This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I love this question today. We're gonna hear a question about going from small money to scaling a business. This is so fun. We're gonna shift gears a bit because sometimes we talk about how to get started, how to make your first thousand dollars and so on. And all that is great.
But even better perhaps is making more money and scaling your side hustle, if that's something you want to do. And if scaling is a word that sounds intimidating, by the way, just think of it as growing a bit or making more money than you do now without necessarily working significantly harder. Like I'm not gonna say there's not more work involved with making more money, but there might not be. It all depends on how you design your hustle. So we're gonna hear today from Robert, Robert's in Kentucky.
He's no stranger to the side hustle world, dabbling in various ventures over the years, but now he's ready for a leap. Okay, and he wants to transition from small scale hustling. I don't know if he's been reselling or if he's had a website, e-commerce business, whatever it is, but he wants to build a substantial business, something that can comfortably replace a day job. Now we talk about this a lot. Of course, we've had many, many people over the years go from idea, not just to small income, but idea to day job income, to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, in many cases, not just a few, but many cases.
So as many of our listeners probably resonate with this idea, this aspiration, let's explore some concrete steps and strategies on how to make the transition from small money to growing that business. All right, stay tuned. [Music]
Hello, I'm Robert, a longtime listener from Lexington, Kentucky. I've been involved in various side hustles over the years, but mostly for small money. Now I'm ready to take it up a notch and build a more substantial business, not necessarily a huge one, but something that can provide a comfortable living wage.
I'm not sure where to start or how to scale my efforts effectively. Any advice on making this leap? I just want to say I especially enjoy hearing stories of people who've scaled a small success into something bigger. [Music]
Let's do it, Robert, I'm in for it. So when it comes to making the leap from side hustle to full-time business, or at least growing it to that point, right?
Because we just want to get the income to the point of being a full-time business, whether it's something you actually do full-time or not. I mean, that's also an option. We've got lots of people who have built their side hustles to this really significant level, but they've designed them intelligently so that they don't actually have to work all the time, which is pretty cool. In fact, that's probably the best of all scenarios, right? So here is a specific approach that you might find beneficial.
Let's talk about evaluating your existing side hustles first. All right, if you've been doing this for a while, you've got a few different things. Which one has the most potential to generate a steady income? Or if you have just a bunch of ideas, same kind of thing. I think it's really important when you have to make choices from limited options, you've got limited time, limited capacity, let's really consider which ideas have the most profit potential.
I think it's totally okay and in fact necessary to ask that question. It's okay to focus on what you're excited about and passionate for, like I try to do that, but I also think what's gonna be the most profitable here. And ideally, we're gonna try to find things that are in the Venn diagram between those fields, like what I'm excited about and what's potentially profitable. So then if you're really gonna try to scale something or let's again, let's just say grow it, you probably wanna have a bit of a plan for it. Let's really think about what are the offers that can convert?
Like maybe I'm not sure where all the customers are gonna come from, but is this a business that has potential to grow? I sometimes use this example of how long ago when I was like a baby side hustler, I tried to start a business selling golf memberships for a dollar a person. And there were a couple of problems there. Number one, I didn't know anything about golf, but perhaps even more of a problem, like you can't make money on $1 a person, right? And I didn't totally understand that even though it seems really simple, telling it to you now.
But if you're gonna try to have a small business that scales, most likely it's gonna need to have a high price point or a plan to reach a lot of people. You kind of need one or the other. And then as you're doing that planning and making those projections, you wanna think, okay, if I can get to that point of, I've got the right product, it's reaching the right people. Is this something I can leverage perhaps using digital marketing? I mean, this is the most common way of growing is like you've got an offer that converts, so you put some money toward it.
You're spending money on either SEO or email marketing or social media ads, something that's gonna basically like turn on the faucet or increase the pressure or the velocity, whatever the right analogy is to where you're reaching more people or selling to more customers or selling more to those existing customers. So you just wanna start thinking about how can I be strategic like that? Not just what is the baseline offer of here's a service, here's a product, here's how to reach the people, but how can I leverage that and basically go from 1X to 3X or 5X or whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish. Now, as part of that, you don't wanna overwork yourself all the time. That's what ends up happening.
That's what I've done too many times. So from the planning stage, consider automation and delegation. Think about, okay, if I am suddenly reaching twice as many people, how can I not work twice as hard? And that might have to do with setting up some automation tools, setting up some customer relationship management software, maybe scheduling some social media. There's lots of different things you can do there, but you wanna just think about that from the beginning.
And then the last thing I wanna say is just keep a close eye on your financials, especially as you begin to spend money for that leverage because it can work really well, but it can also get out of hand. Sometimes you don't realize like I'm actually spending a lot of money and it's not profitable. So pay really close attention to it. It just gets more and more important as you're making more and more money 'cause the stakes are higher. But Robert, I'm excited.
I would love to know what happens. Listeners, if you're trying to scale a business or just make more money or just go to the next level, whatever that looks like for you, just know that I am cheering for you, I'm rooting for you, and it's a wonderful goal. So get to work. I'm gonna try to do the same thing. sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Of course, new episode every day, even as I'm on the road for the next few weeks, promoting gonzo capitalism. It's been fun to see folks over the past few days, and I hope to see many more people at the nightly events. chrisguillebeau.com/tour for dates and details. Hope to see you online or in person. That's all for now.
Once again, I am Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
