Side hustles have become more and more popular over the last few years, and perhaps you have one yourself. They can be a great way to pursue a passion and make some money at the same time, and because you have the safety net of your main career, you can take bigger risks and try new things that you wouldn’t have been able to if this was your sole route to income. Side hustles can also be a great way to try out an idea before you commit to running it full-time; you can see if there is a market for it and whether it is going to make any profit.
If you run a side hustle, you can either keep it small and use it to bring in a little extra cash, or you can grow it into something that becomes your full-time career – you might even employ other people too. If this second idea seems like the right one for you, keep reading, as we have some tips on how you can make this happen.
Write A Business Plan
If you want your business to grow and go from strength to strength, you need to have a business plan. This may not have been necessary for your side hustle (although it’s always a good idea, even if you don’t think it will be needed, as it can save you a lot of time later), but when you turn that side hustle into something bigger, it’s absolutely crucial.
Your business plan is your route to your ultimate goal, whatever that might be. It’s a series of steps that will get you to the end result you are working towards. Having these smaller steps written down means that you’ll always know what to do next, and when it comes to making decisions, you’ll find it much easier because you know where you need to be after that decision is made.
Not only that, but your business plan will also be vital for obtaining funding or finding a partner or investor. When growing your business, it will be a faster process with funding behind you, and when you have a good business plan, getting that funding is easier.
Work With Partners
If you want to grow your business, it can be a time-consuming process to do everything yourself. This is why it can be a good idea to work with various partners to reduce your workload and ensure you can focus on the core of the business itself (whether that’s selling a product or a service). In many cases, this will involve outsourcing, and although this will cost money, the amount of time you can gain back will mean you can focus on advertising and marketing or ensuring that you offer the best customer service. One great example of this is finding consignment stores to help sell your products. Another idea would be to outsource your marketing while you work directly with your customers.
You might also find business partners to work with. Working with complementary businesses can easily expand your market and potentially your product range, and if you choose your partner wisely, you’ll find that you can both benefit. The more partners you work with, the bigger your business can grow with relatively little effort. In order for this to work, you’ll need to have a legal agreement drawn up to ensure that there are no problems, especially if you are working on a profiting sharing model.
Know Who Your Market Is
When you ran your side hustle, you may not have looked too closely at who was buying from you or who was likely to buy from you. It didn’t really matter because it was an additional income stream and not something that would take up too much of your time. If you made a sale, that was great, but if you didn’t, that was fine too.
Now things are different, and if you want to grow your business, you need to know who your target market is. If you don’t know this, you won’t be advertising to the right people, and your marketing budget will be spread too thin. When you know who is most likely to buy from you, you can create a marketing campaign (or outsource the work) that speaks directly to those people. This will galvanise them into action and persuade them to buy from you.
No business can be for everyone, and if that’s how you are currently marketing, then you need to start doing some research because if you try to appeal to everyone at once, you’ll probably appeal to no one at all.
