I built it. It’s mine. No one can take it away from me.
The biggest motivator to start a side hustle is usually money.
Also, when we start a side hustle, we are already making ends meet, albeit barely for some of us, but most of that money is gravy.
I’d like to offer a different, very worthy, yet less spoken about, reason for starting a side hustle; security.
What is Security
Security is akin to freedom. Just as having a roof over the head, and food for the belly, it is absolutely essential.
It is the state of being free from threat.
When we hear the word threat, we most often think of self defense from aggression, and it is, but the threat of violence is not the only threat that you and your family face.
Incorporating a side hustle into your life provides potential security from things like:
- Loss of a job
- Unforeseen expense from a catastrophic event
- Change in workplace conditions
- Change in yourself or family that demands a change in lifestyle
Having the confidence in a backup plan gives you far more freedom make decisions in your own best interest.
How To Add Security with a Side Hustle
Starting a side hustle from nothing isn’t easy. A lot of people do it, which can be misleading. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely possible.
As you build your hustle, I want to offer you five things to design into it for added security.
1. Build relationships
You should be doing this anyway, but as you build your business, build in a mechanism to keep in touch with your customers and find ways to share your story. Be totally honest. Share with your customers how valuable they are to you. This is a great way to acquire repeat business, which is exactly what security is.
Should life take a turn, you’ll have a list of people that are accustomed to hearing from you, who have come to know you through the work that you do, and who you can reach out to with the next chapter of your story.
“Life has changed, I could really use your help, thank you for being part of my story.”
2. Overcome the fear of marketing
All of us have different levels of comfort with marketing ourselves, and most of us are uncomfortable with it at first. Use the time at the beginning of the hustle to overcome that fear.
Meaning, don’t postpone starting a side hustle thinking that you can just turn one on if life gets tough. Even if you have a skillset that is highly marketable, don’t overlook the reality that marketing is hard and takes longer than most of us expect.
3. Understand the systems of the hustle
Getting systems in place as you grow will be critical to having the ability to scale on short notice.
Each hustle will be different, but there should be a marketing system, and then one to handle workflow, a system for processing billing and payment, and a system for keeping in contact with customers.
All these systems will develop and grow over time, which is exactly the point. Understand what these systems are and put them in place early. Many will require learning new aspects of business management, new software and maybe new skills. All the time spent on these is not time spent selling or building your actual widget. Climb the learning curve in a low stress state, before you need to call on the hustle for security.
4. Acquire the necessary tools and supplies for growth
As you grow your hustle, think forward for what it would take to grow it beyond the scale you are actually shooting for. That doesn’t mean you have to take it there, yet. It just means that any extra income can go toward the tooling and supplies that would be necessary to grow the hustle if you needed to.
Some examples of this could be extra tools for your landscaping business, fancier software to handle billing or workflow, improved email client for maintaining customer contact, a course in Facebook marketing, or anything else particular to your hustle.
5. Set early goals to not be overwhelming, but capable of scaling
This is more of a precautionary statement. When you start your hustle you should clearly identify what your goals are. Such as: I’m going to work 2 hours a night, 5 days a week, to make an extra $200 a week.
It’s important to communicate this with the people in your life who you share your time with and be understanding when the time commitment goes up disproportional to the income. When that happens, it should trigger a review of the systems and feasibility study of the hustle.
What it should also do is keep you in check at the scale that fits your lifestyle so that the hustle doesn’t become an undo burden on your life, which will lead to you hating yourself for ever starting it. Having that goal gives you permission to turn down work, or take longer to finish a job if necessary and provides the awareness that your hustle could scale up if you ever need it to.
My Story with Knife Sharpening
I’d like to close by using my own side hustle as an example.
As I write this, I’m coming up on 2 years into a side hustle sharpening knives. I started sharpening knives with the goal of raising $5k over 5 years by sharpening no more than 10 knives a week. The reason I started the hustle was to raise funds for a wholistic landscaping project on my homestead. I made the choice to not share my income reports, but I want to use that as an example of, what I consider to be, a reasonable goal at the outset.
I frequently share that I have no desire to become a full-time knife sharpener. I thoroughly enjoy my W2 job and think that it’s not inconceivable that I’ll work there as long as they’ll let me.
The added security of my side hustle just hit me because I feel like I’m at the point where, if I needed to, I could turn the volume up on knife sharpening.
I remember early on how nervous I was marketing myself to a local restaurant, and how that call to the farmer’s market manager made my heart beat harder. That’s all comfortable now. I’ve built the confidence to roll into any restaurant, tell them I sharpen knives, give them a card and offer one for free to check the quality.
I’ve branched out into lawn and garden tools, because that’s what the customers asked for.
I have learned how to use email marketing tools to send beautiful emails to my customers. I started with Gmail and they looked like garbage.
Overall, it’s a cool place to be. No one can tell me that I don’t need to come to work anymore. No one has their thumb over me to tell me to do something I otherwise wouldn’t do if I didn’t need the money. I built it. It’s mine. No one can take it away from me.
I think of it as a smoldering pile of tinder. If I get hungry I can blow some oxygen on it and blow it up.
Hopefully I’ll never have to.
Thanks for reading,
-NHMan
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