Why It Doesn't Have to Take a Long Time to Grow Your Side Hustle

How soon would you like to make money from your side hustle?

Does it take a long time to grow your side hustle? Actually, that’s a myth.

It doesn’t take a ton of TIME to build a side hustle, but there are a lot of moving parts, and you need to know them to build a sustainable and long-lasting side hustle.

That’s right, there are also no shortcuts IF you want your business to be set up for longevity!

I want to help you set up a side hustle that lasts.

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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey risers. Welcome to Empathy Rising. You guys know that is really my ultimate. I'm not here about quick, get your business up quick and make money fast and a hundred thousand dollars in 60 days, and that's not me. I really am wanting to set you up for longevity. I want this to be a side hustle that you can rely on that is stable, that gives you the alternate income stream that you can dial up and down whenever you want.

So you have agency over your income, over your livelihood. Those are the things that are really important to me. However, in doing this for a while, I have recognized a few stock points that can keep people really interested in a Side Hustle, but not actually doing it. There's a difference between wanting and doing and these checkpoints and milestones along the way. When we break through these barriers, when we move past these stuck points, that's when we hit the milestones.

And reaching these milestones, I really think is that progress that you need to see, because we need to have validation along our journey. We need to see certain things happen in certain times. And that's what keeps us moving forward. And I've designed these workshops around three of these key milestones.

So one milestone is that insight. And that's what we talked about all of last episode with knowing exactly how you want this to work for you and coming up with a plan that makes sense for your unique situation. So that's the first milestone. Now another milestone that I think is really important is customer validation.

Hearing that another person is interested in your idea and would actually want to participate in a program that you've created or you've designed. That's a huge factor in making your side hustle a reality. Now I'm not saying we want to rely on external validation and all of that stuff, but when you have a potential customer express interest, it indicates that there is a need for the problem you're wanting to solve. And it indicates that there is a market willing to pay to solve that need. So we're not just looking for people to tell us we're pretty, or that we're smart or that we have good ideas. 

We're really looking for people to say there's a need for that: "Yes, there is a need for that. And there are people who will pay for that". So that's the difference, right? Between the external validation and customer validation. It's also the first sign that you're communicating about your idea effectively and passionately enough for others to buy-in, because if you're looking for customer validation and you're like "yeah, I'm thinking about this thing. And I think it's like going to be, like maybe three weeks long, but it could also be like six weeks long. I'm not quite sure yet..." people are gonna be like, what? 

They're not going to know what you're talking about, and they're certainly not going to follow the conversation well enough to be able to say "yeah, that sounds great". So customer validation shows us that there's a market out there, but it also is an indicator that you have done the work to really come up with an idea. When you can talk about that idea, concisely and people can follow and be intrigued by it, that's a sign that you've done some work too.

Okay, so customer validation is a big milestone. It's a milestone that validates your idea, but it's also a milestone that validates the work that you've done. To be ready to ask for feedback, you need to have a couple of things in place, right? You have to know who to ask, who's the right person that would be interested in this.

And you also have to know what you want to do. You have to know what you want to do and who you want to do it for. So that takes some upfront reflection there. Take some of that work before maybe you're willing or ready to ask for the validation to ask for the feedback. 

And once you get that feedback... Now don't get me wrong, this part can be scary. It can be hella scary to be like "oh, I have an idea. What do you think of it?" - that's why we're doing workshops around this. That's why we're going to work through some of these blocks. 

But customer validation, when you're able to put it out there and ask for it can be a huge motivating factor in taking the step to put your idea out in the world, hearing from people that it's a good idea that they would pay for that idea. It's like a competence boost. It's "okay, there's a handful of people out there who say this is a good idea. That's a pretty good indication that there's more people who think this is a good idea". It can be just the thing that we need to flex those bravery muscles.

Now once you have customer validation, another milestone that moves us along our path to our side hustle is actual cash flow. Now money coming in isn't always the end goal of our side hustle, right? Impact is important. Reach is important. Being able to serve at a bigger scale and beyond our licenses is important to us.

