The Side-Hustle Dad

Ep37
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Bryan Steele: [00:00:00] All the advice out there will tell you to keep pressing forward, keep pushing, success is right around the corner, you can do it, you can make it. But sometimes what the content out there online, what the gurus are telling you is that maybe it's time to quit. And quitting is not something we like to talk about, but today we're gonna face it head-on.

When we started our businesses, our side hustles, to achieve some financial flexibility, some freedom, some goals that move us forward, we always imagined that it was going to work out exactly right and we were gonna achieve everything we possibly imagined. But sometimes [00:01:00] the reality is that it didn't do what we expected, and we get to the end of our journey with a given side hustle, and it may be time for you possibly to shut it down.

Now, there's four things that I think are criteria that everyone should look at when they're shutting down a business to know whether it's really time to let that side hustle go. But the first is actually success. When you set out to start your business, you gave it a goal, you gave it an objective, you gave it a why you wanted to start this business.

If you achieve that goal, why are you continuing? Now, you may reframe the purpose, reframe the why because you enjoy it, you wanna keep it growing, keep it being successful, dedicate those resources other places, be more generous. It may be a dozen different things. But if you've been working hard and grinding and making it [00:02:00] happen to achieve this goal, it might be a season where you need to get some balance back in your life, reconnect with family and friends, and spend more time with them, and enjoy the fruits of your labor, and that's okay.

We don't need to pretend like this side hustle has to go on in perpetuity for the rest of our lives. If it has met its season and it's done, wind it down. But there's three other reasons which will tell you it's not being as successful as you originally imagined. The first is a callback to episode number two.

We put a stop loss test on the business. We're not going to continue investing more than X amount, ~and if you get to that number and the po- and... But~ if you get to that number and the business is not working the way you expect it to, you've met that limit. It's no longer time to keep pushing. It's time to let it go There's the three-month test.

There's a Lilach Bullock [00:03:00] piece where she talks about three months. In 90 days, you should really have an idea whether or not the business has some traction. Are you having good conversations? Are you able to get some deals? Are you able to gain some customers or clients? You should start to see some of those things happening.

You should be able to see your ability to deliver, to be able to make a profit, to work through all of these things if it's going to be ongoing and continuous. If you're not seeing those pieces coming your way, if you're not able to get strangers to hire you or, or pay for your product, there may not be anything there.

And so give yourself that, that 90 days, that full 90 days to really understand and try, 'cause we don't wanna abandon anything before it's had an opportunity to succeed. But if you're not seeing anything by 90 days, that's a good sign that it may be time to let it go. Even if there's some people you've worked with or some people are really excited about [00:04:00] your product, it may just not have the audience that you initially thought it would.

Then there's the last one, the would I start it today test. If you've been in it six months, a year, five years, and you look at it and you say, "Would I start this business today?"

And the answer is no? I think you've got your answer. The business is not fulfilling in the way you want it, and so it's better to just let things go and move on. But you already know that. So what's stopping you from shutting down your business? The first is obvious. It's one we hear about, the sunk cost fallacy.

I've invested X amount of dollars, this many thousands of hours, all of these clients I've worked with. If I stop now, all of that is a waste. That's what we tell ourselves. So we keep going because we [00:05:00] believe there's some magical payout, that when we just turn the corner, it's all suddenly going to get better.

But the truth is, we have to cut our losses and move on. ~Gamblers will always believe that the next pull of the, of the...~ Gamblers will always believe that the next spin of the roulette wheel is going to land on their number. But that's sunk cost. Let those sunk costs be what they are and move on. Don't continue to throw time and money at a thing that's not working just because you've already spent time and money on it.

The second piece is our identity. Once we start doing this, we start telling our friends, our family, people at church, in the softball league on Sunday, "Hey, I'm, I'm doing this side hustle. I'm building this business. I'm excited about it. It's going to be successful." And we start to associate ourselves and our worth with it, and the idea of removing that starts to feel like losing a limb, like [00:06:00] a part of who we are.

~But closing it down, you start to think...~ When you close it down, you start to think, " If I don't have this, this piece of me anymore, who am I? What am I? And what are people going to think about me?" We start to be concerned with outside perception instead of what's really most important for us to do in that moment.

And then we also start to think about letting other people down, people who have hired us, people who we're working with, maybe on, on, maybe in an ongoing basis, in an ongoing capacity. And we say, "Hey, we're stopping," and we feel like we are letting them down, like we are the only special snowflake who can help them.

