This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
All right, friends, listeners, community, welcome to Side Hustle School, the only daily podcast that's all about helping you make extra money without quitting your job. How do you find the right idea? How do you pinpoint the right side hustle idea? There's all kinds of things you could do, but how do you make that decision? And what can you do to avoid analysis paralysis and so on?
Today, we're gonna hear a question from Yvonne. She is a recent college graduate from Tennessee. She discovered our podcast through a professor's recommendation, and she wants to put her marketing degree to work outside her day job. So that all sounds good to me, but Yvonne is facing a challenge that a lot of newcomers face. How does she choose the side hustle that aligns with her professional skills and her passions?
You know, life is short. You might as well do something you're excited about, right? You might as well do something you like to do, but there's all kinds of things that you like to do, and some of those things are valuable to others. Some of those things are best constructed into a side hustle, and others are best just to be your own hobby. So let's look at the question, explore some ways to navigate this exciting, yet sometimes overwhelming landscape.
So I'm excited for Yvonne. I'm excited for you. Detailed question coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey, this is Yvonne from Nashville. I'm a recent college grad with a degree in marketing.
I discovered your podcast through a recommendation from my college professor, and it's been a game changer. I've always wanted to start my own side hustle, but I'm not sure how to find one that fits both my skills and my interests. With so many options out there, I'm finding it difficult to pinpoint the right one for me. The episode where you broke down different ideas was insightful, but I'd love to hear your advice on how I can find the side hustle that takes advantage of my marketing knowledge and aligns with my personal interests. All right, Yvonne, it sounds like this is a great time for you to start your side hustle, especially as you're beginning the new day job, post college and all that.
You wanna create some freedom for yourself. You wanna build something for yourself even as you're working that job. That's what it's all about. So first things first here, I think it's important to separate idea generation from idea selection, okay? So we're talking about pinpointing ideas.
So idea generation is a skill of its own. I talk about it a lot here on the podcast in the side hustle book in particular. I'm like, here's how you can generate ideas every single day, like by using the power of observation and just noticing what is needed, like what could be more optimal, what could be helpful to people, how can you add value to other people's lives and then turn that into a product or a service, some kind of offer. So you wanna learn to generate as many ideas as possible. But then the second skill is, okay, once you've got lots of ideas, how do you in fact pinpoint or select the idea?
So let's go through a couple of different ideas for Yvonne here. And these are just kind of ideas I'm coming up with. I don't know Yvonne, so I don't know exactly what's best for her. Based on what she said, you know, she's got this background in marketing, she is somewhat young, you know, maybe a social media manager or an affiliate manager might be a good role. There's lots of people who need those skills now.
Maybe an SEO consultant. If you learn something about SEO, definitely helping businesses with that. That could be in tandem, you know, with social media or affiliate stuff. Or maybe Yvonne wants to go into content creation herself, you know, for a particular topic like fitness or plant care or something, and then choosing a particular medium like a blog or a YouTube channel, you know, then that might turn into an online course. So we've got a bunch of different ideas here, you know, just for the sake of time, I'm gonna fast forward a bit, you know, how do you then pinpoint, you know, what's best for you?
Well, let's look at how much time you have. Let's look at your primary goal. What do you hope to achieve? Are you just trying to make, you know, an extra thousand dollars a month or something? That's fine.
That's perfectly, you know, reasonable. Or are you trying to like create something that could, you know, eventually replicate your day job income? You know, okay, well, the path might be a little bit different there. And so I like to kind of look at different ideas and ask, okay, what is most feasible? What is most profitable?
What seems urgent or timely at this point? And, you know, what am I most excited about? And, you know, hopefully something converges, you know, that matches most of those points. If it only matches like one or two, then I would say there's a better idea out there. Like if the idea seems like, you know, you're excited about it, but you're not quite sure how to make it work, that's probably not the best idea right now.
You know, I think it's really important to get momentum with your first side hustle. Or if you've tried some hustles before and they haven't worked, then whatever your next one is, like whatever you're doing now, I think it's important to create momentum so that that, you know, then leads you on to something different perhaps, something bigger and better perhaps. So develop the skill of idea generation and then focus on what's important to you right now. And then you're gonna determine your idea selection from those parameters. I mean, that's like the short version and this is like always a continuous process.
It's not something you do one time, it's something you do over and over, most likely throughout your life. So Yvonne, listeners, everybody out there, I'm cheering you on. I am so excited to make this podcast for you every single day. Thank you so much for being out there. Thank you for listening.
I'm excited to go on tour next month. Also, hopefully I'll get a chance to hang out with many listeners. And if you have a question before then, sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'm on social media as well, Chris Gallibow. And yeah, new episode coming out tomorrow.
You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
