12 Mar Stop Making Excuses and Start Your Side Hustle
Excuses are keeping you from financial freedom!
Procrastination is a sneaky enemy: it resides in your thoughts, feeding you false information to stop you from taking action. In the meantime, time passes and you’re not getting closer to your dreams. You’re left wondering what your potential may be, frustrated and stuck.
Nowhere is procrastination more present than when it comes to launching a side business, here’s why.
If you have decided to start a side hustle, you likely have consumed a lot of information, listened to a lot of podcasts, and read a lot of articles about how to start your company.
You know a lot about it, you just aren’t taking action yet. Self-sabotage keeps reminding you why you’re not good enough.
When it comes to business, procrastination can manifest in many ways. That’s why I want to share with you the top 10 excuses that I hear most often from what I call “side hustlers in waiting”.
Here we go:
1. "I have a full time job"
If you have a job, I have good news for you. A steady paycheck, while you’re figuring out your side hustle plan, is a great advantage over people starting a side hustle without a job. They need to get money in as soon as possible, just to survive.
You have the luxury of being able to take your time, think strategically, and hold space for what will give you big results in the medium and long term, instead of sacrificing for any immediate, but small results.
2. ‘I Need More Information’
Let me guess: if you’re reading this article, you’ve read many other ones on business. I bet you’ve consumed a lot of information.
Here’s the challenge. When you keep looking for more books, more podcasts, more articles, you absorb so much conflicting information, and you just keep reading instead of taking action and STARTING.
You will learn much more when you start doing. Once you’ve started you will learn what you really NEED to know, not what you THINK you need to know! You don’t need more knowledge — you need more action in order to turn that information into transformation.
3. ‘Side Hustle vs MLM’
Multi-level Marketing, or MLM, as it’s more commonly known, is a polarizing topic. Proponents preach about its power to transform your lifestyle for the better. Opponents tell cautionary tales of misleading claims, social pressure, and loss of money.
The biggest difference between an MLM and a side hustle is that a side hustle is YOUR business, but an MLM is THEIR business. Your side hustle is your business that you nurture and grow as you see fit, and all of the profits from your side hustle are YOURS to keep!
4. ‘It Costs too much’
Starting a business online doesn’t require a lot of money nowadays, there are thousands of side hustles you can start for under $100. List your product or service online, get the first sale and you can then reinvest some of the money into growth.
There are so many tools out there that makes taking action so much easier, especially online. You don’t need a big budget to launch a side hustle.
5. ‘Fear of Failure’
What makes fear so paralyzing is that it’s abstract and undefined. You don’t know how to tackle it. What does failure even mean?
In the beginning, you have very little to lose but a lot to learn — especially if you’re working on a side gig. You will pair all this theory with experience and might even discover that you’re not interested in having a business at all.
Reframe failure and get past this belief. Understand that it’s part of the process and really there’s no such thing as permanent failure. Learn, adjust, and go at it again.
6. ‘Fear of Change’
Although most of us realize that change is the only constant in our lives, we can still struggle to cope with change in our life. We fear change because we can’t anticipate an outcome when trying something new.
Many people actually develop intense fears related to change (also known as metathesiophobia), but the prospect of something new DOES NOT have to feel frightening.
There are several ways to cope with and overcome a fear of change. Ease your fear of change by creating your mission and goals for your side hustle.
When you are clear on your mission and goals, you can make better decisions aligned with your true purpose. Making good decisions, makes your brain more comfortable and comfort will allow you to get past the fear! Once you conquer your fear than taking action is easy!
7. ‘I’m Not Good at Doing Anything’
If you feel that you’re not good at anything or that you don’t have any skills to build a living around, I recommend asking your friends. A great question you can email them is: “What’s one skill I have that you would like to learn?”
Also, remember we all take for granted a lot of our own skills simply because we’ve always had them. Since we can do something easily, we assume that everyone else can, too.
The trick is to look about what transformation you can give to others: that way, you will look for your skills, passions, and accomplishments, instead of external validation from a diploma or degree.
8. ‘I Don’t Know How to Sell’
Whether it’s to convince someone to go on a date with you, to get your dream job, or to get your friends to agree to your holiday plans, you know how to sell. You might not have sold something in exchange for money, but you definitely already have sold someone on something in your life.
Business isn’t much different. Find the right audience, put your product or service in front of them and ask them to buy. If they say no, use the feedback, adjust, and try again.
You’re already a salesperson, you just don’t know it yet.
9. ‘I’m too shy or an introvert’
The online world is so versatile that you can really figure out and choose what works best for you and leverage your strengths (as long as you’re not feeding your excuses).
With so many platforms and opportunities, focus on your strengths. Choose the products, tactics, and business structures that allow you to leverage what you’re good at. Bonus points if you challenge your comfort zone.
10. ‘Someone else is already doing what I want to do’
Okay, your idea has already been launched by someone else. Limiting beliefs tell you that you are too late. Give up and move on.
This relates to the first excuse in this article: “I don’t have the right idea.” It’s a cop-out, moving responsibility onto the idea instead of what you can control: yourself and your actions.
Remember, Apple didn’t launch the first computer, what if Steve Jobs used this excuse and never started Apple? He took an existing product and made it different and better. If you can see similar products or services out there, as long as someone is buying it, that’s a good sign. It means that there’s a proven demand for it.
Final Thoughts
Most of the beliefs you have around starting a side business are just self-imposed limits (excuses) that keep you from taking action. They mean that you don’t have to put yourself out there and actually try and give a serious go at having your side hustle.
If you want to accomplish something and win, you have to give yourself permission to try, permission to fail and permission to succeed.
The lesson? You need to give yourself permission to lose and try again if you want the ability to win. If you recognize some of these excuses, pay attention. Next time they speak to you in your head, realize that procrastination is trying to keep you safe and poor.
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2 Comments on Stop Making Excuses and Start Your Side Hustle
Hey there, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your website in Ie, it looks fine
but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some
overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, superb blog!
Hi Pete,
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Sincerely,
Fred & Kim ~The Biz Wizards