SIDE HUSTLE by Chris Guillebeau

• A side hustle has many benefits, but it all starts with the right idea.
• Some hustle ideas are better than others.
• Once you have multiple ideas, you need to be able to identify the best ones.
• As you move forward with an idea, study what other people are doing. Then, do it better or do it differently.
• Once you have a great idea and a specific idea of who it’s for, you need to transform that idea into an offer. An offer includes a promise, a pitch, and a price.
• Resourcefulness is your most valuable hustle skill. Get all the logistics out of the way so you can focus on more important things.
• Use the cost-plus model and follow two easy guidelines for much higher odds of success.
• Many new hustlers get caught up in mundane details. Avoid that trap from the beginning, and keep your focus on just two things.
• When’s the best time to get your offer out in the world and see what happens? Usually before you feel totally confident.
• No man is an island, and few side hustles thrive without the help of friends and supporters. As you begin hustling, don’t hesitate to ask friends, family, and maybe even your mail carrier to join your cause.
• try different things and keep a record of results.
• small victories can be disproportionately satisfying.
• Don’t get distracted—identify what’s working and do more of that.
• To make significant improvements (and save more time) as you expand your hustle, systemize wherever you can.
• When you receive multiple paychecks from different sources, you are no longer dependent on the whims of a single employer.
• More income means more options. More options mean more freedom.
• No matter what it is you do in your day job, or whether you want to identify as an “entrepreneur” or not, you need a side hustle.
• Everyone should have a side hustle. Even if you love your job, having more than one source of income will give you more freedom and more options.
• To be successful at hustling, you first need to understand how to generate profitable ideas and then choose which one is best at any particular time.
• Side hustles are all about action! You need to launch your idea, usually before you feel totally ready, then regroup and refine after seeing the initial results.
• you need a willingness to learn and experiment.
• Most business education teaches people how to be a corporate manager, which is fine if that’s what you do for your day job. But with a side hustle, you’re starting your own business, not running someone else’s. You don’t need an MBA.
• The initial goal is to start on your own, using your own skills and effort.
• Once you acquire the skill of idea generation, you’ll have no problem coming up with ideas whenever you need.
• The only way to master side hustle skills is by doing.
• The key point is to move through these stages in sequence.
• Sometimes it helps to have a visual reminder of how you’re doing.
• Whether you love your job or can’t stand it, everyone should have more than one source of income.
• Remember, a side hustle is the new job security. There’s no downside, and the possibilities are unlimited.
• When you build something for yourself, even as you continue to work your day job, you become empowered.
• A side hustle is like a hobby, with one big difference: most hobbies cost money. A side hustle makes money.
• Happy faces are nice, but you can’t deposit them in your checking account.
• Once you understand that money really does grow on trees, the next step is to learn to plant the right seeds. The seeds for a money tree consist of moneymaking ideas.
• They may not be obvious at first, but if you look closely, you’ll find no shortage of ideas that can be converted into money available for the taking.
• Every hustle starts with an idea—and for best results, you may need more than one.
• Before we go on, take note of an important fact about hustle ideas: not all of them are created equal. In fact, there’s a tremendous range of potential profit among them.
• almost every hustle idea that’s worth pursuing shares three qualities. You want your idea to be feasible, profitable, and persuasive.
• Your goal is to start a project in a short period of time that earns money outside your day job. If any of these pieces of the equation are not immediately evident in the idea you’re considering, you don’t have a feasible idea.
• Start A Project / That Earns Money / In A Short Period Of Time
• Can you envision your next steps? If not, abandon the idea.
• A side hustle produces income. If you don’t see a clear way to get paid, abandon the idea.
• if your idea requires three years to get going, abandon the idea.
• A feasible idea is one that you can turn into reality using the skills, time, and resources you already have. To put it simply, an idea that isn’t feasible is not worth considering.
• Even if you don’t know every step of the way, you must be able to see a pathway from idea to launch.
