Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Building A Personal Brand Side Hustle
Authenticity is key. It’s so much easier to consistently be yourself than to try and be someone else. If you think about your favourite celebs, they’re just being themselves - and it’s so much easier to invest in them and like them.
Authenticity is key. It’s so much easier to consistently be yourself than to try and be someone else. If you think about your favourite celebs, they’re just being themselves - and it’s so much easier to invest in them and like them.
If you are wanting to start a side hustle, one of the first things to consider is how to position yourself, whether you are the “brand” or your product is the brand. For side hustles, where you are brand, the only way to make it work is to put yourself (and not someone else you are pretending to be) out there.
“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
This quote comes from Jeff Bezos. And as much as he is controversial, he is a business mind and he’s managed to make a pretty massive success, starting Amazon as an online side hustle.
Your personal brand is what you do and how you do it. Since it’s centred around you, it’s not something you can (or should) try and fake.
The best side hustles that pay you to be yourself
YouTube Video Streaming
More and more people are interested in making and consuming bite-sized content. This means authentic homemade videos have skyrocketed in popularity.
Vlogging and YouTube channels are now sitting on potential pots of gold with niche, loyal followers available for each industry. With a little effort (and a lot of consistency), it’s possible to start a pretty lucrative side hustle with a focus on video production.
Consistency is key if you want video content to be a serious income stream. You also need to be comfortable behind a camera and have some skill editing video (but that you can easily learn “on the job”).
For example, Casey Neistat is one of my favourite YouTube vloggers. His authenticity and consistency won me over completely.
Even though Casey does things which are simple in practice, the fact that he does them daily is what makes him impressive. He often messes up, stumbles over words, slips, slams doors, cuts open packages that end up cutting through his products. Whatever. Push on and be consistent.
Remember, with all content-related side hustles: Done is better than perfect.
With video streaming, revenue is possible through ads (either paid through the platform or by partner advertising), selling products or merchandise or by crowdfunding in your video content.
Instagram Influencing
So many people grow up dreaming of a life of fortunes and fame. It’s what the media shows us as glamorous, so we’re obsessed with the potential of the razzle and dazzle. The hard truth: So many people want A-lister fame, but so few people get it.
Luckily, you don’t need to have to be in the Hollywood spotlight anymore to have a profitable personal brand. With the world living on social media, the stage is set for you to make a profit from your personal brand from behind your screen. Using Instagram to market your side hustle with a business account, you can monetize the platform by finding the right niche, building a good following and creating a consistent strategy.
Part of the side hustling process is developing the right voice and targeting a loyal customer base or audience, so building (or harnessing an existing) following on the social platform also acts as a great way to focus up and promote your side hustle product.
Blog Writing
Content is king, but it’s not easy to sell, not itself at least. While you might not be able to monetize just the content of your blog easily, you can make use of the platform where it lives.
If you have a blog which you update regularly with authentic educational, informative, and entertaining content and are able to drive readers to it, you’re already on your way to make it a side hustle income. A blog which gets traffic is a fantastic way to generate extra revenue because there are a couple of strategies you can use to make money with it. There is space for advertising, selling merchandise, books, products, services, and coaching on blog platforms. You can also diversify and have affiliate links to make money if you partner with a relevant company to your industry and offer discount codes on your blog’s site.
Twitch Streaming
Like with all content-specific side hustles, consistency is the key to unlock the potential revenue.
Avid gamer and Twitch streamer Jordan Slavik commented on building a following on Twitch: “Successful channels — like companies — are built up over years, not over days or weeks. The most important thing is to keep producing materials.”
Twitch is a platform which has many supportive fans tuning in to watch their favourite gamers. And that support can come in the form of steady revenue. Starting a side hustle through Twitch streaming requires a niche and consistent hard work, but once you’ve got a loyal following - even if you’re not the best gamer - you’re on the path to profiting from your time. Top tips: Make sure you stream with a regular schedule too, so your fans know when to tune in. Once you have a following, don’t pretend they’re not there for you. They are, so engage with them! Ask questions, make jokes, reply to their comments. Provided you stay consistent - and if you’re authentic, this should be pretty easy - they’ll stick around to watch you.
LEARN FROM MASTERCHEF - Do Less But Better
I am obsessed with Masterchef Australia. If you have never seen it, it’s a cooking show where they take amateur chefs and over the course of a three-month competition pick a winner who ends up becoming a pretty formidable chef in the industry.
I am obsessed with Masterchef Australia. If you have never seen it, it’s a cooking show where they take amateur chefs and over the course of a three-month competition pick a winner who ends up becoming a pretty formidable chef in the industry.
The most recent season has given me a lot of pause for thought. One of the main themes that emerge is the young chefs always try to do too much in the time allocated to them for their cook.
They’ll often say that they would usually cook this meal in 3 hours but today they’re going to try and get it done in 45 minutes. And I moan and think to myself how stupid they are.
Then throughout the cook, they keep adding elements to their dish. A crumb here, a tuile there, an extra this that or the next thing and by the end of the cook their dish has more than ten different elements on the plate.
Now, for the absolute masters, this is not a problem. They can make each element perfect and balance the flavours so that the dish sings as you bite into it. But for most of the contestants doing too many elements ends up with them being eliminated and going home.
I recently posted a video about saying no to things more often than you say yes to them and this goes hand in hand with trying to do too much with the thing you’ve chosen to do.
If you are trying to grow your audience, you can either build a social media strategy for one platform and get it right or build a strategy to try and be everywhere. I’d argue that making one platform work at a time is more sensible than trying to boil the ocean with a magnifying glass.
I’m trying to teach myself to do less but better, like the best chefs in the world.
Is Muscle Memory holding you back?
The concept of muscle memory is often just thought of in a sporting context. You teach your physical muscle to remember something by practicing that thing over and over and over again.
I haven’t played guitar in a couple of years but the other day I picked one up and strummed away. Muscle memory.
