How to Start a Side Hustle in One Weekend
Side hustle lesson number 1: you don’t need to spend all of your free time trying to get your side hustle off the ground. But it can be a fun way to use your free time, to be sure. If you’ve been thinking about starting a side hustle, whether you’ve got business experience or not, this article is for you. I’m going to walk you through the process of having an idea and following through until it’s launched. All in just one weekend. Sounds crazy, right? It’s not. I just did it. And not for the first time. Let’s get to it.
You’ve got an idea for your side hustle already. I know you do.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you already have an idea in mind for your side hustle. If you don’t have an idea, I’m not going to tell you to go out and do a bunch of market research. You’ll be able to conduct live market research after you launch your side hustle and start to get real-world feedback from people. Real-world feedback is worth more than any graph you’ll read online about what it is you want to do. So I’m going to assume you have something in mind already.
What should you do if you don’t have a side hustle idea in mind? Stop lying to yourself, first of all. And then be honest about what it is you image for yourself. Do you imagine yourself starting a blog like this one? Do you imagine yourself making crafts and selling them? Do you imagine launching a digital product because you love creating planners? Do you imagine babysitting kids? Cleaning houses? Selling used furniture? I’m not here to judge: I’m here to encourage. I don’t really care what your side hustle idea is, no matter how much you want me to tell you it’s a good one. A good side hustle idea is one you want to do. You can figure out how to make money doing it. Trust me. Where you’re going to need some flexibility is in how you end up making that money. You might launch your idea this weekend and in three week’s time, it might already look different. That’s business, baby. Welcome to the club.
What’s the bare minimum to get your side hustle up and running?
You’ve got your idea. Amazing. Now what? Now you need to decide what you need to get started. This is called a minimum viable product, but you don’t actually need to worry about that. What you need to worry about is getting something made/created/built/outlined so you can start selling it. Do you need to run out and register a business today? No. You’re testing the waters. You’re most likely funding this little venture all by yourself or courtesy of MasterCard, so don’t worry about the logistics of a proper business just yet. That’s a Monday problem. Today, we’re talking about what you can do now so that you’ve got something to sell come Monday.
Don’t overthink your product or service. Start with the bare minimum (hence, minimum viable product). If you want to clean houses as your side hustle, put up an ad on Facebook Marketplace looking for clients. How much should you charge? Start with $25 an hour. Don’t worry about what other cleaners are charging. That’s the fastest way to get yourself to quit before you even start. Pick a number, try it out. You can always change it later. Seriously, just go with it. If you want to bake cakes in your spare time, bake a freaking cake on Saturday, take pictures of it and post it on a classified ads page on Sunday. Sell the cakes by the order, payment due upfront so you can fund your idea, and get on the phone and talk to people about what they want when they reach out.
To website or not to website? Hint: not to website.
You don’t need to build an entire website just to try out a side hustle idea. But you can. Grab a free website builder at Wix, Squarespace or any other platform that pops up when you do a “free website builder” search online. Make it look the best you can and don’t get caught up in the logistics of how it all works. This is going to be a giant time suck for you and will prevent you from actually making money with your idea so only go down this road if you really think you need it. Hint: you don’t. So we’re not going to spend any more time on this piece.
Back to testing out your idea. Let’s say you want to sell journals that you’ve been creating in your spare time. Amazing. List them on Facebook Marketplace. Why do I keep bringing up Facebook Marketplace? Because it’s free, for starters. It’s also local and many side hustles start locally. Sure, there’s lots to do online with digital products selling to complete strangers, but you’ll probably have more success selling to people you kind of know, or know in passing on Facebook than you will trying to stand out in the noise of Instagram. Ask me how I know.
And now you’re thinking, “Oh my God, someone is going to see and judge me.” You bet your ass they are. But who cares? They’re just sitting there scrolling through Facebook wasting their one precious life while you’re here coming up with completely amazing ideas and trying them out. You are not the same. Don’t let their words into your brain. It will slow you down.
Clarity rules. Overthinking drools.