• if you have a hard time explaining the primary benefit of your concept in more than a sentence or two, you may need to rethink the idea.
• If the primary benefit is unclear to potential customers, you won’t convert many of them into paying customers
• A side hustle is something that makes you money, not costs you money. If you don’t see how you could make money from the idea, preferably in a short amount of time, it’s probably not a good idea.
• Your idea has to arrive at the right time, and be so persuasive that it’s hard for customers to say no to.
• To be successful, you want the right idea at the right time.
• THE HIGH-POTENTIAL IDEA CHECKLIST Can you describe how to turn your idea into action in one sentence? Is there an obvious way to make money with this idea? Does this idea solve a problem for someone? Can you figure out how to make this idea happen quickly? Is it relatively low maintenance? Can you get paid more than once for this idea?
• In creating your side hustle, the goal is to turn your idea into an asset, something that has real value and produces income for you over time.
• Side hustle ideas are like that stock certificate. They hold the potential for real value—but only if you cash them in. If they remain in your head or scribbled on the pages of your journal, the value remains trapped in the world of potential. Your goal as a hustler is to unlock that potential and start converting the idea into profit.
• What are these people doing, and what do they need?,
• Whenever you encounter groups of people, ask yourself What do these people need or want?
• Generally speaking, there are three broad categories of side hustles. You can sell a product, whether one of your own or someone else’s, you can provide a service, or you can be a middleman of some kind.
• Selling a product is simple enough: you make, buy, or acquire something that you then sell to someone else.
• Providing a service is also pretty simple: there’s something you do for someone else, in exchange for payment.
• Some very profitable hustles can be found in “decoding” or improving an existing process, improving it in a way that produces income without creating a product and without directly serving any customers.
• Wherever money is exchanged, there’s usually at least one way that a creative individual has found to make the process more efficient, and to profit from that improvement.
• Offer online tutoring services in your field of expertise
• Create an online (or offline) course in some quirky subject you happen to know a lot about
• Publish a blog with a new lesson on a specific topic every day
• Start a podcast and sell sponsorship
• Start a membership website, where people pay a monthly or annual fee to access useful information about a specific topic
• Write and publish a book (if I can do it, you can too!)
• Most important, always be on the lookout for feasible, profitable, and persuasive ideas as you go about your daily life.
• Just by applying a little logic, you should be able to immediately spot at least some obstacles and opportunities that are inherent in your service or product.
• Identifying the obstacles and opportunities in your idea may call for more formal research, but you don’t necessarily need to head to the library and spend your weekends immersed in a stack of books.
• For each idea, consider what would be uniquely good or uniquely challenging about it.
• By understanding how easy or difficult your idea will be to implement, you’ll have a much better understanding of which of your ideas to shelve, and which one you’ll choose to move forward with.
• The secret to turning a profit for any business or venture, whether it’s a side hustle renting out cars or a multinational corporation, boils down to one basic principle: don’t spend more money than you take in. With this principle in mind, the projected profit for just about any hustle can be calculated by the following simple equation: EXPECTED INCOME - EXPECTED EXPENSES = PROJECTED PROFIT
• The point is that by forecasting profit and expense with a simple estimate like this, you’ll be able to make decisions for your hustle with far more confidence than you would simply by guessing.
• It doesn’t matter how many people walk into your bar; what matters is how many people buy something.
• Your side hustle absolutely must have a clear plan to make money. Don’t set aside this requirement and decide that you’ll “figure it out later.” That’s fine for a hobby, but not for a hustle.
• Don’t worry about being on-the-nose accurate; the goal is to compare the profit potential of your various ideas to see which one might be more worthwhile to pursue.
• Any idea that doesn’t have a likely path to profit should be abandoned. Money isn’t everything, but when it comes to a side hustle, money matters a lot.
• Money grows on trees, but you have to plant the right seeds. Start to notice potential opportunities wherever you go.
• Not all hustle ideas are created equal. For best results, your ideas should be feasible, profitable, and persuasive.
