3 Practical & Productive Ways of Thinking to Make Your Side-Hustle(s) Profitable
Because it matters to get busy with ourselves
Let us face the truth. Hustling for free does not pay the bills. Doing work for free does not unchain us from the shackles of the corporate cubicle.
That is especially so if you believe side-hustles are your tickets to financial and professional freedom.
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”
Deep down, I believe that the ultimate freedom is to thrive financially, mentally, spiritually by being myself. And that is why I invest a lot of time in my side-hustles. My dream is to get busy with myself, my business, my career.
And if that sounds like what you aspire to achieve, the following 3 ways of thinking will help you earn more on the side.
First Things First — If You Want More Money, You Need to Manage Your Energy, Attention, and Effort
Question: How do we manage our energy, attention, and effort?
Answer: Through time.
If you want to start or grow a side-hustle(s), you need to carve out time to work on them. Nothing else matters just as much.
Thinking about and managing time requires nothing more than simple arithmetic. First, compute the net disposable time you have after sleeping, meal breaks, and 9–6.
This is my calculation (for reference):
- Total number of hours in a Day: 24.
- Total hours required for sleeping: 8 (I need that amount. Otherwise, I will be a zombie the next day).
- Total hours required for 9–6: 9
- Total hours required for meal breaks: 2
- Net Disposable Time Available for Side-Hustles: 24 minus 8 minus 9 minus 2 = 5
From here, I work on the sums further. This advice is (extremely) powerful for those who are not time-sensitive. I advise you to take 5 minutes to work out your available time per day.
Author’s Note: I do not plow all 5 remaining hours into my side-hustles. For me, I commit 3 hours per weekday, leaving 2 hours for myself to do whatever I want. At times, I take the entire 5 hours to disengage and relax.You may want to leave your weekends alone for a recharge, as I occasionally do. If so, your total disposable time available per week will be 3 hours * 5 days = 15 side-hustle hours.
This is my magic number.
Once you have the magic number on the back of your coffee napkin, we can now work out how to earn (more) money from our side-hustles.
When Time is Money & Deriving Maximum Financial Impact
We want to focus on areas of our side-hustles that maximize our returns.
We need to identify where value is created and realized, and contextualized to our side-hustles. This depends on the revenue maturity of our side-hustles today.
And the revenue maturity is highly dependent on our sales and marketing efforts and our ability to fulfill.
If you are just starting out: Invest 80% of your side-hustling hours on marketing what you can do. Leave the remaining time to get deals.
If you are already earning and want more: Put 70% of your effort in sales, 20% on fulfilling work orders, and the remaining 10% on marketing.
Author’s Note: The right question to ask ourselves is how we can continue to grow our side-hustles while holding our available side-hustle hours constant?One comment on marketing efforts.
As your side-hustle(s) mature, you can spend a little less time on your marketing efforts. That is because your previous work and the current clientele is your greatest marketing asset. Use your work portfolio to sell more to prospects.
Last But Not Least — When Your Side-Hustles Are Fast Becoming a Potential Business
“Be sure you positively identify your target before you pull the trigger.”
I agree with Tom because we need to focus our efforts to achieve what we want. 86,400 seconds per day is all we have.
We cannot get more available side-hustling hours without increasing the number of seconds endowed to us. And at times, we may be confronted with good problems.
If your side-hustles are growing fast, or you are working multiple side-hustles as I do, consider shoring up your team. There is a limit to what one pair of hands can do, no matter how productive and efficient we are.
Author’s Note: Just one point here for clarity. Focus on yourself at the beginning of your side-hustles. That way, no one else can distract you. Consider getting more people in only when you have a lot of orders to fulfill. That way, you grow your revenue without blowing your costs.If you are in a position where your sales revenue is growing faster than your output — Congratulations! You may potentially have a genuine business now, so you must think like a mature entrepreneur by leveraging on a team.
I follow these 3 simple rules to do so:
- Rule # 1 — Personally handle all sales closing activities.
- Rule # 2 — Build a team to take over your order fulfillment and marketing work (gradually).
- Rule # 3 — See Rule # 1, followed by Rule # 2.
I am particular about handling the sales closing activities personally. I want to avoid delivering projects that I cannot complete or getting sold at a discount.
If you think like me, consider work delegation. Check the quality of delivery from time to time. Focus 90% of your effort on sales closure. If your team ghosts on you, you can count on yourself to deliver what was sold (by you).
Summary
We want to achieve profitability from our side-hustles.
Because doing so gives us the ticket to focus on what we want to do and how we want to earn to our keep. For me, it is about building and minding my own business.
Of course, we must be aware of and focus on where we are at in our side-hustles. Different stages require different strategies for revenue growth.
All the best.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