The trick to getting a side hustle up and running in one weekend comes down to one word: Clarity. Sounds fancy. It’s not. Clarity means you have an idea, and you stick with it, not letting yourself get side tracked by other, maybe more profitable or fancy ideas. The best way to see what you’ve got is to put it out there see what happens. The goal, of course is get to someone to buy your product or service. But if nobody does, you’ll be rewarded with information. And information for the sake of information is awful. But information attached to action is super useful. For example, if you make a post on Facebook Marketplace and lots of people click it but nobody reaches out, then you can determine that your wording might need tweaking. But for the first few days, you’re not going to do anything. Sometimes it takes people a few days to come around to a new idea. so don’t flinch. Stay the course.
Clarity comes into play with your product too. Keep it as simple as possible. Don’t try to explain why you did it, made it or created it. Talk about what it’s for and how it’s help someone do something or how it could help someone do something. That’s all people really want: to feel better, do better or be better. If you sell wooden carvings, they’ll help people make their homes more homey, to feel connected to nature and express themselves in a unique way. That’s a result. And it’s a result people pay for. So be as clear and simple as possible. How would you word that? Also simple: “Unique, hand-carved wooden figures that bring the natural wonder and beauty of the forest indoors.” Damn, I’d buy that.
You don’t need a step-by-step guide to start a side hustle. You just need to offer something to someone for money.
You’re probably wondering where the step-by-step guide to starting a side hustle is by now, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t need one. And anyone who tells you that you do is just trying to sell you something they created, probably as a side hustle. As an experienced entrepreneur and successful side hustler (I’ve made money from every side hustle I’d ever had), I can tell you that most of the business advice out there is bloated and not useful. The best advice I ever got was “Put it out there and see what happens.” Nothing is ever an overnight success, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be 48 hours away from having cash in your pocket and a product out the door.
Let me tell you about some of my side hustles in case you’ve gotten this far and are still pretending you don’t know what you’d want to do. First, let me give you permission to try anything. Seriously, you can start a side hustle doing anything. It doesn’t have to align with who you are right now or what you’ve done in the past. A great idea and successful side hustle can be born just because you want to try it. Remember, you’re not married to this idea; you’re testing it out. Plus, divorce is always possible even if you do tie your entire personality to this venture so don’t be too serious about it.
Side hustle examples from my life
Career newsletter: years ago I started a print-based newsletter from my home office. I sold advertising to local businesses to promote jobs they had available. I put it in other businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, office buildings so people could pick it up and read it. This was before internet career searches were a thing and I literally had to pick up the phone and call businesses to see if they wanted to buy advertising. I had no audience. And I had a three month old baby that I trucked around with me while I did the newsletter deliveries. Don’t tell me you can’t do it too. In today’s world, I imagine this to be recruiting or job match making, but you get the idea.
Gift baskets: for some reason I have yet to uncover, I’ve always had a fascination with gift baskets. I think they are the perfect gift and business model. I’ve started several gift basket businesses over the years and even sold one of them for a few thousand dollars at one point. Basically, I designed a prototype and priced it at double what I paid for the products inside. They sold…like hot cakes. I took so many orders one Easter I had to go three towns over to buy more stock for the baskets. The secret? Facebook. Sell to people close to me. I had a website at one point but found that selling online in marketplace and just posting to my friends made me hundreds of dollars. I also sold at markets and offered free delivery within a certain radius to make it easy for people to say yes. I loved this business and miss it sometimes, but luckily, it’s the kind of business you can start and wrap up seasonally.
But that’s not all…
Typing service: this was one of my early side hustles that I seriously made bank with through simple classified ads telling people I could help them write large reports. This later morphed into an editing service and eventually became a full-time writing gig for me. It had many names over the years: HD Typing Services, Korrect.IT and others, but the point is that it started as a small offer to do some typing. I wasn’t even writing anything: I was just copying information like data entry.
Tupperware: you knew there was going to be at least one MLM on the list, didn’t you? Let me tell you about my Tupperware career: I was good at it. I sold thousands of dollars worth of Tupperware. Unforuntately, I also bought thousands of dollars worth of Tupperware so you can do the math, but my point is that while MLMs aren’t what they used to be (they’re worse), today’s version of this is affiliate marketing. You can take someone else’s product and sell it for a commission. I mean, I guess this is what car salespeople do too, but we’re just spit balling here. For a while, I turned my Tupperware business into a gift basket business (of course I did) and I sold packaged Tupperware kits to real estate agents as “welcome” gifts for new home buyers. It was awesome.
