And 4 baby steps to start a side hustle right away.
Side hustles are the hot topic nowadays. And people either love or hate them — there is no middle ground. But has anybody ever thought if today is a good day to start a side hustle or not?
I love side hustles. So much that I would start hundreds if I could. And I am convinced they give meaning to your life and provide you a constant need for growth, besides a secure landing pad for the future.
Even if, at the moment, you may be happy with your job, income, and work situation, what if in the future everything changes? How do you plan to escape that cage?
Primo Levi once wrote a book title that perfectly suits this thought:
If not now, when?
And even if I can’t tell you how to live your life, enjoy your free time, or spend it by Netflix-and-chilling (which apparently became a verb), I will encourage you to have a side hustle if possible.
Leave everything else and launch your idea right now. Because there are at least 4 reasons why today is the best day to start one. And if you wait too much, you could miss the opportunity of a lifetime.
4 Reasons Why Today Is the Best Day To Start a Side Hustle
There are many reasons why starting a side hustle today would be the best option compared to tomorrow. And all of them deal with different characteristics of humankind. So let me summarize them in the 4 reasons why today is the best day to start a side hustle.
1 — Productivity: you avoid procrastination.
Procrastination has been the greatest enemy of the twenty-first century. Since the Internet was born and the available content multiplied, our curiosity has played with us, and we became the best unproductive procrastinators on Earth.
So if you want to escape that common path of time-wasting, you should start a side hustle today. Because this kind of personal job will make you switch mentality from a watcher to a doer.
Nowadays, we are keen on watching others make things on Youtube and saving videos to do those things ourselves later. But we never do them.
However, with a side hustle, you will finally do something after months of waiting for inspiration. You will break the chain of procrastination for good instead of feeding it. And the constant need for attention of your new little job will keep you interested and productive all day long.
2 — Safety: you build a safe landing pad.
If you don’t like your job, you quit.
Simple, right?
Wrong.
If you are unsatisfied with your current job, work situation, or income, a side hustle can be your solution. If you quit your job without a plan, things will end badly. However, if you build a side hustle and play the long run, you could transform that passion into your main job, and you will probably like it even more.
First of all, you could be your boss, which is a considerable ego boost. Also, you could work on something you choose. So there is no chance you will hate what you are doing. And lastly, a side hustle has more potential to grow than your current job.
Your current career depends on many things, two being your colleagues and boss. But with a side hustle, it all depends on your ability to work smarter (not harder) and talk with your clients (not your boss).
If you start a side hustle today, you will build a safe landing pad for the future. Because even if you are satisfied with your position now, this feeling could shift in the future. Your needs, dreams, and expectations change with time, and so should your job.
3 — Strategy: you have a time advantage over competitors.
If you start any project a month later, you will always be a month back on track compared to those who started today. While you were indecisive, your competitors have built more audience than you and benefit from that advantage. Someone may have stolen your idea, and you need to share clients with them now, or even worse, lose yours.
But if you start your side hustle in time, you will have a strategic advantage over any late runner. You will fortify the winning idea, gain a time advantage, and have more time to study your clients’ needs. This way, your business offer would be the best on the market, and you will attract more customers.
Also, if your contenders beat you on time, you will have motivational problems in the future. Seeing others succeed while you struggle makes you lose patience, focus, and mental strength. So with time, if the pressure becomes too high and motivation too low, you could give up on your side hustle.
4 — Time: you will enter the new post-pandemic business-standard.
As humans, we always defeat crises — it is our footprint. And since we are in the middle of a pandemic, so you should use this opportunity to your advantage.
Usually, in the following years of a social crisis, people want to feel more alive. They feel like something was taken from them, so they are more willing to invest in themselves, both in education and wellbeing. So if you start a side hustle today, in the middle of a global social crisis, you will be more ready for the end of it, when people will actively search for you.
However, if you delay this opportunity, people’s enthusiasm will fade away in a few years, and you will have fewer business opportunities. This does not mean your side hustle won’t work anyway, but it will take more time to grow.