And the truth is, nobody's thinking about you that much There are people who care, but somebody else can solve those problems for those people. You're not actually letting anyone down. [00:07:00] And then finally, we think back to our own kids. What are they seeing when they see Dad stop? Are we teaching them that quitting is okay?

The fear is, is that they start to develop those habits, but the reality is we're showing them how to move forward, how to move on when something no longer serves us. So it's not quitting. It's moving into a new stage of life. It's moving in a new direction. It's moving into new ways that you're called because this one thing isn't working, and that's teaching them courage in those situations.

Just like it took courage to start the business, it takes courage to stop, and we have to embrace that moment, and our kids are going to watch how we handle it and how we walk through it Years ago, my wife and I thought of a great idea, or I thought it was a great idea. We were going to sell funny T-shirts.

[00:08:00] I had bought some in the past online. I was like, "Oh, that's really humorous. I really want to wear that around 'cause it's funny." And I thought, "Man, I could come up with some great puns." I was an engineer. I could just think about all the things I went through at school and those experiences, and almost like a stand-up comedian, I would turn it into some pun or phrase and, and look at things a different way.

And I thought, "I'm gonna turn these into a series of funny T-shirts for engineers." Pretty simple to do. We invested some money into designing the shirts, getting designs made. ~Um,~ there's easy drop shipping options where we could just put the designs up on websites and push people to those websites, and if they liked it, they would buy it, and then we didn't actually have to print the shirts ourselves.

It would get printed and sent directly to those people, so we could pick out shirts we really liked and, and good product. And we did that, and we like, we tested all the prints. Like, I bought one of every shirt just to be like, "Yep, it looks good. The [00:09:00] quality is good. The design is good." And as we walked into that, we started trying to come up with those things.

I was telling all my coworkers, since I was an engineer at a manufacturing company, I was like, "Oh, this is, this is really funny." And I had some people even buy the shirts and thought they were hilarious. But we were not expert marketers. I didn't know how to do e-commerce well. I had no background in it.

We tried paid ads. They did nothing for us, didn't get us any traction. And so we're looking at this business, and we're going, you know, we're paying for this online web store where people are going and buying the shirts to have them shipped to them, and nobody's coming. And we're just paying money for advertising, and we just don't know how to convert them.

Now, the idea may still be good, and it might work for somebody else, but she and I, as we worked on it together collaboratively, my wife and I, we just realized we weren't the people equipped for it, and it wasn't as much fun as we thought it might be. [00:10:00] And so we s- looked at it at the end of the day. We said, "Hey, we gave it a shot.

We tried it, but it's time to shut it down. It's time to let it go and move on." The business failed. We didn't, and I want you to remember that. If you look at a business, and, and if obviously, if you achieved your goals and you're shutting it down, that's a different conversation. But if you're starting to take that in internally, that identity, that letting other people down, the business is what failed.

You haven't, and I want you to internalize that and recognize that It doesn't mean that you were not capable. It just means that business didn't work, maybe because you didn't have the specific skills for that business. ~You might be success-~ You're going to be very successful in other ways, just not in this one, and that's okay.

That has no bearing on your worth or your [00:11:00] value. Now, we want to end it well, because I think that's important. So how do you shut it down cleanly? So the first, communication. That's very obvious. You're gonna communicate with your wife, your family. You're gonna say, "Hey, this is where we're at. This is what has happened.

I think it's time to let it go. ~Um,~ so that's what I'm gonna be working on." You wanna make sure you finish all of your commitments to existing clients. So if you've got open contracts, you do your best to wrap them up or find a clean endpoint. And anybody who's paid a deposit and you can't work with, you refund them.

You send it all back and let them know. You're gonna clean it up. You're gonna do your best work. May take a couple of weeks, may take a month, but you're going to wrap everything up cleanly, and you're gonna contact everybody. It's a very simple, short client note. "Hey, I'm closing this business at the end of the month.

I wanna thank you for working with me, for trusting me with this. ~Um,~ I've really [00:12:00] appreciated that. It means a lot. If you still need help with this thing, here's somebody I would recommend." 'Cause odds are you've got a network out there. You've met people. So send them to someone else who can help them that you trust.

They, your clients, those people you work with, will be grateful for that referral, because they still need help maybe, and you know how to get them that help, and they will still remember you for that and the way you approached that Close that loop. Don't just shut off and ghost completely. Then you're gonna close the money piece.

