This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
All right. All right. Welcome friends. Welcome to a new episode of Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to a brand new segment, a brand new segment. We're going to call it Weekend Workshop.
This new segment is all about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle in 2025, one step or concept per week. It's going to come out every Sunday. It will include activities, examples, and more, give you an action step each week. And of course, it's all free. You can access a notes page that's going to be built out over the course of the year at sidehustleschool.com/workshop. And today's topic is learning to spot profitable ideas.
Okay. And we're going to use the book side hustle from idea to income in 27 days as a reference point. I wrote that book using the sequential step method. The book is available wherever books are sold. It's pretty cheap, but if you don't have it, that's okay too, because I'm going to take you through the key steps along with listener stories and examples throughout the year. So my hope is
that at some point, we're going to hear from listeners who are using this method to start their own projects. Then we can report back on it and have a whole community vibe, which is what I love. So thank you for being part of side hustle school. If you're brand new, if you've just discovered the show, welcome. Hey, we got a new episode every day. It's always completely free.
Today's learning objective, evaluate potential side hustle ideas using three criteria to identify those with the highest odds of success. So the principle here is that ideas are everywhere. You can learn to develop your power of observation to identify ideas. We'll have a whole episode on that next week. But you also want to identify ideas with the highest chances of success. And let's
just jump in here. There's no listener audio for these segments. We'll have a short ad break. But I want to make sure you understand the concept of where we're going first. So today's core concept, not all side hustle ideas are created equal. Again, ideas are everywhere, but some ideas have much
better potential than others. So you want to think of profitable ideas like seeds for a money tree. I wrote another book called the money tree, but that's another time you need to plant the right seeds in the right soil. And the most successful side hustles share three critical qualities. These qualities are feasible, profitable, and persuasive. Alright, so feasible, what does that mean? It means
you can turn your idea into reality quickly using skills and resources you already have. If your idea requires you to take three years of training or a million dollars in startup costs, that's not feasible. Okay, it's not feasible for most people, including our audience. And we want people to start quickly without spending money. So think about what you can do now, not what you might be able to do someday. A feasible idea lets you start quickly with minimal preparation. The second
quality is profitable, meaning that there is a clear path to making money in a reasonable time frame. A profitable idea answers the question who is going to pay for this and why? And if you can't explain how you'll make money in one sentence, keep looking like find another idea. A lot of people get caught up in ideas that sound interesting, but they don't really have a clear revenue model. So you want to avoid that like don't fall into that trap, focus on ideas where the path to profit is obvious. The third quality is persuasive. People want or need what you're
offering right now. It's not just a good idea. It's not just a profitable idea. The timing in the market conditions are right. For example, selling handmade face masks was incredibly persuasive in 2020. That was a great business to go into. Not so much today. Alright, your idea needs to solve a
current problem or fulfill an immediate desire. So let's take some more detailed examples that kind of match all three of these characteristics. Example number one, Julia Kelly, I wrote about her in the side hustle book, she was making $8 an hour doing caricatures, like she was an artist. And she found a way to transform her skills into a $250 an hour digital portrait service. Basically, she's like, I'm good at this thing, but I don't want to get paid $8 an hour. How can I deploy these skills
in a different way or different for a different market. So she identified an unmet need for corporate events. And this idea was feasible because she already had those drawing skills, it was profitable because corporate clients had much more budget. And it was persuasive because she offered something unique that traditional photographers couldn't match. So this was a perfect idea for her, repositioning her skills, her existing skills for a more lucrative market.
Maybe one more example, Tom loved hiking. And he noticed that local trails were confusing to navigate. And so rather than write a guidebook, which would take a long time, right, he started offering two hour insider trail tours for $75 a person, which combined his existing knowledge with immediate income potential. It was feasible. It was profitable. It was persuasive. He didn't
need permits, insurance, special certification. And he also didn't have to write that guidebook, which as I said, would take a long time. He just had to show up and share his expertise. All right, feasible, profitable, and persuasive. Keep that in mind. We're going to take a quick
break. When we return, how can you quickly evaluate any idea based on these criteria? Let's make it as easy as possible. Stay tuned. Okay, so how can you evaluate ideas based on the criteria of feasible, profitable, and persuasive? Well, here's what you do. You imagine that you're
on shark tank and you're one of the sharks and you think like an investor examining a business proposal and you kind of interrogate your ideas and you ask some critical questions such as can I start this idea quickly with what I have? So basically you look at your current skills, your resources, your available time. Don't underestimate that. That's super important. If you are really busy right now and you have a lot of obligations, like so many of our listeners do, then it might be difficult for you to undertake a project that's going to require 20 hours or more of your time per week. There's lots of projects you can start for five hours a week. So it might
be better to do that. But again, your skills, your resources, your available time. Next question, is there an obvious way to make money? I just kind of keep hammering this in because you should be able to explain your revenue model in a single sentence. You need to be able to say people will pay me X dollars for Y service or it could be a product. They're going to buy this product.
It costs this amount. Here's where they can go and do that. It's got to be really simple. You know, if your revenue model is something like I'm going to build an audience and figure out monetization later, that's not really a revenue model. It's actually not a great side hustle approach to do that. Next question, will people pay for this now? So this question relates to that quality of
persuasiveness. I don't just assume that there's a market look for evidence. Are others successfully selling similar things? Are people actively searching for solutions to this problem? If you can say yes to one or both of those questions, then that's good. That's a good start. If not,
take a closer, harder look before you proceed. Next, can I explain the main benefit in one sentence? So just like your revenue model, can you clearly state what the value proposition is? Why does this make someone's life better in a tangible way? So much so that they're going to pay money for it or at least that they would consider doing that. And if you can't communicate that value
proposition clearly, customers won't understand why they should buy. Maybe two more questions for you here. Is this idea relatively low maintenance? Again, your side hustle needs to fit in alongside your existing commitments. So be wary of ideas that are going to require constant attention. And here's a little bonus question, can I get paid more than once for this
idea? Not every business needs to have a recurring revenue model, but it's great if yours can, right? So look for opportunities to create recurring revenue or repeat business. If you're checking ideas off the list and you're like, okay, this one is feasible, profitable, persuasive, that's good. Here's another one that I also like. I think it meets these criteria,
but this one has the potential to generate recurring revenue or repeat business. I might suggest that that's a better idea, at least if you are equally excited about both of them, because that matters as well. Okay, so as noted, each weekend workshop is going to have an action exercise. This one is to take three potential side hustle ideas, could be anything, and score them against those questions, right? I'm going to list them out on the notes page. If you want to come
take a look, sidehustleschool.com/workshop, we're going to build that page out throughout the course of the year. Basically, you take three ideas, whatever side hustle ideas you have, and you can borrow or steal some of mine. In fact, next week, I'm going to give you a whole lesson on how to beg, borrow or steal ideas. Basically, take three ideas, score them against those questions, give each idea a point for every yes answer. And then the idea with the most points has the highest potential. Pretty simple, right? You're just trying to increase your odds of success. That's
what we're hoping to do through this process. Increase your odds of success this year. And last but not least, it's better to have a simple idea you can start soon than a brilliant idea that never launches. I'm so excited to bring you more of this series throughout the year. As noted, it'll come out every Sunday, at least for the first half of the year. And we'll see what we do
from there. We might build out some more listener stories and examples, but that's our focus for the moment. Of course, other episodes come out other days. It is always completely free. You can subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcasts. You can also access the entire archive of the
show, more than 2,900 plus episodes on the website, sidehustleschool.com. And with that, I'm going to wish you a wonderful week. Thank you for joining me today. And I hope you'll continue to listen. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project
