Start a lifetstyle business or side hustle

So, you decided to build a new income source while having fun helping others with something you like?

Look no further, that’s a great idea to start a small business out of it!

Now, how do you get started?

I designed this short series of articles to teach the fundamentals of such a project. It’s based on experience, after 15 years and 7 businesses built, several generating six-figure incomes individually. I’ll try to stick to what truly matters, and cut everything else.

So, let’s start with the most fundamental thing in marketing: your customers.

Before anything else, you’ll have to clarify 3 simple questions:

1. Who are your customers exactly?
2. What are their most burning desires?
3. Where do they congregate?

For the first question, you should be able to write at least a whole A4 page on both their demographic and psychographics. What they believe, what they like and don’t like, what they tried and failed, which websites, books, online groups, or youtube channels they spend time with, etc.. If you can’t come up with a page about them, take time to study more competitors and people paying to solve the problems you want to focus on. You should focus exclusively on the individuals who would be the most enthusiastic to work with you, not the ones who “might” have some interest or use your help. Target only the “hardcore fans”.

For the second question, you want to list the 3 wishes they would ask to a genie in the bottle or to Santa Claus. What they want the most on earth (within your specialty). Forget about what could be just “helpful” for them, focus exclusively on their number one top priority at the moment.

Then, once you know “who” is your target, and “which” problem you want to help them solve, you can articulate a marketing positioning in the form of a sentence like “I help Czech university students graduate and kickstart their career”. This sentence will be just for you, as a general guideline to make sure that all your content will be aligned with your general mission.

Lastly, and most importantly, you need to have a clear idea about where you can talk to your target, whether online or offline, to know where to promote your content. Because content without promotion would be like speaking in the middle of a desert. Equally important, the places where your target congregates are also a source of subjects for your content, by collecting all their most common questions.

These are the most important fundamentals of marketing.

With these foundations, you know who you talk to, to solve which problem, therefore which content you should create, knowing which of their belief you can leverage, and where you can promote your content.

Later, once you’ll have a clear answer to these 3 questions, we could talk about how to sell within these content, without looking like a salesman, but by being helpful.

See you in the next article!