Potential side hustle to my main hustle

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One of the manufacturers is over a week late in giving me their quotes. Their tardiness delays the entire process including the ability for the company to bring in revenue.

These delays also impact my personal finances too since I’ve been working on The Refoundry full-time for a while. If I’m smart, I should try to find another way to bring in money while I have a little more time to do it now.

The challenge that I’ve shared before in this journal is: “What easy 9-5 job can a former CEO of an animal shelter do?”

Almost everything that has come to me so far have been 50+ hour a week jobs, and I haven’t been able to get past the recruiters for lower-level positions (not that I’ve tried for many).

An idea actually came to me before Christmas about doing digital marketing work like I used to do with my first business about fifteen years ago. I tested the market demand with some of my friends who own businesses, and no one expressed any serious interest – probably because they already have themselves sorted. So, I abandoned that idea.

But I still have other friends and contacts asking for advice about sales and marketing – twice in the last week in fact. These are not the medium size business owners that I asked previously, but sole traders with smaller pockets.

Knowing that there appears to be a demand from these micro-businesses, I think I figured out a less-time consuming, affordable way to provide it to them. I just need to do a little more market research to confirm that it provides enough value.

Wouldn’t it be funny if my side-hustle actually helps me pay for my main hustle rather than the other way around?

But I don’t want to do any marketing, I just want to make my product

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I’m again at a writing conference today. There are some incredibly, talented people here – many that put me in complete awe with their imaginations and writing skills. However, the repeated thought that I hear over and over is that they don’t want to do any marketing. They just want to write their books.

It’s such a strange industry for that reason. I mean – how many people would create a product or service without considering the need to sell it at some point?

The publishers are “betting” on new and emerging authors much like venture capitalists bet on start-ups. Most of their investments will not pay off, but they’ll continue to add new talent to their portfolio as old ones die off in hopes of that one unicorn or new best-seller will pay the bills.

If authors want to increase the chances of their book being that best seller, they’d do themselves and their publishers a huge favour by accepting the fact that marketing is as much a part of the job as writing the book.

Auxiliary Skills

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I’m attending a writing conference this weekend. It may seem like an odd thing to do while I’m trying to build a products manufacturing business. However, I also believe in investing in my personal development even while I’m learning other things (like a new industry) for my career.

Writing happens to be an auxiliary skill, just like public speaking. And these types of skills come in handy in all aspects of life – such as when I write a personal post on social media or MC a good friend’s wedding.

In the last year, I have taken a lot more creative writing classes – forcing me down a path of fiction that I never saw coming. While I may never publish any such works, I believe that these skills have already upped my game as a communicator and storyteller.

Furthermore, the need to really understand a fictional character in order to write about them has helped me become a better observer of body language, tone and often endearing quirks of people. These are all good skills to learn, if nothing more than to be “present” in the moment.

Of course, attending this conference also means that I’m working later than normal most nights this week in order to fit in everything on my To Do list. I don’t mind. If we all waited until we had more time for personal development, we’d never do it. Unfortunately, that’s what most people do.