What To Do If You’re Quiet – Should You Have A Side Hustle?
What to do if you’re quiet – should you have a side hustle?
This really happened to me. We pulled into our driveway just the other day and there’s a guy fishing in our recycling bin, pulling out bottles and cans and putting them into milk crates.
Of course, I stopped as I drove by and asked him, “Are you collecting bottles to get the money back?”
And he says, “Yeah, is that okay?”
“Of course, it’s okay. I don’t mind.”
So I drive past, park and walk back for a chat because that’s the kind of guy I am.
He says, “I’m a landscaper normally, but with this dry weather and this heatwave, nothing’s growing and nobody needs lawn mowing, pruning, landscaping and no one can plant anything now with all these water restrictions so I don’t have much work. I’m out here getting a bit of extra income as a little side job” he said.
“Fair play”, I said, “Good for you.” But as I go on with my day, (I’m a business coach of course), I started thinking about him and my admiration for his gap and thought, ‘Hmm, I’m not sure as a business coach if that’s what I would advise.”
So here’s what I would advise as a business coach for builders and tradies.
The second source of income like this or working at Woollies, Tesco, or wherever, or for someone else, is valid.
You need the extra money. It’s a valid way of generating some extra income if you really need money or if you don’t have any cash reserved.
However, it’s not going to help you solve your business problem. It’s not going to help you make your business more sustainable. It’s not going to help you grow.
It’s not going to help you make your business resilient to the next drought.
What should you do in quiet times?
What that guy should be doing is marketing. He should be working on his marketing.
He should be finding more customers.
If everyone is having their lawn mowed once a month instead of once a week, he needs four times as many to keep the revenue the same.
If he goes to his customers and talks about mulching and moisture retention conditioning for the soil, he might get some more business.
They could try to sell sprinkler systems, irrigation systems or rainwater collection systems from the gutters before it does eventually rain again.
That’s just me shooting from the hip and coming up with a few ideas that he could go and try and increase his revenue with when there’s not much work for mowing, weeding, pruning, or landscaping.
Recommended Reading: Stop Cleaning The Shed! Build A Marketing Machine
There’s probably other things you could find as well.
I don’t know his situation. He might really need the money. He might have other reasons for not wanting to go and get additional business such as he doesn’t want to grow and hire somebody, etc.
But I’m a business coach for people who want to grow their businesses, so I’m going to focus on that.
I’ll think about marketing, sales and growth work.
If you’re quiet and you have a situation like a drought or if you’re a landscaper where it gets quiet, start marketing. Go out there and find some new customers or try and sell something else to the ones you’ve got.
They call it upselling or cross selling – it’s the same thing.
If it rains and you get busy again and you’ve grown, you can always hire another trades person and keep doing more marketing and grow that business into something that’s a lot less vulnerable to those ups and downs in the quiet periods.
So the point of this video is:
If you want to grow and build a sustainable business, you’d better focus your energy on marketing and sales when it’s quiet and invest in your business rather than getting a side hustle.
Remember, marketing is more than just advertising and it’s more than just looking for new customers. Selling new things to your existing customers is also marketing and is also valid. And it’s often easier than trying to find a new customer and selling something they’ve never bought from you before.
I’ll make another video about that another day.
If you’re interested in my business coaching and whether it’s right for you you’ve got some options.
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See you later.