For the past couple years, I’ve been doing these quarterly progress reports.
Why go through this exercise?
It’s time to evaluate what happened over the last 3 months, to see if you achieved your goals, and to ask if you’re happier or otherwise better off than you were when you started.
So am I?
We know that the attorneys, window washers, and web designers who earn the most money aren’t necessarily the ones who do the best work. Those who earn the most are those who know how to sell their service.
Realize that selling is a huge part of your side hustle.
If you are nervous about selling, this exercise will help.
Yep. I designed bombs.
Sounds more exciting than it was.
I was actually stuck back in a dull gray cubicle, three locked doors away from daylight. I hated it.
Under the dim flickering florescent light, I hatched a dream: to launch my own startup. I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart.
In August I embarked on a personal challenge to develop a meditation habit. If I could do it every day for a month, maybe it would (finally) become a routine practice.
Inspiration for the challenge came from a conversation with Dan Harris, an Emmy award-winning journalist who discovered meditation as an effective way to calm the voices in his head.
Dan convinced me to give it another shot, citing scientific evidence that meditation has a whole host of benefits including lower blood pressure and increased focus. So I committed to meditating every day in August, and I recruited 47 side hustlers to join me for accountability.
A few people have been asking for an update on my Amazon FBA efforts, so here goes!
The bottom line is that this side hustle has been profitable, but not by a lifestyle-changing amount.
So far, I’ve only focused on local clearance arbitrage, with my best finds being from Walmart, Home Depot, Office Depot, and Babies ‘R Us.
What’s the most common piece of advice when it comes to online business? Let’s see if this sounds familiar.
See what else is out there, and create something 10x better.
And while creating the best / most helpful / most shareable / most awesomely epic 10x content ever is supposedly the golden ticket, I thought I’d put this advice to the test and share some results from a recent attempt at “epic-ness” of mine.
Does it really work? Is it worth the effort?
A few months ago, I looked for new ways to monetize my blog. I came across a post about selling sponsorship spots in my email newsletter.
I liked the idea so I thought that I would give it a shot.
The result? 3 days after reading the post, I landed a 3 month-contract with a couple of sponsors and made $300/month with only 30 min of work. Here’s how it works.
Last quarter I wrote about feeling more stressed, anxious, and tired, and wondering if that was just the price of parenthood.
With our little hustler growing every day, things are definitely getting better. I think we’ve already blocked from memory how horrible the first 6 weeks were!
This quarter he started daycare 3-4 days a week, which has helped block off longer hours of hustle time and rebuild a bit of a routine.
Over the last few months, I’ve systematically deleted more than half of my site… and my traffic went up?!?
And I’ll be the first to admit, this sounded like completely nuts. Why would you delete perfectly good content? Each page is an extra chance — however remote — for someone to discover you, right?
For the past year, I’ve been doing these quarterly progress reports.
Business-wise, the Side Hustle Nation audience has grown, but other projects have taken a back-seat.
I feel like I’ve been in “maintenance mode” for most of the year.
And while happiness is hard to measure, I have to admit it’s gone down since last year. To be sure, there are moments of elation but on average, I’m feeling more stressed, anxious, and tired. Is this the price of parenthood?