That's a big factor in why we want to do this. But money is also a form of validation, right? Customers saying our idea is good, and customers saying that they would pay for it is excellent, customers actually paying for it is even better. The most streamlined way to make this happen is a cash injection.

Now, I want to talk a bit about the difference between a cash injection and a launch. Okay, so you need a launch and an audience and a marketing system to have the business that is set up for longevity and sustainability to have the thing that's going to be a bonafide income stream that you can rely on long-term.

A cash injection is different because a cash injection really is just a form of validation. It's a: can I get a couple of people to pay for this? So the cash injection is much simpler. Then a launch. There are way less moving parts than a launch. And for me, there's less anxiety than a launch because you're not sitting there like biting your nails.

This is going to work. Cause if it's not going to work, did I do everything right? I think there's a lot of anxiety that can come around a lot, but a cash injection is different. A cash injection is more of a low-pressure way of putting your offer out there is take it or leave it. Hey, I'm doing this thing, anybody interested? If nobody's interested that's okay. Then we just tweak it and move on. It's not like we're basing our entire business off of a cash injection. 

So it's more of an experiment. And yes, if you say anybody interested and no one says "yes", it can feel like a failure, but I want you to think back to a couple of episodes ago where I was talking about failing forward, I really don't believe in like, failure as in like a negative.

It's: here's the outcome I desired, but here's the outcome I got. What can I learn from that outcome? So failing forward and taking the data from any outcome we get, whether it's the desired outcome or not. So when you're doing a cash injection, you're not basing the success of your entire business on a launch, right? A launch is the money that's going to pay your bills. A launch is the money that's going to pay your mortgage. The launch is the money that you earn for your living. A cash injection is more like a bonus. Like woo. How cool, I got a thousand dollars this weekend, which can be huge for a lot of us, right?

I'm not saying that it's chump change or anything, but having this mentality around it of "oh, it's a bonus. This is something unexpected, how cool". That is a totally different mindset than around a launch. So I think this is absolutely one of the best ways to streamline your side hustle. Because you get to take a small action step and you get to soak up the momentum and soak up the validation that you need to make progress.

And I think that's true for both of these. You're soaking up the validation from customer feedback, but you're also soaking up the validation from cash injection, right? The money in the bank validation, right? Both of these milestones can be what you need to push forward to build out the entire marketing system, to build out the entire business plan for a long-term sustainable side hustle.

Okay. So how exactly can you laser focus on your side hustle, and how can you hit these milestones and have the motivation to make a full income stream? That's what the other two workshops in the summer slowdown series are exactly for. So they're going to cut through these two specific areas and they're specifically designed to move you forward to customer validation and to money in the bank validation.

So last week, like I said, we talked about the first workshop, which is going to help you determine the value of the clients on your caseload and come up with a plan to replace or to exceed that revenue. This is the inspiration that's going to catapult you into the action. And that's where workshop two and workshop three come in.

Workshop two is on Saturday, July 17th. And this one is covering the most essential element of your side hustle, which is your niche. And like I said, above to hit that first milestone of customer validation, you need to know who you're talking to. If you're validating with the wrong customer, it's not going to help you at all. We have to validate with the right customers. 

Now I know that niching isn't sexy. Everyone talks about it. Everyone talks about how important it is. You've probably done a few different niching courses, or if you've taken other practice building programs, 100%, they probably had a lesson on niching. And so this isn't necessarily new information for you, but what is different about the workshop is we're not just talking about this, we're doing this. 

We're going to figure out who the customer is and how do we validate our ideas with that customer? Okay. So that's the big difference here is the actual implementation, the actual meeting of the milestone.

So once you know the person you're talking to, everything else falls into place, right? The problem that you want to solve for that person falls into place, where to market to that person falls into place. How best to market to that person falls into place. What type of sales strategies are best for that person?

What is the price point that person can afford? All of those questions are defined by your ideal customer, by your niche. And to get that ideal customer validation, you have to know who that person is. So I know it's not sexy, but it really is the essential key that unlocks every other piece of this.

