You’ve probably heard more than a few people talking about the incredible benefits of setting up a side business, or a “side hustle.” Among other things, starting a business on the side can allow you to begin making a foray into the entrepreneurial world, without giving up the security of your day job.
For another thing – and this is a point that the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has made – having a side venture to work on can help to keep you motivated and optimistic, and to teach you useful skills, when your day job is dragging a bit too much.
That’s all well and good. But how exactly do you figure out what kind of side business to go for?
Here are a few suggestions on how to go about that.
Sift through your past work and life experiences, and see what might be useful to other people
Most of us end up accumulating a pretty interesting collection of past work and life experiences, and skill sets, over the course of time. It’s just that we kind of forget about those things, and tend not to factor them into our considerations.
If you’re thinking about starting a side business, sift through your past work and life experiences, and see what might be useful to other people. Be pretty thorough here, and don’t only analyse skills that you consider “professional”.
It may be that, in your younger days, you did quite a lot of part-time landscaping. Well, that might be a good basis for getting involved in the world of commercial mowers.
Just about any life experience you might have accumulated in the past, can hypothetically be leveraged somehow in a side business.
Figure out what you can actually make time for, currently
The thing about a side business, is that you are always going to be dealing with certain time constraints when running one.
As the business becomes more and more successful (hopefully) you can begin switching things around to prioritise it more in your life, and move away from your day job. But for a significant length of time, that’s not likely to be the case.
Figure out what you can actually make time for, currently. If you have a couple of hours to spare per day, you can probably do pretty well with setting up a web business. But that might not be quite enough time to make headway on your luxury tourism company scheme.
Ask yourself what you’re really interested in – and then see if there’s any way of “massaging” that into a business model
If you’re creating a side business, you might as well try and make it a business that you would actually enjoy, find fulfilling, and be interested in.
Not only is that just a much more positive experience, but you’re also much more likely to be consistent and motivated when you are spending time on something you care about.
Go through your assorted interests, and see if there’s any way of “massaging” them into a business model, even tangentially.
Hi! Thought this post was really interesting 🙂 It seems like ‘side hustles’ are the way things are heading and you’ve written about them really well! How would you advice managing your side hustle alongside a full time job or university, I’m a bit worried about getting overwhelmed x
HI Laura, I didn’t actually write this article. It was written by an outside source. However, I can still give you some advice on this matter. The key things that I will advise are to have a clear plan for your business. Grab my free workbook (Ideal Business Workbook) – Secondly, understand that you totally can run a business when you can only dedicate a small amount of time to it. I advise that you take a look at https://www.yasminvorajee.com/ She specializes in helping people create a successful business with a tiny amount of time. My final tip is to break all of your goals for your business/side hustle down into very small chunks. If you have a task that will take 3 hours, break it down to small chunks that can be completed in as little as 10 minutes. Therefore even if you only have 10 minutes that day to work on your business, you still do something productive every day. Ideally, you will have gaps in your schedule where you do get more time but the last tip will help you to stop getting overwhelmed.