How often are you striving to test out a new idea to make an extra buck? Are you idly sitting by hoping extra cash comes your way or actively pursuing that dollar?
I like to call this type of work a side hustle. It’s on the side — I’m still employed — and I have to hustle. Time is short when you have a 9 and a 1/2 month old, so I want to maximize my time with him while also maximizing the dollars I can earn on the side.
Side hustles have been instrumental in allowing my family to do things we never thought possible. Thanks to earning a side income on top of our actual jobs we’ve been able to sock away more money for a rainy day, pay for emergencies as they have popped up, and overall lowered our financial stress levels significantly.
How to Start a Side Hustle
Here are three core aspects of side hustling:
Test, Test, Test
No one is going to send you an overnight package with step by step instructions on how to start a side hustle. Not only are hustlers too busy to show you how to do their hustle, it would dig into their potential business that they’ve built from their own sweat.
It’s all about testing. Got an idea? Find a way to test it out as inexpensively as possible. You don’t want to build up a ton of overhead around an idea that may or may not pan out.
Effort
You are going to have to put in a lot of effort toward getting a side hustle off of the ground. Your initial tests might show your idea can make some money. Don’t expect to be rolling in the dollars without a lot of effort involved. Expanding on your tests will take time and energy.
Then again your first few tests might be monumental failures. That’s okay. You might lose $20 or $50 or $100 on your first few tests; a small price to pay to find something that can you a lot more than that in the future. (And if losing those amounts would break your finances you simply aren’t ready to try side hustling.)
Don’t get discouraged and keep your efforts up. You can’t find a real hustle without effort.
Willingness to Fail
Last, but certainly not least, you must be comfortable failing. Hard.
The greatest entrepreneurs in the world have all failed multiple times before finally nailing the idea that made them wealthy and successful.
You have to be comfortable with feeling like you threw money after a bad idea that didn’t pan out. If you can’t be comfortable taking a risk knowing that it can fail then side hustling isn’t for you. Statistically speaking a majority of small businesses — the legitimate kind with LLCs, and buildings, and rent, and so forth — fail. Take one step back from that and wonder how many ideas it took to get to that group of legitimate small businesses, and how many of those ideals crashed and burned before they ever really got off of the ground.
We’re facing steep odds. Good thing we know that going in up front. We can mentally prepare to dominate and deal with the ups and downs of hustling.
It will be hard. It will be bumpy. But you just might find something that earns you a few hundred or thousand dollars per month… enough to change your world.
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