Side Hustle

Side Hustle shows you how to set up new income streams without quitting your day job, taking you all the way from your initial idea to your first earned dollars in just 27 days.

About ten minutes ago I tossed out the entire structure of my latest Medium post series. Completely redid it. Earlier this morning I threw out a marketing idea. I constantly replace my ideas with better ideas, no matter what stage they’re in. Sure, there are milestones I complete before making more changes, but the plan always keeps evolving.

When it comes to generating ideas for your side hustle, you might have an initial block, but once you get over it, you’ll quickly collect more ideas than you can handle. To avoid losing time, pick the one you like best and run it through this quick validation framework Chris suggests:

Is it feasible? Can you execute in in an hour or less a day and expect to see results within a week? Or are you trying to climb Mt Everest on your first attempt? Will it be profitable? Do some rough math. How much can you expect to make from one sale? What expenses do you have to cover? What’s the optimistic version of this? And the pessimistic one? Is your idea persuasive? Can you explain what you’re selling to your grandma in two sentences? What’s your “wow factor?” Who do you know that’d think your product is irresistible? What’s your unique advantage?

If an idea fails to pass the scrutiny of these questions, don’t bother with it. Imagine how hard it’ll be to convince anyone else if you’re doubting your own concept this early in the process. Keep moving until you find an idea that holds.

Then, turn it into an offer.

In copywriting, there’s this important distinction of features vs. benefits. A lot of salespeople suck because they drown you in features, like a quad-core CPU, gesture control, or hand-woven alpaca wool, without explaining how those features make your life better. By condensing your idea into an offer with a big promise, a concrete pitch and a specific price, you avoid that mistake. Here are what those three parts should look like, according to Chris: Your promise should be a bold, provocative statement that highlights the persuasive aspect of your idea. When people hear it, they should see how they can immediately benefit from your idea. For Four Minute Books it’s “learn more in less time.” Your pitch tells people how you deliver on that promise in as few words as possible. Here’s mine: “I read the world’s best non-fiction books and summaries, and write down 3 things you can learn in 4 minutes or…