Final invoices out, collect everything that you're owed, pay anything you're owed. If you've worked with vendors or things like that, pay for all of that. Close down any subscription software things that you've got. ~Um,~ put the tax bucket somewhere else, ~um,~ 'cause you're gonna be closing that business account, but set aside that tax bucket so you can make sure you pay it at the end of the year or the end of the quarter, and label it, 'cause you will still have to pay that.[00:13:00]

And then when the account's at zero, close the account. Move the money that's for you back into your personal account from, from the income you've made, and move on. Then you're gonna keep all your receipts, which is you're gonna export your CRM data. ~Um,~ you're going to get all of that client data, your testimonials, before and after photos, your evidence folder f- that we talked about in episode six.

You're gonna keep all those things. You aren't just gonna remove them. You may have to put them on a hard drive or something that's gonna be a different copy somewhere else because you're closing your Google Workspace account or something along those lines, but you're going to get all that data. You're gonna save that.

You never know where that will be needed in the future. And then you're gonna tell people, you know, family, friends. You're just gonna say, "It's very simple," you know. "I, I did this business. I ran it, it did its job, and I closed it." End of story. If they wanna ask more, you can tell them, but odds are they're gonna [00:14:00] say, "Oh, okay."

You're now moving on to this next thing. It's... You're gonna be doing something else with that time and energy and resources, and then you're gonna mark that last day. When are you gonna finish the work with the clients? And the business is gonna be turned off, and you don't go back to it. You don't kinda, like, work with one client ongoing.

Like, what I, what I don't want you to do is just hang on to a little bit. Like, "There's this one client that I just keep helping on the side." Let it go. If it's not working, just let it go. Move on and recover all of that for yourself. You're not letting anybody down, and I want you to hear that Now, the reason we did the side hustle is because your entire livelihood was not dependent on this business, and you can move confidently and cleanly into the next stage.

Because the odds are you might still want to pursue that goal. It may just be with another idea, another business, and [00:15:00] none of that is going to come to you until you let this one go and you mo-move on, and that's important to recognize. But beyond just that data that you save on the hard drive, there is other things that you are going to keep that cannot be taken away from you.

You've got the skills from this business that you worked on, and not just the thing you did or the product you made. You've learned how to market, you've learned how to run QuickBooks. Like, you've r- learned all these other things you may never have done until you start this side hustle. Skills you will always be able to lean back on in the future.

You've got proof people paid you. You've got testimonials. You can do good quality work. You have a database of people, all these people who reached out to you, who you worked with, who paid for your services, who bought your product. Like, those people you [00:16:00] served, you've got that information. All the other data that you collected.

~Um,~ you know what an hourly rate is. You know how to, how to budget your time. You know how to measure out, like, profit margins and, and what your time is actually worth. You've gained that ability to understand and, and work with data. And you understand your why. That's a powerful thing.

What are the things that are important to you? What are you valuing? What are you pursuing with these endeavors? What means something to you? Because if we're just doing it aimlessly, it's never going to have the impact we want it to have, and I think that's important to remember And then as you reflect on these pieces and you get some space, other ideas can come.

You can go, "You know what? That didn't work, but I've got another idea. I've got this other thing we should try. I've got some additional perspective now. I now know what doesn't work, so [00:17:00] I have ideas around what does work." And so I wouldn't necessarily leave this business, shut it all down, and then just go jump straight into the next one.

Let yourself have a little space to reflect and think. But yeah, if you can do this, you ran a business. If you shut it down, there's no reason you can't start and run another business, or at least try. Just take the lessons and what you've learned and apply them to the next thing that you do. I think that's going to serve you well long term.

You didn't lose two years. You just got an education in being a business owner, and that's gonna last a lifetime. And you may never start another business, but because of that perspective, you might have wisdom for other people. You may be able to mentor somebody else when they start their side hustle.

And I think that's important, and that is a valuable thing, [00:18:00] so don't let go of that. So your call to action today, look at those reasons why you might need to take a step back and think about them clearly. Has the podcast met its goal? Have I reached my stop loss number? Have I given it a full 90 days and I'm not seeing momentum, not seeing traction?

And finally, would I start this business again today? You likely already know the answer, and if that's you gotta keep rolling and you wanna keep pushing forward, awesome, because we are going to be here for you continuing with the Side Hustle Dad, and I can't wait to see you on another episode real soon.

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