Scaling And Growing Your Side Hustle
It will take more time than you imagined, probably more effort than you were prepared to give, and also will push your emotions to the limit, but finally everything will pay off! Your side hustle has grown to a point where you have customers, you are making money, and you are tearing at the seams trying to run it all.
Maybe there are too many things to do and you can’t find the time to do them all without sacrificing something non negotiable, maybe the structures you have built on your social media or website worked fine when you had 10 customers, but can’t work when you have 100. Or maybe you are starting to go stir crazy remembering all the orders and addresses you need to send your products to.
Strategies for Scaling Your Business
If your side hustle is starting to feel less like a very fun activity and more like a second job, you need to reach out and start to scale your business in a way that makes sense, and while it can seem rather daunting to scale your business, it really isn’t that hard and often you don’t need to overhaul all of the systems you are using. Instead, you can just focus on scaling the systems you have.
As mentioned in the previous post, you can often buy or upgrade your website, your email list software, and your social media accounts to higher tiers. These higher tiers allow you to expand your software to take on more people, handle more orders, and wrangle more traffic to your website.
If you are having problems with the physical side of things, you might want to invest in hiring and training up some help.
For example, if your business is a coaching business, you might be able to coach or group coach a number of clients, but eventually you just won’t have the time or energy to help any more people. At that time, it might be a good idea to hire some additional coaches and train them in your methods, so you can help more people, the coaches can get some experience, and you can make some more money.
Scaling and delegating tasks can be very scary at first, because as a business owner, you often want to have full control over your business. But having help will free you up to take on larger tasks.
Expanding Your Product or Service Offerings
One of these larger tasks might be to expand the products or services you offer. This is where things get fun, because you are given license to do what you really want to do. You might start charging for different types of commissions, open up a VIP program for customers willing to pay more, or start offering a new product or service for your business. Heck, you might even choose to open an entirely new side hustle that the audiences of the first one might be interested in.
Additionally, if your business is growing, you will want to start keeping the customers around that you’ve already got. While getting new customers is always going to be important for a business, it’s really majorly important whenever the business is new. However, if you have an already established side hustle, then you will want to retain the customers you have and keep them coming back.
Building Customer Loyalty and Retention
Customer loyalty and retention get a rap for being overly complicated in the world of marketing and business, but really you just need to do a good job, provide some amazing services, and then make sure to keep in touch with those customers and give them a reason to come back. Discounts, extra services, first look at the new stuff you are releasing. Make your customers start to feel really valued and they will keep coming back and begging you for more.
Now, not every customer is going to be a loyal one, and not every customer is going to want to come back… all for their own reasons. However, if you put the effort into customer retention it is going to really pay off.
Plus, one of the biggest benefits of retaining customers is that you might build a friendship with them. There’s nothing like making a new friend because you treated them well within the context of a business relationship, and if they own a side hustle of their own or have some talents you could use, then you can make further connections!