The Side-Hustle Dad

Ep04
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Reset and Refocus
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Welcome back to The Side Hustle Dad. I am glad you're joining me here today. If you made it through the first three episodes last week, I really appreciate you. I do want to share something that has kind of come up since I released those episodes, as I have heard a little bit of, oh man, I didn't do any of this.

Like I didn't talk to my spouse about starting my side business or. I just wanna say, none of this is perfect, and if you find yourself in a position where you've already started and you're realizing maybe I didn't start the best way, you just, just make course corrections. There's no need to burn everything to the ground, but just find little ways to.[00:01:00]

Start pointing yourself in the right direction. If you don't know why your business exists, if you, if you don't have why, start to figure out what that is. Start to create the job that the side hustle is gonna fulfill for you and your families. Don't, don't feel like. Because you didn't do it perfectly it's not worth doing.

Or you jumped into it and made a bunch of mistakes. Like we are all on this journey together, figuring this out. I mean, I didn't have all of this figured out and developed when I got started. I was, I was making it up as I went. So don't, don't beat yourself up over it. Just take action. Take the next right step.

And that is certainly the case today.

Schedule Your Hustle Time
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And, and before we get started with that time. That we define like, Hey, here's the, the places where there's time available. I want you to start blocking that out on your schedule. Say, okay, well this hour, these two hours, this is gonna be carved out. This is for this specific purpose.

So block that out on your schedule. Don't get stuck on Netflix. Don't get [00:02:00] stuck. Doom scrolling. Make that time yours, make that the time to work on the business. So we're not gonna, take things for chance that you go, oh yeah, that, that was the time. And I'm gonna remember, and it'll be in my head, put it on the calendar.

Be intentional. Be intentional. Be intentional. All right, so today. We're gonna start getting into the what and as we go on, you know, we'll, we'll rewind here and there and talk about mindsets and strategies and things like that. But I'm really excited about the next few weeks because we're really gonna get into some very practical steps.

Avoid the Second Job Trap
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So today is the what now? There are lots of ways to go out there and make extra money. You could go do Uber, you could do DoorDash or TaskRabbit. There's all these gig economy things which have emerged since the iPhone came out. That now make these other ways of creating additional income possible.

[00:03:00] Now, I'm not really talking about any of those because to me those are just another job. Those are just another way of, the only thing I'm doing is just trading an asset my time. For somebody else, and there's nothing beyond that for the intention, for the strategy in a way that's really valuable or creating an asset.

Now, it doesn't make those things bad. That is certainly a way that some people have found to get themselves outta debt or to. Give them a little leg up when it was difficult financially. And so I'm not disparaging them at all, but that's not really what we're aiming to create here on this podcast. So we're, we're really avoiding the second job trap.

We're building assets, okay? We're not just taking on additional shifts. Another part-time job. We're making something that's sustainable long term that we're proud of creating. [00:04:00] The downside is, I can't tell you what that is for you. So what I am gonna be serving as today, and honestly in many of these episodes, is I'm just gonna be the guide.

I'm gonna be giving you a map or a framework to figure out what it is you could be doing. Now, you may not get it right the first try. You may try some things and it doesn't work. But you can always come back to this episode and reprocess like, what, what is it I wanna try next? What is the next task? What is the next thing that I'm gonna attempt?

But it ultimately needs to be something you're really excited about it. 'cause that's, that's where this is all headed. And so I want this to be a business you are excited about participating in.

Ikigai Framework Overview
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So first thing today, when defining the what we're gonna talk about, a Japanese concept called Ikigai translates into reason for being.

And I like this framework because it really does start to tie together the [00:05:00] different things that will make a side hustle for you, sustainable and profitable long term. You can think about this as a Venn diagram of four different circles. So if you're sitting down while you're listening to this, if this.

Something you're listening to while you're doing your, you know, business time as you're trying to figure things out. You can take out a piece of paper and draw four circles that all intersect together at one point in the middle. And obviously there's overlap in different ways between the four different circles, but that's gonna be what we're talking about today.

Circle One What You Love
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So first circle, what do you love and why this is important for a side hustle. If you start with this, you're willing to push through challenges. You're willing to grind late at night, and it doesn't feel as much like grinding. I was talking to [00:06:00] another business owner, another entrepreneur, and she's in a completely different industry.

