Quit Your Side Hustle

Quitting. Maybe not the most exciting topic, but definitely an important one. So let’s talk about first, how to know if you should start a side business and second, how to know when to quit.

If you’re an entrepreneurial type and you’re struggling to build your business – whether its a YouTube channel, an Etsy shop, or a fried chicken joint, I think it’s important to know when you should keep persevering and when, “You gotta take it behind the barn and shoot it.”

So in this video, I’ll cover knowing if an idea is worth pursuing, knowing when to pivot, the sunk cost fallacy, and knowing when to quit.

Enjoyment vs. Income

First, I think it’s important to get on the same page with what we’re talking about here. Generally speaking, this is for people who are looking to bring in additional income by building a business, kickstarting a side hustle, or monetizing a hobby. I often mention that money doesn’t need to be your ultimate goal with anything you do outside of your regular day job and in fact, it’s healthy to have things you do for pure enjoyment of doing it. Making money while doing something you enjoy isn’t really that easy and once you’re able to, you may find that the business side makes whatever you’re doing decidedly less fun. Even... un-fun. A chore. A….a job! So just know that in order to turn a passion project into a business, it’ll take a lot of perseverance, focus, and likely failures before you get on the right path.

Know When an Idea is Worth Pursuing

Before we even talk about quitting, let’s first talk about how to know if you should even start. And if you find that whatever you’re doing doesn’t meet the must-haves in this section, well, that might be your sign to throw in the towel.

I’ve made a checklist of what I believe are must-haves to know if you should even go down the path of pursuing a side hustle. And as much as I find that term a bit obnoxious, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here.

Time to Dedicate

So first, you must actually have time to devote to this project. It’s easy to over-extend yourself and fill up your calendar with everything you want to do that your mental and physical health starts to suffer and your personal life starts to crumble, and that’s not a good thing. If you are just spending 3 hours a night watching bad Netflix shows, and would rather build a business, perfect. You’ve got some time you can devote to this, which is definitely a must-have.

Passion

Can you be successful without passion? Well, it probably depends on your definition of success, but yeah, of course you can make money with something you aren’t super passionate about, but you likely won’t be very satisfied with your work and you probably won’t have longevity in whatever it is you’re doing. What’s going to keep you pushing forward when you face a lot of rejection? When you keep failing, what’s going to motivate you to try again? Simply put, your passion. Let’s take a successful businessman by the name of Gus. The dude loved chicken so much, he put his life on the line to try and break into new markets. His passion for pollo allowed him to own a chain of 14 restaurants across the American Southwest. A true success story.

Well, almost.

Enjoyment

Enjoyment is another key factor and in some ways it goes hand-in-hand with passion, but the key thing to remember is that you are taking something you’re passionate about and turning it into a business. That may sound like the ultimate dream, but keep in mind everything the business side entails. Advertising and marketing, negotiations and contracts, clients and revisions… it can definitely be a lot to handle and overwhelming, especially if you don’t enjoy the business side of things. Ideally, you already like business or can learn to like it as it will enable you to build your business and pay your bills.

Unique Advantage

Next up is your unique advantage. So let’s go over what that really means. If you want to start a fast food chicken joint, maybe you’ve developed a uniquely tasty blend of twelve herbs and spices that the colonel could never get his greasy paws on. On top of being the chicken king of your backyard barbecue, you also have a passion for systems. You’ve noticed some inefficiencies of your local mom and pop chicken joints, and you know how you could make your place run like a well-oiled machine. Boom, amazing fried chicken recipe and you’re a nerd for systems? Sounds like a unique advantage to me.

But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Your unique advantage could be as simple as your point of view. Your creativity. Something you do or even a way that you think that other people don’t, but you think people would appreciate.

If I bring in my main channel, Mango Street, Rachel and I started that because we didn’t see our style of photography represented on YouTube. We didn’t see faster-paced editing or to-the-point tutorials. We bundled our creativity, editing backgrounds, and our perspective of what makes a good tutorial to form our unique advantage.

Be familiar with the space you’re entering. Know what’s out there, what the audience or customers like, and what you can bring to the table that’s better or different in the best way possible.

Ability to Execute

This last one might be the most challenging one of all – your ability to execute. Having ideas or making tasty chicken or taking cool photos is the easy part. Being able to go from that into a profitable business is where it gets really difficult. Just spend a few minutes watching Shark Tank and you’ll see people with really great inventions or recipes or whatever fail. You have to be honest with yourself and ensure that you have the skills, the know-how, the ability to make your dream a reality. If you’re someone that gives up at the first sign of resistance or finds a shiny new object every other month, well this may not be for you.

MVP

Alright, if you were able to check all of the must-have boxes on my checklist, the next step is your proof of concept. In the startup world, there’s a term called Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, which is how you develop a new product to launch to consumers. This is the most basic version of the product. You can then gauge interest from consumers, get their feedback, and then improve the product even more. Once again to call back to Shark Tank, you’ll often hear the sharks be weary of products that haven’t been in the hands of many consumers. They want to know that a lot of people have purchased the product and the company has been able to address any constructive feedback that would improve the product even more. Major issues customers face have been eliminated. The customers are happy. The product is good.