Recently I watched a short documentary about the two fastest speed cubers in the world. If you’re not sure what the hell that is, watch this:
What you are witnessing is a combination of an incredible amount of data, pattern recognition, finger dexterity and algorithms all coming together in under 7 seconds of brilliance.
The documentary tells the viewer that most of the professional speedcubers memorise up to 300 different algorithms that they can then combine to solve any of the 43 quintillion possibly permutations. When you think about it this way it’s quite an incredible achievement but in truth, it really is just about practice and muscle memory.
The concept of muscle memory is often just thought of in a sporting context. You teach your physical muscle to remember something by practising that thing over and over and over again.
I haven’t played the guitar in a couple of years but the other day I picked one up and strummed away. Muscle memory.
This documentary really got me thinking about what other kinds of muscle memory I use and teach myself every day. When I stopped to consider the endless things I do every day it’s actually quite overwhelming.
The one that I want to focus on is the one that we probably think has the least impact on our lives: self-talk.
Self-talk occurs when you tell yourself that you can or cannot do something. When you tell yourself that you do or do not deserve something. When you think you’re not smart enough or pretty enough or that you shouldn’t eat that or you should do more of something because of XYZ. These micro-moments throughout your day are either helping you to become a better version of yourself or they are teaching you to be too hard on yourself, setting you up for failure before you’ve even begun.
If you are considering a new venture or job, if you think you might deserve a better partner or a raise at work and you talk yourself out of taking that first leap you are teaching yourself that you don’t deserve good things.
Your brain remembers this and over time you don’t even have the conversation with yourself, you just stop trying.
The muscle memory we employ every day really does matter and just like any skill, you can teach yourself to be and do just about anything (within the limitations of the natural world of course).
Next time you catch yourself talking shit to yourself I want you to stop and think about why and then I want you to get irritated with yourself and stop it.
Positive self-talk takes a conscious effort to get right but frustratingly negative self-talk is easy to let slide and not notice. Take notice of how you talk about and to yourself because words really matter. But that’s a topic for a different article altogether.
Where Does Your Self-Worth Come From?
This got me thinking about how we value ourselves and where we derive our self worth from. More often than not you are gaining your self worth from something that you haven’t spent much time choosing, it just happens. Your house and how big it is, your car and how expensive it is, your kids and how well they perform compared to other kids, how good looking your partner might be, how smart people think you are, how many social media likes and followers you have and on and on the list goes. These are all things that feed our ego and impact our self worth.
Since I was the 16 years old I’ve been building a business as part of my daily life. That’s twenty years of business building. Over the past ten years I have also been a professionally paid public speaker presenting keynotes at conferences and corporate events around the world.
These two things have carried a lot of my personal self worth.
The past 6 months have forced me to reflect on where my self worth comes from and what happens when I can’t feed it in the ways that I have become used to.
Obviously speaking at conferences has completely changed and initially disappeared almost entirely. So I crossed that off my list of ego-feeding tasks.
Then in January I exited a business that I had been building for two years and decided refocus my work on writing my next book and helping people build side hustles through my online courses and content. So that meant that I wasn’t really building a business for the first time in my adult life.
The two main sources of my self worth have evaporated in the space of half a year.
I didn’t realise it at the time but about three months into this new life I had sunk into a slight depression. Mostly the depression had to do with being locked in a one bedroom apartment under the brutal South African lockdown laws but when I discussed it with my psychologist (over Zoom initially) he helped me understand that everything that once made me feel a sense of value was gone from my life.
This got me thinking about how we value ourselves and where we derive our self worth from. More often than not you are gaining your self worth from something that you haven’t spent much time choosing, it just happens. Your house and how big it is, your car and how expensive it is, your kids and how well they perform compared to other kids, how good looking your partner might be, how smart people think you are, how many social media likes and followers you have and on and on the list goes. These are all things that feed our ego and impact our self worth.
With no business and no stage in my immediate future I have had to seriously reevaluate where my self worth comes from and if I like it that way.
I don’t have a clear answer yet, unfortunately, but I do want to keep asking myself if I am happy with the things that I value and how they make me feel.
Your Side Hustle Should Be Additive Not Subtractive
It’s so easy to start something that you end up hating:
Start something new without much thought behind it
Do it for a short time
Watch vanity metrics only and become frustrated with your lack of likes and followers
Keep going but hate the work because your goals are not defined or badly laid out
Eventually quit but not after pain, suffering and loss of capital
That’s it, that’s how easy it is to start something and hate it very quickly.
It’s so easy to start something that you end up hating:
Start something new without much thought behind it
Do it for a short time
Watch vanity metrics only and become frustrated with your lack of likes and followers
Keep going but hate the work because your goals are not defined or badly laid out
Eventually, quit but not after pain, suffering and loss of capital
That’s it, that’s how easy it is to start something and hate it very quickly.
I believe that side hustles are a fantastic way to make some extra money and also live a bit more of life. Find project, problem or business that interests you and then slowly start turning it into something that other people might want to spend money on. That’s the dream but it often doesn’t work out that way.
Here’s a small tip that can make a huge difference to how you build out your side hustle income streams:
Side hustles should be ADDITIVE to your life and not SUBTRACTIVE.
When you build anything of value it should add more to the life that you live, not subtract from it. Yes, of course, it will be difficult but ultimately it should not be bad or subtractive.
If you decide to start a side hustle and you commit the time and attention to do so you should also be patient and consistent without adding negative pressure to your day to day life.
To make your side hustle additive you should consider the following:
How much time do you really have to commit to your side hustle?
Most people believe that they live full lives and don’t have any extra time in their day to allocate to a new project. The litmus test for this statement is to count how many hours of your day you spend watching TV. For the average person, that figure is anything between 4hrs and 8 hrs PER DAY!!!
If you watch two hours of TV a day then you have two hours a day to build a side hustle. If you can only afford two hours per week, that’s great, segment that time out, put it in your calendar and spend focused, dedicated, non-distracted time building that bad boy out! But remember, do this consistently and be patient. Work in the allocated time and don’t let yourself get distracted.
