This month I conducted the first (annual?) Side Hustle Nation member survey, and was grateful to see more than 100 responses!
To incentivize responses, I gave away a free side hustle strategy session and made sure the survey was mobile-ready so it could be done on a phone.
Congrats to Kim Rempel for winning!
What should I work on next?
The first thing I asked was for some direction.
The choices were as follows:
- Build an “authority site” from scratch
- Build a “service business” from scratch
- Build 10 different income streams, each at some minimum target (ex. $500/mo)
- Write a “side hustle income guide,” sharing a TON of ways to earn job-free income
- A “public coaching” effort, helping one or more members build their side hustle — documenting and sharing the process
- Other
The winner? Attempting to build 10 different income streams, each to a certain revenue level per month.
That’s what I was afraid of! You guys are going to put me to WORK!
I like it though, because I’m always up for a challenge.
Close behind were the “public coaching” idea and a new book project on the tons of ways to earn a side hustle income.
Interested in becoming part of the public coaching case study? Why not you?
Either way, this is excellent feedback since I’ve been kicking around an authority site idea for a while, but will have to make that a lower priority in 2015 based on what you want to see … unless it becomes part of a public coaching experiment.
And the comments that followed were really insightful. There were passionate pleas for every one of the options!
A Facebook Community Group
One of my goals for the year is to bring a greater sense of community to our little “nation” of side hustlers and entrepreneurs.
To that end, I wondered if people would get value from a dedicated and private Facebook group.
Nearly 7 out of 10 survey respondents said yes:
I’m sure a few of those yes’s were just people being nice, but it seemed like enough interest to move forward with.
So here it is: The SH Nation FB group.
Jump on in and tell your friends.
This is YOUR group — I’ll be as active as I can, but I’ve got my work cut out for me this year (see question #1 above!). So I’ll depend on your inherent awesomeness to keep things civil and flag any spammers.
What’s Your Biggest Side Hustle Challenge?
Next, I was curious what challenges people were facing in the journey. What’s holding you back from side hustle success?
Aside from the usual suspects of time and lack of ideas, I was surprised to find many people struggling with the initial push just to get started.
I have the opposite problem — I’ll start a bunch of things, get distracted, and it will end up half-finished on my hard-drive.
And to the handful of respondents who mentioned FOCUS, I’m with you 100%.
An even greater number of people cited side hustle growth, executing on their plan, or finding the right clients as their biggest struggle. That’s actually really encouraging to see because your wheels are already in motion and often that’s the hardest part.
Which of these new podcast cover art concepts above do you like the most?
I’ve been wanting to change up the “cover art” for the podcast, but was hesitant to do it without any feedback.
I made the original (and all these concepts) in PowerPoint.
Should it have my name on it? Should it have my face?
I actually messed up the Google Forms survey on this portion. After spending some time figuring out how to embed images and getting it all fancy, I found out that none of the answers on to this question were being recorded.
So I went back to the “brute force” method that was less elegant, but had the added bonus of actually working, and collected 69 votes.
And the results were decisive enough I feel comfortable moving forward with that new design.
If you’re curious, I actually had Fancy Hands compile a collage of the top 100 shows in iTunes to see what kind of cover art was being used by top podcasts and which of those stood out most to my eye:
Which ones stand out most to you?
If you could wave your magic side hustle wand, what would life look like at the end of 2015?
This last question is where the answers got really inspiring.
Some focused on the dollars, ranging anywhere from earning $300 per month all the way up to $250,000 this year.
Hey, I did say magic wand — now it’s just a matter of executing what it’ll take to get there.
But the other answers were perhaps more telling:
- “calm and collected.”
- “have at least one stranger buy my book.”
- “not living in a shitty apartment.”
- “working on projects I want to.”
- “debt free.”
- “making money doing things I enjoy.”
- “deeper in love with my wife.”
- “working less hours.”
- “quit my day job.”
- “location independent.”
- and finally, “gloriously free.”
That’s what it’s all about, baby.
Of course this isn’t Harry Potter, and there is no magic wand. The only “magic” we have is our own determination and hustle.
If any of those “magic wand” statements ring true for you, there’s no one stopping you from making it happen. I’ll be doing some follow-ups this year to hold people accountable to their dreams.
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to do the survey!
