The Difficulties of Simply Beginning a Side Hustle
These articles are written primarily for those of you either starting or thinking of starting your own business. The intention is to help you avoid the pitfalls and start things smoothly.
In last week’s post, I detailed my quandary—the difficulties of simply beginning a side hustle and focusing on one idea at a time. Over the last week, I’ve considered how I had bound my fledgling business KodifyIT over-tightly to my scribblings on Medium and Substack—time for a divorce.
Disclosure. I sometimes use Generative AI tools to help me when writing. From outline suggestions to topics or subtleties, I had yet to think of.
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Splitting the Work
There are two main focuses, rather than the four or five that were naively taken on earlier this year: writing and my business ambitions.
The writing is for pleasure, mostly. Sure, it would be nice to earn something for the efforts; perhaps that will happen, perhaps not. Most important is the genuine sense of achievement in daring to put my thoughts out there, something I, personally, would never have dared to do just a few years ago. I’m very shy and introverted by nature, and it has taken decades to build my defences. If you met me now, you would never think I was an introvert 😉
Over the last few weeks, the realisation is that any potential business clients are not the sort of people to be interested in the article’s ramblings. Very likely, they never will be. So why, you ask yourself, are the Medium and Substack profiles so tightly linked with the business? They are two entirely separate aspects.
Sure, I’ll write about many different topics, but so what? I enjoy it, and I hope some of you do too.
The solution was simple. Split them out and rebrand the writing profiles into something more in tune with what I am happiest writing about.
Beware of Broken Links
A total rebranding of accounts in Medium and Substack is relatively simple, but be aware of the possibility of broken links on your social media accounts. This is, potentially, the most time-consuming depending, oddly, on the source of your links.
Links to Medium articles seem to function correctly still, even after changing your entire profile, sub-domain, etc. But I’ll monitor this over the following days, just to be sure.
Substack links, on the other hand, will require revisiting all your shared links. Each link must be edited with the new sub-domain replacing the old one.
Substack: How do I change my subdomain?
Fortunately, I have tended to use links to Medium articles rather than Substack mostly. As I said, I’ll monitor the links over the next few days. But, even if I do have to revisit these links, it shouldn’t take long, as I’ve only published thirty articles or so. Obviously, it will be more of a problem for most writers.
Pivoting the Business
Last week’s post briefly touched on the specialisation problem with my business model.
The Everyday Solopreneur: Start Your Side Hustle with Focus and Flair
My passion was, and is, the all too prevalent problems of clients under-specifying their software requirements. This inevitably leads to conflict and disappointment, usually after the initial delivery, during the acceptance phase of the project.
The problem with building a business to address the issue is that “Project Requirements Analysis” means nothing to potential clients. What does have an impact is the more general term “Project Management”. Project Requirements Analysis is simply one of many steps within Project Management.
Unveiling the Key to Project Success: The Power of Requirements Analysis and Client Specifications
See what I mean? This means something to those in the profession of Project Management but not to anybody else.
Fortunately, pivoting my business and supporting my website is not as significant a problem as I feared. But it still has to happen; You can take a look for yourselves by clicking on the links at the end of all my posts. Do you understand what services I am offering? I didn’t think so.
The message must be simple to understand in the context of the potential client’s experience. But, all this is simple and easy with a bit of effort; the main challenge is getting the message out. This means Marketing, a subject in which I’ve zero experience.
I’m not looking forward to it one bit.
Building the Business
I want to get going and not muck about actually doing the marketing. Life as a solopreneur is a lot more challenging than I had anticipated. Simply being a specialist in my discipline is just not enough.
I must build my network and contacts for the next phase of business building. I have several ideas, but I’m floundering around like a fish out of water. This is where GenAI tools start to shine.
First up to bat are the available resources:
I have a small business specialising in Project Management, more specifically in Project Requirements Analysis. I have no experience in marketing. Can you give me an extensive list of resources to help me to learn how to market my new business?
Great results, of course; they are not exactly what I need now. But, an excellent starting point. GPT-4 is a bit hamstrung; unfortunately, we are limited to its training data until September 2021. Bing Chat doesn’t give such an extensive list of results, but at least the links provided are current and relevant.
I also asked for a Marketing Plan with milestones, another good starting point. Of course, I could wing it; however, I must screw the nut and put the effort in. Now, if you are in a similar position, you don’t have to do everything, just the points that will get you moving in the right direction. Plans constantly change anyway, so as long as the fundamentals are covered, the rest will come in time.
Final Thoughts
I don’t plan my articles weekly; I write what is foremost in my mind. Perhaps this is not the most productive methodology; possibly, I need to think about creating an ideas factory.
However, it’s the most fun not knowing during the week what I will write about next. I suppose it means that they stay fresh and reflect my personality better.
I hope you have a good week ahead. Until the next time, take care.
KodifyIT B.V. is an advisory bureau targeting businesses that have either been on the receiving end of a failed project or are aware of the potential pitfalls and wish to mitigate as much risk as possible while developing a project’s client requirements. We aim to side-step any issues before they cost time and money.
I apologise to my readers for some of the spellings you may feel are incorrect. I was born and brought up in the United Kingdom, and this is the spelling I am comfortable with (Grammarly is happy with it anyway).