Have you defined your success triggers?
What does success look like for this side hustle? Are you trying to make a shitton of money or just a little? Are you trying to build an empire or a small and steady stream of income? This part is so key to allowing your side hustle to be additive.
If your goals are too lofty and unrealistic then every minute spent on it will seem like it’s not enough and that you’re letting yourself down. Make sure to scrutinize your success triggers so that they fit in with your life.
Do the people in your immediate life know you are starting this project and understand how much of your time it’s going to take away from them?
If you don’t tell anyone in your life that you are starting something new and big that is going to sap your time then they are going to flip out when you disappear. And that’s on you.
Communication is imperative when it comes to your side hustle so do me and yourself a favour and talk to your kids, your friends, your partner, your parents and whoever else you have commitments with and let them know what you’re planning. They don’t have to like it but you do have to talk to them.
Are you mentally and physically fit enough for this new challenge?
Sure, the main reason most people start a side hustle is to make money but that goal alone isn’t enough to drag you through the mental and physical anguish that a side hustle might cause you. There is no quick way to make extra money (if anyone tells you there is then they are probably trying to sell you Herbalife or Amway pyramid schemes) and if you come to terms with this fact then the most important thing you can do to make your side hustle additive is to get your mind right and treat your body with care.
You can’t stay up until 2 am every morning, eat shitty food and never do any exercise but still expect to stay healthy, mentally fit and ready for the stresses of an extra project on the side.
Take care of yourself first and the rest becomes much easier.
MEGAN MACKENZIE - EP. 15 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
Megan Mackenzie is a professional trail runner and has won South African Long Distance Trail Championships in 2015, African X in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, Ultra Trail Cape Town 65km and others. She has also represented South Africa internationally at numerous events.
Her perspective on finding and maintain a direction in life is unique and insightful and our shared obsession with curiosity makes this a fantastic end to the first season of The Curious Cult show!
DAVID PEREL - EP. 14 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
David Perel started his racing career at a very young age. He's had ups and downs, he's discovered a passion for real-life racing and found success there all the while progressing as a formidable sim racer. In this interview, David and I discuss his entrepreneurial spirit, what it takes to be the best at something, starting side hustles that become business, curiosity, hard work and sacrifice. A riveting conversation with an accomplished sportsperson and entrepreneur.
ERIK HERSMAN - EP. 13 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
In this fascinating episode, I talk with Erik Hersman, the co-founder of BRCK.COM, iHub and Ushahidi about:
Innovative ways to bring wifi to emerging markets in rugged conditions. The business model of innovation. How they bought a 4-letter domain. How things work vs will this work type of curiosity. New words for failure that we should use. Tertiary education is nice but not necessary.
RICH MULHOLLAND - EP. 12 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
Rock and Roadie turned entrepreneur Richard Mulholland is the founder of presentation powerhouse Missing Link, as well as the co-founder of 21Tanks, HumanWrit.es and The Sales Department. He has written three books, Legacide, Boredom Slayer, and Good story, bro and is a global public speaker that in 2019 alone spoke in 26 countries on 6 continents and to online audiences the world over. Mostly though, he's a husband, dad, brother, son and uncle.
In this episode we talk about adapting your skills to a changing world, how some people are knowledge hunters and others are knowledge gatherers and how comfort is the enemy of curiosity.
LAUREN BEUKES - EP. 11 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
Lauren Beukes is the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City and Afterland, among other works.
In this episode, Lauren discusses her badass parents, her ability to engage her own kid's curiosity, what it's like to launch a novel about a global pandemic in the middle of a global pandemic (which was unplanned) and more.
TINUS LE ROUX - EP. 10 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
In the 10th episode of the Curiosity Cult Show, I chat with Tinus Le Roux, the CEO at Fancam. They take stadium-sized HD selfies that teams across the world use to engage their fans.
Tinus has a unique experience and understanding of his curiosity and is one of South Africa's unsung entrepreneurial veterans.
Rob McGinniS - EP 09 of The Curious Cult Show
In the 9th episode of the Curious Cult Show, Rob McGinnis talks about his intense curiosity about turning C02 into fuel that we can use in our vehicles today.
We discuss his storytelling ability, his theater background and how that helped him raise the funding he needed to change the world.
Listen to the episode here:
Our Irrational Obsession with Billionaires Needs to Stop
I enjoy reading about famous and wealthy people. I like to understand how they live and what one human being does with more money than a country earns in a year. I like reading biographies that teach me about the path these people took to get to where they are. It’s voyeuristic and a guilty pleasure I’ve had for a while. But I believe that society’s obsession with the wealthy and famous is getting out of hand.
Here’s the thing: I like Kanye West’s music (his pre-god music) but I don’t care what he thinks about planned parenthood and abortion.
I want to drive a Tesla and hope that SpaceX gets humanity to Mars, but I don’t care what Elon Musk thinks about the global pandemic.
I shop at Amazon, but I don’t care if Jeff Bezos believes that investing in cryptocurrency is a good idea or not.
I would wear Kylie Jenner’s lipstick before I listen to her opinion on politics.
Yet when these billionaires comment on anything, we listen. When they announce presidential races, we indulge them. Forbes recently interviewed West about his run for office in the USA and the interview is absolutely batshit crazy. It’s so crazy that the best they could do was quote West in incoherent chunks and avoid writing an actual story, because his meandering smashing together of words was practically unusable.
Another potential American president who babbles on incoherently. Great.
As a society, we need to place much more importance on what experts say about topics that they have dedicated their lives to. We need to stop listening to wealthy people about everything.
I want to hear Jay-Z’s views on the evolution of music. I’m interested in what Kylie Jenner has to say about growing a brand from zero to a billion – that makes sense.
When it comes to things like global pandemics, medical procedures, quantum physics and international relations, I want to hear from people that have dedicated their lives to these fields… not someone who is dipping their toe in for a lark.
