If I Wanted To Start A $300/Day Side Hustle, This Is What I’d Do

Dropshipping is dead. Affiliate marketing is too hard. And you need money to start a side hustle. These are all things I’ve heard in the last week, and here’s why they’re all completely wrong. What these people actually mean is that side hustles are too competitive and require a ton of money to get started. That’s a valid concern. Making money requires a lot of hard work. I don’t think I really mention this enough in my articles. It took me years of building different side hustles to become a millionaire.

So, if you want a quick and easy formula for success, then you won’t find it here, or anywhere else for that matter, because it doesn’t exist.

Step 1: Get Good Enough at Something

However, I can give you a simple five-step plan that you can apply to any side hustle you choose.

Step one: Get good enough at something. Starting a side hustle is like playing a video game. You first need to increase your character’s power by assimilating knowledge and developing valuable skills. Unlike Sims, your real-life avatar doesn’t come with a ready-made six-pack. This is going to require some dedication. A valuable skill is anything you can learn that a large market is willing to pay you for in the future.

Notice I said you just have to become good enough. That’s because I don’t think you should be wasting years of your life trying to become an expert before making any money. Look, I’m going to get straight to the point. Too many people go to university. Yes, knowledge is power, but unless you want a job in a traditional institution like becoming a lawyer or a doctor, there’s little need to pay for traditional education.

I’m a big believer in learning a skill whilst making money. I don’t know why more people don’t do this. My friend was the same when she became a counselor. She felt like she had to become more and more qualified before she could charge for her services, even though she was already amazing at what she did. Now she’s actively getting paid. However, just think how many people she could have helped and the money she would have earned if she’d got over her mental block sooner. The same goes for you. There are people out there that need you now, not in three years’ time. So it’s time for you to decide what skill you want to learn. Remember, you need to make sure your skill has a wide enough appeal. I mean, if I decided to develop the skill of reciting the seven Harry Potter books off by heart, that skill would be pretty useless when it comes to making money.

Most people don’t like to admit it, but they’re extremely time-rich. And they could spend it learning a new skill, but instead, they decide to chill. Now, that’s okay if you don’t want anything more from life, but the one thing I can’t stand is people that complain about their situation and they don’t do anything to change it. The truth is, society wants a docile population that goes to work, follows orders, and collects their paycheck. That’s why they continually pump out TV shows and films with blatant political messages all designed to brainwash you. I mean, it’s called programming for a reason.

So a handful of examples of useful skills you can spend your free time learning are video creation, coding, negotiation, graphic design, writing, or even practical trades like carpentry, electrics, and plumbing. The list goes on and on. There are so many side hustle ideas out there that allow you to be paid handsomely for leveling up your avatar. I mean, if you want to learn coding, then start building websites for friends. How about physical trades? Just help out a handyman on the weekend. And for video editing, reach out to work for an influencer.

Step 2: Offer a Standout Service

Step two: Offer a standout service. A few years ago, my son had become good enough at filming videos and editing them. He’d managed to teach himself these skills while posting to his YouTube channel, but he wasn’t making much money. That’s when he did something pretty clever. He decided to offer a standout service for clients.

If you offer a normal service, for example, “I’ll film and edit your videos for $100 each,” then you’ll be lost in the crowd of competition. You’ll be one of the many options for your customers. It doesn’t matter if they’re looking for a video editor, a web coder, a graphic designer, or a salesman, they’ll be comparing all of their options based on one thing: the price. This means that you’ll always have to worry about competition, and ultimately, it’s a race to the bottom. As there’s always someone willing to work for less than you. That young lad who still lives at home editing videos is always going to be able to undercut you, as $10 to him is worth so much more than it is to you. I mean, he’d probably be one of the richest kids in the playground.

The issue is being seen as a commodity. In other words, there are lots of different options, and you’re comparable to all of them. The solution to this is offering a standout service. So that your customers don’t see you as one of the many options, but instead, the only option. This gives you the ability to charge far higher prices and build a much more lucrative side hustle.

A standout service should look something like this: “I’ll create an action plan for your social media strategy, direct a bespoke promotional video, help you with your on-camera delivery, and use my experience in your sector to gain new customers and fans that will rave about your services”. Let’s break this down into three parts that you can replicate to make your own standout offer.

The first one is niche. Although your skills only have to be good enough, your client should still look to you as an expert in their particular sector. This applies if you’re looking to become a social media manager, Facebook Ads expert, dropshipper, consultant, and so many more. People are much more likely to pay for someone that’s positioned themselves as a specialist within a niche, rather than a jack of all trades. Now, the person that does everything might actually be better than you. However, they’re not perceived in that way, and the way people see you is what matters.

