Vetting my Side Hustle Ideas
I recently read a book called “Side hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 days”.The book was about how to turn your side hustle into a legit business, with the idea that you work a full time job and don’t have time to run a corporation. From my notes I took on the book, I generated a template to vet my future ideas. Like most people, I tell myself “Hey I’m the idea man!”, aren’t we all? I have plenty ideas, but hopefully now I can vet some of those ideas and figure out which ones are feasible for a side hustle and which ones are just pipe dreams. Here is a sample of my template, maybe I can make another post on actually using it later.
Ideas must be feasible, profitable and persuasive.
Bad Ideas:
- Grand vision, hard to simplify or translate into action.
- Something you have no idea how to make, or requires skills you do not have.
- Vague, nonspecific idea of the kind of people who will pay for it.
- Something that is high maintenance or requires a lot of lead time.
Good ideas:
- Simple
- Know how to do already or can figure it out
- Solves a problem
- Low Maintenance and easy to deliver
- Recurring income
Three types of businesses:
- Sell a product
- Sell a service
- Middle Man
Answer These Questions:
- What is uniquely good and what is uniquely challenging about this idea?
- What will you need to get started, how much will it cost?
- What potential obstacles stand in the way of launching your idea?
- How hard will it be for you to get your first sale?
- Has anyone ever done something like this before?
- If everything goes right, whats the best case scenario?
- If everything goes wrong, what is the worst case scenario?
Rank your list of ideas from high, medium to low on these meters:
- Feasibility
- Persuasion
- Profit Potential
- Efficiency
- Motivation
Always Remember:
- In order to make money, you must provide value. Value always comes first. Question: How can I provide value to others?
- Expected Income
- Expected Expenses = Projected profit
- If you’re sitting around waiting for a payday that is clearly never going to arrive, get yourself unstuck and move on.
- If you don’t have a way to get paid, you don’t have a hustle.