I do not want to read about Kanye West telling Forbes that vaccines are “…the mark of the beast,” and that planned parenthood has “…been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work”.
Here’s another unqualified rich man who is anti-abortion telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies. Why are we indulging his ill-informed opinions and giving him a microphone on some of the most important platforms in the world?
We let these people speak because they are billionaires. We have become obsessed with wealth as an indicator of all-encompassing knowledge and experience.
I was recently sent a press release that triggered this column. The PR agency pitched this and similar headlines:
Can Billionaires Teach Us How to Thrive in Crisis?
No, they can’t.
They’re billionaires and they live on their isolated islands, football field-sized yachts that float in international waters to avoid the global pandemic, and in mansions that could house hundreds of people.
They cannot teach me or anyone else how to thrive in a crisis because they don’t live in a crisis: in fact, they barely live on the same Earth as the rest of us. Not any more. To these people, Earth just looks different.
There are 2,095 billionaires in the world that we know of, but I’m sure there are many more who don’t want us to know who they are. That’s 0.000027% of the population. These people have unthinkable wealth and are only earning more of it, yet now we’re also giving them our minds.
My frustration extends beyond the click-bait headline of desperate PR people. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I support freedom of speech that allows people to say what they want and when they want, and to receive fair and reasonable criticism. But I’m sick of listening to wealthy, famous and good looking people with tens of millions of fans on social media talk about things they know nothing about.
I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?
The unchecked impulse of the wealthy and famous to tweet whatever comes to mind does real societal damage, all in the name of ego-stroking.
Let’s talk more about Kanye West’s announcement that he’s running for president of the USA. West is a verified billionaire (Forbes calculates his net worth to be around $1.3bn). He has also recently emerged as a religious zealot who believes that the coronavirus can be cured by prayer, and that his god elects the president of the USA (his god, not the other roughly 2,999 gods that humans believe in).
This same guy is running for president (although it seems his run has come to an abrupt end, thankfully) and has a good shot at gaining votes. HE HAS NEVER VOTED IN HIS LIFE. He is barely equipped to run a household, let alone a country. Yet he has a platform because he sells a lot of sneakers and can rap over a beat. He’s damn good at rapping and he sure knows how to brand himself, but outside of this, he has no qualifications that justify his destructive messages. He is scientifically bankrupt and morally questionable. Have we learned nothing from Donald Trump?
Why are we empowering billionaires? Why are we giving dogmatic nut jobs a microphone? Is it because we are so empty of our own opinions that we need the rich, famous and good looking to think for us?
Is it easier to allow populists to make decisions for us than to formulate our own views and act accordingly? Or are our democratic institutions ready for disruption? Is this not exactly what democracy is? An individual who believes that they should run for president and can do so without hesitation.
I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?
There is no line here. We have let the crazies run the insane asylum. This is our doing.
As I have said already, I believe that everyone has the right to their own opinions, but outrage is engagement. Social networks, news organisations, YouTubers, influencers and anyone trying to gain traction for their opinions seek to spark outrage. Outrage stems from polarising people, not galvanising them. The middle ground is boring.
The extremes incite violence, rage and retweets. Sadly, people do not understand the difference between having an opinion and having facts. You can have your own opinion, but you cannot have your own unique facts. Social media and traditional media outlets are rewarded for inciting outrage.
The old version of this used to be, “if it bleeds, it leads” but we have progressed far beyond this now. Where does the responsibility lie? Is it with our governments? Are the laws ripe for change and ready to be upended? I don’t think so. More laws won’t fix this problem.
I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible.
Is it with our educational institutions? Perhaps. Maybe we need educators to prepare impressionable minds for the onslaught of fake news, made-up facts and wealthy uninformed power-houses pushing agendas to make them richer.
Or does responsibility lie with the wealthy who should be editing themselves to save the masses? That will never happen. Billionaires become billionaires because they are ambitious, egocentric and mostly selfish. These are not traits that serve a community very well.
I believe that the ultimate responsibility lies with each of us. It’s our job to know who is talking to us and what has informed their view of the world. It’s our job to question everything we read and question why it’s being said in a specific way on a specific platform to a specific audience.
It’s our job to challenge politicians, to challenge laws, to fight for change, to openly debate things that upset us and to indulge other people with differing opinions as long as they aren’t causing harm to other people.
I believe that opinions stemming from the Trumps, Musks and Wests of the world are causing more damage than the world can manage. Social media has made it too easy for unchecked opinions to gain traction and muddy the facts so that most people can’t tell which way gravity is pulling them.
I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible.
Finally, do not agree with everything you see online (even this column) just because it has appeared online. Dig deeper, find out who the author is, find out what they believe in, find out why they hold this opinion – and then see if you still like what they’ve said.
This is how we overcome idiocy and dangerous extremism. It’s on us. No one is going to save us from ourselves.
This article was originally published in The Daily Maverick.
Three reasons you haven't started a side hustle
You’re scared of failure, you’re scared of what people will think, you think you don’t have enough money. These are the three reasons you haven’t started a side hustle yet. Here’s how to overcome those problems…
Absolutely everyone has an idea that they think could become a side hustle that makes money. Shockingly few people actually take that idea and turn it into a side hustle. Why? What makes us so scared to venture out of our comfort zones and try something new, start something different and potentially improve our financial situations? We seem to have society that scared of starting.
I want to change that.
Over the past 20 years I have built many side hustles, some succeeded and became a fulltime gig for me, many did not but thanks to these attempts I realised that there are three main reasons that I and other people don’t start a side hustle. They are not complicated reasons but they are real and scary for most people.
I want to talk about them so that we can address them and let them go.
1. You’re scared of failure.
Fear of failure is the number 1 reason people don’t start a side hustle. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that fear of failure is the number 1 reason people don’t do anything exciting, scaring, new, difficult or risky.
“What if I fail?” is the question that keeps you up at night, that you wont bring up with your partner or friends and that eventually makes you want to crawl into a little ball in bed, cover your head with the duvet and rock yourself to sleep.