She's in the beauty industry. And certainly she has started this business and it comes with a lot of stress, but because it's something she loves, the stress doesn't feel the same. There's not as much of a burden felt because you go, I believe in this. I love this, and so I'm leaning into it. And so that is a fantastic perspective to take.

So love in a business is something that's going to make stress more tolerable, feel less like of a burden gonna prevent burnout long term. So what I want you to do is in that love circle, is start to write down the things that you love, because this is a thing that we can look at as a lens to start to go well, where?

Where maybe am I gonna aim? Okay, this might be something you, you love the outdoors, you love being outside. This might be [00:07:00] an activity you really enjoy doing. Maybe you like painting or woodworking or just working on your house. Maybe you find mowing the lawn really relaxing. You like working with your hands.

Maybe you like thinking maybe you love really good deep conversations. Think through those things. Where are you filled up? Where do you feel like this is just something I love to do? What are things I love to participate in? Do you love to participate in sports? Do you love to golf? Do you like watching sports?

Right? Do you love to get together with the boys over a drink and just debate sports for an hour? Because it's just a way of getting out of your normal routine and just having some fun. Right? So what are those things you love? It might be something you love doing with your family, something you love doing with your spouse.

It can be any and all of them. There is no category you need to put in here, but what are those things that you love to do? [00:08:00] First circle. Okay.

Circle Two What Youre Good At
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Now second circle. What is it you're good at? This is your skills category. So just because you love to do woodworking doesn't mean necessarily you're skilled at it.

But take a sober look at the skills that you have. What are the things somebody says that is your unfair advantage? Do you have understanding or knowledge in areas which other people just don't? In many cases, this might be skills you attained from your day job, maybe not directly, or maybe it's in part.

You know, maybe there's a part of your work that you do right now that you know is valuable if you're a leader. Let's say you're a manager at a company. Maybe you love developing people's skills, you love sitting down with them, helping them to grow. Maybe You're a manager at a company and one of the skills you've really honed and developed is [00:09:00] delegation and helping other people develop their skills and grows.

It's just a specific thing you've, you've honed. It's an advantage. Think about those items. What are those skills? Musical skills, artistic skills, numbers, skills. It can be broad. It doesn't necessarily have to be super specific. 'cause if there's a, an industry you want to go into, maybe your aptitudes, your spatial reasoning really helps you with something you, you haven't necessarily learned quite yet.

But you definitely can grow rapidly because of your unfair advantage. Okay, so that's second circle your, your skills.

Circles Three and Four Market and Money
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Now let's move to the third circle. What the world needs. What do people express that they need in their lives? What are the problems they're facing? What are their pain [00:10:00] points? And maybe in a different angle, what's their aspirational future?

What do they want? What are their desires? So needs and desires that other people have. What do they have that maybe you can help with?

Okay, what, what does the world need? And then finally, the last circle is, what can you be paid for? What's something somebody is willing to give out money for to solve their problem, to get to what it is they desire, shorter, faster, more efficiently at a higher quality level? What are they willing to spend money on?

And it might even be that some people are willing to spend money on, but maybe not others. And that's okay. That's still something that can be paid for. So a little bit of story time, right? So you're looking at all these items. So what I want to encourage you now is you can [00:11:00] pause this podcast, take two minutes, write down as many things as you can think of for all the different. Circles, right? What are you gonna put in each one? Love skills, needs and desires, and what can be monetized? You're gonna fill up those buckets. Don't necessarily need to look for overlap yet, but just start writing them down, okay?

Find the Overlap Story Example
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Once you've written them all down. Assuming you paused this and now you're starting again. Once you've written those all down, start to look at where overlap could potentially exist, where an opportunity for a business could exist. Now, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Maybe there's other businesses out there that already do this, but now you're just realizing, oh, hey, this would actually be something I could do.

That's an intersection of all four of these items. So for [00:12:00] me, when I got started. On my side hustle journey, one of the early things I did was started doing music production and recording. In middle school, high school, college, I played trombone and college I, you know, high school and college. I learned to play the guitar.

I played in bands. We would go play dive bars and things like that. I loved music. I also had some skill at the music. But I was going to school for engineering. That was something that was a little unique for me in that I had this very technical capability, very technical mind, and so one of the things I loved was when we got to record music.

