I was recently talking with someone who was looking to start a side hustle and was amazed at the vast array of ways that people are making money now-a-days. At first glance it’s kind of crazy, so many sites out there allow you to essentially set up shop and start making money “right away”, at least in theory. The truth is, these marketplaces, like every other, are dominated by 20% of vendors, but that’s a topic for another time.
Regardless they were overwhelmed by the choices presented to them and were asking me which choices to make. I told them that I really couldn’t decide for them since there were so many factors to consider, but after talking we were able to wean things down to a few less choices than we started with. We looked at sites like Etsy and the like, Upwork, and other sites that utilize professional skills such as Care.com.
At first glance there were plenty of options but here’s the thing. It’s actually very hard to make any appreciable amount of money or anything of these things. At first glance sure they all look great. “Oh, all I have to do is put up shop and I can start making money right away!” however that’s far from the reality. Like I stated above a small number dominate the marketplace.
But what does this have to do with harnessing momentum?
Gravity, Business, & Life
When you start out something you generally suck at it. Whether it’s a habit, a sport, an art, a skill, whatever. That’s just the way it is. Likewise when you first hang your shingle out as a business people aren’t going to trust you. There’s this catch 22 of the whole they want people with good verified reviews and the best way to get good verified reviews is to have good verified reviews and so on and so forth. In just about everything there is this “starter pain” where you have to do 10x, 20x, 100x the work as someone who has a year head start on you to have a chance of ending up anywhere close to them.
I’ll use an example of rocket flight. The majority of a rocket’s fuel is used up breaking free of earth’s atmosphere, not in space. Breaking free of the atmosphere required the most power, then when you’re out it doesn’t require nearly as much. Same with skills and business and the like. The start is always the hardest. For my friend looking to make side income, I told him “Don’t expect to make a dime for the first 6 months.” and that’s with doing almost everything right. When you factor in time involved you’re often working for less than minimum wage.
But you do this in the hopes that it’ll grow and become something more, something which may or may not happen. You won’t know until you get there. This is one of the reasons that tenacity is the number one ingredients for success. Often those who end up successful are those that were just too stupid to realize that they should have given up. So they stuck with it and lo and behold, eventually they made it.
How To Build Momentum In Business & Life
I think I spread my focus with this article a little too broad, covering both business and life but its worth discussing. How to you break free of the atmosphere, get out of that “Starter pain” and all that? Well the first and unavoidable thing is putting the work in over time. Doing the boring stuff day in and day out that doesn’t seem to do much now but will make a difference down the road. For example on Upwork it’d be checking the job postings every day and sending out at least a cover letter or two.
It’ll be different depending on what you’re doing. If it’s starting up a blog then writing an SEO rich article in a specified niche each and every day, maybe twice a day to help get you started. For writing novels it might be writing 1,000 words. For wanting to be a UFC champ making sure you get X amount of rounds in the cage and so on and so forth. Figure out what little things make up success and then do them day in and day out.
Another big thing is don’t expect anything to happen. Expecting can derail you. Just put in the work and keep your head down. Eventually if and when the reward comes you should be almost surprised by it. Because trust me, the reward you started for is so far away that it’s not going to sustain you through all of this. You need to just understand that you’re going to grind and be bored before anything good comes.
And that often at the end you might think that what you wanted might not have been worth it.
Or maybe it will be.
Only you can know that.
Grind Your Way Through The Atmosphere
Work hard and work smart as well. It’s not rocket science but it does require discipline and consistency. The whole 10 year over night success thing we’ve talked about before. For whenever you hear about an “overnight success” that “overnight” success actually was the culmination of a life of hard work. Put another way you have to work hard and keep going until luck decides to work in your favor. And the thing is luck will never work in your favor if you’re not putting in the work. That’s just how the thing works, not fun, but the truth.
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
