START MY

SIDE HUSTLE
WORKBOOK
Nick Loper

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Copyright and Disclaimer

This book is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only.

No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form
without the prior written consent of the author.

All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this book are the property of their respective
owners.

Users of this guide are advised to do their own due diligence when it comes to making business decisions
and all information, products, and services that have been provided should be independently verified by
your own qualified professionals.

By reading this guide, you agree that the author is not responsible for the success or failure of your
business or investment decisions relating to any information presented in this book.

© Nick Loper & Bryck Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved

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Section 1: Your Entrepreneurial Baseline

Your Personal Profitability
If you looked at your household like a business, how profitable are you each
month? To complete this exercise, subtract your monthly expenses from your
after-tax income. There’s no judgment here!

Getting a realistic look at your personal profitability is the first step in thinking
like the CEO of Your Own Life that you already are.

Example Your Baseline

Income Income
Day Job: $4000 Day Job:
Side Hustle #1: $50 Side Hustle #1:
Side Hustle #2: Side Hustle #2:
Other: Other:

Total Income:  $4050 Total Income: 

Expenses Expenses
Housing: $1400 Housing:
Utilities: $300 Utilities:
Daycare: $800 Daycare:
Debt: Debt:
Food: $400 Food:
Transportation: $100 Transportation:
Insurance: $100 Insurance:
Gym Membership: $20 Gym Membership:
Clothing: $20 Clothing:
Other Expenses (est.): $400 Other Expenses (est.):

Total Expenses: $3540 Total Expenses:

Monthly profit or loss: + $510 Monthly profit or loss:

Percentage:  12.6% Percentage: 
(profit/income) (profit/income)

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Where Are You Going?

What do you want out of your business in 3-6 months? Is there a specific monetary goal you're
shooting for?

WHY is that important to you?

5-Year Painted Picture Vision

Time machine yourself 5 years into the future. What do your life and business look like?
Visualize all aspects. Outline your company and where your revenue comes from, and outline
your personal life and what is amazing about it. How do you spend an average day? Be detailed.

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Failures and Lessons

What projects of yours have failed in the past? Why?
What did you learn from those experiences?
I'll go first.

Failure Why It Flopped Lesson(s)

A wine-related niche site. Didn’t care about the topic. Create content on things I
No unique perspective. actually care about.
There needs to a
reason for this
to exist.
What’s better/different
about this content?

A handbag/luggage spin-off of More sellers/competition. Need to do more market research

my shoe site. Technical challenges. upfront.
Lower commission rates.

Selling my Atlanta condo. It would have made a great cash Consider an alternative to the
flowing rental. option you’re considering.

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Failures and Lessons

Your turn!

Failure Why It Flopped Lesson(s)

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Fear Setting
What’s your zombie apocalypse worst case scenario as you embark on your entrepreneurial
journey?

How permanent or life threatening would that damage be? (Circle one)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I'll be fine A little painful Call the morgue

How likely is this nightmare? (Circle one)

Highly Unlikely  Possible Probable Certain

How would you repair the damage? How long would it take? (Odds are, it’s easier than you
imagine).

What benefits do you see in pushing past the fear?

How permanent or life-improving would those benefits be? (Circle one).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Meh Major EPIC

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Section 2: Finding YOUR Side Hustle Idea

What is a Business?
Most would-be entrepreneurs totally overthink the importance of a killer business idea.

Think of it this way: a business is simply a problem solving machine.

It's a repeatable way of making someone else's problems go away. What problems could you solve?

Where Does the Money Come From?

In business, the money comes from solving people's problems. (The good news is you're a natural-
born problem solver!)

This usually takes one of 3 forms:

1. Selling a Service
2. Selling a Product
3. Selling an Audience (or their attention — think Facebook)

This workbook is focused on selling a service because it's the fastest and cheapest way to get
started.

That said, you can use the exercises to generate audience business ideas as well.

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101 Service Business Ideas

The list below is by no means an exhaustive one, but hopefully will show you the breadth of
potential service ideas that are out there–both online and offline.