• Starter ideas are fine for a while, but at some point you’ll want to transition to NLIs (next-level ideas).
• Use the back-of-napkin financial analysis (or a simple spreadsheet) to estimate the profit of your idea (or ideas) before proceeding further.
• Once you have multiple ideas, you need to be able to identify the best ones.
• FEASIBILITY: The ability to begin turning the idea into action in a short period of time
• PROFITABILITY: The potential to make money from this idea, also in a short period of time
• PERSUASION: Not only is this a good idea, it’s a good idea now
• EFFICIENCY: How quickly can this be executed?
• MOTIVATION: How excited are you about this idea?
• The point is to compare multiple ideas to see if a clear winner emerges. If one idea clearly ranks higher on most qualities, it’s a pretty good indication that that’s the one to try.
• Remember, your goal is to rank and compare different ideas, then select the best candidate.
• Save all your other ideas for later—you may end up coming back to them at some point.
• Hang on to those extra ideas, but never save your best idea for later.
• Use the selector tool to figure out which idea is strongest and has the most potential, and then lead with that.
• If you still can’t decide after all the analysis, just pick what feels right at the moment.
• When it comes to side hustles, action is almost always better than inaction.
• Even if you end up changing course later, you’re still gaining valuable experience and building valuable skills.
• You just want to learn two things: Who else is offering the same thing or something similar How your idea will be better or different
• You don’t have to be better at everything—in fact, you probably won’t be. When you closely observe the competition, though, you may be able to pick up on some things that they either haven’t noticed or just haven’t had time to address.
• When you “follow the money,” your goal is not only to determine roughly how feasible and profitable the idea is, but also what your competitors are doing that’s making them money. Then, you want to figure out how you can adopt and improve on their strategy.
• If you have a big idea and want to get some real-world feedback (not just from your friends) before going further, you can set up an advertisement and see how people respond.
• Convincing people that they want to buy something they’ve never heard of and didn’t know they needed is challenging, so you’ll have a great advantage if your concept is crystal clear and very easy to understand.
• Every side hustle has a target customer, a specific type of person that its product or service is designed for.
• And the better you can understand those people—who they are, what they need, and where their pain points are—the better equipped you’ll be to serve them.
• If you have an idea of who your customer is, but are having trouble figuring out their pain points, it may help to have an extended (albeit one-way) conversation with them.
• When you’re presenting an offer, you want to make sure to give people all the pertinent information they need to make a purchase.
• A complete offer includes the following elements.
• THE PROMISE: how your hustle will change someone’s life
• THE PITCH: why they should purchase or sign up now
• THE PRICE: what it costs to purchase or sign up (and how to do it)
• The promise should focus on the benefit people will receive from whatever you’re selling. You want to craft a short, bold statement that attracts attention and makes the benefit to customers immediately clear.
• The pitch should provide everything someone needs to know, without getting bogged down in a bunch of irrelevant details.
• The price should tell prospective customers or clients not only what your product or service costs, but also what it includes and exactly what they need to do to receive it.
• Write to a person, not a group.
• Have a purpose for every word. In good copywriting, nothing is superfluous. Every fact and every bullet point is there for a reason. Write multiple drafts and edit ruthlessly each time.
• Don’t just list a bunch of features; maintain the focus on how your offer makes people feel better in some way.
• Enthusiasm is contagious, so don’t be afraid to put yours on display.
• No matter what it is you’re selling, you need an origins story, too.
• Unless you’re selling a completely generic product (and you probably shouldn’t be), you’ll be much more successful if you provide your customers with a history about how your hustle came to be.
• Unless you have a reason to not include any information about yourself in the origins story, it’s almost always a good idea to infuse some personality into your narrative.
• Some ideas are better than others. Use the Side Hustle Selector to find the best ones by comparing them on a range of criteria.
• You don’t have to be better than the competition in every way, but you should at least be different. Become a detective and survey the landscape to understand what else is out there.
