How To Turn Your Side Hustle Into Your Full-Time Gig
Last week, I talked about some considerations you need to make if you are looking to start a side hustle. You can learn more about those considerations here.
Now that you’ve had a chance to test different ideas and landed on one that you want to take on full time, its time to formally establish your business. By taking the steps to formally establish your business you can begin to scale and turn your idea into your next empire. Here are some tips to get you started.
The Foundation
The first step to formalizing your business is to create some structure around it. This means selecting and forming a business entity, obtaining your Federal Employment Identification Number (FEIN), opening a business bank account, getting the necessary insurances and licenses, and doing some simple business planning.
There is a lot of information to research when making these foundational decisions that can lead you down a rabbit hole of unproductivity and indecision. To avoid this, set deadlines and keep it simple. You can obtain your FEIN for free here, and most state websites have small business sections with entity selection information. Once you have done that, use these resources from the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur to develop your company’s overall prosperity plan and define your goals quarter by quarter.
Services
There used to be taxis, and now there is Uber. There used to be talk radio, and now there are podcasts. Bank loans used to be the only solution, and now there is crowdfunding and microloans. Although there isn’t anything new under the sun, there are new ways to deliver and package your services that make them more appealing to the market. So now that you’ve decided what you are selling, you need to decide who you will sell to and how you will make the sale. This means choosing your niche and delivery systems.
A niche is your target audience. It is a small and specific segment of the population with particular desires and preferences that a business owner can speak to with their branding and marketing efforts. A delivery system is just that – a system for how your products or services will show up in the marketplace. Will you package your services into offers with specific deliverables? For physical products, what containers will you use to hold your goods? Now is the time to make those decisions.
Systems
One of the main problems that most business owners face is the fact that there is too much to do with too little time. It can feel like you are running on a hamster wheel, and its hard to grow your business if you are caught up working on the minutiae of the everyday business cycle. Enter systems. A system is an automated process or routine that addresses a specific problem in your business. Once you set up a system, it requires very little maintenance to keep the process going, and these systems can be repeated over and over again to get routine things done. Systems can be used for client on-boarding, lead generation, and product or service delivery.
Marketing
Now that you know your niche (who you will sell to) and how you will sell (through your packaged offers), the next step is to tell your market that you are open for business. This means creating a website advertising your services. You’ll also want to create a blog where you regularly provide free information to your target audience about topics related to their needs.
Some other aspects of your marketing plan to consider are social media accounts, facebook groups, and other online communities that your clients frequent. It’s also important to seek out opportunities to create partnerships with other entrepreneurs so that you can expand your reach into other audiences.
Ready to turn your side hustle into your full-time gig, Legally Bold can help with that. It’s kinda what we do here. Contact us to schedule a discovery call to get more strategic about your next moves.