How to Determine Your Side Hustle & 12 Tips for Success

We are living in an incredible world filled with endless possibilities to create more of the life we’ve always dreamed of. The rags-to-riches stories are everywhere these days. More people are learning to seek out the resources to turn around their situation and break through the barriers of their current restricting circumstances. It is far easier to reach a wide range of people and because of that, creating new opportunities to make money can extend past a garage sale, craft show or lemonade stand–there are no limits to what you can do anymore. Additionally, thanks to social media, amateurs are being more appreciated than ever before by others for their knowledge and real-life experiences to get from one point in life to another. Professionals can appear too unattainable with resources far greater than what the average person has. If you’ve had an experience (otherwise known as life) that you’re sharing, most people would rather connect with you for guidance on how to be where you are in your journey than a professional who may be in a similar place.

A side hustle should be something that takes your knowledge, experience, skills, or passions and converts them into a product or service that can help other people. It’s the classic model of people helping people. Except instead of having to stay within certain guidelines determined by someone else, this is your idea, your product, your service, your determined way to get it done. The goal of a side hustle is to bring money into your bank account while you sleep. Whether that’s booking clients 24/7 with a downpayment, selling downloadable products, or receiving orders for single-SKU products, a side hustle should be a small amount of effort to bring in the possibility for a lot of money day or night.

To start this process, you need to remove any mindset that you can’t be successful, that you don’t have a great idea, that it’s been done a million times before, that there are similar free products out in the vast internet, that you can’t turn a hobby into a money-making gig, that you’re less knowledgeable or less skilled than anyone else — basically any thought that there’s no way you can have a successful side hustle. Otherwise reading this and pursuing this is already pointless. The only difference between you and a person making a six-figure income playing pranks on people and recording it on YouTube is this: they believed they could do something and make money. so they did it. You can do it too. If you’re ready to take control of your financial freedom, creating a side hustle is a great place to start.

When working through the following questions, keep in mind what makes you unique.

Questions to ask yourself to determine your side hustle:

1. What do you enjoy the most about the job you do now?
   (i.e. creating spreadsheets, database organization, sales calls, networking, analytics, helping customers locate an item, designing graphics, etc.)
2. What are your passions/things you enjoy doing but don’t get paid for?
   (i.e. photography, gardening, cooking, walking dog, shopping, creating Powerpoint presentations, writing, etc.)
3. What life experiences do you enjoy telling others about?
   (i.e. traveling, rising from an addiction, higher education, parenthood, losing weight, eating healthy, job searching, etc.)
4. What skills do you find easy (that others may struggle to do)?
   (i.e. travel planning, organizing, meal planning, event planning, working out, budgeting, website design, cooking, etc.)
5. What problems do people often ask your help with?
   (i.e. career advice, party planning, fashion, travel help, family activity ideas, baby sleep training, budgeting, Excel documents, public speaking fears, social media, computer repair, etc.)
6. What areas do you have extra knowledge in — whether formal education or not?
   (i.e. culinary, human resources, stock market, healthcare, music, legal, exercise, relationships, technology, etc.)
7. What kind of people do you have a passion for helping?
   (i.e. working moms, introverts, economically disadvantaged, sports fans, rising professionals, volunteers, etc.)
8. What types of social media accounts do you follow?
   (i.e. travel, celebrity, exercise, therapy, sports, financial, interior design, cooking, technology, Green Initiatives, etc.)
9. What type of magazines/articles/nonfiction books do you read the most?/What do you like to learn about?
   (i.e. travel, other people’s lives, financial management, teaching, technology, sports, psychology, world issues, etc.)

Idea Generation

1. Are there any common links from the previous worksheets? Anything that stands out by itself or could go hand-in-hand with another? (i.e. travel planning with website design, baby sleep training with enjoying helping moms, budgeting with Excel sheets, fashion advice with party planning, etc.)
2. Are there any ideas that could be created into an instant downloadable PDF, an e-book, Excel sheets, Powerpoint files, or put into an online course?
3. Are there any ideas that could affordably be created into a single-sku product?
   (Note: You can always expand at a later time, but you don’t want to initially invest a lot until the market for your idea is tested.)
4. Are there any ideas of a service that could be provided virtually?
   (i.e. editing/proofreading, career counseling, financial management, schedule management, travel planning)

12 Tips for Side Hustle Success:

1. Start Small
Creating a side hustle doesn’t have to change the world — just your world. Side hustles smooth the path to earn extra money to give you the chance to find your ideal job, go back to school, take more vacations, pay for your kids’ activities, or simply to live more of the life you always dreamed that comes along with financial freedom and flexibility.
Of course, every side hustle has the opportunity to grow into more. But if you start with an initial smaller goal, you’re able to succeed (or fail) quicker, and make the necessary adjustments for success. Big projects require more resources; little ones allow you to get off the ground with little time and/or money investment.
In my course, Empowering Your Side Hustles, we discuss three types of low-cost start-up opportunities: informational products, single-SKU physical products, and virtual services. All of these are fairly easy to create to test the market and launch, with the potential to bring in thousands of dollars a month with a limited investment while using your knowledge, skills, experiences, and passions.