1. Academic scoring 33. Elder care

2. Accounting 34. Email marketing
3. Adjunct professor 35. Event planning
4. Administrative support 36. Facebook ads management
5. Affiliate management 37. Freelance writing
6. Answer phone call 38. Google ads management
7. Article writing 39. Graphic design
8. Book editing 40. Handyperson
9. Bookkeeping 41. Home staging
10. Brand ambassador 42. Hosting trivia nights
11. Build spreadsheets 43. House painting
12. CAD design 44. House sitting
13. Car detailing 45. Industry or market research
14. Car repair 46. Junk hauling
15. Child care 47. Keyword research
16. Client onboarding specialist 48. Knife sharpening
17. Closed captioning for videos 49. Lead generation/qualification
18. Conversion rate optimization 50. Lice removal
19. Cordinate meetings and appointments 51. Live chat customer support
20. Copywriting 52. Lyft/Uber driver
21. Create email newsletters 53. Manage Amazon ads
22. Create PowerPoint presentations 54. Manage Instagram
23. Create sales funnels 55. Manage Pinterest
24. Customer retention specialist 56. Marketing consultant
25. Daily or weekly dashboard reporting 57. Meal planning
26. Data entry 58. Meeting facilitator
27. Data mining 59. Mobile DJ
28.  Dating or relationship coach 60. Moderate Facebook groups or forums
29.  Delivery driver 61. Mover
30.  Dog training 62. Music lessons
31.  Dog walking 63. Mystery shopping
32. Doula 64. Notary

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101 Service Business Ideas

Continued...

65. Parking lot clean up 84. Songwriter

66. Performance coaching 85. Sports coaching
67. Personal chef 86. Supply chain management
68. Personal training 87. Teaching English
69. Photo editing 88. Tour guide
70. Podcast editing 89. Trainer
71. Pool cleaning 90. Transcription
72. Product packaging and order fulfillment 91. Translation
73. Project management 92. Travel agent
74. Proofreading 93. Tutoring
75. Public relations 94. Video editing
76. Public speaking 95. Voice-over acting
77. Recruiting 96. Web design
78. Reputation management 97. Web development
79. Resume editing 98. Website maintenance and support
80. Running errands 99. Wedding officiant
81. Sales support 100. Wedding photography
82. SEO 101. Yoga instructor
83. Social media management

Circle any of these that sound interesting or that you could do, and add them to your list of
potential business ideas below.

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Sweet Spot Worksheet

Fill in this worksheet by taking inventory of your existing skills, interests, and network.

Skills Interests Network

Questions to consider: Questions to consider: Questions to consider:

What have you gotten paid What would you do tomorrow Who do you know, or rather,
to do in the past? if you had no responsibilities? what types of people do you
What do other people find If money were no issue, what know?
hard that comes easy to would be exciting to work on? Do they work in certain
you? What do you never get tired of industries?
What do people talking about? Who are the networking “hubs”
compliment you on or ask What did you love doing as a you’re connected to — the
for advice about? kid or teenager? people who seem to know
When do you feel in flow? What blogs or magazines do everyone?
What do you know more you read? What podcasts or
about than the average YouTube channels do you
person? follow?
What have you learned to What are you curious to learn
do outside of work? more about?
What do you find fascinating
that most people think is super
boring?
What do you love doing in your
free time?

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Sweet Spot Worksheet (Example)

When I follow the prompts and fill this out for myself, here's what it looks like:

Skills Interests Network

What to do next?
Once you have your worksheet filled out, try to come up with as many potential service ideas as you
can. You don't need to pull from every column, but thinking of different combinations can be
helpful. For example, here are a few potential ideas based on my list.

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Your Potential Business Idea List

Based on your Sweet Spot worksheet, write down as many potential business ideas as you can. I'll
explain what "Phase 1 Validation" is in a moment.

Idea Phase 1 Validation

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What Sucks?
Necessity is the mother of invention, right? While many business ideas come from the Sweet Spot
intersections we explored above, others come from simply seeing problems and coming up with
ways to make those problems go away. I call this the "What Sucks?" method of idea generation. Here
are some examples.

Pain or Problem Solution

Cleaning the carpet Cleaning service
Ironing shirts Ironing service
Cooking dinner Meal delivery/prep
Bike is too slow Ebike!
Can't do work with kids around Daycare
Spending too much on groceries Meal planning service
Need more downloads for my app App marketing

Your turn! For the rest of the day (or rest of the week), I want you to write down everything that
annoys you, that you wish you didn't have to deal with, or that you spend money to solve. If it's a
pain for you, it's probably a pain for others as well.

Pain or Problem Solution

Add any problems / solutions that seem interesting to you to your master list of potential business
ideas. For extra credit, ask a few business owners what sucks for them!

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Section 3: Business Idea

Selection and Validation
The next phase is narrow down your list of potential business ideas. There are 3 ways I recommend
you do this.

1. "Phase 1" Validation

"Phase 1" validation is to simply answer if another business already exists that solves a similar
problem in a similar way. If so, they've proven the model and taken some of your risk out of the
equation in that you know there are already paying customers out there.

To complete this step, just check the "Phase 1" Validation box for any business idea on your list that
already exists in some shape or form.

2. The Weighted Decision Matrix

For a quantitative way to compare different ideas, use a weighted decision matrix like this one.
Assign a number score (1-5) for each of the questions listed, or add your own questions to make it
more personal. You can also increase the weight or importance of the questions that are more
important to you.

