To say that starting a side hustle changed my life would be an understatement.
Starting a side hustle – Break Your Budget – completely transformed everything about my life, including:
💸 My career path
💸 My financial future
💸 What I value in my life
Break Your Budget has opened my eyes to an entirely new perspective on work and money and how I want to design my life.
It’s been a catalyst for enormous personal growth and I truly would not be who I am today or where I am today if I never started this platform back in 2019.
This summer is the 5 year anniversary of Break Your Budget, and I recently passed my 2 year anniversary of working on BYB full-time.
Starting a side hustle and turning into a full-time business has been an incredible experience, and it’s one that I hope everyone who wants to have this experience gets to achieve.
Today, I am going share a few tips to start and scale a 6-figure side hustle.
This isn’t an EXHAUSTIVE list because let’s be real – we don’t have all day. I recorded an episode of Don’t Depend on Daddy last week that goes really deep on what I am sharing today, so give give that a listen if you’re looking for more!
Now let’s get into it!
STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR SIDE HUSTLE
There are 2 types of side hustles you can choose from:
Skill-Based: A skill based side hustle leverages a specific skill, expertise, or knowledge to generate income. It involves utilizing a skill to create products or services that provide solutions for other people. Break Your Budget is an example of a skill-based side hustle (turned full-time business).
Low/No Skill: This type of side hustle doesn’t require monetizing a specific skill. It is the type of gig that you can get from leveraging a third-party, like an app, dedicate a few hours each day, and earn cash. It doesn’t mean NO skills are required, but you don’t need to have specific expertise to be successful.
Not sure where to start? Ask yourself these 3 questions:
- What is your goal of starting a side hustle?
- How much time can you commit?
- How do you want to design your life?
STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR PROBLEM + OFFER
Every business that exists solves a problem.
Think about your own personal interests, hobbies, and experiences. What problems have you faced in the past? Have you experienced your own transformation? What are you good at?
If you’re stuck, reverse engineer the question. Think about the GOALS other people (or yourself) want to achieve. How can you help someone accomplish them?
Once you’ve identified your problem, you can create your offer which is the solution to the problem.
There are 3 types of offers to create:
👉🏻 1:1 Service: This could be a coaching or consultation call and is a great place to start so you can really understand your ideal client and their problems.
👉🏻 Done-For-You Service: This is a service that you as the business owner performs for your client i.e. does it for them rather than coaching or guiding them along to do it themselves.
👉🏻 Digital Product: This is a product you create (template, ebook, online course) that you can sell over and over.
STEP 3: CREATE A MARKETING PLAN
Your marketing plan is how you bring your offer to life and get it in front of people.
You don’t need to be an influencer to advertise, but you can’t be afraid of being seen. I HIGHLY recommend leveraging social media to market your offer for a few reasons:
- Social media is free and accessible to everyone
- People are ON social media → it’s where your ideal client is spending their free time
- It’s scalable
Here are a few quick tips to put together a content marketing plan:
👉🏻 Determine your content pillars, which are overarching content themes you’ll talk about
👉🏻 Choose your platforms; I recommend choosing 1-2 to start with (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Youtube, etc)
👉🏻 Create your cadence, which is how often you’ll post. Starting a 3x per week and building from there is a sustainable plan of action!
There is A LOT that goes into starting & scaling a side hustle, and I go into more detail inside Own Your Career!
