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5 Ways To Turn Your Side Hustle Into Your Real Hustle

This article is more than 3 years old.

Forty-five percent of Americans have a side-hustle, according to Bankrate.

Most likely, if you are reading this, you or someone you know is in that camp. From simple services to MLMs, the majority of people who have full-time corporate jobs dream of taking their side hustle to the main stage. 

Brooke Taylor, a Holistic Career and Business Coach, helped thousands of small businesses scale digitally while also working full time at Google — so she knows firsthand how to make your side hustle your main gig. Today, Brooke works with female leaders who want to pivot into entrepreneurship and new entrepreneurs who want to scale. 

Brooke gave me her best tips for turning your side hustle into your read hustle. 

1. Take The Hustle Out

Did you know the definition of Hustle is to “push roughly; obtain illicitly?” When serving your customers is not your truest motivation, then you are hustling. And hustling is unsustainable.Before Brooke coaches any early-stage founder, she asks them the question “Why, really, do you want to see this business succeed?” and “Where is your ego in this business?” These two questions are the number one indicator of how this aspiring business owner will sustainably launch their business and how successful the business will be. It’s hard for a lot of entrepreneurs to answer because it requires rigorous honesty.

"I had a client named Jenny who was feeling burnt out and stuck in the early stages of launching her digital marketing business. Despite attending all of the networking events after work and putting in the extra hours on the weekend, her customers were not buying. When I asked Jenny to honestly answer these two questions, she realized that her motivation to build the business was to prove to herself and her friends that she had what it takes to be an entrepreneur. She had a vision of winning Forbes 30 Under 30, getting a huge payday, and having a business card that said ‘CEO." While her business concept was innovative and investors were interested, she lacked the passion for solving the pain point of the customer,” says Taylor. "Serving her customer was not her primary motivation, therefore she was hustling. This is why she was feeling stuck and her customers weren’t buying. The solution was to realign her ambition to start a business with a vision greater than her ego."

2. Align Your Ambition With Service And Passion 

"Motivation ebbs and flows, especially for people building businesses with a 9-5 job. This means that you need to be running on a power that’s greater than will-power and hustle in order to get your business off the ground. Service and passion are the external battery packs that you can plug into after a long day and find the energy to keep building your business,” says Taylor. "When I shared this with Jenny, she could plainly see how she was missing the external energy pack of passion and service, which is why she was feeling burnt out. We reimagined her entire business model around the part of her customer’s problem she had the most passion for, and she immediately saw results.” 

Making sure you’re solving a problem will help fuel your ambition so you still have energy when things get tough. 

3. Treat Your Day Job Like An Accelerator, Not A Venture Fund 

A lot of common advice is to view your day job like the venture fund that’s funding your business. This is the wrong way to look at it. Your day job is so much more than a paycheck and healthcare. "You want to view your day job as an accelerator where you can develop skills, receive mentoring, and a valuable network to make your dream a reality,” advises Taylor. 

Ask yourself “What skills can I develop now that will serve me in my business? “What mentorship can I get in leadership?” "How can I use my current colleagues as a network or to market test my concept?"

This will also provide a necessary mindset shift to viewing your dayjob as an asset, rather than a hindrance. Your dayjob can be the competitive edge you have over venture-backed entrepreneurs because you can be learning more in those 8 hours that you can transfer into the business, rather being told by investors how to run your business.

4. Build Your Own Credibility Now

As an early-stage business owner, people are investing in you, not your business. "Building credibility is a necessary step many side-hustlers miss because they are so focused on executing a business plan,” says Taylor.

 If you’re launching a product-based business, consider why you are the only person who is qualified to bring this idea to life. If you are launching a service based business, you need to be crystal clear on how your expertise will add value to your clients.

5. When You Feel Stuck, Take The Next Right Action

It’s easy for side-hustlers to get bogged down in all the work it takes to launch a successful business while maintaining a full-time job. It’s also easy for entrepreneurs at any stage to feel overwhelmed by the mounting to-do list required to build a business.

"That’s where Turtle Steps come in. This is a concept I learned from esteemed life coach Martha Beck. You don’t need to concern yourself with an enormous goal like growing a large following on social media or getting funding. The tiniest incremental action you can take that feels manageable is the right one,” she says. "So instead of spiraling into a state of overwhelm and panic by everything there is to do, ask yourself, 'What is the tiniest next right action I can take towards this enormous goal?' We run the marathon one step at a time. We build a business one turtle-step at a time."

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