CONCLUSION
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
—Henry David Thoreau
I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
—Steve Jobs
We hope this book has propelled you forward in developing a stronger mindset and clarity around a vision for your future—supporting you in building the life you want, as you define it. By challenging yourself to clarify what your Life Vision is, you can reverse engineer and chart a real course to arrive at said destination. A side hustle provided us the bridge necessary to make our own journey successful and fulfilling—we believe it can for you as well.
As you continue pursuing your side hustle, keep in mind the following thoughts:
1. Commit or recommit to making your side hustle a priority. There are scores of reasons to elevate building a side hustle, and almost infinite distractions to keep you from prioritizing it. Commit yourself to making your move with definitiveness and a sense of adventure; it will be worth what you must exchange for it.
2. Revisit, sharpen, and crystalize your Life Vision. How do you truly want to live? What do you value? Where do you want to be 10 years from now? How does your side hustle fit into this vision? This is the driver for your work, dedication, and resiliency.
3. Determine WHO already lives this way. Who has already made it to your destination? Who else is on a similar journey? Make these people a part of your life. Fight to get into the inner circle of the people you respect and want to emulate. Fight even harder to gain their expertise and respect. Observe them. Watch for patterns. Ask questions. Be curious and humble as you lean on and learn from them.
4. Choose or enhance your WHAT. Evaluate your side hustling options, keeping the WHO at the forefront, and consider what most realistically facilitates manifesting your Life Vision. Will you innovate or use established systems? How critical is passive or progressive-passive income? Do you need your business or product to be your passion? Keep in mind your first side hustle doesn’t have to be your last.
5. Get your LIFESET in order! As best as possible, put yourself in an optimal setup for long term sustainability by making solid career and financial decisions. And don’t forget about your health, relationships, spiritual walk and recreation! Remember, it doesn’t have to be in “perfect” order, as it never will be.
6. Hierarchize self-development. Begin intentionally owning and raising your self-image. Use experiential learning as a tool to develop the necessary skills to communicate effectively, as well as influence others. You will struggle to scale anything beyond where your personal belief caps you. Use feedback, mistakes, and experiences as tools to learn rather than symbols of your failure. Fail, learn, adjust, take more action, fail, learn, adjust, and take more action, again. Repeat for 5 to 40 years, as necessary. Rage against ever becoming bitter or jaded on the journey.
7. Be aware of the typical side hustle pain points. You’ll encounter plenty of challenges. Be eyes wide open for spotting common hurdles so you can handle them with more grace and grit. Recall, this is an adventure, not a stroll in the park.
8. Execute like a CEO. Arm and equip yourself with the proper mindset for making significantly more and higher-caliber decisions as a business owner. Learn how to isolate and develop this as a skill—it is paramount and one in which most have had little, if any, formal training. Give yourself the gift of decisiveness.
9. Choose your inner circle wisely. Poor decisions when choosing business partners, employees, or other key relationships can cost you heavily, in both money and time. Evaluate which type of support you need and surround yourself with those of high skill, character, and values that align with your own. Use an individual’s historical performance as a measure of these attributes, not their personality.
10. Funding your venture. Having enough capital is crucial. Without it, much of our other advice and your efforts are rendered useless. Consider all your options, develop a plan, and consult experts prior to moving forward when making major financial decisions.
11. Marketing and branding. Without sufficient sales and top-line revenue you are dead in the water. Make this a priority and learn to effectively use marketing and branding to amplify and leverage your efforts. Realize most people only think of a few adjectives when it comes to you and your brand. Do not be forgettable! Differentiate yourself by overdelivering value and leading with relationships.
If we haven’t emphasized this enough, entrepreneurship is hard. Really freaking challenging—for most of us anyway. As a matter of fact, just getting this book written and published was a wild experience in and of itself. But for us the more paramount question is not, “Is it difficult?” but, “Is the challenge worth the reward?” Our answer: Hell to the Yes.
You will eventually have to face many things you don’t want to face. You will have to be more honest with yourself than you ever have—and in ways you never have. Entrepreneurship tears you open mentally and emotionally and forces out what you’re made of—whether you like it or not.
A major challenge for many neophyte business owners is they expect to love every aspect of entrepreneurship. Many feel they are doing something wrong when their honeymoon phase ends, and every minute isn’t lovable. It is simply not so. Like the rewards of a good marriage (or any interdependent relationship), you have to push through what makes it frustrating or challenging. This is where learning truly starts . . . in the be-coming through the process. You will have to fight past the mundane aspects of building a company. The unglamorous stuff. The redundant stuff. The stuff such as filing your taxes or completing your unemployment insurance forms. You know, the stuff that puts people on stages and book covers.
There will be days when you have to resist quitting. There will be times when you wish you didn’t have that extra spark, bigger dream, or vision, or that you hadn’t taken the red pill. That you could just crawl back into the Matrix and make it all go away.
Keep. The. Hammer. Down.
Oftentimes, we can enroll others to rally around our cause and mission not just because of our technical genius-ness, but because of our spirit and attitude in the face of challenges, the clarity of our purpose, and how we move and navigate with an elevated sense of faith and belief. It is frequently our command over our own emotions, thinking, and actions that can inspire our partners, employees, co-owners, or investors more than a specific business strategy. There’s a reason people adore fairytales, fantasies, and Hollywood stories of the underdog coming out on top (please go watch Cinderella Man—after you finish this chapter). Humanity craves it. We have multibillion-dollar movies and billion-dollar industries full of stories just to relish in observing someone else’s victory.
For as long as human history has endured there have been those who love great stories, and those who make great stories.
Every grand story is made so by the level of challenge someone had to not only endure, but also conquer—and the greater the challenge, the greater the story.
So the question is, What will your story be? What example will you not just tell your children about, but be for them? And if not your own children, then for your friends, your community, or yourself? There is only one person who can answer that question.
Perhaps it’s time you start answering.
We wish you exactly as much in rewards as you are willing to embrace in challenge and adventure. No more and no less, because it will be exactly what you have earned—exactly what you have purchased.
One of the main reasons we wrote this book is because we felt deeply and earnestly we had something to say that could be of genuine service. We hope we have been, and we hope you are willing to return serve.
Stay focused on WHAT and WHO matter most.
And enjoy the grind.
C&C