• Get super clear on your avatar or ideal customer. Start with the basics, but then think about some deeper questions: What do they really want? What are their hopes and dreams? These answers will guide you as you prepare to launch with maximum impact.
• Resourcefulness is your most valuable skill as a side hustler.
• EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE
• Resourcefulness is often worth more than any amount of business experience or know-how.
• It doesn’t have to take money to make money, but sometimes, big investments in a proven hustle can pay off.
• Logistical questions like these are all “figureoutable,” but without a plan for generating income, you don’t have a hustle.
• Get a bank account that’s just for your side hustle.
• Similarly, get a separate credit or debit card you use only for expenses associated with your hustle.
• Pay for everything you can up front.
• Set aside at least 25 percent of your hustle income for taxes.
• Be fast with invoicing.
• It’s good to pay people quickly, but it’s even better to get paid quickly.
• Whenever possible, insist on a written agreement for service work.
• Legal structure: operating as a sole proprietor is perfectly acceptable for many hustles.
• Right from the beginning, set up a very simple accounting system.
• If at all possible, set aside a dedicated hustle workspace, even a small one, in your home or apartment.
• Once you’re making money, pay yourself first.
• Don’t be intimidated by the word contract. If you’re freelancing or otherwise doing contract work with clients, you should absolutely have some sort of written agreement, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a hefty document with lots of fine print. The most important thing is to have clear communication regarding the work to be completed, a timeline by which it will be done, and the fee you’ll be paid.
• The first thing to know is there there’s usually a range of possible prices you could successfully charge. You want it to be low enough that you don’t turn away or lose customers, but high enough that you can still make money. Assuming you want to maximize profit, your long-term goal is to find a sweet spot at the higher end of what people are willing to pay.
• With cost-plus pricing applied to a product, you first figure out how much it will cost to provide the product, and then you simply add on a markup (a dollar amount or a percentage) that serves as your profit.
• One good rule of thumb is that your minimum accepted hourly income should be at least what you make per hour in your day job, and probably more. Since you’ll be working on the project in your spare time, the income you earn needs to be worth the leisure time you’ll be giving up.
• To recap, just keep this in mind as you go along:
• PRODUCT: Minimum acceptable profit per item or per sale
• SERVICE: Minimum acceptable hourly income or flat rate
• The great thing about side hustles is that you can set your hustle’s price based on what works for you. With this method of pricing, you determine your desired profit, then you examine what needs to happen to achieve the goal.
• Whenever possible, design your hustle with recurring revenue in mind. Why sell something once when you can sell it over and over?
• Instead of having clever pricing, have a great product and a fair (fixed) price.
• Don’t stray too far from market prices.
• Only by publishing your offer and seeing how customers react will you know if your price is viable.
• Because side hustles are designed to be moneymaking projects that you can get off the ground quickly, you want to be able to design a simple and efficient process to go from idea to implementation in as little time as possible.
• The more you can simplify your idea and break down the creation process into clear, specific steps, the easier it will be to get up and running quickly.
• Many, if not most, hustles these days should have some kind of website. A website is essentially an online home—and you probably don’t want to be homeless.
• Don’t overpay for a website: you can get all the bandwidth and space you need for as little as $5 a month.
• Don’t worry about trying to be everywhere in the social media universe at once. Pick one or two networks and spend your time on those.
• However, do register your name (or your hustle’s name, if appropriate) on the most popular networks—even if you don’t intend to use them—to make sure no one else does first.
• It sounds obvious: if you want to make money, you need a way to get paid. Yet I continue to be surprised by how many retail websites have a checkout button that is difficult or impossible to find, or how many new consultants don’t have a process in place to file invoices.
• Before you launch your hustle to the world, you need a payment system in place, and the system you need will vary depending on what kind of hustle you’re starting.
• With a product hustle, where you sell either a physical item or a digital one, your price should reflect the cost of expenses, plus the minimum acceptable profit per item or per sale.
