5 Hidden Struggles When Building an Online Side Business

Building an online side business is hard work.  Anyone who promises you otherwise is lying.

It's hard to work all day at the job and then come home and get to work on your gig.

It's hard to homeschool your kids all day and pivot to your online side business at night.

These are the obvious reasons that it's hard to build a business “on the side”.

But there are also hidden struggles that mostly go unseen to the untrained eye…

Struggles that can just as easily derail your side business in the shadows.

Let's shed some light on them…

5 Hidden Struggles When Building an Online Side Business

In no particular order, here are 5 common suspects I look at when anyone comes to me struggling in their side gig…

1. Stop thinking of it as a side business; rather think of it as your second job where you have a set schedule and would get fired if you don't show up.

Too often people take themselves off the hook, rationalizing their lack of activity in their side business because they're too tired from the day.

Once that happens, you might as well stop.

Your side gig is already dead.

2. If you think you don't have enough time for your business, you're wrong. You don't have enough focus.

I've yet to meet a part time marketer who truly didn't have enough time to build their business.

The problem is always a lack of focus, not a lack of time.

When you understand that, you approach your time very differently

3. If your bills are being paid from your paycheck, you will most likely lack urgency in growing your side business.

It took me a while to understand this.

I had a well-paying job in healthcare that would pay the bills and allow us to  live comfortably.

While that's not a bad thing, it makes it tougher to grow an online side business.

Lack of urgency has caused many a part time entrepreneur to struggle in their side business.

You must find ways to instill urgency when none exists,  like setting deadlines and/or being accountable to someone.

4. In your job, you probably have to avoid mistakes or you'll get fired. In your business, if you're not out there making mistakes, you aren't growing.

This is a huge mental shift for Part Timers.

And it's a shift that must be made daily.

At your job, you strive for perfection.

In your side business, you strive for imperfect action.

5. Never sit down at your computer without a plan.  If you don't have a plan of action, there likely will be no meaningful action at all.

When you're Part Time, your business time is precious and you can't afford to waste it.

Yet that's what most people do… by not having a plan of attack.

Setting up a rock-solid Daily Method of Operation will go a long way to ensuring that each second of your valuable business time is used to the best extent possible.

When you sit down at your computer to get to work and think… “what should I do today?”…

You've already lost the day.

When I work with someone in my Complimentary 30-Minute Focus Session, these are the things I look for when someone tells me they are struggling in their online side business.

Almost always I find the answer to their lack of results lands somewhere within this list of suspects.

Schedule your Complimentary 30-Minute Focus Session Here.

Your Turn

Do you have an online side business that you've struggled with?

To what do you attribute your struggles?

Leave a comment below and join in the discussion!