27 Part Journey to Starting aSide Hustle — Day Four
How to identify obstacles and opportunities
With every great idea, there are challenges that may arise. For today, the author asks to think about your ideas and try to realize what challenges may come up as you try to get your idea off the ground. Let’s review my three ideas and try to throw some wrenches at them.
My Cyber Consulting idea has some fundamental challenges that I think I’ve already overcome. . . . well mostly. Here are the challenges that I see with this idea and how I plan to overcome these challenges. First, you need to be trained and skilled in order to have some credibility. I have two cyber security certifications so this shouldn’t be a problem for me. Also, I’ve spent the last four years working in this space so I have solid real world experience and understandings of what businesses need with respect to their cyber needs. Next challenge, and quite frankly the challenge I’m most afraid of, is that you are ultimately responsible for the data of the business while performing the “cyber” transaction. What this means is, if I an accident happens while I’m hardening a system, then I’m liable for their loss of data. I think this can be covered in two ways. Once, I make sure I always have a backup of their data. Two, I take out an insurance policy to make sure I’m covered in the unlikely event that things go south. Additionally, I can work my way up to more riskier cyber tasks. I don’t have to come in on day one and try to revolutionize their business. I can start by fixing easy stuff such as stronger passwords.
The STEM idea has some challenges, but I also think that by going through my current method, I help solve some of the challenges I’ve already encountered over the last few years that I’ve been trying to do this. By being online, I take out the middle man which is the school itself. I’ve tried to present my services to various schools over the last few years and administrations have made it a difficult barrier to entry. By standing up my own University if you will, students would have the ability to extend their knowledge at their leisure. This presents an additional layer of complexity because well people can be inherently lazy and people would have to have the motivation to join my service. I’m going to brainstorm some ideas here and do some research, but I think I can overcome this challenge by offering a STRONG value over anything else.
Lastly, my barely holding on to life DIY idea would have to be projects that people want to own. I can’t randomly create hideous non functional things. There would have to be some sort of trending need for whatever I create. Distribution and other logistics shouldn’t be too bad considering the abundant resources available today.
Overall, I don’t think any of my ideas present serious obstacles to get started. I don’t need to go learn anything new because I already have the skill set for every idea. Since I’ve been sitting on these ideas for many years now, I’ve incrementally have obtained skills, resources, and roadmaps to each one. I do not need large capital to get started with any of them. I think, that regardless which idea I go with, my general obstacle I’m going to encounter will be reach. I will need to sell and advertise my services. That to me is that scariest part because I was never taught to sell. I was never taught to make myself vulnerable and put myself out there. I think this fear can be overcome, especially as I start to gain traction but I guess the fear of rejection is really what has kept me from starting all of these years. However, with that said, I see the amazing people that are reading my stories every day, I get more encouragement to proceed.
Thank you all for reading today, I’ll keep pressing and see you all with tomorrow’s topic. At this point, I’m not really taking any additional actions outside of putting my thoughts into this blog post. But rest assured that I will be sharing any progress via social media in the form of articles, pictures, and videos as I start to gain more traction. Thank you all for your support!