• With a service hustle, where you’re essentially selling your time or expertise, you want to set your initial price according to your minimum acceptable hourly income, or charge a flat rate based on what your time is worth.
• If you’re selling a product, a simple payment system will likely meet your needs; for a service hustle, you’ll also need an easy method for invoicing customers.
• You can add a button or link to your website to accept funds through PayPal, or you can bill customers directly through the system.
• Payment schedules can vary, but since we’re keeping it simple, you probably want to choose one of these three: Payment in full prior to beginning work Partial payment prior to beginning work, the rest at completion Payment in full when the work is completed Which of these you choose depends largely on what kind of service you’re providing.
• Keep it simple and do whatever is common in your industry (though when you have a choice, getting payment in advance is almost always best).
• There’s no need to invent an all new system of invoicing. Just make sure it’s convenient for you, and seamless for your customers.
• The goal of a contract is to cover your bases, while striking the right balance between your protection and good-faith efforts.
• A very basic contract should specify what you’ll do, how much you’ll be paid, and when you’ll get paid. That’s it.
• A basic contract should also specify any protections you require.
• Setting up a way to get paid is pretty simple, but it’s also critical. Money has to find its way to your bank account! Decide on at least one method of payment, and make sure it’s ready to go (and working properly) before you launch.
• A workflow is simply a series of activities or processes that must occur to complete a project. In the case of hustles, it’s everything that needs to happen for customers to make a purchase and receive whatever they’ve paid for.
• One of the best things about making a customer workflow is that it can help you pinpoint a few places where something could go wrong.
• One way to troubleshoot any workflow is to test out the customer experience yourself,
• do more of what’s important, and less of what’s not.
• But the best hack of all is to do something that makes a difference in people’s lives, or at least the life of the ideal customer that you identified on Day 8.
• No matter what your hustle is, you should always focus on improving the experience for your customer.
• Underpromise, overdeliver. Manage expectations but go above and beyond whenever possible.
• Respond to unspoken needs.
• Highlight positive results. If you report back to customers in some way, show them how your service has benefited them.
• Hustlers tend to fall in the trap of trying to do too much.
• You need to work smart, not just hard.
• When you focus on what’s important, you make a lot more progress. Don’t let yourself get distracted from the two things that matter the most for your side hustle: the benefit for customers, and the income for you. Spend at least 10 percent more time on each of these areas, and spend less time on everything else.
• Ideas must turn into offers so that people can pay you for them. An offer includes a promise, a pitch, and a price.
• Use the cost-plus model to set your price. You want it to be low enough that you don’t turn away or lose customers, but high enough that you can still earn enough money to make the hustle worth your time.
• Once your idea is more fully formed, create workflows and list every action your customer will need to go from discovery to purchase (then consider a few common scenarios to find solutions where something might go wrong).
• Make it as easy as possible for customers to pay you. Always start with simple technology. You can upgrade later if the hustle takes off.
• When you’re not sure how to spend your hustle time, focus at least 10 percent more of your time on two things: change people’s lives, and make more money.
• Even when you feel confident, you never know for sure if your idea is going to work until it comes to life.
• The second reason to launch before you’re ready is that perfectionists do not make for good hustlers. If you wait for perfection, your twenty-seven-day plan could morph into twenty-seven years.
• “Done is better than perfect.
• In short: when in doubt…start!
• What if you aren’t ready to launch? Well, you’re hardly ever fully ready…so here’s a trick. Go ahead and publish your offer, but add the label “beta” to it.
• The people who need your hustle want to be marketed to! They are waiting to hear about it.
• Benefits should help people feel better. You don’t always want to mention these emotional needs explicitly, but you should keep them in mind as you craft your language.
• Here’s a good rule of thumb: benefits are the ways in which a product will improve someone’s life; features are the details that demonstrate how.
• Always think about what people really want and why they want it. With that information in hand, it’s much easier to figure out how to offer them the tools that will help them get it.