Failure is a bitch. It hurts, it’s a blow to the ego and often you believe it’s the thing people are waiting for or expecting of you. But you’re wrong. As much as it hurts, failure is a fantastic way to learn and if your frame failure as a method of teaching then you never lose! You actually gain. You gain experience. You learn what not to do the next time. You have lived. If you never start then you have definitely not experienced a full life.
I like to ask people to test out their idea in the following way:
If your side hustle fails will you die?
I’m serious.
Will you literally die? No? Then fuckit, do the thing.
If all that happens when you fail is that you feel bad, learn something new and move on then what the hell do you have to lose? NOTHING!
2. You're scared of what people will say.
Do you know how many people are thinking about you right now as you read this sentence? None.
No one is actively thinking about your achievements this very minute. That means that while you sit and worry about other people, they are not doing the same. No one does that. Do you?
Do you sit and think about the people you know throughout the day hoping they’re failing at what they do? Waiting for them to update their LinkedIn profile that they have quit their new side hustle? No, of course not! That’s insane.
When I was running Nic Harry (a fashion side hustle that I started with $350 and turned into a full-time six figure business before selling it) I would tell people that they shouldn’t worry about what people think of their outfit because everyone is only worried about how their own outfits look.
Same thing with your side hustle.
But let’s say that you do actually give a shit what other people say. Why do you think the people in your life would berate you for failing? If you truly believe they would then you have the wrong people in your life. Before you consider starting your side hustle you better get your house in order and find the right people to support you through this experience.
Starting a side hustle is no joke and the people you surround yourself with can make or break your ability to survive the beginning stages of a side hustle.
Take a good look at the people you call your closest friends and family, anyone who would mock you for failing or starting should be gone, soon.
3. You think you don't have enough startup capital.
It’s strange to think that people believe the only way to start a side hustle is with startup capital. There are hundreds of thousands of businesses all over the world that start with a sale, a thought, a product that took years to build because money was tight.
Lack of funding is a roadblock that you put infront of your path to success. It’s strange how much we sabotage ourselves with roadblocks. It’s like we hate succeeding.
Let’s break out some figures:
If you save $50 a month for 12 months you’ll have $600.
At the start of the 13th month you can take $600 and buy product you believe in and then sell it for $1200.
You get where I’m going with this, right?
You need to build something small before you can build something big and we all think too big when we start out.
You don’t need a lot of money and most often you don’t need any money at all to start a business.
What do you need?
A product or service to sell.
A customer who wants to buy.
If the product you want to sell costs money then start saving right now and work out how long it’ll take you before you can buy stock.
There are ways to make it work. Think laterally, talk to people and probe the problem from different angles until you’ve found a way to build the side hustle you want.
But don’t rush.
Very often people want capital because they believe that they need to start TODAY or it’ll never work. That’s bullshit. There are very, very few side hustles that are time sensitive and I am almost certain that yours is not one of them.
Be calm, save money and then get started.
If you are serious about your side hustle but think you need some help then you’re at the right place.
Click the button below to find out more about my book, online course and coaching. Let’s #StartSomething together.
No More Blue Ticks - Why I Turned Off All Notifications
For a long time I expected that when I sent someone a message, I was owed a response almost immediately. This caused problems with friends, fights with my partner and frustration with business partners because they were, in my mind, all ignoring me.
For a long time I expected that when I sent someone a message, I was owed a response almost immediately. This caused problems with friends, fights with my partner and frustration with business partners because they were, in my mind, all ignoring me.
Here’s how it went down in my mind: What absolute bullshit! How can it take anyone two hours to reply to a message from ME!? Surely they know I have things to do and their reply is imperative to the continuation of my day. Without this immediate response my day is ruined, don’t they know!? I just spoke to them like ten minutes ago, did they throw their phone over the wall and jump off a cliff? COME ON!
That is how my mind understood communication; I sent you a message, aren’t you lucky, you must respond immediately.
Earlier this year I was working in a high-pressure startup that required a lot of care and attention. The founding team - of which I was a part - was in close communication almost every hour on the hour throughout much of the day and a chunk of the evening. We operated in multiple timezones and even when we were altogether everything was urgent and it was understood that responses were immediate for any and all communication.
Then I left the company.
When my time at the company was over I decided to rethink how I use the communication tools at my disposal. I took a very detailed look at my anxiety levels, stress levels and my expectations of the people around me. I realised that real-time communication was destroying me, my relationships and my ability to do the work that I was most interested in.
Everything is real-time in 2020. News, communication, trauma, success, happiness, sadness, it’s all in real-time and streamed all over the world. You want to watch something else? Cool, pick from Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc etc. You don’t like what you’re reading? Cool, change it up and read something new on your kindle, phone, iPad, laptop. You want to see your friend a million miles away? No problem, Whatsapp video call, Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, Teams, check their Instagram story, Facebook story, TikTok uploads or anything else. You want it. You got it. No questions asked.
Even email is not perceived as asynchronous any longer. People expect you to receive, read and reply within minutes and if you don’t reply they send you a Whatsapp message and if you don’t reply to that they straight up, old school dial your number and phone you to tell you about the Whatsapp message they sent you about the email they sent you.
There is no escaping it, people expect you to reply to everything immediately.
But before I go on, let’s try to understand what happens to your brain when you receive an email or message.
“I feel tremendous guilt,” admitted Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook, to an audience of Stanford students. He was responding to a question about his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” he explained.
The above quote is pulled from a Harvard article titled Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time.
The article goes on to explain how dopamine engages with our social interactions and causes us to crave “successful” social interactions.
Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that plays a starring role in motivating behavior. It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food, when we have sex, after we exercise, and, importantly, when we have successful social interactions. In an evolutionary context, it rewards us for beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them.