And so it was just naturally something I wanted to learn about and grow in. And I picked up equipment here and there and just started learning. Well, that's something that's needed by others because not all musicians have this [00:13:00] technical problem solving brain. And so I could offer recording services to those musicians and bands who wanted their music recorded so that they could put it out on Spotify.

So they could make CDs and sell 'em at, at their shows. They needed that and so it was something they were willing to invest in. Now, certainly lots of times they didn't have a lot of money, but it was important enough that if, if they were gonna make money at their shows, like they had to have music. At one point in time, you, you needed a physical cd, and so that was an opportunity for me to say, oh, hey, I'm looking at all these.

And it was not, this was not a, a concept I knew at the time, but in retrospect, I, I can see where all those overlaps exist. And so when I threw that dart at that target, it landed because it fit all four of those things, and it didn't feel like a giant burden to run that business on the side. Because it was something I [00:14:00] enjoyed, something I loved, and that's what I want for you.

Now, you could take somebody like me, you could take those exact same four categories and come up with a completely different business. For example, I could use my technical brain and say, you know what? I'm a guitar player. I've got some skill at this, but I've got a technical mind. I'm gonna design guitar pedals, or some recording equipment, some boutique thing.

That I want to put out there in the world, and that would still be something other people need. 'cause I could offer something based on my perspective and experience and skills that nothing in the market exists for. Makes something unique that other people like and will be willing to pay for because it makes their guitars sound different, sound exciting, something they enjoy when they're performing or recording their music so you can take even the same.

Sets of circles [00:15:00] and come up with multiple business opportunities. So even if you go in and you try something and it doesn't work, don't say, well, there's those things just don't work together. They don't, they don't match. Right. Well, maybe it just needs to be a different business. Maybe for some other reason it needs to look differently.

Maybe what the world is asking for and needs is not the same as what you thought. And so don't feel like you've gotta get it right on the first shot, or that if you don't, then there's just no way for it to work. Okay.

I tried several different businesses over the years, and not all of 'em worked at the same level, but. I can guarantee you there is something out there for you. I do believe that there is a business opportunity for you. So take your time, work through that, and start to be thinking about where's that overlap?

Where's that, where's that overlap? Creating an opportunity.

Service vs Product Businesses
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And as you're thinking about that, there's really two categories of [00:16:00] businesses that you can create. There's the service-based business and a product-based business. And I wanna walk through these really briefly just because I want you to think through which of these makes the most sense for you.

There's benefits and drawbacks to each, honestly. And so that's what I want to talk about now. So let's start with the service based business. These would look thing like, things like I was doing. You know, recording services for bands. It could be home repair, it could be a creative skill like freelance copywriting.

You could be doing coaching, whether it's something like a physical trainer, coaching, athletics, or coaching a business, or coaching somebody's life, right? Life coaching is a thing that didn't exist 20 years ago, and now it's, it's all over the place. Maybe you like landscaping. Those are all examples of service-based business.

The big benefit of a service-based business is you can charge for that right now. If somebody has that need and you have the skill [00:17:00] to meet that need and can convince them, they're gonna pay you for it. That can happen tomorrow. You come up with your offer. You say, this is what I do, this is how I help. I can get you where you want to go faster.

Boom. They will tra do that transaction right away. You can charge for that right now. The other thing is because you're an expert, because you've cultivated this skill, because you have leverage, there's a lot higher margins, right? If there's equipment you had to get, you already likely have it. So there's not a lot of extra stuff to get.

You are the thing. They are hiring. You are in, in essence, with a service-based business, you are the product. So there's a higher margin because it has to be you. So now on the flip side, it's also, the problem is that it has to be you, which means there's a cap on your time, right? We've constrained your business.

We said we're not gonna let it go outside these bounds. We've got boundaries. And so we're not [00:18:00] gonna spend more time than this. And in a service-based business, if you don't work, you're not getting paid. So it can very much start to feel like a job If you're not managing it well, but if you, you create the boundaries.

and You deliver on the results? Yes, absolutely. It can be very lucrative. It can be very beneficial. I mean, that was my business for a long time as a service-based business. And it is, even now, it's a service-based business. Now, there is somewhat of a cap on your time if it's just you, but there's ways to become more efficient.