• As you begin hustling, don’t hesitate to ask everyone you know to join the cause and get the word out.
• SUPPORTERS: general cheerleaders who can provide support and pitch in in various ways
• MENTORS: guides or experts who give you specific feedback and advice
• INFLUENCERS: trusted authority figures who have the ability to connect you with potential customers and help you get the word out
• IDEAL CUSTOMERS: people who represent your avatar and can offer detailed, honest opinions on the many “Should I do this or that?” questions you’ll have
• The golden rule of relationship building is: do not be “that guy.”
• Remember, it’s a small world. People talk, and if you do cringeworthy things like the ones on this list of true stories, the word will get around. Be the person everyone wants to help, not “that guy” they try desperately to avoid.
• Remember, no man is an island. As you build your hustle, don’t hesitate to ask for a little help from your friends.
• Choose mentors carefully, and don’t buy into the common belief that everyone needs one.
• When you’re beginning a new hustle, you don’t usually know which approach will be the most effective. To find out, try different things and keep a record of results.
• find out if you’re right about something, you have to test it.
• One of the simplest experiments you can do is called an A/B test.
• To A/B test your hustle, you might present customers with two versions of your product or offer and see which one people tend to select. Or, to do A/B testing on your website, you might create two versions of a page and direct half your traffic to one and half to another. Over time, you can easily see which version performs better—then you switch to that version and test something else.
• You don’t need to test everything. You just need to test the things that matter most. Start with the big stuff! Here are the big three: Your product or service (what you offer) Your offer (how you present it) Your price (how much it costs)
• You should avoid running more than one A/B test at a time, because then you can’t know which factor influenced the different results. However, you should continue running different A/B tests, one after another.
• Deals, discounts, and special offers are your not-so-secret weapon to encourage customers to purchase.
• Human beings are conditioned to respond to deals. Everyone loves getting something for less.
• Two key psychological variables are at work: scarcity and urgency. The first relates to the perception of limited resources or opportunities, and the second relates to the perception that those resources or opportunities won’t be around forever.
• SCARCITY: “There are only a limited number of items! I’ll miss out if I don’t buy one.”
• URGENCY: “The deal is going to go away soon. I’ll miss out if I don’t buy it now.”
• Generally speaking, the more you can introduce these factors in your marketing—without being dishonest—the more successful you’ll be.
• ANNOUNCE THE SALE IN ADVANCE.
• YOUR CUSTOMERS SHOULDN’T HAVE TO JUMP THROUGH A BUNCH OF HOOPS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE DEAL.
• THE SALE MUST PROVIDE SUBSTANTIAL PERCEIVED SAVINGS FOR CUSTOMERS.
• MAKE SURE YOU PROVIDE AN OFFER THAT CUSTOMERS CAN GET EXCITED ABOUT.
• The key here is to appeal to emotion and show them why they simply must have something they may not even have realized they wanted.
• TEST YOUR SYSTEMS (ORDER FORM, SHOPPING CART, ETC.) TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING REFLECTS THE RIGHT INFO.
• There’s nothing worse than when customers think they’re getting a great deal, only to find out the discount or offer doesn’t automatically get applied at checkout like the ad promised.
• WHEN THE SALE ENDS, IT REALLY ENDS.
• People will often ask you to extend the sale for them. Most of the time, the best policy is to say no.
• Remember this: to make more money, offer a limited time discount or a sale.
• Always celebrate your early achievements. There’s more work to be done, but small victories can be disproportionately satisfying.
• Making money for yourself, outside of your day job, is a transformative experience.
• When you’re first hustling, it’s good to be frugal and conservative. You want to keep expenses low and focus on growing income. But don’t take this too far. Your hustle exists to pay you, not the other way around. Don’t just invest back in “the business.” Invest in yourself.
• Even small celebrations can be meaningful.
• Start before you’re ready and look for “proof of concept.”
