The Seven-Legged Stool of Successful Side Hustlers
Whether you’ve got a day job or not, we all need multiple income streams
As a creative, I’m always on the lookout for new streams of income. These side-hustles are excellent insurance policies against financial disaster. Whether I make an additional hundred dollars a month, or one thousand, the more legs under my stool the better.
Sometimes we put all our efforts on social.
We build entire businesses on the backs of someone else’s platform. This can be really lucrative. You’ve got a baked-in audience of millions of people, all sitting and waiting for your content to scroll-by. But there’s a catch. The social platform is a one-legged stool. We can lose our accounts, and our incomes overnight.
Look at Facebook and Instagram.
A few weeks ago they went completely dark for almost two days. Social business that relied on these platforms for all their sales lost millions. These are fundamental business practices of diversification, but I believe they’re getting lost in the excitement.
We need a better stool.
So, maybe we’re not giants of e-commerce, but we’ve got a side hustle going. We hope to someday turn said side hustle into a full hustle. We can go the ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ route or we can gather a whole bunch of baskets. I prefer that latter. If I lose one income stream it’s not a big hit to my bottom line.
But what if you’re a small-time creator?
A multi-legged stool doesn’t have to mean seven different businesses. For some entrepreneurs this works, but for most side-hustlers we don’t have the time to keep track of seven totally different income streams.
Instead, we’ll build seven income streams off our single side hustle.
Before we go deeper, there’s a mindset shift required. We can’t ignore our core work, so there are stopgaps we’ve got to put in place before we should start to pursue additional income streams. I’ve included a tiny checklist here:
- What’s your core business? Understand who you serve and continue to serve these customers.
- What’s your main source of revenue? Feed this income stream the same as you did before. If you stop paying attention to your original source of income, the money could deteriorate quickly. We’re trying to add streams, not lose them as we find new ones.
- What else can you offer this core group of people? Multiple streams don’t have to mean new customers, especially with a side hustle.
We don’t want to find a new tribe. If you build your business well you’ll serve the same tribe for life. But we can offer different types of products, through multiple channels, to ensure we don’t rely on one sales platform too much.
Extra legs for your hustle
Here’s the fun part. This is a brain-storming exercise. We’ll list all the different income streams we can think of for your side hustle. These don’t have to be different businesses, but complimentary offering for the same tribe.
We’ll find offerings in different formats and multiple locations, so we can attract buyers who enjoy your work on multiple platforms.
I’m a writer, so I’ll use a book as an example. Say my core product is a non-fiction book. This is my bread and butter — pride and joy. Yet, I don’t want to rely on Amazon for all my income.
Here are multiple streams of income for a side-hustling author:
- Wide distribution (sell your book on multiple sites, not just Amazon)
- Audio book
- Print book
- A course based on the book
- Print-on-demand wall art with motivational quotes from the book
- Print-on-demand shirts and hats with similar book quotes
- High-dollar, personal coaching based on the book
- An online, paid mastermind group based around the book
- An annual conference (con) based on all the people who use the principles in the book, with multiple speakers and vendors. You can start very small with conferences and run them while working. You won’t create Comic Con your first time out.
- Signed copies of your book for gifts
In that example we’ve got ten different income streams from one core product. You can do this with anything you create. The more legs under your stool the more insurance you provide for your business.
Not everyone wants the same experience.
My print audience will not be the same as my audio book audience. Yet, these are both members of my tribe. I’d do one a disservice if I didn’t offer my book in the format they enjoyed.
Maybe you’ve got customers with a lot of money and no time for reading. They’d be happy to pay you for high-dollar coaching if you tell them exactly what to do and hold their hand through the process.
Some customers want only the book.
We serve our tribe at every level and we build our seven-legged stool in the process. Even if you make thirty dollars a month from your print-on-demand sales — that’s $360 a year, in hands-off income you weren’t getting before.
We start small. We grow more legs for the stool. We find what works and we do more of that.
It’s time to take control of your financial security
If you want your side hustle to become your full hustle it’s important to grow your seven-legged stool now, before you need it.
Not only should you build multiple income streams, but it’s important for us to own our platform as well. If all our customers are on Facebook, it’s impossible to take them with us, should we lose our account.
Your tribe wants more of what you offer.
If we enjoy your work, you do us a disservice by not having more for us to buy from you. It’s your duty as a creator never to let your tribe run out of things to buy from you.
This might sound strange and it will take time, but you never want a raving fan with nowhere to go. There’s always a new direction we can take our work. Your tribe will appreciate your innovation.
It’s time to built the stool.
We’re waiting for you.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +437,678 people.
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