The Realistic Approach to Finding a Side Hustle
Stop chasing trendy side hustles and use what you already have. A real-estate agent with deep industry knowledge considers a laundromat instead. The speaker's framework: evaluate what you know, who you know, what you have, and where you are to find ideas that actually fit your unfair advantages.
Chapters
Let's talk about a mistake I see a lot, which is somebody is going out and they're looking to find a side hustle, right? They want to keep their day job, but they want to go find something else to expand the portfolio in the way they make money. Your side hustle could be driving Uber. Your side hustle could be delivering for one of the food delivery services. It could be taking another job. But a lot of people want that side hustle to be an entrepreneurial thing. So how do you find like a good side hustle? I see people go down this path all the time. They come talk to me about it. And invariably, when these folks are looking for a side hustle, they come to me and they say, well, I have all these ideas and it could be an idea in the tech space or an idea in the restaurant space or all this different kind of stuff. But I always ask them one thing, like, why go after those ideas? Because oftentimes they're making this huge mistake in terms of how you find a side hustle, which is a lot of times the grass seems really greener, but in reality where you should be looking for a side hustle is, well, just right in front of you. To step back a little bit, I was talking with a friend the other day and he really knows a lot about real estate. He's worked in residential real estate for years. He has all kinds of insight into what's going on to the market. And he came to me and said, hey, I would like to get into a side hustle and I've got an idea about buying a laundromat. And I've got this other idea about doing an app, like I'm gonna get an app program and I'm gonna sell it. And I've got this other idea about, you know, how I'm gonna go buy a business in the home services area, right? And, and to me, I looked at that and I'm like, wait a second, like you're missing the forest for the trees here. You have like such a huge opportunity because of what you're coming in with, which is all of this knowledge of residential real estate and He's going to chase this grass is much greener type situation, but totally missing the biggest opportunity right in front of him, which is all of these potential business ideas where he has like, well, just an unfair advantage. And so if you want to avoid this mistake, what you should do when you start to look at a side hustle is don't look at some dream that you may have of other stuff. Look at what's right in front of you and start with, well, the advantages that you have. And to me, I think there's 4 types of those unfair advantages where you could go start a business tomorrow. Around a side hustle. And those 4 types of advantages are number 1, what you know. So in other words, skills that you have that maybe other people don't have. So in the case of my friend, he knew more about real estate than anybody else. Why is he doing a tech app? Like, he should be doing a software app. He should be going to figure out a way to leverage what he knows about real estate that nobody else knows, that inside information. Number 2, who you know. Do you have connections that are an unfair advantage for you? So say, for example, you're somebody that knows and has a good relationship with every business owner in your town. That is an unfair advantage that should be something as a place where you go look for ideas around that particular thing. What you have, for example, like if you don't have much money, like you shouldn't be going to start a business that's going to require a lot of money. So, so start with what you have. Are there things that you have? Are there assets you have? Uh, for example, uh, if your side hustle is going to be opening an Airbnb, well, maybe you have a piece of property that you inherited that's relatively cheap. Number 4, where you are, right? Where are you located? Obviously, if you're located in the middle of the desert, uh, of Arizona, like you don't want to be looking at a side hustle that's it's an ice skating rink. That— and that's an exaggeration, but same thing goes for other places as well, right? If you're potentially, uh, in a place where there's not a lot of upscale customers, like, don't make your side hustle opening a business that caters to upscale customers. Like, where are you located and how can you take advantage of that? And so those are the 4 categories of ways that somebody who is looking for a side hustle can have an unfair advantage. And so what I tell people when they're looking for a side hustle is instead of thinking about ideas around you, think about what you have in terms of these strengths that are unfair advantages for you that will make it easier for you to win when you go start that side hustle. So coming back to the idea of my friend, like, what did he know? Well, he knows real estate better than anybody else. Who does he know? Well, he knows a bunch of people that are in the real estate game. He knows all the brokers, he knows lots of investors in the space, so he's got that unfair advantage as well. Where is he located? Well, he's located in a good market for that type of stuff in terms of real estate. All that together starts to present opportunities where he should go look at ideas around that rather than go do something that's just totally unrelated to his unfair advantages. What you should be doing is starting to brainstorm ideas that play to those strengths that I particularly have. And as you brainstorm those ideas, you start with the strengths that you can offer, and then ideas can come around that. And so in the case of my friend, he was able to go look at businesses that could make sense for somebody that knows a ton about real estate. So in his case, you know, he was able to potentially go to a property management firm or something along those lines that matched his kind of career aspirations and what he was able to do without quitting his day job. But we all tend to have these same kind of strengths as well. In my case, I don't start healthcare businesses. Do you want to know why? Because I don't know anything about healthcare, and I don't really try to. There's plenty of opportunity tuning the things that I know really well— software, retail, real estate to some extent, uh, making YouTube videos maybe. But anyway, like, you have these opportunities that are based around the strengths, and if you are disciplined and you avoid those things that are something you don't know anything about, or you don't really have any sort of unfair advantage, you can focus your time on areas where, well, just by being who you are, or who you know, or where you're located, or what you can do, you're able to be going into those things with an unfair advantage and increase your likelihood of success. And the same thing applies to all kinds of different knowledge. Say you're the only person in your town connected to a foreign country and you speak the language there. Well, that potentially gives you an opportunity to start to leverage those two things, whether it's through an offshoring business or some sort of trade between your country and your town, uh, or bringing a culture or something that you know from that other place back to where you're located, right? And so these are all the unfair advantages that a lot of times they're so easy for us that we just ignore them and we don't even really think about how how unfair they are. So anyway, avoid this mistake when you're looking for a side hustle. Don't go look at it just because it's sexy. Somebody created a YouTube video about it. Start with really what your unfair advantages are and then brainstorm ideas around that. And like my friend, you'll end up being pretty darn successful.
