One of the greatest missed opportunities in life is starting a tiny little business. The problem is people get scared by the phrase “side hustle.” Some of you have watched Gary Vee talk about side hustles and thought to yourself “that could never be me.” You don’t have to be a Gary Vee worshipper to take advantage of side hustles. You also don’t need to replicate old mate Elon to be in business. The word business scares the crap out of a lot of us. University lied and made business sound complicated. So complicated that many of us never dare try having a business. That’s why the solution is to chunk it down. Empire feels unachievable. Business feels too professional. Hobby feels amateur. The way you frame things in your head can help you push past your perceived limitations. Side hustle is an easier way to explain to yourself how you’re going to use the skills you have to charge money. Business is nothing more than having the courage to charge money. Starting small is the most underrated life-hack I’ve ever come across. Side hustle equals small. Small Pursuit + Effort = Momentum Momentum x 5 Years = Empire Social media is telling you to be grandiose and outrageous. The secret is to go so small that nobody notices, including you.
Put money and the concept of business to the back of your mind. It will overwhelm you. A side hustle is a small pursuit. What can you pursue this year? Ideally what you choose to pursue is of interest. This year I decided to pursue online education. I did other people’s courses, read blog posts on the subject, and researched course design. Then I found other people who knew about online education. I used curiosity to ask them questions. None of what I just said sounds like a business. That’s the whole point. The focus isn’t business because the idea of business screws up your mind. Find one thing you can pursue this year that is an interest. Make it small.
Stress, in the beginning, will destroy the interest you’re nurturing. The moment that your interest needs to make money, because your life depends on it, you’re screwed. Writing was my side hustle early on. I used writing as a way to relieve stress, rather than attach the idea of business to writing and make it into stress. The question was this: “How can I use this interest to escape stress?” My side hustle became a joy. I sat down and wrote whenever I could. It was fun. The fun helped me learn more. Learning leads to mastery. Mastery leads to an empire, later on.
Process is a confusing word used by self-help wannabes like me. Process just means noticing what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. Your process helps you find the time and automate the tasks that need doing. If you don’t have a process then life’s accidental problems will get in the way of your tiny side hustle you’re trying to build. The reason you will need to find time is because in the beginning you’re going to be making money from an alternate means. Your side hustle will not be monetized for a while. So you’ll need to create a balance between work that pays you money and work associated with your side hustle. Your process reveals the balance. My side hustle process started out as 90% paid work, doing a normal sales job, and 10% unpaid work as a blogger. Over time the balance has shifted as the income from one has canceled out the other. Start with a process. Refine the process. Keep noticing your process. The small parts about your process that you think are unimportant are where all the potential for your side hustle is found.
Matthew Biggins said this in his popular 2018 side hustle essay and it’s spot on. Free is the best way to build an empire. Charging money too early is a mistake. By aiming for mastery in a field you’re interested in, you build up enough knowledge to create value. I hate the word value, though — it’s confusing. Value = Content You provide value upfront repeatedly for free through blog posts, eBooks, videos, podcasts, social media posts, free courses (email courses), illustrations, or photos you take and give away for free. This free value you give away attracts people to you like a magnet. If you do free for long enough there will be so many people in your inner-circle to support your side hustle you’ll be blown away. Free content leads to an empire.
Seth Godin is a marketing god. Most marketing books are trash designed to get you to attend a seminar. Not Seth’s book “Purple Cow.” When I look at the side hustle world of blogging it’s a bunch of black and white cows eating grass. Their heads are down and many of them never dare pop their heads up for air out of fear they will have their heads chopped off by a commenter who has had a bad day. The listicle green grass they eat full of clickbait headlines, and the farmers they let herd them into line — known as Elon and Jobs — makes their world pretty boring. Then a random purple cow named Sean comes into the paddock from another farm known as Quora and blows sh*t up. There are cow guts everywhere. His cow mate Genius Turner joins from the other farm shortly after. These cows are purple. They don’t eat grass. They have parent cows who are cow navy seals. They don’t dare eat freaking green grass. They eat human food from 200 years ago. They use their cow brains to research cows living on Mars. These purple cows are weird… Michael Jackson weird. As a result, their side hustle hits differently. They make side hustling look easy. People are dying to find out their secret. What is it? They embrace their weird. They put weird into their side hustle of blogging. They say things they’re afraid to say. They make you feel emotions you didn’t know you had, or haven’t felt in a long time. They take what tiny bit of self-respect you have and piss it against the wall. They make it okay to dream, a little. Purple cows are unique. Uniqueness just means working a side hustle your way, and not being afraid to unleash your awesomeness on the world. Because your unique view of the world is awesome to a bunch of somebodies.
