THE CHECKLIST TO LAUNCH A SIDE HUSTLE How to launch your first, successful side hustle C R E A T I V E A N D C O F F E E
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP ONE GET CLEAR ON YOUR WHY Going into business for the sole purpose of making money, without a 'why' or caring about the 'how' is very quick way to get burnout, uninspired and frustrated. "People don t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. - Simon Sinek Being clear on your purpose will give your business journey purpose and clarity. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION HOW TO FIND YOUR NICHE www.creativeandcoffee.com
WHAT ARE YOU TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT? Starting a business based in a niche or around a topic you don't truly love is going to get pretty hard, very quickly. So have a long think about the things that you really love to do. WHY DO YOU WANT TO START THIS BUSINESS? It doesn't have to be anything truly profound but when starting a business, especially a side-hustle, you need to be committed. Every so often you will need to remind yourself why you do what you do. HOW WILL YOUR BUSINESS BENEFIT OTHERS? There's a lot of things we need to think about when starting a business and a lot of them concern us. But business is a two way street, a relationship between you and your customer - so what's in it for them? WHAT IS THE ONE THING, BIG OR SMALL, THAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE? Your value proposition, your unique selling point, there are many different terms for it but it boils down to this - what makes you stand out from the rest. Why should people buy from you?
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE IN ONE YEAR? What does your business look like in one year? Is it ready to become your full time job? Are you ready to leave your 9-5? WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE IN FIVE YEARS? It's important to have a vision for your business that you can work towards. Especially as a side hustle, we can often treat our businesses differently than if we were relying on them full time. WHAT WILL SOME OF THE SACRIFICES BE? Saving up, budgeting, working more hours. Let's be realistic about the sacrifices we are going to make up front - so we can better prepare for them now. WILL IT BE WORTH IT? Those sacrifices you've just listed - compare them to what you have written for 'where you want to be in five years time'. Is it worth it? When times get tough, come back to this and reinspire yourself
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP TWO GET CLEAR ON YOUR MISSION The best way to create a profitable business is to solve a problem. "To launch a business means successfully solving problems. Successfully solving problems means listening." - Richard Branson In this section we will think about a problem we want to solve, who we want to solve it for and how we can solve it. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION HOW TO FIND YOUR AUDIENCE HOW TO VALIDATE YOUR PRODUCT www.creativeandcoffee.com
WHAT PROBLEM DO YOU WANT TO SOLVE? Be as specific as you can. Think about the urgent reasons why someone might need this problem solved. HOW CAN YOU SOLVE THIS PROBLEM? Think both about general solutions to this problem but also what, specific, point of view or solutions you can offer based on your skills, knowledge and passions. WHO DO YOU WANT TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR? You might find it helpful to think about one person. Who are they? What are their hobbies, interests, struggles and aspirations? Why do you want to help them? WHERE CAN YOU FIND THESE PEOPLE? Think about the person or people you have identified above. Where would they hang out online and in real life? Ask them about this problem, what they struggle with andhow they would like the problem to be solved.
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP THREE GET CLEAR ON THE WHAT Once you know what problem you want to solve and how you want to solve it, we need to think about what we want to do. "Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it." -Ray Bradbury Choosing a way of monetizing your business is important, because if you love why you do something but not how you are doing it, then it will quickly become tiresome. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION MONETIZATION MASTERCLASS www.creativeandcoffee.com
WHAT PRODUCT OR SERVICE ARE YOU GOING TO OFFER? How are you going to monetize your passion? You might want to watch the masterclass to get some ideas! For example you could teach, create templates, write books, provide services, custom orders... HOW DO YOU ENJOY COMMUNICATING WITH PEOPLE? A great way to decide on your 'how' is to think about how you like to communicate with people. This is really at the heart of business after all. WHAT METHOD OF CONTENT CREATION DO YOU PREFER? You don't have to content market for business if you don't want to BUT it makes life a lot easier if you do. If blogging doesn't seem for you, think about vlogging or podcasting instead. Sarah x CHOOSE A SIGNATURE PRODUCT OR SERVICE Think about what it is you want to be known for. One of the biggest struggles as a new business owner is 'recognition'. By promoting a signature product you will get 'known' much faster.
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP FOUR CREATE A MARKETING PLAN If a tree falls but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Hundreds of websites launch without a marketing plan and unfortunately there is no one around to hear them. Let's not let that be the case for us. Have a plan in place to launch with a bang but also be ready to start sending traffic to the website once it's launched. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION HOW TO ENGAGE ON INSTAGRAM 5 THINGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN WHEN I STARTED BLOGGING www.creativeandcoffee.com
HOW WILL YOU GET YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER'S ATTENTION? Where are they? And what is it that you are going to say to them that will instantly catch their interest? What message are you communicating to them? WHEN YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER LANDS ON YOUR WEBSITE, WHAT ACTION DO YOU WANT THEM TO If you could only get your visitor to take one action when they arrive on your website what would it be? Make it clear and easy for them to do so TAKE? WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ARE YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE ON? You need to be where your audience is. Think also about the type of content they enjoy. Are they more likely to watch short videos, enjoy graphic images or read text. WHAT DO YOU WANT THEM TO SAY ABOUT YOU? If you could choose one thing for your ideal customer to think about you, what would it be? What would you want them to say to their friends about you?
