Your mindset and attitude are the keys to a successful side hustle.
In our last blog, we spoke about how you can build an effective side hustle. But in this blog, we’re going to look at some of the key elements of a mindset that will help you succeed.
Know your why
Before you start any project, you have to be clear about why you’re doing that, know what your motivation is and what you hope to achieve, and be realistic.
Quite often, it’s very easy to come up with an idea with goals, which probably won’t realistically happen. You end up putting a lot of extra pressure on yourself to achieve something which is really hard to actualize. Furthermore, if your why is centered around worldly achievements things that you need to occur in the world in order for you to be successful in your project, then it makes it much more difficult to succeed.
Partly because you can’t control the outcome also because when you’re starting a project, there’s typically a lot that you don’t know. And quite often it’s a lot more effort than you realize in order to achieve the outcome that you want.
However, If your why is centered around intrinsic goals, such as the fulfillment that you get, or the learning and the growth that you have, in one sense, you can’t lose because every step of the way is giving you that fulfillment and growth.
You can ask yourself, “how is this satisfying my curiosity?”
And go from there and see what value this has for your own growth and development.
Don’t lie to yourself
When coming up with a side hustle, it’s very easy to imagine this perfect world that’s going to unfold, where everything’s going to fit into place. You’re going to be super successful. Leave your day job and jump into your passion full time. And you imagine you’ll accomplish this all in 30 days.
So the first part of not lying to yourself, it’s just being honest about the expectations of what you can do and can achieve.
On the second side of this, quite often, we have busy lives with commitments already in place. We have things during the day that we need to get done or attend to and activities in the evening that we’re already committed to.
Especially for those of us with families, there’s a lot of time that we put into our family to grow and thrive.
Any side hustle that we engage in is going to take time. So be honest with yourself about how much time that you actually have, and when you’re going to have time to engage in this side hustle.
Map it out, block it off on your diet.
And then see if that’s something that you’re really willing to commit to week after week.
Become the path
There is a saying that you can’t travel the path until you become the path.
In the context of a side hustle, it’s very easy to talk about what you’re going to do and make plans about what the work will look like. But until you start doing the work, then it’s just an idea in your head.
If you’re starting in business, whether full-time or as a side hustle, you know it’s more than just developing a product or putting up a web page, but you’ve got to go out and validate your idea, which means talking to a lot of people. It means developing a sales and marketing plan of how you’re going to reach your customers and let them know what you’re providing. It means handling the business aspect of your finances, your taxes, and all the great stuff that comes from running your own business. And then actually delivering your actual product or service.
Sometimes you don’t have all the capabilities to do all of these pieces and you’re going to be hiring people or working with other people. Have you identified who those people are? Have you fleshed out these different areas of your business and actively started taking steps? Do you have a minimally viable product that you’re validating or some initial users that are testing your product or service?
At some level, and you need to be invested in and committed to your side hustle and actively taking steps in order to take it forward.
Until then, it’s just a nice idea in your head.
It has to be part of your life
Trying to force something into your life when it just doesn’t naturally fit won’t work.
When you’re doing a side hustle, by definition, you’ve got a day job or some other main activity in your life, and you’re doing this on the side. It can’t be something that you just do in this mysterious spare time that you may not have.
So you have to be honest about how it’s going to be part of your life and how it’s going to interact with the other things that you’re doing. How will it exist with your full-time job, your studies, or whatever else you have going on?
Figure that out ahead of time. And you’ll find that fits into your life much more easily.
Conclusion
Now I’ve broken pretty much every rule in this blog, as I’ve developed my side hustles People Helping People and Wild Tiger Tees, except for the first one.
I was always very clear why I was doing the podcast. It wasn’t is for my own growth to develop a career that I’m passionate about that I really believe in. Wild Tiger Tees is part of that very same purpose, but I often lied to myself about what I actually have time to accomplish and what I need in order to be successful.
I spent countless hours talking about things that we can do and could do, but I find myself hesitating to actually take the steps we need in order to prove concepts and move things forward.
And lastly, my life is super busy. Running a podcast and a side hustle social enterprise work program for youth experiencing homelessness takes up a lot of time.
I’ve got a day job and a family and find myself continually pressed for time. It means I continually go back to the drawing board and look at what I can actually accomplish. And quite often, I have to go much easier on myself than I want to because I have these expectations of what I can achieve, but simply don’t have enough time.
Now I work with some great people in order to make things grow seamlessly, but it takes a lot of effort, and clarity in order for that to unfold. And so the principles in this blog will really help you as you’re starting out, be more successful in whatever you do.