By now you have a small pursuit and are putting your back into it in the form of effort. Effort leads to momentum. It’s slow though. Early in my banking career I met hundreds of business owners. None of them ever turned their side-hustle into something meaningful in less than a year. Momentum x 5 Years = Empire You work away long enough at your side hustle that eventually momentum creeps up on you. Momentum allows you to see what is possible with your side hustle. Once you see what is possible, anything is possible. A side hustle becomes an empire in five years or more. You know this deep down but the problem is you think doing your side hustle will suck for the first five years. Actually, the first five years are the best part. The days spent working away in your home office and seeing no results are pretty cool. Five years might seem like a long time but it goes really quickly. Why? Doing your side hustle should be fun and hard work at the same time. Five years flies by. Eventually you’ll be so lost in your side hustle that you won’t even know it’s a side hustle anymore. Your side hustle will just become a part of how you live. It will have space on your calendar the same way your family does, and exercise does.
You thought this was going to be a Disney Fairytale. Nope. Snow White ain’t coming to defeat the seven dwarfs who chase you down the street with a barge pole. My friend at work laughs when I say this: “For every 4 weeks, one is going to suck. I prepare for the suck.” Problems will find their way into your side hustle. Last year I had a troll group leader select my social media accounts for extermination. It was a terrible time and even family found it hard to watch. What made it slightly easier was that I expected it. You don’t know what a bad situation will look like but you can prepare for it. That’s why I have my game plan pre-prepared for the one week a month full of suck. Here’s the plan I use which you can steal:
As a result, I don’t smash my head against the wall. My skull is still in one piece, for now. Side hustles are full of problems because they have the potential to turn into a business. And all a business is a life full of problems you get paid to solve. Problems equal money. The Empire Phase Once you have success you get complacent. Your fun side hustle can accidentally turn into a nightmare you depend on for financial validation (and the expected Lambo). My empire phase started when I realized that early retirement with a part-time job was an option. That’s my version of an empire. An empire so powerful that the meaning of work and money morph into an alternate universe occupied by you. The empire phase is when you dare to charge money. I say dare because most people are deathly afraid to ask to be paid. They can sometimes think it’s selling-out or evil to earn money. They are lied to and told that entrepreneurship is evil. Yes, charging money can make you an entrepreneur. If you find the label of entrepreneur evil you can just not use it. As Ayodeji Awosika said: “we’re all entrepreneurs already, we just have one customer.” Labels limit your potential. Call “charging money” whatever the heck you want to call it. Here are a few labels: freelancing, part-time job, teaching, coaching, small business, side hustle, stall at the farmer’s market, etc. They all mean charge money. The reason to build yourself an empire isn’t to make a lot of money. Sorry. An empire will give you money, yes. It’s what you can do with the money from an empire you’ve built that counts. Here are a few ideas: Buy back your time. Give your money away to people who need it. Use the money to help the people who built the empire with you. Quit your job with the money and go all-in on your side hustle. Become an unconventional human and do something tiny for humanity.
Everyone’s looking for shortcuts. Humility — you need people to build an empire. Be humble enough to treat people well and you’ll get there faster. Email lists — they help you build an empire. Email is how you communicate to people who might get value from your skills. Pro tip: the open rate on an email is roughly 25%. The other 75% never see what you emailed them. Group chats have higher engagement levels. Generosity — nobody likes a Scrooge McFu*k. Pardon the French. Invest back in yourself — money invested back in your side hustle is nice. Money invested in yourself goes further. Invest money you make into education — books, events where you can meet people, basic online courses that go deep on one topic, and coaching from people who’ve done what you want to do. Learn to grow your brain. Your brain sees the empire before you do. Reflect on wins — I still don’t do this enough. If you have a huge win then go and celebrate it. It might be years before your next one. Celebrating wins helps you find more because you experience and get addicted to the feeling of achieving a goal. Ihate the idea of business. It has scared many people away from their dreams when they didn’t have to be. That’s why I’m changing the labels up and telling you to go tiny, not big. Grandiose is for amateurs. You don’t need to get your head around the idea of business. You are a business already with a bunch of experiences, a set of skills, and 1–3 things you love doing. I explained my side hustle experience like this on LinkedIn the other day: “This is all I ever wanted to do. If I die tomorrow, I will die happy having done this.” Start a side hustle and build your version of an empire. An empire is really just a vehicle to exploit your potential and become someone you never thought you could be.