?
What if your side hustle supplies no products or services?
What if your side hustle was scalable and saleable?
How would that compare with investing/risking large amounts of capital (borrowed against the family home) in your own business?
Yes, your own business may have the capacity to scale and be worth a gazillion 10 years into the future.
On the other hand, it could also fail spectacularly, as so many do (the stats are all there when you do a Google search).
Is having your name attached to a huge tech success more about ego than the lifestyle, peace and security you really want for yourself and your family?
But aren’t most side hustles a lot of work for a relatively small income?
Yes – if you take the “blunt instrument” approach of seeing what you can find online (like everyone else searching for “side hustle”).
However, you can discover better opportunities simply by building your network of collaborative business owners. This will also help you to also refine your own “side hustle” ideas so that you are far more likely to achieve the results you seek.
Don’t rush – think it through carefully before launching a side hustle that becomes a waste of time and money.
The first step to discovering the best side hustles is to start building your network. Talk with as many other successful entrepreneurs as you can. They are often collaborative, have skills you don’t have (and vice versa) and are very happy to help you meet like-minded others.