Before jumping into one of these, it’s very important to evaluate what niche has the highest earning potential, and secondly, what you enjoy the most. In an ideal world, it’ll be the same answer. However, it doesn’t always work that way. Money is obviously very important, but you aren’t going to get anywhere if you hate what you do. So it might be worth taking a perceived cut in income for more enjoyment because, in the long run, your motivation should make up for that loss of money.

The second part of a standout service is financial incentive. In order to charge more for your side hustle, you need to make more money for your client. Think about what skills you have or are planning to learn, and how you can use them to make other people wealthier. It’s so important to sell this financial incentive, rather than the actual product, such as the video, website, copywriting, and so on. No one really cares about that. They only care about what that product will do for them.

The third part of a standout service is skill stacking. This is essentially taking all the valuable skills you’ve assimilated in level one and slotting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. In my example, this is of course the social media skills I’m using to create their action plan, production skills to create the video itself, and directing skills to make sure they’re on-camera delivery hits the mark.

Step 3: Productize Your Service

Step three: Productize your service. Once you productize your service, you can sell it to multiple people. This will allow you to make a lot more money without drastically increasing your expenses. Productized services enable you to expand your side hustle and serve more customers without dedicating an excessive amount of hands-on work to each project. The model is repeatable and should only require modification. In other words, you shouldn’t have to make any massive changes when adapting it to different clients or projects.

To make a productized service, you’ll need to outline precisely what your customer will get and at what price. You’ll then be able to sell this product many times. The customer is still receiving a service, now with the appealing predictability of an off-the-shelf product.

There are endless possibilities when it comes to productized services, as they’re only limited by the creativity of the service providers. I know a personal trainer called Tom who’s currently doing this. He can only work with a limited number of clients through individual hourly sessions. So he’s increasing the amount of money he can make by building online courses. While he’s charging less for online access compared to personalized training, he can sell these to many more people, therefore making up the difference. Tom can also choose to have in-person sessions while his online courses are still selling in the background.

You could offer fully “done-for-you” web design packages, content creation bundles, coaching courses, graphic design packages, and so many more. The common thread is that you’re selling the same service or work to multiple customers with little customization or extra work needed for each one.

Step 4: Recycle Your Money

Step four: Recycle your money. By now, your side hustle should be generating some healthy profits. But this leaves you with a very serious decision on your hands. Do you start spending the profits on expensive clothes, holidays, cars, and impressing others, or do you reinvest the profits and delay gratification to become the person you’ve always wanted to be? To me, the answer’s obvious, but so many people make the mistake of spending money too early, pretending to be someone they’re not.

As you’re a viewer of my channel, I’m going to assume you’re with me on this one. So make sure you’re recycling your money by investing it in marketing, equipment, software, and so on. By doing this, you can expand your reach, increase profit margins, and operate like a well-oiled machine. But with that said, it’s very important not to reinvest all of your money back into the side hustle. You need to take some of the money off the table to build your personal wealth. Here’s exactly how you do that.

Throughout my entire adult life, I’ve invested money into the stock market to passively grow my wealth over the long term. I did this to ensure that I’d retire a millionaire, as historically, when investing into a diversified portfolio of index funds and ETFs, you can expect to grow your money by 8% per year. Of course, this isn’t guaranteed, but it is the historical average. This isn’t because I wasn’t confident in my ability to scale my businesses to millionaire status, but I wanted a safety net for me and my family.

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Step 5: Automate Everything

Step five: Automate everything. This is the level of the game where you unlock all the special moves and cheat codes and no longer have to play by the same rules as everybody else. It’s true. The rich and powerful live a completely different life to the average person, and that’s because they understand this step in a way that most people don’t. The harsh reality is that you don’t have a sustainable side hustle yet. It’s more like a profitable job. Even if it feels like a long way away, you should be thinking about what dream side hustle you want to start building towards, something I did very early on.

When I started my own product range of radio-controlled models, I was outlining exactly what team members were needed. This means that when I started hiring those people, I’d given it a great deal of thought. Of course, at first, you’re probably going to be very tight on cash, unless you have a mass amount of funding. This means you’re going to be doing everything yourself. This is just not sustainable. So by slowly handing over responsibilities, you’re able to clean your plate or regain your freedom. You have to stay really focused, as it can be really easy to give in to your selfish tendencies and want to hold on to more of the profits for yourself, rather than hiring someone else. But this just takes away precious time that could be spent working on your side hustle and not in your side hustle. It’s all about looking at the bigger picture and building the automated machine that is the side hustle.