Did you know that a lot of big businesses in Nigeria today began as side-hustles? With the advent of the internet, it is now possible to have both a side hustle that could bring you a lot of money and a full-time job at the same time.
So, what is a side hustle? A side hustle is basically a business you do part-time while retaining your full-time job. Sometimes, a side hustles has the potential of becoming a full-time business.
Having a side hustle, apart from giving you an opportunity to make extra money for yourself, can also be a good way to spend your leisure. However, turning a side hustle into a big business in Nigeria is not devoid of several challenges. So, I decided to dedicate a section of this discussion to address some of these challenges and the way forward.
Converting A Side Hustle To A Full, Big Business In Nigeria: Challenges and The Way Out
In Nigeria, our educational system teaches mostly theory and almost nothing about money or entrepreneurship. So, you’d have to educate yourself on what the education system failed to cover. Besides the faulty education system in the country, there is this misconception in the society that one always needs to have huge capital before starting a business. Well, that is not true most of the time.
Another fad that is widely circulated is that Nigerian banks do not grant loans to businesses that are just starting out. Well, you have to understand that money is attracted to fresh, new ideas and most Nigerian banks are open to helping such ideas to grow. However, in the absence of external aid, you can generate capital for your business from your savings; get a loan from family, friends, your religious circles and well-wishers. Interestingly, today you can easily save money with Sumobank and use it to finance your business startup.
As regards saving, a good book which can assist you is, “The Millionaire Next Door”. It is a classical book which teaches savings and how to survive below the income level.
Finally, there is this challenge of over-dependence on salaries or regular income without due consideration of how to grow that income. It is the mistake of one working for money instead of making it work for him or her.
These are all unique challenges any Nigerian must overcome when trying to diversify income by turning a side hustle into a big business in Nigeria.
5 ways you can overcome these challenges are:
- Educate yourself on finance and how to multiply money.
- Make your money to work for you
- Create an emergency fund.
- Start and grow a business.
- Collaborate with business partners.
A lady working to turn her side hustle into a big business
Want to turn your side hustle into a full-time business? Read the 5 important tips below.
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Design a Solid Plan
You cannot simply abandon your full-time job for your side hustle when you have no solid plan in place. You need a plan that outlines how your business will operate once it is fully functional.
Your plan should incorporate your business’ vision and mission statements, your business values, and the goals which you have in mind to achieve in your proposed business. Outline what your business would accomplish within the first 90 days of setting it up.
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Make Everything You Can Automatic (i.e., Automate the Operations)
Today, you can find an app on the internet for handling any aspect of your business. Automating as many things as possible would give you free time to handle other tasks that could bring you much money since you have a limited time at your disposal daily.
So, from the set-go, acquire the necessary tools which would help you to automate your side hustle into a full-time business. You can use Buffer or Hootsuite, for example, to automate your social media posting and Canned Responses from Gmail to send out recurring mails.
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Create More Leads
Creating more leads for your business is the quickest way to grow your business and generate a favorable cash flow system for yourself and your business. So, invest a good amount of your time and energy in publicizing your business to get more leads (i.e., contacts – phone numbers and emails) who would sooner or later become paying customers. One way to do this is to create and distribute a lot of quality contents which will attract potential customers to your business.
One way you can do this (i.e., create content) is to start a blog and use it to reach your potential customers. This would give you the opportunity to build a customized email list for your business which you can use to push out (i.e. publicize) your new products, offers, and services.
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Use Freelancers
Freelancers can help you to have an incredible amount of free time by helping you perform some heavy lifting in the business. Delegate some tasks and outsource them to freelancers and have a budget ready for their payment every month.
You can give them tasks like developing your blog content and managing your social media platforms while you handle the critical aspects of your business.
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Create and Follow Your Schedule Religiously
You must have a schedule with which you run the day-to-day activities of your business. This would really help your business to grow rapidly. You do not want to put too little or too much time into your business. So, create a schedule that would point out your working hours, what you do each time and the expected results.
It is not enough to have a schedule. You must endeavor to follow it to the letter to achieve success at the end of the day.
Conclusion
Everything is possible in life with hard work and determination. Anybody can begin from anywhere, even the lowest bottom and climb to the top.
In life, one essential asset you always spend but can never recover is time. So, time management is very important if you want to grow your business and you can do this with automation software. Besides doing things faster and precisely, automation helps to cut down on the time which could be wasted handling recurring tasks.
Are you involved in any side hustle or thinking of starting one soon? Let me know in the comments’ section of this blog. Thank you for the audience.