We are being “rewarded” for what the world is telling us are beneficial behaviours. Every time you get a “ping” a “ding” a “buzz” or a flash of light about a new message or email you are being rewarded with a dopamine hit that reconfirms you are doing well socially. Social networks and social proof have led us to believe that posting, reading, messaging and engaging on social networks is a “beneficial behaviour”. Work environments have conditioned us to believe that doing email is a core function of our job and work. It’s often how we’re measured subconsciously by our peers and colleagues.
We’ve been tricked by Facebook (which owns Whatsapp and Instagram), LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat and all the others. Even the person who designed the exploitation at Facebook admits that we’ve been tricked. You now even get a little red mark on you browser tab that tries to pull you back into these services if there’s an unread notification. It’s brutal.
So I leave the high-intensity of a startup and decide to try and get to grips with my anxiety and stress caused by communication.
The first thing I did was turn off the blue-tick-read-receipt insanity of Whatsapp. Now I can’t see if people have read my messages and they can’t see if I’ve read theirs.
The second thing I did was activate a permanent out of office response telling people that I don’t do email as my work so they shouldn’t expect immediate replies from me.
The final thing that I did was refocus my work away from communication and towards my actual work.
Initially, I was fidgety and irate, constantly in anticipation of someone reading my message and responding. But then the craziest thing happened after a couple of weeks… I stopped caring about return communication. I stopped expecting people to message me back immediately and that meant I was never disappointed when they took two days to reply.
This is a key revelation. With blue-ticks on, I was constantly disappointed by people who did not reply to me as quickly as I reply to them. That rage and disappointment completely disappeared when I realised that they probably also have a job, emails, work to do, meetings, kids, husbands, wives, parents, stress, anxiety and that I was, SHOCKINGLY, not at the top of their priority list.
Expectation is the thief of patience.
I expect you to reply immediately so I have no patience relating to your day, your life and no respect for your time.
Recently I was contacted on Facebook by someone I used to know and last saw about 20 years ago. He was a kid (11 or 12) when I knew his brother and he had just seen me on a TV interview. He expected a reply and when he didn’t get one he lashed out at me and got very angry. He even sent me the “contact information” of very famous people that he allegedly knew to show me how important he is. Can you imagine being so demanding of someone else’s time that you become aggressive, name call and insult someone over chat when they don’t reply?
I blocked him and moved on with my day but the interaction really shocked me.
Have we become so desperate for social proof from others that if they are busy or just don’t want to talk to you we lash out? I think we have and I don’t like being desperate.
The incredible outcome of turning off read receipts and notifications for all communication is that I do not check my phone obsessively in case someone has messaged me.
My self worth is not directly tied to other people engaging with me in real-time. I have more time to focus on my work and my time is more focused because I’m not constantly distracted.
If you feel frazzled, harassed and are tired of people disappointing you because they dared to respond to you a few hours or a few days later than you expected, perhaps it’s time for you to reassess your self worth and the work you do.
Email is not your job. Email was never your job. Messaging is not a right, it’s a privilege.
You do not own other people’s time or their list of priorities. You have a gift called communication, use it to empower your day not destroy it. Take back control by not replying to every message and email as if it’s all urgent. It’s not.
Be the Most You That You Can Be
Today people think they can become famous by copying what other famous people do. The tricky part is how we’re experiencing fame. In the golden age of film and music, there were a handful of people around the world who were considered famous. Today there are literally tens of thousands of people who have bigger audiences than the stars of yesteryear.
The only way to make it out alive is to live as only you can live.
There is nothing new about wanting to be famous.
Eighty years ago you would see James Dean on the big screen and idolise him, want to be him and wish you were as cool as him. But you didn’t look like him and you weren’t as talented as him and you didn’t imagine you could be as famous as him by just copying what he did.
Today, that’s exactly how people believe they can become famous; by copying what other famous people do. The tricky part is how we’re experiencing fame. In the golden age of film and music, there were a handful of people around the world who were considered famous. Today there are literally tens of thousands of people who have bigger audiences than the stars of yesteryear.
Think I’m kidding? Here are just a few to get you thinking:
David Dobrik — 16.1m YouTube followers
Charlie D’amelio — 60m+ TikTok followers and 1.8bn likes (she’s 15 years old)
Casey Neistate — 11.9m YouTube followers through his daily vlogging
Lilly Singh — 14.9m YouTube followers
KSI — 19m YouTube followers
MKBHD — 11m Instagram followers
Liza Koshy—18m Instagram followers.
Jasmine Brown - 2.4m Youtube followers
These are regular people.
There really isn’t anything too unique about them yet these people each have an audience larger than the size of New York. Give that some thought.
We believe that media outlets influence our lives, they do, of coufse but not nearly as much as the famous people on social media these days.
I have been using TikTok recently and it’s been a trip, let me tell you. It’s filled with young people being themselves and getting famous for it. Never before have we seen a platform that can turn a simple 15 or 60-second video into a career of fame and fortune so quickly. You can post something unique and interesting and reach 1 million likes in a day. It’s insane. I posted a video of my one hand washing a tap and it received over 30 000 views in a week. My hand washed a tap for fuck sakes.
The people succeeding on these platforms (InstaFaceTokTube), the ones who are really leading the way, are being themselves. They are being the most version of themselves that they can be.
Everyone else is following or copying them.
Everyone else is following and copying because social media lets us believe that we are just like Charlie with her 60m followers. She’s just a kid who likes dancing. Young people see her and think to themselves “Hey, I’m a kid, I like dancing, I can do that.” And then get all pissy that they aren’t famous after a single upload.
There are copycats, of course. And there are people who can dance better than Charlie or put on makeup better than so and so or kick a ball better than blah blah blah. Sure, but if it isn’t your thing then it isn’t the most version of you and you’re fucked.
Acting like something is not the same as being that thing.
Faking a passion for dancing isn’t going to make you a famous dancer. Faking an obsession for cooking wont make you a famous chef.
Let’s take a look at Finlidrappermusic’s account. This guy is a drummer and all-rounder musician. He’s incredibly gifted and likes to play songs using glasses of water that are filled up to make different sounds. He could’ve just set up his drumkit and played drums and then posted to TikTok, but he didn’t. He chose to be the most version of himself that he could be. He didn’t look to anyone else, he just did the thing that he was doing and people loved it.