It really does. It unlocks every other single piece of your side hustle. So in that workshop, we're going to be talking about who you want to work with, how you want to work with them, keeping your side hustle niche separate from your therapy client niche. So the person you're working with and talking to, you're doing it in an ethical way.

And we're also going to make sure that person that you want to work with is more above baseline than your therapy client might be. So we might still be holding space for that person, but we're holding a much lighter, different kind of space, depending on what type of program we build out.

So we're going to work through all of that. And then we're going to talk about how to achieve customer validation from this person, how to run our ideas by this person and get their feedback so that we can be utilizing that feedback as we move forward to our next milestone, which I'm going to hit on right now. 

So the third workshop is going to happen on August 21st. So remember to mark your calendars for that day, and this is the workshop, which is a super-duper meta, but if you're a member, the next milestone is to inject some cash into your side hustle. To actually put it out there and to deliver it.

And workshops are the quickest way to make money online. And for this workshop or this meeting this event (because I'm saying workshop a lot), and for this event on August 21st, we're going to be making it so you can host your first one 100% by the end of the year, but hopefully by the end of the summer.

So my vision for this is for you to outline your workshop. We're going to talk about how to make your first sales from this workshop and the things you need, like technology-wise and all of that stuff to actually execute the workshop. And if you get 10 people in your workshop, it can be a thousand dollars, right?

So this is a cash injection. We're not going for a huge launch where it's like a $5, $10, $15,000 launch or anything like that. We're just going to go straight for injecting some cash, proving that your offer is desirable and basically monetarily validating your concept, right? So the tangible asset that you're going to take away from this is the script.

So you're going to have the script to put your offer out there. You're going to have this script to ask for the sale. You're going to have scripts to close the sale. All of that kind of stuff so that you can make your first revenue from your side hustle really in very little time. You'll need the time it takes to build out the workshop and then you'll need the time it takes to get hopefully 10, maybe even more 15, 20 sales.

That'd be great. And like I said, if you make 10 sales, that's your first thousand dollars from your side hustle. And wouldn't that be cool if it happened by the end of the summer? So this workshop series really is designed for you to take bite-sized action. And for you to hit these milestones and for you to make some money to have a cash injection. Like I think that would be so freaking neat. 

The Summer Workshop Series it's really designed to be like a buildable journey, right? It addresses these three key stock points and it helps you break through these three key barriers. So if you start at the beginning with the workshop that's coming up on June 19th, you're going to see the exact math behind how a side hustle fits your unique situation, your unique caseload, your unique revenue, current revenue and revenue goals and revenue desires. And it's going to be that inspiration that kicks off the rest. 

Now, moving through the second workshop, you're going to discover the most essential element of your side hustle. So that's figuring out your niche, and your niche really does unlock all of the other components (like I mentioned) and unlocks your marketing and unlocks your sales. It unlocks everything else. And it's going to tell you who we're going to sell this workshop to at the end of the summer. 

So at the end of the workshop series, you're going to craft your first income opportunity and that can really catapult your side hustle into reality by bringing you your first paying customers.

So you're going to hit these three major milestones this summer. You're going to validate your idea. You're going to inject some cash, and you're really going to have everything you need to then turn this momentum into a longer-lasting sustainable income stream. And that's what's going to get you closer to your work goals and your lifestyle goals.

Whether you've been stuck for a while getting your side hustle off the ground, or maybe you're new to the side hustle idea but you want to streamline the process, you want to make sure that you are cutting through the fluff, cutting through the noise and getting these milestones marked down.

That's what the Summer Slowdown is completely intended for. These three workshops help you focus and do the actual work to move through three high priority areas so that you can take that bite-size action and capitalize on the huge momentum. And you're going to make money from your side hustle this summer. That is my ultimate vision, right? 

Tickets are on sale now and seats are filling up fast. So I would make sure you hurry over and grab your ticket. It's over at marissalawton.com/summer. And that'll give you all the information that you need and remind you of the dates that you need to mark off on your calendar.

All right, guys, I hope you can tell how enthusiastic I am about this. I just think this is going to be really neat and really cool. So I can't wait to see you in the Summer Slow Down series, and until then keep on rising. 

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