2. Be Authentic
If you want people to gravitate toward your side hustle, it has to be something you’re passionate about. The most natural form of sales happens through everyday conversations. Trying to do something that may make money, but there’s no heart behind it will be energy wasted. The side hustle will also end up being more work if you don’t naturally have the energy to put toward it. Find a side hustle that gets you fired up even when you’re tired.
Even reporting on what other people are doing can be an authentic side hustle. It’s still authentically you as long as it’s a topic you get amped up about. Even if you’re not a gym owner but you admire what they do, compiling lists, tips, and interviews of successful ones can help other people. If it’s an area you’re passionate about and know well through research, people will gravitate toward it because your passion is contagious.

3. Get Uncomfortable
One of my least favorite phases is, “If it’s hard work, it wasn’t meant to be.” It’s such a cop-out, such an easy way to give up. The world will fight harder to resist you when you’re doing something GREAT. It hates change more than anyone else. Even more than you. This tip may seem counterintuitive to Tip #2 (Be Authentic) because if you’re authentic, you should feel comfortable, not uncomfortable, right? Wrong. Many people don’t pursue their ideas because they’re scared to put themselves out there, worried about revealing their idea and not getting the response they hope for, or don’t want to put a price tag on it and advertise it to friends and family as though they don’t deserve to be paid for their great idea, or a million other reasons to sit back and not take action. They restrict themselves, limit the reach of their dreams, stay comfortable and wishing instead of getting uncomfortable and DOING. There is not one person starting a side hustle that doesn’t feel uncomfortable at some point in the process, if not the entire process, because they’ve never done what they’re about to do which is kind of the whole point — to make a change. Growth comes from being uncomfortable, and the best successes bloom out of those opportunities.

4. Stay Aware
Opportunities present themselves every single day. You choose to seize them or you don’t. Like Tip #3 (Get Uncomfortable), to seize them usually requires some form of discomfort which is why many people let them pass instead of grabbing on and making it part of their journey. If you have yet to determine or finalize your side hustle, stay in tune with what people are talking about, the problems people are searching for answers in, a trend that gets you excited, what you’re learning about that you want to share with others. This entire world is about connections with other people: listen, watch, stay aware of the connections in your life and those happening around you to help pave your course. Once you start plugging into these daily and thinking in terms of “how can I work this into a side hustle?”, you’ll be amazed at the opportunities knocking on your door, begging for a home.

5. Learn Always
Never stop learning. Stay on top of trends. Research what other people in similar industries are doing. Don’t be afraid to put your own spin on what you’re learning about. People will value what you have to offer, even if five other people offer something similar.
Most side hustles can always be taken to another level (we talk about this in a value ladder format in my Empowering Your Side Hustles course). The more you learn, the more you have to share with others. It’s a never-ending invigorating cycle. But that’s the beautiful part — if you are excited to learn about the exact topic your side hustle is in, it’s not work. It’s reading you probably would be doing anyway, except now you can convert what you learn into a method to earn money.

6. Be Flexible
Knowing what you like doing, the people you enjoy helping, and the things you are passionate about is tremendous and will guide you to different side hustle opportunities (as long as you stay aware like Tip #4 suggests). Just don’t be 100% strictly set on the exact path you may have outlined initially. Your journey with your chosen side hustle may need some adjusting along the way and that’s okay. Testing the market, making necessary changes, adding value, relaunching, failing, succeeding — it’s all part of it. Once you accept that and let go of any specific attachments, you’ll be able to do what’s needed quicker and bounce back to keep the energy on it high and move toward what works so you can better help others as you set out to do.

7. Always Add Value
Although in my “Empowering Your Side Hustles” course we focus on getting a product out the door immediately to test the market, that’s not the end of the value you’re offering to your customers. Adding ongoing value into your side hustle is like the air it needs to breathe and continue for years to come. Stay focused throughout the life cycle of the ways in which you can inject more worth into your products and services, therefore adding value into your customers’ lives. It’s the sure-fire way to keep repeat customers since they will learn to trust you as a go-to source to enhance their life and help solve their problems the more you’re able to offer. Throughout your side hustle’s life cycle, you need to ask yourself “how can this add more value to new customers?” and “how can I continue adding value to existing customers?”

