If your side hustle isn't growing, this is what I'd do

Hey zxcv, it’s Mark.

I recently had a subscriber called Nathan reach out to me with a problem I hear all the time.

Here’s what he said…

‘I’ve been grinding on my side hustle for months and it’s going nowhere. Maybe it’s just not meant for me.’

Now, the reason most side hustles don’t grow isn’t because the idea is bad, or because people aren’t working hard enough.

They stall because of a few mistakes I see people make all the time.

So here’s some useful tips to fix each one:

​

1) Not Embracing Your Obstacles

There’s a great quote by Jim Rohn that goes like this: “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

Between you and your dreams are obstacles, and you need to overcome them to make your dreams ‌a reality.

You may already be facing huge obstacles in your side hustle, but you must make it your mission to overcome them in order to achieve your dreams.

If you don’t, then those obstacles become the excuses that block the path to your dreams.

Then you’re just left staring at your biggest excuses, with your dreams out of sight.

The funny thing is, you often find that the people with the biggest obstacles are usually the most successful, as it takes a certain type of person to push through the pain when things get hard.

​

2) Not Offering A Stand-Out Service

You need to be offering a standout service, with an offer that looks something like this…

I help [this type of person] get [this result] by [this method].

To fill this out for yourself, focus on the following things…

1) Niche down

Although your skills only have to be ‘good enough’, your clients should still look to you as an expert in their particular sector.

People are much more likely to pay for someone who has positioned themselves as a specialist within a niche, rather than a jack of all trades.

2) Offer a financial incentive

In order to charge more for your side hustle, you need to make more money for your clients.

I normally say… aim to make them money, save them money and/or save them time. Ultimately they all link back to the client having money money after paying you.

Think about whatever skills you have, or are planning to learn, and how you can use them to make other people wealthier.

It’s so important to sell this financial incentive or outcome, rather than the actual product such as the video, website, copywriting, and so on.

No one really cares about that, they only care about what that product will do for them!

3) Start to skill stack

Only do this once you’ve become pretty good at one high value skill, such as video editing, brand design, copywriting, short form content, deal making, funnel building… the list goes on!

If you can become good at more than one of these things, you start to become very unique, and when there are less people like you… you can charge more. It’s simple supply and demand!

​

3) Their Side Hustle Isn’t Productised

Once you productise your service, you can sell your services to multiple people. This will allow you to make a lot more money without drastically increasing your expenses.

Productised services enable you to expand your side hustle and serve more customers without dedicating an excessive amount of hands-on work to each project.

The model is repeatable and should only require modifications, in other words, you shouldn’t have to make any massive changes when adapting it to different clients or projects.

To make a productised service, you need to outline precisely what your customer will get and at what price.

You’ll now be able to sell this “product” many times. The customer is still receiving a service, but now with the ‘appealing predictability’ of an off-the-shelf product.

​

zxcv, what’s your biggest takeaway from this email? I’d love to know, so hit reply to this email.

All the best,

Mark Tilbury