How I’d Start a Side Hustle or Business to Make Lots of Money

How I Would Start a Side Hustle or Business to Make Lots of Money

Would you believe me if I told you that rejection is a good thing for you?

In fact, the more you get rejected, the closer you come to making a lot of money with a side hustle or a business.

One disappointing thing I see is so many people sitting on potential but never realising it.

They never do because of two main fears:

• The fear of failure.
• The fear of rejection.

Beyond these two fears is everything you want when it comes to success in your business or a side hustle.

Today, I want to show you how to get beyond these fears and take the 5 steps you need to start a side hustle or business to make lots of money.

You can also apply these tips to other aspects of your life such as your career.

This topic is super important because many people don’t have a side hustle or business and they’re interested in starting one:

How I Would Start a Side Hustle or Business to Make Lots of Money

If you take action and follow these steps, you’ll never live with the agony of zero success. 

These 5 steps will be based on the P.O.S.T Framework in our book, Financial Joy.

P.O.S.T stands for Purpose, Objectives, Strategy and Tactics.

Let’s start with the Purpose element first.

Step 1: Decide Why You Want Success With a Side Hustle or Business 📝

You need to be crystal clear on what success in this area will bring to your life.

Does it mean the end of a dead-end job that you hate? 

Will it mean more money to invest in your Stocks and Shares ISA or Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP)?

Does it mean that you have more money to live the lifestyle you want?

Perhaps it might even mean you finally have some money left to invest for your children.

Finally, will it speed up your journey to financial freedom?

Action: Pause for a moment right now and write down what your why is. Don’t continue reading until you’re clear on exactly why this matters to you. Write it down 📝

Now let’s move on to the Objectives in the P.O.S.T framework.

Step 2: Set Your Freedom Goal as a Monthly Amount 💷

Isn’t it interesting that when you have a deadline at work, you do everything possible to achieve it?

You do that because you fear that you might let your boss or your team or yourself down.

Psychologically, you took action because there was something clear to aim for.

I want you to use the same idea but this time, set a deadline for yourself and for your benefit.

Pick a number that would be game changing for you monthly but with a purpose attached.

E.g. it could be £3,000 or $3,000 a month because it would cover your monthly essential expenses.

The key thing is to make sure that it is a per month number not per quarter or per year. This way, the deadline feels more real and there is some urgency to achieve it.

Now let’s move on to the Strategy in the P.O.S.T framework.

Step 3: Start With Small Experiments 🔍

The fear of failure stops most people from starting a side hustle or business even when they already have the skills to succeed. 

To help you beat that fear of failure, I’ll recommend doing what I did to start The Humble Penny.

I turned the whole thing into a fun experiment with 1 – 2 hours a day. 

Do you remember doing experiments at school?

My Chemistry class during my A-Levels was one of my most fun classes. Here is a little reminder of how experiments work:

Experiment Step 1: Identify a Side Hustle or Business Idea

Think of a problem you want to solve or something you’re passionate about.

An easy way of finding business ideas is to ask people who know you well. Send them a text now saying:

“Hey, you know me well. What top 3 business ideas do you think are best suited to my skills and interests?”

Another way is to consider what you currently find frustrating in your life day after day, and chances are, others are also finding it frustrating. 

Finally, you could pick a popular idea that you know people are making money from, e.g. Starting a dropshipping business.

I’ll stick with this example because our 11-year old son is currently learning how to do dropshipping.

Experiment Step 2: Ask a Question

Start with something you want to find out.

E.g. Will people buy the products I plan to sell through dropshipping?

Experiment Step 3: Do Background Research

Gather information about your question. 

• Trends: What are some of the most popular niches?
• Products: What is popular or in-demand in your chosen niche?
• Competitors: What are others doing? What products? What pricing? Read their reviews.
• Customers: Are there potential customers? Without potential customers and a big enough market size, there is no business.

You can do this using online tools like Google Trends, Facebook Ads Library, and surveys within your network. 

Experiment Step 4: Form a Hypothesis

Make an educated guess. 

For example:

“People will buy my dropshipping products if I offer trendy, high-quality items at competitive prices with reliable shipping.”

Experiment Step 5: Pre-sell Your Products

The goal of pre-selling (or pre-ordering) is to keep costs to a minimum and see if people will pay you for your idea.

If you can make your first £1 or $1 from pre-selling, then you’ve truly validated your idea.

Pre-selling also helps you to tackle the second fear that we touched on earlier, i.e. the fear of rejection, because you’ll be asking people for money.

Remember, getting a NO is NOrmal!