So back to fried chicken, (it’s past my lunchtime), your MVP might be selling your chicken at your town’s farmers’ market. This is generally a relatively low-cost way to gauge interest, talk to your customers, and find price points that your customers are willing to pay.

For a different business like a YouTube channel, well, it’s a bit simpler. Script out or outline your first video. You could rent or borrow any gear you may need to film your video. You could even pay someone on Fiverr to edit it if you don’t know how. Publish it. Promote it. Get honest feedback from people whose opinion you respect. Keep improving and keep publishing.

Know When to Pivot

You often won’t strike gold with your first business attempt. I’ve failed at many different side hustles and every time, I can point to something from my checklist that I was missing. Oftentimes, it was several things. And that’s okay. Being afraid to fail is a detriment. It’s okay to fail, but fail forward. Keep your losses minimal and learn from your mistakes.

Even when you have something that has potential… you may just need to pivot to find your sweet spot. Take Mr. Beast for example, who I’ve talked about before. He started off making Minecraft and Pokemon videos, and then made videos analyzing other Youtubers. He kept experimenting with an assortment of video topics to see what worked best. It eventually turned into him giving away crazy amounts of money, and completing crazy challenges, and the rest is history.

Or take YouTube itself for example. It started off as a video-based dating service, and then, they saw the bigger potential in hosting online videos. Eventually they sold to Google for a mere 65 billion.

Or even Shopify. The founders attempted to open an online snowboard store and built their own shop since they didn’t like the ecommerce solutions that already existed. The shop wasn’t successful, but they decided to sell their storefront that they built to other businesses.

So if you do feel like you need to pivot, take inventory of what you have and what you’re capable of. What’s working well for you? Then, cut your losses. It’s okay if something didn’t work out, but don’t let it take you down with it. Combine your strong suit with what people like and are willing to pay for and create the next iteration of your business.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Just because you’ve dedicated so much time, effort, and money into something does not mean you should keep doing it. And that’s essentially what the sunk cost fallacy is all about. It can be hard to let go of something knowing everything you’ve put into it, but if there isn’t that light at the end of the tunnel, if there aren’t changes you’re able to make to turn your business around, there’s little to no reason why you should keep chasing this fantasy.

Oftentimes we go against the better decision because of this. Take it from The Decision Lab. The sunk cost fallacy means that we are making irrational decisions because we are factoring in influences other than current alternatives. The fallacy affects a number of different areas of our lives leading to suboptimal outcomes.

Instead, focus on what is right in front of you. What is the future cost if you continue down this path? Closing your eyes and hoping for the best isn’t a strategy, so don’t go throwing good money after bad.

Knowing When to Quit

Knowing when to quit is important so that you don’t continue to waste more of your time and money and energy into something that doesn’t have the potential to pay off.

I thought I’d look at times I quit to retrospectively break down why I thought it was the right move.

Recording Engineer

Many years ago, I got a second job working at a recording studio. I was essentially a night manager there and every so often, I would engineer sessions. This job didn’t really pay anything and was more of a way to get my foot in the door. You really only made money when you were engineering sessions, and you only could do that if there was a client and all of the more veteran engineers were busy. I worked Thursday and Friday nights, and eventually, it didn’t seem like there was enough room to really grow and do what I wanted to do, which was engineer. Plus, I had started shooting weddings with Rachel on the weekends, which left me with very little free time. So I decided to let this job go.

My First YouTube Channel

Here’s something I don’t think I ever talked about before, but 8 years ago, I actually started a YouTube channel called Wave Cafe covering the audio software Pro Tools. Pro Tools was probably the one thing I felt best at out of everything I was doing at the time. Looking back at my checklist, I pretty much had everything checked off, except the time to dedicate. I was looking for a full-time job then so I could pay my bills and trying to start a YouTube channel at the same time when I knew nothing about the business side of YouTube proved difficult. I had to hang this up while I just earned a paycheck, which was the smart decision to make.

Real Estate Investor Apprentice

Again, many years ago I worked for a real estate investor. I took a half day on Wednesdays from my day job to drive out to the suburbs and meet with the investor. I spent my weekends looking at houses and marketing, all without a paycheck, but the promise of commission if I brought him a deal that worked out. The main reason I quit was that there were too many inefficiencies in the business for me to succeed. Just getting the investor to look at potential properties was a hassle and by the time he did, the deal was gone. So I would spend all of that time and gas money and lost income by not working my day job, and I wasn’t given the opportunity to succeed. I quit after a few months with zero regrets and eventually flipped vacant land on my own.

Final Thoughts

It’s honestly pretty challenging to turn a passion into a business, but I hope this video helped outline some of the basics to increase your chances of success. You should now know when something is worth pursuing, when you may need to pivot, and when it’s okay to call it quits. Keep in mind most people don’t see success with their first business attempt, and I have failed more times than I can count and still fail at things to this day, as evidenced by a handful of my videos.

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