Real world examples to start and then grow your side hustle.

I am taking a Permaculture Business Design Course through Regeneration Nation CR. The exercises and worksheets are fantastic and have helped me to focus more on the customer.

• What is the problem you are trying to solve? What does your customer actually want? Are you trying to solve what you think the problem is?

Example: If you are evaluating someone's land and doing a permaculture design, have you asked: "what do you like to eat?"

So many people plant things that they actually don't eat, or will not likely eat.

Define who your customer really is and let your customer define themselves by what they really want.

• Niche down and then niche down some more so you are known as an expert in that space.
• Quickly go to market with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test the response and whether it is worth throwing money (and more importantly TIME) at.
• Charge less for it in a beta test. Get real world feedback.
• Let your customer ultimately decide if they are your customer. Don’t chase after someone who doesn’t want to be your customer.
• Learn skills while doing. Charge less while learning those skills, build clientele and experience, then raise your price.
• Become a producer and not just a consumer.
• Like the permaculture principle – Use your yield. It can be used to give, trade, or sell to grow your forms of capital.
• Don’t grift for the sake of the grift or people will easily see through you.

Use research tools like Google Trends and Answer the Public.

I do a deep dive on How to use Answer the Public in the latest Thriving News article on How to Overcome Writer's Block.

Episode website: Ep. 130 - Tips on How to Grow Your Side Hustle

If you like this content, shoot us a tip on Venmo or Cashapp @ThrivingtheFuture.

Sponsors:

• Check out the Solar Food Dehydrator. Watch the movie, get the plans, all for reasonable cost.
• Grow Nut Trees: Buy Elderberry, pecan, hazelnut seedlings, and red mulberry seedlings - all adapted to the Midwest. Seeds and trees have “memory”. They thrived and reproduced in a certain climate.Often when you buy chestnut trees, seeds, or plants online, you have to buy from nurseries in the Northeast or Southeast US, or the Pacific Northwest.Take it from us, trees and plants grown in those climates do not do well in Kansas. So buy Elderberry, pecan, hazelnut seedlings, and red mulberry seedlings - all adapted to the Midwest. At GrowNutTrees.com.

Get full access to Thriving the Future Substack at thrivingthefuture.substack.com/subscribe