And one more…
Daycare: I still can’t believe I did this, but I did it for a while and then realized I was out of my mind so I went back to work. It started an at-home daycare so I could stay home with my son when he was about 2 years old. I had 3 kids coming and going at various times and I did it on a part-time basis for a while. But my brain isn’t built to handle more children than my own so it didn’t last. Thank God. Still though, I made enough money to be able to stay home with my kiddo and feel like I was building something for myself.
Can you really launch a side hustle in a weekend? Yes.
So what can you do in a weekend? Any of these ideas. Seriously. And so much more. Recently, I had an idea on a Friday morning and by Monday morning, it was live and in living color. What was it? A snail mail club for romance readers. I started by thinking about this trend I saw on Instagram of people returning to analog living. I’m old enough to remember when people actually did send snail mail for everything but the new generation thinks it’s cute. And I agree. So I thought about what I could send via snail mail to people once a month as a side hustle. I’ve got a successful training and development company that is my full-time job but the creative side of my brain loves stuff like this so I let it run wild. I thought instead of doing art, which a lot of people are doing, I could write short stories of the smutty variety and send those out every month. Not only does it keep me writing regularly, but it’s something that travels with me when I travel. I can send mail from anywhere. Too easy.
Keep it simple.
I set up a landing page, measured and weighed paper to see what it would cost to send out the stories, priced postage and packaging and came up with a price that was at least double the cost. Based on my years of doing gift basket development, I knew how to price and source product but you can literally use computer paper. The point is to get it to a point where you can make the offer. Who would love this? Romance readers. Romance writers. Where do you romance readers and writers hang out? Instagram and TikTok but I’m 44 and hate TikTok so I’m focusing on promoting it on Instagram and Facebook. History shows I have a good track record sharing my creative projects on Facebook and it’s easy to reach people. Can I pay for ads and do more robust marketing later? Sure. But it’s probably not necessary. There’s no rush. It’s a side hustle. It’s okay if it takes three months to get off the ground.
Fulfillment and Delivery
The most important part of starting any side hustle isn’t the marketing or sales. It’s about fulfilling your promise to your customer. If you’re selling gift baskets, then you need to make sure the products are what people want. If you’re writing newsletters, you need to make sure the topics are relevant to the right people. But more than that, you need to make sure you actually send out the newsletter or deliver the gift basket. But what people really want is follow through. Most side hustles fail before they ever get started because people get caught up in the how. Keep it simple: make a basket, deliver it to the recipient. Do it yourself. Don’t worry about shipping. Don’t even offer shipping to other places yet and do not, for the love of everything holy, think people local to you won’t want what you’ve got. You’ll be wildly surprised what people are selling to their friends and neighbours. How do I know? I’ve sold lots to my friends and neighbours, without a website, without a business name and without a real plan. I had an idea. And the best things come when you bring your ideas into reality.
A Weekend Project
The reason I’m saying to start your side hustle in one weekend is because if you take longer to do it, you’ll probably chicken out. No offence. I’ve just been doing this long enough to know that overthinking and pre-judging yourself is why you won’t do it. It’s far easier to put something out into the world quickly and make it better over time than worry about it being perfect out of the gate. I know people who have been talking about starting a business for years. Eventually, you find it hard to believe them. I always encourage action. Think of it as a side quest. It doesn’t have to become your entire personality. You can try something new and see how it goes. To get you thinking about how you can accomplish something like this in a weekend, here’s a list of things I’ve done in one single weekend over the past year.
Painted a trio of Christmas canvases
and of course, started my snail mail club.
Perfect smerfect. Just do it.
Were any of these things perfect? No. The point is not perfection. The point is action. Don’t let the fear of how long something will take to “start working” deter you from starting. Not everything launches to a hundred orders. But if you get just one, then you’ve got something. And then you’ve got something to work with.
Do I think everyone should be an entrepreneur? I think everyone should try it at least once. See if it’s for you. Starting a side hustle can be a great way to improve your problem-solving abilities, creative thinking skills and boost your confidence. Just creating it is fun. Selling it is optional.