• “Sell like a Girl Scout”—if you’ve correctly identified your ideal customer, remember that they’re looking for you, not just the other way around. Don’t be afraid to get creative in reaching them with your message.
• Testing is boring in the way that making a lot of money is boring. Set up at least one A/B test to see how you can improve your offer.
• Use deals and promotions to encourage action. Show up with a tank!
• As you learn more about how customers respond to your hustle, take note of the most crucial metrics—then take action on what you learn.
• keep up with your metrics in three key areas: Profit (income minus expenses) Growth (number of new prospects, customers, or clients) Time (how many hours per week you spend starting and operating the project)*1
• IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, KEEP TRYING
• Expect your hustle to give you the results you want, or choose a different hustle.
• Don’t get distracted—identify what’s working and do more of that.
• Average is boring. Find the winners and focus your efforts on them.
• Consider this quote from Bill Gates: “Headlines are misleading. Bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”
• As you continue to develop and improve your hustle, follow these two basic rules of iteration: If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t work, abandon it and move on.
• Gradual improvement may not make for a great headline, but it looks great when you deposit it in your bank account.
• Set a goal to do one thing that will increase income in the existing hustle. Similarly, don’t be afraid to let go of at least one thing that isn’t working well, and then put that energy toward improving the things that are.
• One of the easiest ways to grow a hustle is by horizontal expansion. If everything’s going well, consider adding another version of it to better serve your customers.
• You aren’t trying to build a Silicon Valley startup and make money for a million investors; you’re doing this to make money for yourself.
• For a lot of businesses, it’s generally much easier to sell more to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones.
• The easiest way to turn over a rock and sell more to your current customers is to “remix” your offer. To remix, you typically add an additional version of what you’re already doing. Maybe it’s a premium version, a “next-level” version, a Volume II—or something else entirely.
• Too much choice and the customer feels confused and overwhelmed. Some choice, however, is usually smart.
• The reality is that people want at least some choice. Give the people what they want!
• Every business has key systems. As a side hustler, yours are probably stored in your head—and that’s not always wise. To make significant improvements (and save more time) as you expand your hustle, systemize wherever you can.
• When it comes to hustling, “systems” doesn’t mean fancy IT software or expensive network servers; it simply refers to all the procedures that allow you to serve customers or otherwise make money.
• At some point in their journey, longtime hustlers learn an important lesson: you can do something repeatedly, or you can do something just once. They also usually find out that documenting your work does not come naturally. Frankly, most people don’t want to do it—it’s a future pain point, so they wait until they have to. But if you ever want to grow your hustle, or if you just want to save time, consider doing it on the front end instead.
• Documenting your processes gets you out of the mundane details of the day to day.
• The two most important workflows for most hustles are sales and service. Basically, you want to document how you sell to people and how they receive what they purchase.
• Taking the time to document your systems and improve your workflows will almost always be less tedious than the damage control you’ll have to do if things go awry.
• Another important workflow is focused entirely on welcoming and orienting new customers. This is called onboarding, and it’s all about helping your buyers become familiar with whatever they’ve just paid for.
• Here’s the thing about a good side hustle. It can help support your life, but it doesn’t have to be your whole life.
• Always remember that a hustle is different from other startup ventures or businesses. You don’t have to listen to the advice of experts or follow conventional wisdom.
• There is no single “right way.” There’s only the right way for you.
• Continue to learn, experiment, and improve.
• Don’t worry about tracking everything, but do choose two or three metrics to keep an eye on.
• Iteration is the real way to win. If at first you succeed, try something else.
• Audit your hustle to see where you can make more money, save time, or both.
• If you have a big idea and want to get some real-world feedback (not just from your friends) before going further, you can simply set up an advertisement and see how people respond.
• If 10 percent or more of the people who landed on your blog post clicked on the link to your landing page, that’s widely considered to be a pretty good sign that people are interested in the product or service that you’re thinking of offering.
• Common sense is not always common.