There are examples of this all over the world and throughout time. Yes copycats exit and yes they can make a lot of money doing what they do (copy) and do it well. But the ultimate question lies in front of them: Are they happy?
Probably not. Acting all day on social media and in life is hard work and tiring work and frustrating work.
Being yourself is not hard work. It’s hard work to get yourself out there and help people discover you. It’s hard work to become the best and refine your skills but it isn’t anywhere as difficult as being a worse version of someone else.
And here’s the thing, the people that I respect and admire the most in the world are not the ones with the most money or the biggest business or the fanciest houses. The people that I respect are the ones who know who they are and live accordingly every single day.
Think like a Founder - Important Habits You Should Adopt
If you are launching a new venture, starting a side hustle or thinking about making a big shift in your life then you are probably considering what it takes. What does it take to start something new? What does it mean to your life to commit to building something and succeeding?
I have been a founder many times over the past twenty years and I surround myself with the best founders, business builders and leaders out there. There are some things that business founders do that I think are imperative to your own success if you are starting something new. Here’s a breakdown of what I think founders do that other people should adopt when building something.
1. Obsess
There are problems everywhere. That means that there are solutions waiting to be turned into money everywhere. My favourite founders choose to work on problems that they are obsessed with.
Talented people can work on just about any problem and can likely make it a success of some kind. But it’s when founders obsess over the problem or the solution that they really turn up the heat.
It’s perfectly OK to obsess for one day a week or one hour a day. Your obsession can start out slowly and come up in a nagging sort of way. If you are obsessing then you want to work on the business or venture wholeheartedly. If you’re obsessed with food and eating the right kind of fuel, you’re likely to be a fit and healthy person. If you don’t really care too much about what you eat and how it affects your training then you’ll probably struggle to get into the best shape of your life.
The best founders obsess and that’s a good place for you to start: What are you obsessing over and is that what you are working on every day?
2. Focus
You can’t build multiple side hustles at once. You think you can. Other’s will tell you they did. You’ll really want to but you shouldn’t.
Saying “no” is an indication of obsessive focus. The more you say no to, the more you can focus on the thing you are obsessed with.
If you try to take on every opportunity then you’ll lose out on all of them instead of capitalise on the most lucrative or unique one.
Start saying NO more often, even if it feels like you might be losing out on something.
If you consistently feel like you’re losing out then maybe you’re working on the wrong thing and it’s time to rethink your obsession.
3. REVENUE
Early on in a startup or side hustle every action should lead to revenue. If it isn’t something that will take you a step close to earning money then it shouldn’t be your focus.
Sales and revenue matter more than just about anything else.
This means that if you need your product to improve to make a sale, then that’s a focus. If you need your YouTube channel to hit 100 000 subscribers before revenue, then that’s your focus. Figure out what your triggers are for revenue and then double-down and focus, obsess on hitting revenue.
4. Deliver
Don’t faff around trying to make whatever it is you’re working on perfect. PERFECT DOESN’T EXIST. You are never going to get to perfection and if you think you will, you’re in lalaland and need a hard reset in your thinking.
Stop. Assess what you have. Launch. The first thing you launch is never going to be the best version of your vision but at least it’ll be out there in the world. Deliver something to someone and listen to what they have to say. Put your work out into the world, it only counts when other people can use and critique it.
Many have said it before me: Ideas are fucking worthless, execution is everything.
5. Listen
It’s easy to start something new or make a change when it’s just you on your own. You essentially run your own little dictatorship of one. You decide what to build. You decide when to build it. You decide how it works, what it costs, where it lives and when you make changes.
Then you launch.
And then everyone has an opinion.
It’s difficult to take on every opinion you hear but the best founders listen and know how to curate who they listen to. You can’t take on everyone’s opinion but often when users are telling you something it wont just be one person with one opinion, it’ll be multiple users reporting the same feedback and that’s when you listen and then follow steps 5 and 6 below.
Build, launch, listen, iterate, adapt.
6. Iterate
The first version of whatever you’re selling is going to be good enough to get out there but not good enough to use forever.
Deliver the next feature. Add the next service. Upgrade the product. Listen to feedback (see point 6) from customers and implement the most relevant and practical suggestions.
The faster you can create a flywheel of iteration the better your product will be and the happier you’ll keep your customers.
Build something. Release it. Gain customers. Watch how they use your product. Listen to their feedback. Build the next version. Release it. Repeat.
That’s a simple flywheel that most founders I know use.
7. Adapt
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson’s famous quote applies to the start of something too. If you think you know how people are going to use your product you are sorely mistaken. You have no idea what’s coming at you until you release your baby into the wild and see if it can survive as you planned or if you need to adap, change and rethink the plan.
This is why point 4 above is so important. You have to get over your need for perfection. You need to overcome your fear of what other people say. Founders don’t give a shit what their critics say. They build, deliver, release, listen and adapt.
If you are afraid of making small tweaks, tiny pivots and slight adjustments as you go then you’re likely going to cling on to a sinking ship and drown.
Obsessing is great but do not obsess over the perfection of your initial idea or product. Be prepared that whatever you are building or launching is going to change, even slightly, over time.
8. Be You
In a world of infinite information and personality-overload it’s very easy to find someone to copy. We see the success of the Kardishians of the reality TV stars of the people who do nothing, contribute nothing but have a personality and we think we can do what they did.
You can’t be a better version of Kim Kardashian than she can be. You can’t be a better version of Casey Neistat than Casey. You can’t beat Jordan Peele at his own game or take Trevor Noah on at being Trevor.
But you sure as shit can beat them with your own brand of insanity, skill, dedication, obsession and focus. You can beat anyone in the world at being the most version of yourself that you can be. Founders know this intimitaly and it’s a hidden super power. Everybody reads about Steve Jobs being an asshole and the founders I know who tried to be like Steve - even I did for a brief and devastating period in one of my businesses - suffered greatly because we’re just not built like Steve was.
