Capitalism is draining us
In our current iteration of late-stage capitalism, the large majority of humans are working at jobs they hate to make enough money to simply have their most basic needs met.
It's exhausting. It's destructive.
Your micro-business or side hustle can be an act of resistance against cultural expectations and norms.
Owning a business an opportunity to say THIS is how I think the world should be – A middle finger to the patriarchy and imbalances of power.
(1) Here is one roadblock that most people never get past
You don’t have to do business the same way that big corporations do.
You don’t need a logo and branding suite or an expensive website. You don’t need a marketing budget or a Quickbooks account. You don't even need a social media presence.
You just need a skill or an idea and a few people who values that skill or idea enough to pay you for it.
A high school student in my community makes sourdough bread on the weekends and sells fresh loaves, hot out of the oven, for $10 each. She posts in our neighborhood Facebook group and sells out within minutes.
My son’s friend has a push mower, and he goes door-to-door offering pay-what-you-can yard mowing to neighbors. He makes hundreds of dollars in a single weekend. No website. No fancy sales funnels. Just pure grit.
My uncle is an amazing carpenter (now retired). He always had a job, but made cabinets, put up drywall and did odd jobs nights and weekends. His work was completely word of mouth.
When my brother and I were little, my mom realized that working outside of the home wasn’t profitable, so she created a daycare in our home and watched her friend's kids while their parents worked.
When my kids were little, another parent at our school made some money on the side by allowing working parents to drop their kiddos at her house on their way to work. She shuttled a small gaggle of children to school in her mini van.
Airbnb was started by two broke 20-something roommates who rented out their San Francisco loft when a tech conference was in town. They offered blow up mattresses and breakfast for $80/ night.
Steve Jobs started Apple out of his garage.
Not sure how to get the word out about your service? Here's some ideas.
(2) Here’s another thing that holds a lot of people back
You might fail. In fact, you probably will. Failure leads to your superpower.You might try 20 different things before you find something that clicks.
Stage 1 of any business is the “seed” phase. In this stage, you’re throwing seeds into the wind to see what takes hold.
In this phase, it's all about putting your head down and doing the work.
Eventually you will find a seed that sprouts.
Once your biz is sprouting and has a proven need (aka paying customers), that is when you can start thinking about investing in a website or business cards or forming your LLC.