Download a copy of this worksheet here: https://www.sidehustlenation.com/decisionmatrix

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3. Detailed Selection Process

If I don't have a clear winner at this point, I'll move to a more detailed selection process, which
involves filling out a comparison chart like this.

You can download your own copy of this workbook here:

https://www.sidehustlenation.com/ideaselection

Important Note:

Remember, there's no such thing as a perfect business idea. Choosing what's next doesn't mean
choosing what's forever.

My advice? Pick something and take action. You can always pivot or change course later.

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Your 1-Sentence Investment

Proposition
Consider your 1-Sentence Investment Proposition your mini "elevator pitch" on what you do and
who you serve.

Structure:
"I help _________ (my target customers) __________ (get something they want)."

Examples:
"I help wedding photographers fill their calendars."
"I help podcasters turn listeners into email subscribers."
"I help Udemy instructors reach new audiences to monetize their
expertise.”
"I help freelance writers earn more money."
"I help self-published authors sell more books."
"I help people make money outside of their day jobs."

Your Turn:
"I help _________________________________________ (my target customers)
______________________________________________________ (get something they want)."

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Section 4: Marketing Your Idea

The #1 function of marketing is to get your message in front of your target customers. To do this,
consider who they're already doing business with, how they're currently solving the problem you
propose to solve, where they hang out, and what media they consume.

On the following pages, you'll have room to identify (by name) your potential clients and strategic
partners. But here are some other marketing strategies you might consider.

Work Your Network

It's shocking to me how many people start a business but don't tell anyone about it. If you don't, who
will?

One way to do this in a non-spammy way is to simply email or message people you know to catch up.
Ask what they're up to or what they're excited about. It's human nature to respond in-kind. That's
your cue to tell them what you're working on.

Remember, the goal isn't necessarily to sell to your immediate network, but rather to tap into their
network of other people who might be interested in your services. If you don't tell anyone about your
business, they'll never be able to refer you.

The "Buy Buttons" Theory

Where do people go to hire your type of service? Freelance websites? Niche marketplaces?

Odds are, there's some sort of platform or marketplace you could create a profile or "buy button" on,
to get in front of potential customers looking for help.

For myself and for Side Hustle Show guests, that's been places like Fiverr, Upwork, Thumbtack,
Craigslist, The Seattle Home Show, Airbnb, Amazon, Udemy, and many, many more.

The idea is that each of these platforms has already attracted an audience of buyers, and it's
relatively straightforward to add your listing to potentially capture some of that traffic.

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Your Prospect List

Now that you've selected your top business idea to take action on, it's time to come up with some
potential customers. Who are the ideal clients for your new service?

Business Name (if applicable) Contact Person Website Contact Info

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The "Giveaway" Method

The "Giveaway" marketing method involves showcasing your service — for free — to your prospects.

Not all businesses are well-suited to this tactic, but it can be a very effective way of cutting through
the clutter.

This is all about leading with value and opening up a conversation.

For example, here's an outreach email I sent following the giveaway method for my "lead magnets
for podcasters idea."

Hey there [first name],

Loved the recent episode you did this week on [topic XYZ]. I implemented your tip on [X] and I'm
already seeing results, so thanks for that!

I’m a bit of a podcast junkie myself and even host my own show. One thing that’s worked magic for
my business was creating specific opt-in offers for each episode. In fact, I tripled my email list in the
first 3 months I started doing it.

I created a lead magnet based on your most recent episode (attached). You’re free to use it as you
wish; it’s my gift to you as a fan. If you want to learn more about how these offers work on air and
how it’s added to my bottom line, let’s chat.

Cheers,
Nick

What could you give away to your target prospects to get them to notice you?

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Potential Strategic Partners

Another powerful way to build authority and get in front of your target customers is strategic
partnerships. These are often complementary businesses with which your target audience is
already doing business.

For example, for my book editing business, I partnered with the instructor of a popular self-
publishing course. In my wife's photography business, she and her partner have partnered with a
few local wedding venues and event planners.

Business Name (if applicable) Contact Person Website Contact Info

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The Hustle Habit

This is the end of the workbook, but it's only the start of your journey!

Make the commitment to keep moving forward and keep marketing your business. It isn't easy, but
it's worth it.

Remember your WHY from the beginning, and remember that the best opportunities aren't visible
until you're already in motion.

Hustle on!

-Nick

Want to Go Deeper?
I have a full companion course that explores and explains the concepts and exercises in this
workbook. It's called Start My Side Hustle, and I'd love for you to join me inside.

You can learn more here, and since you already have the workbook, use promo code WORKBOOK
for a special enrollment discount.

Cheers!

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