Side Hustles · 6 minute read
Almost every business starts with somebody doing something small, badly, for someone who needed it. Here is how to find your first paying customer this month.
The biggest lie about starting a business is that you need money first. You need a customer first. Money is what a customer gives you. Everything else is optional at the beginning.
Nobody wants a business. They want a problem gone. Walk around where you actually live and listen for the sentence 'I really need to sort out...' — that is where businesses come from. A dog that needs walking. A garden that has got away. A small shop that has no photographs of its stock online. A hedge nobody has time to cut.
Work out what the job costs you — materials, travel, your time — and add something on top for the fact that you did it. Doing it 'cheap to get started' is how people end up busy and broke. Charging properly is not greed; it is how the thing survives long enough to get good.
The moment money changes hands you have a business, and there are rules that come with it. Look up what you need to declare before you get paid, not after. It is much easier to do it properly from the first pound.
Ten paying customers teaches you more than a year of planning. You will find out what people actually ask for, what they complain about, and what you should stop doing. That is not failure, that is the work.
You do not need to be brilliant at school to do this. You need to be willing to knock on a door, be told no, and knock on the next one.
More free articles about money, work and business are at The Next Generation Blog.
Let's Play Business — LPB Deepcar Learning Centre, Deepcar, Sheffield. Contact: anna@letsplaybusiness.co.uk