Side hustles
How to avoid the 5 big mental blocks
And 2 bonus mental blocks
Side income streams have become a must for survival and for greater authority building.
If you are holding down a day job, great, don’t quit it yet.
If you don’t like your job and want to create an additional source of income, create it on the side. Retain your hated job.
You could have your own reasons to create side hustles but why haven’t you started yet?
We all go through major mental block or “enemies within” before we take that decision.
1. What will people think of me
These are the same people who will disappear when you lose your job or have a crisis in hand.
They haven’t planned out anything for you.
They don’t know your dreams, your challenges or the pit you are currently in.
What they think about you and your side hustle is their problem. You carry on..
Stop thinking about other people’s thoughts. Period.
2. What if I fail
Yes, you must fail and you will fail.
If you want to learn great lessons, learn from your own failures.
If you want to learn good lessons, learn from others’ failures.
Lot of people don’t factor out the possibility of failing during the planning and strategy phases hence they are either shocked or disheartened when failure meets them.
Failure is success in disguise, it makes you better everyday.
Plan to fail.
3. What if I don’t find clients
When you know your solution works and will drive results, find the first 5 customers who will test out your hypothesis.
When I say 5 customers, I didn’t mean paying customers. They could be free customers, friends and family members.
Guinea pigs basically.
Share the success story within you network; rinse and repeat.
These first 5 people will give you invaluable feedback on the good, bad and the ugly of your offer.
I loved this piece of advice from Shaunta Grimes
4. I don’t have time
We never have time for anything. Do we?
- We make time for what is important to us. We make time for things which have the highest order of priority.
- If you are stuck in a job and hate it to the core, you got to make time to start building a side hustle.
- If you are out of college and staring at a bleak future, you need to make time
- If you are talented and sitting at home, you need to make time to bring out the passion and share it with others.
- If you are in debt and a single salary isn’t cutting it out, you need to make time to increase your revenue sources.
It’s not time that we don’t have- we don’t have the urgency, priority and creativity to make use of whatever we have.
5. I don't have money
A side income source doesn’t need huge money like from VCs or angel investors.
Do you have $30 to buy hosting and get a 4 page website up?
That’s all you need to tell that you have a side business going on.
You probably have a laptop and some wi-fi or cellular data going.
If you are doing really bad, have you tried Ruzielle Ganuelas suggestion of eating this?
By the way you can make great landing pages at Mailchimp if building a website is holding you up. Your URL could be a little ugly though.
If you think you need a blog, website, writers and all the mumbo jumbo you don’t actually — you need to open up.
All great businesses have started with little or no money.
Don’t let money hold you back but make a promise to put in the money you receive from your first 5 clients back into your business so that it grows faster.
6. I have seen others fail
You have witnessed some great things and watching others fall is one of them.
Unless you are a sadistic person, you should go and either help that person get up or learn why he failed.
People have penned their failures like Sahil Lavingia who has laid down an illuminated path for others to follow.
When others fail, they are calibrating their own journey.
Who knows they might just pick up from where they left and hit on success.
Failing is inevitable like darkness after day.
It’s up to you to make a choice, do you want to switch on the light or stay in the dark.
7. Self Doubt
Oh! The biggest mental block.
It is so big that I see people writing about this point alone.
Self doubt has its roots in our past failures, our opinion about ourselves and what people perceive us to be.
You need to replace your self doubt with something else like Elle Kaplan
But, Aytekin Tank thinks self doubt will propel us to success.
The question is more “can i do it” than “should I do it” or “would I do it”
The world has always criticized, critiqued, shamed and pulverized you so why do you want to do that to yourself.
Outsource all the find-my-negatives to the world and you stay calm inside.
You are your friend, no matter what.
In closing,
The real enemy is within.
Where do we find success — its outside
Where do we find love and respect — its outside
Where do we find money — its outside
All the bad things seem to be inside of us holding us back.
My unorthodox blogs are at hustlinguniversity and karmaworks
