How to start your own business or set up your side hustle for success. Let’s talk about making your business, your hustle, your income stream successful today. Who am I? I am Greg, I am with Stop The Grind.
I’m here to help you stop grinding at meaningless things and start your life. Start doing what matters to you, start doing what you enjoy, and stop that meaningless grind. All right, let’s jump into this.
Entrepreneurs are what you are. Entrepreneurs can be anyone, from someone with a side gig to someone jumping into the deep end with a business acquisition. Now, I don’t typically recommend that you just jump right into the deep end with a business acquisition, because there can be so much to learn about running a business well, and it may seem wise at first to just buy an existing business and then you can run it and keep it going, but there are so many moving parts to a business that’s usually not the way to go.
Most people start out with what would be a side hustle or a small business, and I highly recommend that for most people. All right, so something to think about when you start your business is, that passion alone does not equal dollars in the bank. Now, it’s important to be passionate about what you do, however.
I have started multiple businesses that I wasn’t exactly passionate about. I did it because I could run them and I could make money with them, but they became a grind, which I ended up stopping, either by selling the businesses or just closing the ones that I didn’t want anymore, because, well, they were just a grind and I didn’t want to do them. So, especially when you’re starting out and money’s not as lucrative as it can be, it’s important to make sure you’re doing something you enjoy doing, but also if you’re going to do it for the long haul, you want to enjoy it, you want to have a passion for it.
But now, that passion doesn’t just convert to dollars. Just because you’re passionate doesn’t mean you make money, but being passionate will help you make money because you’re going to be excited about your business. All right, so first you want to make sure there is demand for what you have.
Now, let’s talk about that for a minute, because I would say, almost anything you can think of, there’s demand for it. The key is finding out where that demand is or where to sell that demand. You’ve heard me talk many times about different places you could go to sell your services or whatever it is you’re trying to do.
Sometimes it’s door knocking, sometimes it’s on social media, sometimes it’s using a service like Fiverr. Whatever that case may be, you need to be able to find your customer. So, what you’re offering, I’m pretty sure has demand, but if you don’t find the customer, you’ll see no demand even though it’s there.
So, first off, make sure you know where to go to find that customer. And I would come up with multiple avenues on how to get there, how to find customers in multiple ways. Just building a website isn’t going to work.
Just running ads alone, for most businesses, isn’t the only thing that you need to do to make it work. So, figure out where your customers is and how you are going to reach them with your sellable item, with your sellable service, with whatever it is you are doing. The other thing to think about is, not everyone wants to be a business owner, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
So, if you don’t want to be a business owner, there’s a couple things to think about. One, do you just really want to work for someone else? Well, then make sure you find a job you love. Two, maybe you just want to side hustle because you don’t want all the risk of owning a business.
That’s fine, a side hustle’s fine. Maybe you want to be more than a side hustle, like a full-time thing, but not take on employees. Employees add a whole new level of complexity to the puzzle and can add a lot of stress.
I’ve had many employees, and the stress levels are completely different when you have employees because now you’re also caring for them, and they also bring their own drama and baggage, as well as skills and usefulness. So, think about the size you want to be and start planning in that direction. This may change over time, but at least have a direction you’re headed.
All right, the next thing is, there is so much support out there, don’t do the business thing alone. Seek out other business owners, colleagues, people who have done this before, and make sure to hang out with them in some form or fashion. There’s business groups, there’s affiliate groups, there’s chamber of commerce groups, there’s networking groups, there’s different ways to hang out with people.
But being a business owner can be very isolating, even when you have employees, because employees don’t treat you like one of them because you are the boss. So, make sure you’re finding ways to connect with others, but also make sure you’re connecting with other similar-minded people so that you can find the resources you need. How do you find your accountant? How do you do this? How do you do that? Hey, I just got this letter from the IRS, what do I do now? Hey, I’m trying to do something with my business, have you done this before? And these are great friends or people that you can bounce ideas around with, you don’t have to figure it all out on your own, you need to have a core group of people who understand what you’re going through and can help you along the way.
Okay, all right, next up. Yeah, know why you are starting your business in the first place, your business, your side hustle, whatever you’re calling it, know why you are starting it. And always keep this at the front of your mind, here’s why.
Are you starting it for more money? Well, then you need to make sure that you’re making that kind of money that you’re trying to get. Are you starting it for more freedom and flexibility? Oh, wow, a small business can be all-consuming and you won’t have more freedom and flexibility, you’ll find yourself grinding away 24 hours a day, seven days a week if you let the business do that to you. Maybe you’re doing it for more family time, same problem here, the business can be all-consuming.
So always keep the reason in mind on why you started this business and force the business to fit that need. If you are looking for more freedom, make sure you get more freedom and the business doesn’t control your life. I’d say do that anyway.
If you’re looking for more family time, make sure the business doesn’t encroach on time that you spend with your family. This can be hard and you’re going to need to set very clear, tight boundaries with yourself on how to separate yourself from business and give your family the you that they deserve when you are with them. If you want more money, you need to make sure that you’re charging appropriately, that you’re making that kind of money and not saying tomorrow will be a better day.
