This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up my friends? Thank you so much for listening. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you're doing well. I hope you are making progress. For a goal that is important to you, if you're struggling or encountering some difficulty, well, I'm thinking of you as well.
And just know that this is part of the process. Know that we have a community of people all over the world who are in different stages at different levels. And sometimes you might have a success for a while and then, you know, have a failure or a misstep. So it's not always the case that once you get something right, it's always gonna be right. I just remember that if you hear a success story, you're like, oh, I'm glad this person is doing well now, but they have to keep their eye on the ball because that could change for them too, okay?
So today we're gonna talk about plateaus. And today's caller has been able to build his project to $1,000 a month. He's earning $1,000 a month, which is awesome, but he can't move past the plateau. And so great start there, what comes next? Now, full disclosure, I struggle with this too.
Not necessarily the same $1,000 a month plateau, but I often, you know, very often I've found myself feeling that I'm doing well, whether it is in my career as an author or something else, but I could be doing so much better. And so I feel like I'm often at that kind of plateau that it bothers me. And so my answer for myself, which we'll delve into a bit more after the question, but you know, for me, it's been a combination of trying to improve while also trying to make sure that I'm always playing to my strengths and not just being average at everything, because average is boring. Even above average can be boring. You know, like, what are you excellent in?
What are you really excited about? I mean, that's where we should focus on your efforts, I think, because there's no leverage in average. Still, got some more thoughts about this. I'm struggling with always hitting the same plateau. Let's do a shout out from our sponsor.
Now let's hear from our listener, our caller, and then I will share a bit more about my experience and perhaps some advice for him. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Kevin from Dallas. I've been listening to the show for the past couple of years and I've appreciated all the helpful content. So speaking of help, I'm struggling with always hitting the same plateau. I started three projects and they all get to a certain point.
I'm able to develop a product and see a few sales. My last project even earned $1,000 one month, but then it stalled out. And I know that you say going from 1000 to 2000 isn't twice as hard, but I don't know why I keep encountering the same plateau or what to do about it. So thanks for your help and keep up the great work. - Kevin, what's good, man?
Thank you so much for listening in Dallas. Thank you for sharing this question as well. I think it's something that a lot of people would wonder about. I often hear from people who are like, man, I'm so excited I got my first few hundred bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever it is, but then I fell back or I couldn't get beyond whatever that plateau was. So let me say, first of all, as I mentioned in the introduction, that I too struggle with hitting plateaus.
It's not necessarily a few hundred dollars a month or a thousand dollars a month, but the plateau is the same, it's a principle, right? And the struggle is real. So ultimately I think what you have to do, again, with the knowledge that I don't have all the answers about this, but just from my experience, I think you have to either change yourself somehow, you have to work on improving yourself, or change the circumstance. And you might wanna do a kind of a combination of the two. So if we talk about changing yourself, I mean, this is the essence of self-improvement.
Why do I want to better myself? Why do I want to grow? So to figure that out, you have to ask, why are you hitting this plateau? Why can you not get past that point? It might relate to your workflow.
It might be some kind of internal obstacle or insecurity or negative self-talk. It very well could be a more practical issue as well, but I just think a lot of people underestimate how detrimental these internal blocks or challenges can be. So why are you hitting the plateau? What is it? Is it a lack of knowledge or is it a lack of confidence in yourself or a combination?
Now you can also change the circumstance a bit, as I said. And so what I mean here is, maybe there's a way to accept, at least somewhat, somewhat accept this pattern and work around it, okay? Doesn't mean that you're always going to be at a relatively low level, but I would say like, imagine that there's somebody out there that's good at building side hustles that gets to a thousand dollars a month. And they've done that multiple times, but then they get stuck. So my suggestion might be, we'll just at least consider this, can you do that over and over, that thousand dollar a month side hustle, but focus your efforts on building these projects sustainably so that they can produce passive income, right?
Because in a lot of ways, actually earning a thousand dollars a month passively might be more valuable than earning more money that you actually have to spend a lot of hours working on, right? Just think about that. So maybe for some people out there, it's easier to do that four times than to build a project to $4,000 a month. Like it's easier for them to build for $1,000 a month projects than it is to build that initial project or that one project to $4,000 a month. And listeners, if these numbers don't apply to you, if you're like, oh, actually, I need to make a lot more than $4,000 a month, or if you're like $400 a month would be amazing.
It's not so much about the specific numbers, but about the principle. And so I don't necessarily think that's automatically the best answer because most people do tend to do well, like if you can get to $1,000 a month, then, you know, as Kevin mentioned, you should be able to also get to $2,000 a month with that project. So it might be better to work on the core issue, but I also don't think that there's only one way to address the problem. So one way or another, you have to either change yourself or change the circumstance. And perhaps it's just through a series of experiments that you'll figure it out.
But again, Kevin, congratulations. A lot of our listeners out there have not had their first $1,000. So I know you want to do more, and I totally respect that. I hope that you do, but just also know that you have made it pretty far already. Okay, thanks to Kevin.
Thank you, listeners. If you got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. It is a privilege and honor for me to bring this program to you every single day. Thank you for listening.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. The program is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
