27 Part Journey to Starting a Side Hustle — Day Two
Today’s topic is about learning how money grows on trees. Ever since I was little, I was told that money didn’t grow on trees. This book seems to believe that the opposite is true. I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. The first story shared is about a young girl in San Diego that manages to take her talents and go from earning 8 dollars an hour all the way up to 250 dollars an hour. She shifted her target audience and expanded on her skill set to enable her to charge more for similar services. You want your idea to be feasible, profitable, and persuasive.
In order for an idea to be feasible, you want your idea to start earning you money outside of your day job. If you idea isn’t able to meet that minimum, then the idea isn’t feasible.
For this part, I need to start a project, that earns money, in a short period of time. The project needs to turn into a reality using the skills, time, and resources that I already have today. So, let’s break this down into some of the ideas I currently have. Unfortunately, I have so many ideas that narrowing down to one is hard. At one point over the summer, I wrote all my ideas down on a piece of paper and put them in a hat. I then randomly picked something out.
I believe that regardless of what my idea is, I think they can all generate money one way or another. For now, I’m going to try to narrow my idea down to something in the following categories: Cyber, STEM, and DIY. With Cyber, I have certifications in cyber security that I think I can leverage to sell my services to small businesses that don’t have huge IT budgets. For the STEM, I want to create courses/curriculum that live on a site where educators and students can pay to learn. Think of ABC Mouse, but focused on learning engineering-like topics. I know a lot of places exist for programming, but I want to expand to overall engineering concepts for K-12. Lastly, I love building things. I think I can grow something that allows me to create products that people would want to purchase and I can sell via website, shopify, etsy, amazon.
Whatever the idea, it has to be relevant. I believe that from the list mentioned above, all of them would gain significant traction since they are relevant. Majority of people don’t really carry cash anymore. Businesses need to be able to have a full digital presence and manage a digital portfolio. Most business owners are not tech savy and the thought of IT can scare them. I think I have personable characteristics and technical expertise that would allow me penetrate a small local market. For the STEM idea, parents want the best for their children and educators want to provide the best experience for their students. I’ve studied our education system over the last 4 years and have worked with numerous educators to have figured out what’s missing in today’s schools and how I can deliver something that can fill in the void. Lastly, for the DIY, I believe that people want customized things. They want things that they can’t find anywhere else and that makes them unique. Out of all my ideas, this is my least favorite but as I keep reading, I’ll hold on to it for now. Eventually I’m only going to pick one, but as I’m reading, I wanted to have a selection of 3 and document them so I can bounce the Pros/Cons for each idea. It may be that I end up going with a completely different idea once I’m done reading through this book, but I want to share my thoughts with the community.
The checklist as described at the end of today’s chapter:
- Can you describe how to turn your idea into action in one sentence
- Is there an obvious way to make money with this idea
- Does this idea solve a problem for someone
- Can you figure out how to make this happen quickly
- Is it relative low maintenance
- Can you get paid more than once for this idea
I’m going to review these points throughout the day and really beat up my ideas. I didn’t do any preplanning before writing any of this so what you are getting are my raw, unfiltered thoughts. It’s scary to write this and share since essentially I’m letting you into my thought process and into a very private part of my life, but I figured if I don’t share, I wont start. Once I share with enough people, they’ll help hold me accountable, and hopefully before this year is over I would have finally started taking action to follow my dreams.
Tomorrow, the book will go over how to find ideas that meet the mold described today. My ideas may change, but it’s okay for now. See you all tomorrow!