You get maybe some new equipment that makes you faster, more efficient. Maybe you start to get a little bit of freelance help to speed up certain parts of the business that you don't like. Maybe you get an admin part-time, you know, a fractional person or a, a VA in another part of the country to manage some administrative tasks for you so you don't feel like you have to do that.

There's ways to, to make that work at a little more at scale [00:19:00] over time, but by and large, at some point it's gonna be capped based on your time. Now the benefit, again, very low startup costs, okay? You just need what you need to do that service. Maybe you've got those tools already in many cases because it's something you love and something you have a skill in.

So you likely don't need to go get a bunch more. Maybe you just need a laptop and that's it. Maybe some software subscriptions, but relatively low cost to be able to get started with this, which makes them fantastic for a side hustle business. So that's the service business. Now let's pivot. Let's talk about products.

This could be something physical like an object you make and maybe you design something on a 3D printer and then you sell it or something you prototype and build. I have a friend of mine who did a board game, right? And so he and his friend developed the rules and how it [00:20:00] worked and prototyped it, and then had a bunch of physical copies made that they could sell.

E-commerce. This could be digital products, eBooks, online courses. Software or SaaS could be, and and I mentioned eBooks. It could be a physical book. I mean, if you're an author, I would consider that to be a product because you're doing it one time and are able to sell it over and over and over again.

This is great because it's scalable, right? You can sell a hundred copies of your product while you're sitting at your daughter's soccer game. While you sleep. And that's ultimately what people promise with passive income is like, Hey, you're not doing anything and you're making money. I don't like the term passive income because there was a cost.

So the cost in developing a product is the long runway to get to the point where you're making your first dollar. That's a difficult thing. So you may be taking a lot [00:21:00] of time, like if you're gonna write a book, if you're gonna come up with an online course, make some software, you have to, it may not be a lot of actual money, you have to invest, but there's a lot of time and effort in coming up with that product before you're ever able to actually make money.

And then on the physical product side, you have to prototype it and get those things actually built and made. So there's an investment cost on a physical product as well. You're dealing with cost of goods sold and, and all of those things. So that starts to take away from your margins in, in that regard as well.

So there's a little bit of drawback there. Now, startup costs for a product can really vary. For digital products, it can be low still, right? It's a knowledge product. It's not a lot of cost upfront that you have to invest. However, when you start getting into physical products, books, games, tools that you wanna build and sell to other people, [00:22:00] something you print on a 3D printer and sell on Etsy.

The costs start to go up because of inventory you have to get. Now, there's ways of mitigating that. Kickstarter, for example, is a way to mitigate that. I don't think it necessarily has to be incredibly costly, and we'll talk about strategies around that in future episodes, but it does take a lot of time and effort and sometimes cost to be able to get to the point where you're able to make money.

But. It's out there, and again, it's scalable and passive. So those are the two ways that you can think about it. Do you need, are you willing to just try and get quick money through a service? Say, I offer this, you can pay me tomorrow and I can make this money, but potentially be dealing with a time cap at some point, or.

Do you say, I've, I've got a little time. I wanna invest in something long term that could really scale if [00:23:00] it goes well, but it's gonna be a long time before I know if it's really gonna make money and there's things that we'll talk about, experiments we can run, but look at those two lenses. Think about what it is that you would lean towards service product.

Which one do you want to take on?

Weekly Action Plan and Wrap Up
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So we're gonna recap a little bit. Let's take a step back. The filter, look at the EAI guy circles. Where are you starting to see the overlap? Where are you starting to see the intersection? Are you leaning more towards a service, leaning more towards a product? What does that thing look like?

So what I want you to do this week as you think about your business, try to pick out. What that's gonna be that you're gonna do. What is your business going to accomplish? What is that service going to be that [00:24:00] you offer? What is that product you're going to make that other people are going to purchase?

Try to pick that out and if you've got a business already, go through these lenses, look at your existing business through these lenses and go. Is there somewhere where there's not alignment? Is there somewhere I need to potentially shift that would maybe make my service look a little more like something that would be my Eki guy?

Or is there something where my product would fit there a little better? So start to look through those lenses, start to think through what it might be. Write those down and pick your target. What is it you're gonna aim at first? That's my goal for you this week. I'm excited to see you on another episode real soon.

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