You need to figure out who the fuck you are and want to be and then you need to be that person as much as you can be.
Be yourself, relentlessly. It will pay off.
Rapelang Rabana - EP 08 OF THE CURIOSITY CULT SHOW
Rapelang Rabana is one of Africa’s most impressive entrepreneurs. She was a curious child who grew into an obsessive entrepreneur. She read voraciously and turned her curiosity into the need to build solutions to big problems.
Apologies for the sound in this recording!
START SOMETHING TODAY
You will never be younger than you are today. Now is the time to start something and this is the manifesto to help you find inspiration.
You will never be younger than you are today, right now, this very minute.
As far as we know this is the only life we get. So, If you are never going to be younger than right now and this is the only life you get... go out and start something.
Start something small, something big or something dreamy.
Start a company. Start a blog. Start a new Facebook group and meet some people.
Start a side hustle. Start to network better. Start a renewed commitment to your job if you love it and want more.
Start caring more about the people around you. Start showing your partner more affection. Start liking yourself a bit more every day. It’s OK to love yourself, it’ll make loving other people easier.
Start exercising today. Start walking every day. Start to breath more deeply and be aware of those breaths.
Start cutting out negative people and welcome in those who lift you up. Start finding your tribe, they’re more important than you can imagine.
Start giving yourself a break. Give others a break too, they’re all doing the best they can.
Start thinking about the family you want or start to let go of the need to have a family. Both of those choices are OK. Start to form a new family that you choose, that’s OK too.
Start reading more and start reading more widely. Start reading views that oppose your own and start to engage with people who are different from you.
Start surrounding yourself with the best people, with people you want to be like and people who only make you better, not worse.
Start being kinder because we could all use more kindness right now.
Start looking after yourself first, that’s self-care not selfish.
Start eating proper food, healthy food, food that makes you better. Start eating the food you love even if it’s occasionally unhealthy. Start to indulge but don’t make indulgence a default.
Start drinking more water. Start drinking that special bottle of bubbly that’s been waiting for the perfect occasion. Today is that special occasion. Start opening that bottle right now.
Start calling your friends more often even when you don’t feel like it. Start growing new friendships even if they may end up breaking down over time.
Start questioning your choices because they may need to change as the world changes around you.
Start thinking about the world, the universe, existence, religion, politics and all the things that seem too big and scary to understand.
Start taking care of your money and understanding your finances. If you don’t, no one else is going to make it easy for you.
Start defining what success means to you and what failure looks like.
Start finding happiness in the smallest of things and be present when you are victorious. Life is filled with small victories that we ignore.
Start ignoring other people and their futile opinions. They don’t matter nearly as much as you think they do.
Start by doing just one thing today that you have been putting off forever.
Start today because you will never be younger than you are right now and this is the only shot you get.
Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
This article was originally published in 2014 and has been read by over a million people across the world!
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
I recently turned 30. For some very odd reason, I’ve not warmed to the idea of it just yet. However, as I began to evaluate my 20s I realised how many mistakes I’ve made and things I’ve learned in a decade of life.
I took some time to write myself some advice.
1) Travel
You have very little responsibility so go and travel. When you get to 30, you’re going to want to travel slightly differently, spend a little more, do slightly more expensive things, eat at slightly better restaurants. So work for a year and save enough money to experience the world on the cheap.
How do you know what you want to do if you don’t know what’s out there to do?
Don’t just travel to the obvious places.
Travel to the tough places.
Travel to learn.
Travel to discover.
Travel to the places that will challenge who you think you want to be.
2) Build things
Don’t spend too much time working on other people’s visions or in other people’s meetings. Spend time figuring out what your own world view is (see point 1) and where you want to take your own life.
Meetings are where ideas go to die.
If you find yourself in a corporate job that you wish you could leave then do it. Leave. If you don’t have a corporate job yet see point 5.
3) Read
Read every day. Read everything you can. Don’t just read about things you know about. Read about people. Read people.
4) Stop Watching Television
Right now. Stop it. It’s not helping you get better at anything.
5) Career
Do not take that corporate job. Just don’t do it (see point 2).
6) Trust
Even if it kills your relationships. Even if it destroys your ideas. Even if you lose your friends. Even if it means you end up getting hurt.
Trust people until they give you a reason not to.
But don’t be naïve. Some people are out to fuck you.
7) People
People are the best and worst thing that will happen to you. Some will help you go further, faster. Others will pull you down to their level and help you lose. Most are OK. Many are average. Some are excellent.
A few people will change your life forever. Find them.
You don’t need a lot of friends or people around you. You need amazing people who do for you as you do for them.
It’s simple really, a lot of average friends will leave you feeling alone when you need to feel surrounded by people who care.
8) Value Time
Don’t waste time on people who you don’t trust. Don’t waste time with lovers who cheat on you. Don’t waste time with friends who don’t treat you the way you treat them (see point 7).
Do not be late.
Value other people’s time. That means that if you’re late, you don’t give a shit about them or their time and that you think you’re worth more and therefore can keep them waiting.
Some people will tell you that it’s OK to be late. It’s not. Some people will tell you that it’s just the way they are. Then you need to reevaluate them (see point 7 above).
9) Fail
Fail a lot. Fail often. Fail at love. Fail at sex. Fail at socialising. Fail at making friends. Fail at work. Fail at business. Fail with family. Fail with existing friends.
Fail. But do it quickly and learn a lesson.
If you don’t learn something every time you fail then all you’ve done is failed. If you learn something, then you’ve grown. Every time you grow and learn and fail, you get better at figuring out how the hell to succeed.
10) Success
There is no point at which you will have succeeded. Not in your twenties. Not ever.
Get over that fact and start building things (see point 2 and combine with point 9).
11) Patience
Be patient. Nothing worth doing is worth doing quickly. Nothing worth building is worth building in a rush. Nothing of value is formed in a minute.
Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.