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP FIVE CREATE YOUR WEBSITE Your business needs a home base and for many of us that will be our website. There are a number of platform options you can choose. Whilst you get a feel for them you might want to start off with the free options such as Blogger or WordPress.org. However, in the long term, you will find that these platforms are quite limiting and easily out grown - so you might want to move to a paid platform sooner rather than later. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION HOW TO START A BLOG (TECHNICALLY) HOW TO CHOOSE A WORDPRESS THEME www.creativeandcoffee.com
COPENHAGEN UNIVERSITY PRESS CHOOSE A NAME FOR YOUR BUSINESS You can agonize over this for a long time but try not to spend too much time over thinking it. Choose something that will allow you to expand as time goes on and your business grows. PURCHASE A WEBSITE DOMAIN Once you've chosen your business name go ahead and reserve the domain name for your website. Full instructions on how to do this are in the 'How To Start a Blog tutorial'. CHOOSE A WEBSITE PLATFORM There are many different types of website platform, each with different pros and cons. I use WordPress, some people use Sqaurespace. WIX, Weebly and Jimdo are other popular drag and drop builders. CREATE FOUR PILLAR POSTS OF CONTENT Whatever content type you want to product, create four posts of content that you can promote over and over again, that will always be relevant to your audience and have them ready to send traffic to.
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP SIX SET UP YOUR EMAIL LIST Having an email list is an essential tool for business. Whilst social media platforms come, go and fluctuate, your email list of potential clients will always be owned by you and gives you a direct line of communication to your audience. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION HOW TO SET UP A MAILCHIMP ACOUNT WHY WELCOME EMAILS ARE IMPORATANT www.creativeandcoffee.com
CHOOSE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE To help build your email list you will first need to choose your email marketing software. MailChimp is a popular one for beginners. CREATE A FREE GIFT Create four pieces of useful content to complement your four pillar posts, for example a checklist, a workbook, an email course, a quiz etc. Make sure it leads on as a natural next step from your blog post to help solve a problem and give your visitor a quick win. CREATE A WELCOME SERIES This is a series of emails that get sent to your email subscriber automatically when they sign up. The purpose is to introduce yourself and start build a relationship. EMAIL YOUR LIST AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH One of the number one rules of email marketing? Consistency. If your followers don't hear from you for ages they will forget who you are and are more likely to unsubscribe when you do email them - so make a plan.
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP SEVEN THINK ABOUT YOUR BRANDING Branding is important; however at this early stage I don t want you to get too caught up in your branding. In order to create branding for your business you need to have a very good idea of your mission, the feeling you want to invoke and know your audience very well. All these things are likely to grow, evolve and change quickly in the beginning of your business and as you find your feet. Therefore it s unlikely that spending huge amounts of time, effort or money on branding at this point would be a sensible investment. However, everyone is different and you will need to make some graphic design decisions when you launch in terms of visuals, so here are some things to consider. HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION WHY BRANDING IS IMPORTANT COLOUR PSYCHOLOGY 101 www.creativeandcoffee.com
CHOOSE FOUR COLOURS THAT BEST REPRESENT YOUR WHY AND WILL ATTRACT YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE CHOOSE A LOGO In the early stages you might want to choose a simple icon or text based logo. Consider all the places your logo will go and make sure it is versatile enough to represent your brand in all the different sizes and places it will need to go. BRAND LOGO COLOUR CREATE A BRAND STYLE GUIDE Create a brand style guide with the all the elements, colours and fonts you will be using. No matter what you choose it is important to make sure your graphics elements are always consistent. CREATE TEMPLATES Create templates for your blog post featured image, social media headers and social media posts. Creating templates allows you to not only be consistent but to easily change text and images for new posts, instead of starting from scratch.
THE SIDE HUSTLE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Creative and Coffee STEP SEVEN LAUNCH AND PROMOTE Finally after all that hard work you'll be ready to launch! But we don't want to launch to the sound of crickets, so let's get prepared and get ready for launch day! HELPFUL RESOURCES TO USE TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION WHY A COMING SOON PAGE IS IMPORTANT HOW TO WRITE AN ABOUT PAGE www.creativeandcoffee.com
CREATE A COMING SOON PAGE Create a Coming Soon page before you launch to generate excitement and gain email sign ups to launch to. If you have already created your email opt-in freebies you can offer this on your coming soon page as well. COUNT DOWN ON SOCIAL Begin generating excitement for your launch by starting a countdown on your social media platforms. Maybe even host a giveaway to encourage people to promote your coming soon page. INCLUDE A LINK TO YOU OPT-IN Make sure to include a link to your opt-in within all your social media bios. If you haven't created an optin yet, link to your coming soon page instead. GUEST POST Apply for guest posts or podcast spots with a similar audience to your own. This will help you reach a larger audience whilst you are still building your own and will start bringing traffic to your site.
T H E E N D Wow, we've come to the end of the checklist. If you feel a little overwhelmed right now don't worry! The reason why I've included everything I have is that I want you to launch right. To launch your side hustle with a really solid foundation which you can build a profitable business on. And if you have any questions then feel free to drop me an email or schdule a call and we can talk it through. Talk soon!