One of the biggest mistakes everybody makes is they always assume tomorrow they’ll make more money than they made today. Don’t fall for it. Yes, that’s the plan, that’s the goal, but you have to assume the money you’re making today is going to be similar to the money you’re making tomorrow.
So if things aren’t going the way you want them to, money-wise, you either have to figure it out or figure out how you’re going to handle this situation. All right, along with the money thing is know your value, know what you’re worth. One of the biggest mistakes every, every, every business makes is they chase every single dollar.
Not every dollar is a good dollar. Let me re-say that because you need to hear this. Not every dollar is a good dollar.
Just because you can make a few bucks from a quick job or something doesn’t make it a worthwhile dollar. Maybe it’s the wrong kind of job and it ends up costing you in the long run. Maybe it creates a bad customer or a bad review.
You could have spent your time chasing the better dollars while you were chasing that simple, quick dollar. Don’t chase every dollar, but at the same time, know your value, know your worth. When you know your value and you know your worth, you price yourself appropriately.
People are going to ask for a better deal. They just do. That’s just the way it is.
That’s okay, they can ask for a better deal, but when you know you’re worth what you’re asking for, you can clearly say, no, I offered you a very fair price. And you know what? Most people are going to respect you for that and actually pay you that price because they respect you. When you’re wishy-washy on your price, they know they can push you around and they never truly actually feel like they got the bargain that they were hunting for anyway.
So know your value, know your worth. On the flip side of that too, just be careful that you don’t overprice yourself. You may not be worth the $20 million that you think you’re worth, so don’t price yourself as if you are worth $20 million if realistically you’re not worth that.
So most of the time, most of the time, you are worth more than you’re pricing yourself for, so price yourself according to what you’re worth, but also make sure that you’re not overpricing what you’re really worth. Big, big thing to think about here too is how can your business make a profit and how soon will it break even? We have this pie-in-the-sky thing of, hey, I only make so much money per day now, so if I charge that to my customers, hey, I’m way ahead of the game. There are other costs involved here.
You’ve got to pay your taxes, you’ve got to pay your insurances, you’ve got to pay your supplies, you’ve got to pay for all of your equipment. There’s so many more costs that you need to know what it really costs to do what you’re doing in order to make a profit, and then how much of that you have to do to make a profit. There’s multiple ways to figure these numbers out, but it’s important that you figure these numbers out.
How much do you have to work, at what kind of rate is it that you need to work in order to make the money that you need to make? And not just gross money, because sometimes we look at the million dollars and we say, ooh, we made a million dollars. Well, you didn’t make a million dollars, that was gross revenue. What did you actually keep out of that million at the end of the day? That is what you truly made.
So you need to know how you get there to what you actually get to keep, what you actually get to put in your personal bank account and use for your own personal bills, spending, and whatever it may be. So always know your numbers, know what you need to make to get there, and don’t undervalue yourself. All right, the most common reasons businesses fail are due to lack of cash.
Cash is a business killer. Every business needs cash to survive. They’re very cash hungry, whether it’s paying bills, paying suppliers, paying employees, paying whatever, it takes a lot of cash.
And sometimes to do a job, you have to lay out a lot of cash on the front end and make it back on the back end. Well, if you can’t lay out all that cash and then wait for the cash to come in, you’re going to have a problem. And then with that comes growth.
If you’re growing, it’s requiring more cash going out to sustain that growth, but you’re waiting for the cash to come back and it becomes this vicious hamster wheel of running and running and running, trying to always catch up with so much money out that hasn’t come back to be profit yet. So cash is a business killer. Always make sure you have cash cushioning in the bank because it’s always going to take more cash than you realize.
Now, that next point then would be growth. How do you maintain growth? Carefully. Growing is great, but if you grow too fast, you will actually kill your business for multiple reasons.
One, you won’t have the cash to support it. Two, you’re going to be running so hard, so fast at all this growth that you’re going to start to trip and drop pieces along the way, which will create a bad end product and customers will walk away and you’re going to lose a lot of reputation and you’re going to lose a lot of customers. So be very careful and very strategic about growth.
It’s okay to have back orders or a waiting list to get to your services so that you can continue to provide excellent services and maintain cashflow. So always, always, always have backup cash and be careful when growing. Growing too fast is deadly to a business.
All right, and finally here, the best way to prepare for future growth is to plan for it now. Always be planning for what your growth strategy looks like. If you’re planning to grow, know what that looks like, know what it’s going to cost, know what you need to do to get there so you can continue to work the pieces along the way.
That’s so important to know what you’re planning to do here. All right, guys, like I said earlier, if you want a cool shirt like mine, I will leave a link in the description. If you need help with any of this, anything at all, there’s also a link down below where you can schedule time with me.
I will gladly help you with any of this, anytime. That’s what I’m here for. I am here for you.
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Hey there,
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Gregg
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