8. Set 30 Day Goals
I’m a big believer in working backward on goals. Be specific to guide your path. If you have a one-year goal, what do you need to do in twelve months to get there? What can you do in nine months to get to the twelve-month goal? Six months? three months? Thirty days from now?
Many times we set a goal like “I want to be xyz a year from now.” The scope is too big which is why many of the goals drop off. You need to get your goals as specific as possible and break down the steps. It’s worth the extra time to map out a plan. Thirty-day check-ins are a great way to stay on top of where you want to be because they’re easy to measure progress, easy to stay motivated, and easy to get back on track with if you have one month that you fall off. (And if you want to break your goals down to two weeks, daily, or hourly it’ll help even more.)
Just keep them realistic. Know that you probably won’t have a million-dollar side hustle within thirty days (although to be fair, that chance always exists too). But if your goal is to get the idea completed and launched within thirty days, that’s much more attainable.

9. Identify Your Pitfalls
Be aware of the ideas and concepts (otherwise known as inner and outer resistance) that you know may be obstacles or pitfalls and set a game plan to tackle them in advance. Are you fearful of announcing to people the service you want to offer because you don’t feel knowledgable enough? Do you doubt it’ll be a success? Are you worried about not having enough time to get it off the ground? Write out those pitfalls, the excuses and thoughts that you can be honest enough with yourself to admit, and figure out how to overcome them BEFORE you get to the stage where they’ll manifest. It’s like wearing bug spray before you head into a mosquito-infested rainforest. You know it’s about to get ugly, but you come prepared to fight them off so you can get out and celebrate in a worry-free field of beauty enjoying the fruit of your journey with no pesky mosquitos biting away at you.

10. Choose Productivity
This is what separates the successful people from the unsuccessful people the most, the Dreamers Vs. the Doers. Many people will say “I don’t have time” to do whatever they need to do when creating a side hustle and implementing it. It’s an easy fall-back excuse. This is the truth: Every single person can make free time if it means doing something that they really care about. There are many nights when I’m so tired that all I want to do is zone out in front of the TV, but I have to ask myself, how much value will that bring to my life versus what I actually need to do? Will zoning out get me any closer to my dreams? Mental breaks are needed, there’s no doubt about that. But when you’re regularly choosing the non-value activities in your limited free time, you need to take an honest look and re-evaluate your priorities. Stop saying you don’t have time, when you do, you just use it for other things. Productivity toward your goals is worth choosing over mindlessly scrolling through the endless abyss that is Facebook or other social media traps. The next morning, you’ll barely remember what you saw on the screen if you choose the mindless route and you’ll have regrets that you didn’t do more; but if you choose to actively work toward your goals, you’ll remember the progress you made, and I guarantee that’ll pump you up for the rest of the day and give you the motivation to continue making the wiser choice.

11. Find Your Tribe
Very rarely is there any job that a person will love absolutely every aspect of, and that’s even true in a side hustle gig. If there are parts of what needs to be done with your side hustle to be successful (i.e. social media marketing or image graphic design) that exhausts you, find people who can take on that work for you. A $10 investment to save you potentially HOURS of draining work that frustrates you and puts you at risk for quitting your side hustle all together is COMPLETELY WORTH IT. Find someone who can do the task faster and for a cheap price to help you out. Don’t let your pride stand in the way.
In the Empowering Your Side Hustles course, we also talk about the free software and services that can aid you in getting these things done if you aren’t already talented in how to do them. The more shortcuts you can take to complete the necessary steps, the better so you can get your product or service out into the world faster.

12. Fearlessly Launch
100% of unfinished projects fail.
Get it done. Complete it. Get it out there. Give it time. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Not right away. You won’t know how successful an idea is until you put it out in the world. Even then, don’t expect overnight success. Sometimes it takes a while for the rest of the world to catch up. If you’re proud of your product or service and truly believe it can help others and it fulfills your soul, do not give up just because no one is drifting to it right away. Keep an open mind for any adjustments you may have to make, try different angles, but don’t immediately give up. And if it doesn’t look like it’ll be a hit, that’s okay. Pick up another side hustle idea and run with it. Give it 100%. You won’t know its success until you give it a chance to breathe and let it live in the first place.
Just don’t be afraid of your idea. Fear holds you back; not your idea. Not your resources. Fear. Breakthrough and launch fearlessly and unapologetically because it’s you, and there’s nothing to be ashamed by. You are bringing value to the world with your idea, and you’ll be rewarded for doing so.