How Did I Start a New Side Hustle?
When I decided to start a side hustle two years ago, I did not think about avoiding procrastination, strategic advantage, and all of that. I understood the importance of starting soon, but I let my passion guide me instead of a well-thought plan.
I was terrorized by living the same day every day with a regular job. And I wanted to have a safe landing pad in case I got annoyed by my profession. Also, interacting with people and talking about self-improvement was my guilty pleasure, so I decided to start my side hustle even without giving it a name.
Here are 4 baby steps that made me build what you know today as The Cosmopolitan Mindset.
1 — I defined the arguments I wanted to talk about.
The first thing to do when starting a side hustle is to understand what you are good or passionate about, so you can talk about it.
The same principle applies if you want to sell a product or a service. Focus on well-known subjects or topics you are passionate about. This way, the effort you put into your side hustle would be more manageable.
Also, when you define the arguments, make a list of people that offer the same product or talk about the same thing. Consider the number of people interested in your service, but also the competition around those topics.
For example, I used an SEO tracker to make a list of keywords and track the volumes of searches of my topics. Then, I recorded the competition score of those keywords. Finally, I divided the search volume by the competition score and ranked the results to understand what articles to prioritize. This way, I have a list of prolific topics and one for occasional subjects.
2 — I analyzed my branding possibilities.
I discovered the difference between using a brand name or a personal name for a side hustle after one year of work, so the pivoting was brutal but necessary.
In theory, you can call your side hustle however you want. However, if you use your name, people will link you to one specific activity and hardly associate you with other projects. For example, if you build an audience writing, you will become a writer, and it will be harder for people to think about you as a podcaster.
For this reason, if you want your side hustle to cover a variety of services or sell different products, you should use a brand name instead of a personal name. This way, you build the brand image from the ground, and people will associate it faster with different products.
So before starting your side hustle, think about its future. Will it be a single-product business, or will it cover many different services? Do you want to work on it yourself, or do you plan to get help from other people?
3 — I outlined the communication strategy for my product.
After defining what I wanted to talk about, I needed to choose the form of my product. So the third step of starting a side hustle is to decide the communication strategy.
The format of your product should consider two things: your proficiency and the strength of the medium. Many blogging topics, for example, can easily translate to podcast or videos material, but they don’t work well with live streamings.
Also, you should consider the available platforms for your business. Are they free, or do they require a subscription? Should you use an external platform or your own site? Make a list of the pros and cons of each opportunity and pick the best. For example, for my side hustle, I described the entire blogging plan in a recent article.
4 — I set the goals for the first year.
Once you pick a topic, name your side hustle, and select the most suitable platform, you need to set a couple of long-term goals to reach.
This is one of the central points of your strategy because it will make the difference between success and failure.
Your goals should be realistic — not too high, and neither too low. If they are too high, you will get discouraged when results will not reflect your expectations. Otherwise, if they are too low, they will bore you, and you will abandon your side hustle.
In my first year of blogging, I made all those errors.
First, I overestimated my growth, and I felt so demoralized I abandoned writing for a couple of months. Then, I set low goals, and I felt unchallenged. But finally, I figured the sweet spot between boredom and challenge, and I kept writing until then.
So if you want to find that sweet spot, I wrote an article about setting achievable goals for secure triumph.
Final Thoughts
Whether you wonder about starting a side hustle or you have already taken your first baby steps towards it, today is the best day to do it.
First of all, a side hustle will help you avoid procrastination, which is always great. Also, it will help you build a safe landing pad for your future, so if you ever get bored by your job, you have a safety net to lean on.
If you were planning on building a side hustle, but you never dared to start, you should realize the advantages of being the first. Not only because of the era of side hustlers but also because somebody might steal your idea and make it successful before you.
Lastly, you should remember we are fighting a crisis, and people tend to act needier when it finishes, which means better business opportunities for your side hustle. This is why you should start today.
If you want to start a side hustle but need some guidance, you can download a collection of helpful printables by subscribing to my newsletter, The Challenge.