Struggling to Grow your Business Online?
You are not alone.
I recently had the pleasure of attending a workshop in Brisbane with Chris Guillebeau for the launch of his latest book, “Side Hustle”.
Chris Guillebeau says, “the first step is to not quit your job”.
I reckon this is damn good advice but what about established businesses trying to grow online?
Back to the workshop though because it mirrored real business – about 20% of those attending already had businesses but (like many people I meet through coaching) they had hit a road block along the way.
Here is what happens:
Tremendous Achievement #1
A reasonable percentage of committed people experience success with a few sales or maybe some income thanks to their creativity and tenacity. You rock!
But there is a catch.
Most people have to work through the next achievement.
Tremendous Achievement #2
At the same time, they manage to keep their job, their spouses/partners, kids and friends… maybe even their sanity.
I half joke, because for many entrepreneurs the challenge is that they may find themselves very time poor and feel like they are far from the side hustle incomes they first dreamt of.
If you find yourself at this point what ever you do – DO NOT give up!
Help is at hand – right here on this page.
Tremendous Achievement #3
This is where we break through and turn our side hustles into the income and life we dreamt of in the first place.
What’s the real story?
For most people “overnight success” takes years – but it can take months.
How long it takes is a combination of three factors.
Now in my 17th year of working for myself on multiple side hustles and having helped many others, I have had to work through each factor many times and I always find that when a side hustle is not working it is usually because of one of these three factors not being right.
3 Side Hustle Factors
- You Inc.
- What You Want
- What Others Want
Each factor deserves some explanation, but ultimately when you find the sweet spot some truly amazing things happen because you end up aligned with universe doing profitable stuff that has an inherent positive feedback loop built in.
Let’s take a deep dive into what makes for a really great side hustle.
Factor 1. You Inc.
Have you ever noticed that some people seem completely happy in their work and they are awesome at it?
Does this leave you wondering “what the hell is wrong with me”?
Well it did with me – for years!
I used to call that seemingly successful few “wankers” or if I could not help but really like them “lucky bastards”.
At some point, I must have decided to own the fact that they had something figured out that I didn’t.
Truth is, I think some people are just bloody lucky. But the majority have to figure it out the hard way.
There are two elements to You Inc.
- Your superpowers – this is often the stuff we don’t realize we even possess. But once we do we become unstoppable.
- Who you are – our core values – what makes us sing and what we stand for.
This is where side hustles are amazing. Because like a truth detector if we tap into our superpowers AND who we are – a LOT of good things can happen seemingly miraculously. Call it alignment, call it what you want.
I hope you can see how these two elements combine like adding fuel to raging fire. When you know how to tap into your own unique superpowers AND you apply it in a way that makes your heart sing – holy shit – let’s have some fun.
Factor 2. What You Want
I recently came to a startling revelation.
For the past couple years, I have been grappling with the “living in the moment” movement versus having goals and doing good stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is great to be able to stare at our navels while imagining sparks flying out our arse.
Seriously though, I do believe we can learn a lot from just being in the now and I love it.
But that does not pay school fees!
On the other hand I think goals can be very powerful and enable us to work towards things that give us meaning. However I found that they just weren’t serving me in isolation.
The problem is that goals – SMART Goals (no less) are meant to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
To be effective they have to be SMART.
But they actually miss something really bloody important.
Goals simply don’t and can’t take into consideration the whole picture. They can’t account for us being human beings – not human doings.
Let me quickly explain – we as humans actually perform better and enjoy life more when we are happy and in a joyful (short term happiness) state or working towards something that has meaning (long term happiness).
But what happens when we ‘chase’ goals is that we can end up living in the future, in a state of unease, and at worst perpetual disappointment.
As author Oliver Burkeman points out in “The Antidote“, “The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable and it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative in security, uncertainty, failure or sadness that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain or unhappy.”
I recon answer lies in the wisdom of Buddha.
Buddha says,
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
But being a visual kind of guy I came up with this;
“live in the present moment” and you can have JOY.
“live… earnestly.” and you can live with MEANING.
For example, picking up a little baby can give us joy but raising a child sometimes does not. But raising a child can often give us loads of meaning.
What we really want is both in balance. Too much of one without the other and you find yourself either not actually doing anything (just experiencing joy) or working too hard (just work towards the things that give us meaning) and we run the risk of burn out.
Through the “Happiness Balance” I find I can live both with ample daily joy as well as with meaning and chosing the struggles you want.
But the beautiful thing about a balance is that they can grow together!
The more daily joy you have the more you are likely to achieve bigger goals that have meaning. You are not forcing anything when you in a state of joy.
The secret is to have not to continuously work on your goals or try and achieve daily joy continuously – the secret is a balance.
We allow struggle – because it is the right struggle.
People are attracted to us because we are brave.
We fail. We cry. We love. And yep – we die. But maybe more people turn up to our funeral.
Good shit happens because we allow it – we ARE it.
Factor 3. What Others Want
To have a good business we need to do something that people want to pay for.
We also need to be in a market that is big enough.
The big challenge here is that our dreams combine with many old beliefs, add in slick marketers and everything gets tangled together into business ideas that bare no resemblance to what will work for us.
Chris recommends flexing our idea muscles. So does James.
We need to come up with our own ideas, we need to learn from our efforts and ultimately we need to meet the needs of all three factors.
- You Inc.
- What You Want
- What Other Want
Apart from having the potential to become much more than a side hustle, working with these three factors can be just a really kick arse way to live. But I believe that if done the right way, they have the potential not to just make great money but to live with connection, meaning and passion too.
After all isn’t that what we really all seek?