You’ll get many of these but you’ll also get a YES and make lots of money if your persist.

Here is how you’d pre-sell your products:

• Create an offer: Something clear and attractive that outlines what customers will get, when they’ll get it and include certain promotional discounts for early birds.
• Promote the offer: Start with friends and family. Then, go to where your ideal customers hang out e.g. existing marketplaces. Plus social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok) and promote your pre-sale offer.
• Collect commitments: Have a payment system ready e.g. PayPal or Stripe. Receiving money from someone is the ultimate commitment. 

Experiment Step 6: Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

Create a small, controlled test to see if your hypothesis is correct. 

Now you’re really getting to work. Will the initial hypothesis that you set be true?

• Product offering: Start offering the product through your dropshipping store.
• Initial Customers: Fulfil initial orders to those who you pre-sold to and ensure it is high quality and done in a timely manner.
• Promotion: Continue to promote your product beyond the pre-sale phase.

Experiment Step 7: Analyse Your Data

Look at the results of your test.

• Customer feedback: collect feedback from your initial customers about pricing, quality and overall satisfaction.
• Sales Numbers: Track and review the number of inquiries, orders and pre-sell conversions.
• Shipping and Delivery: Evaluate how this process went based on feedback and delivery times.

Experiment Step 8: Draw a Conclusion and Refine

Decide if your hypothesis was correct or not. 

Was your product in demand? Which of your products were most popular? Is your pricing competitive and attractive enough?

Based on the validated data above, you now need to consider refining your product offering or pricing strategy.

You should also focus on what product(s) sold the most and back them, letting go of what didn’t work.

Remember, this is the beauty of experiments. You can do many of them (even weekly), thereby testing many ideas (up to 52 a year) to see what will make money. 

Once you find a product or idea that works and makes money, you can then worry about scaling later on. One step at a time though.

Experiment Step 9: Communicate Your Results

Share what you learned. 

This could be with a mentor, in a business plan, or simply for your records to decide on your next steps such as expanding your offering.

Recommended: If you struggle with starting a profitable Side Hustle or Business and you want to achieve it in 24 hours or less, you should join us in-person at our VIP Day. Our next one is on 29th June.

Alternatively, if you want a lower-cost DIY solution, join Financial Joy Academy. 

Here you’ll get group coaching from us, practical courses and masterclasses with action plans to help you build your business, a supportive community of others of a similar mindset, the 5 am Club, get an accountability partner, join in-person meetups 3 times a year and much more.

Step 4: The Connection Effect 🫶🏽

You’ll have heard the saying that the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your relationships.

As someone who started out with a corporate career over 14 years and then taking the leap to run my own business fully, I didn’t fully appreciate the connection effect until I had to find create opportunities from scratch.

People buy from people and the energy with which you put things things into the world is the energy with which you’ll receive.

On your journey of trying to start a profitable side hustle or business, remember that you’re dealing with human beings.

See every interaction as an opportunity to build a meaningful relationship with a human-first approach.

This will open many doors for you and will not only help you to operate with purpose, but it will also help you to generate profits as people will always buy from people who care about them and solve their problems.

Step 5: Be Kept Accountable ⭐️

Every single week, to have the level of success you desire without BS’ing yourself weekly, you need to be held accountable by someone.

I speak from experience because I’ve told myself I’d aim to achieve various things in the past but haven’t simply because I had no one to report to.

An effective way of being held accountable is to follow the review/preview approach.

First, identify someone who you respect who is also on a similar journey to you and has a similar mindset.

Ask them to be your accountability partner.

Next, every Saturday or Sunday, speak or message each other your review/preview.

I.e. review of the last 7 days and a preview of what you want to achieve over the next 7 days.

Then repeat this process every week.

Conclusion

Starting a side hustle or business to make lots of money over time (starting first with £1 or $1) is possible.

It starts with an experimental approach that makes all of this fun and gives you the best chance of overcoming the two great fears of failure and rejection.

Will it be easy? No.

But, it will be fun and extremely rewarding as you take steps to acquire new skills, do experiments and gradually build your own table.

Here are those 5 steps summarised:

Purpose → Objective → Experiment → Connect → Accountability 

This can further be summarised into a 3-step journey: Start → Ask → Repeat 

I wish you all the success on your side hustle or business journey.

Every possibility is yours with this experimental mindset. You can do it! 😀

What to read next on how to start a money-making side hustle or business:

What to watch next on how to start a money-making side hustle or business:

Do you like the experimental approach to starting a side hustle or business to make money? Comment below with your thoughts or questions 🙂