Episode 171 – Guaranteed Success Plan for your Side Hustle / Small Business

Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 171 – Guaranteed Success Plan for your Side Hustle / Small Business

This Episode

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Mark Stephenson & Marc Vila

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customapparelstartups.com

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CAS Podcast

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ColDesi

You Will Learn

• How to budget your time and money when you’re getting started
• How to set realistic goals you can achieve

Resources & Links

• Colman and Company Blog
• ColDesi Learning Center
• Leasing Equipment

Episode 171 – Guaranteed Success Plan for your Side Hustle / Small Business

Show Notes

You are getting ready to start a side hustle, or maybe you haven’t pulled the trigger yet. (Actually, even if you have already started there might some things to learn.)

This Episode is really for those just getting started or looking to get started on a shoe-string budget.

Many small business owners and side-hustle permutations have 2 things in common.

1. They never start out of fear of failure.
2. They start and immediately give up. Don’t even make it past the first month.

By the way, there is nothing abnormal about this. We are 100% guilty of it. Our friends are, our family is.

So we have put together a plan based on our experience, knowledge from the industry and lots of other sources around the web. This plan works, all you have to do is follow it.

Know what you plan to offer and who will pay for it.

This is often what we have described as niche marketing. You should have an idea of which markets you will sell to, what they will buy, how much they will spend.

1. Dance moms – t-shirts, tote bags, plaques, awards
2. Restaurants – Aprons, polos, t-shirts, menus
3. New moms – Bibs, baby apparel, diaper bags
4. Local small business – polos, hats, t-shirts, signage

Create an expense budget

What’s it going to cost you to run this business. This is like the bare minimum budget. We aren’t talking about spending money on ads yet, or hiring anyone. This is like a year-one bare minimum budget.

1. website monthly cost
2. email monthly cost
3. state fees /set up
4. machine monthly payment
5. money for samples, practice, training, testing

Budget for no income

Once you have the budget number, you will be able to work this into money you have, and will have. This is assuming no income from the business yet. So you work this money out from your savings and monthly income. Cancel Netflix so you can get business email. Stop buying Starbucks every day so you can own a machine. Eat out less so you can have your own website.

You can now OWN your own business and afford to take your time being successful.

Plan your work time

Open a new calendar in your phone or add something to a written planner. But schedule time every week to WORK. This can be Tuesday 6am-8am. Thursday 8pm-10pm. Saturday Morning 7am to 11am. Mondays 12pm-1pm (lunch power hour).

Whatever the time is you need to budget a min of 5 hours a week JUST for the business. This is the time you work. Fulfill orders, marketing, website work, Google Business Profile work, social media work, etc.

In addition to this you should have some ‘floating work time’ that is a time each day to reply to emails, answer customer questions, etc. This doesn’t mean you WILL do this daily, but you should plan for it. Maybe it’s every night after 8pm. Maybe it’s every morning at 6am. It’s just got to be a time when you know you can answer an email.

Also, during business hours you will need a time when you can make calls or answer calls. This should be before work, during lunch or after work. You will just need a reasonable time to talk to customers if they want a phone call (which probably isn’t 6am or 10pm.)

Create realistic sales goals to get your business ‘to profit’

How many shirts do you need to sell to pay that money mentioned above?

How many hats do you need to sell to make $500 a month in profit?

Once you know the numbers, write them out. Put them in a place and find a way to get to those numbers. What’s great is with numbers this low, you are going to be able to reach them through referrals. Friends, family, co workers, neighbors, church goers, kids sports parents, etc.

Don’t empty the profits

Eventually you will want to grow or invest in an upgrade. Whatever that is. It might be email marketing software, or a better website, or machine accessories, or a hat heat press. So don’t suck out all your profits. If you are making $500 a month in profit finally… maybe just take 1/2 of that for you and keep 1/2 in the business.

Grow at YOUR own pace

There is no race versus anyone but yourself. Don’t judge if you are successful or a failure by anyone but yourself. If you are stuck at making $500 a month profit ALL your first year. Well, you made $6k! If you took 1/2 of that you just made enough money to buy a new TV, a new grill and go on a long weekend getaway to the beach! You are successful.

Plan some next big steps

This doesn’t need to be done before you start, but it should be done as you are going.

What opportunities are you seeing?

What is a next big growth opportunity?

How can you reach more customers?

Do you want to do farmers markets? Advertise online?

Once you have your sights on some next big steps, then you can plan on HOW you will get to them or WHEN you will start them.

The above plan ensures success because

1. It changes over time
2. You don’t have any budget drop dead times
3. It budgets not only money, but time.
4. You started with a clear plan on what and who to sell to

Transcript

Mark Stephenson:
Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 171 of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast. My name is Mark Stephenson.

Marc Vila:
And this is Marc Vila, and we have a great episode today, I think. Today we’re going to talk about a guaranteed success plan for your side hustle or small business.

Mark Stephenson:
Guaranteed is such a strong word.

Marc Vila:
It is a strong word. But I think that after we iron out the plan for everybody and explain what it is, and then at the end we’ll justify it. And there’s an asterisk on any guarantee, right? Every guarantee has an asterisk.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. But what’s the asterisk that we don’t actually guarantee it? Is that?

Marc Vila:
Well, you buy a car and it’s got a hundred-thousand mile warranty on it, but if you drive it into a lake, that’s on you. That’s not on hundred.

Mark Stephenson:
Sure. Okay.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Okay. So if you decide to do something to drive your business into the ground, or if a media hits your city. I can’t control those things.

Mark Stephenson:
I wasn’t worried before, but now I am.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Okay. You can’t control everything. But in all seriousness, I think that we put this together and we discussed it, that these are some simple steps and really what they do in my opinion, then I’ll let you give yours, Mark, is they are the initial killers of a side hustle. So all we’re doing is planning to stop those initial killers from happening and then the only way to go then is through success, asterisk, media strikes or anything else.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. So I love your qualifications there. And also, I think that this is a reasonable guarantee and we’re going to make this sound a lot longer, really is because we have some time to fill up together. But all it really is to actually do the business. That’s what it’s going to boil down to is yes, you will succeed if you do the business things and you do them regularly and consistently. And I think what we’ll do is talk about why some people do fail at this, what they do and don’t do, and then go through those steps that will develop into a success plan that you can implement that will do just what it sounds like. It’ll make you profitable.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. This episode is really exciting for me because I think it’s really practical. So let’s just jump into the concept and go into, we’ve got four or five steps here that are involved in the guarantee.

Mark Stephenson:
Sounds good.

Marc Vila:
So you want to start a side hustle just to maybe we’ll narrow down the audience. You want to start a side hustle or maybe you haven’t pulled the trigger yet, or you just started. And even if you’re still pretty new and you’ve already started, this is a great episode for you. Okay? It’s also great episode for you. If you’re looking to do things on a shoestring or a tight budget. Maybe a different episode if you’ve been saving your whole career and you’ve retired from the military, then you retired from another job and now you have two pensions and 200 grand in the bank. Different episode for you.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. We’re not going to do that episode, but there would be theoretically, a different episode for you because you’re set. Just set.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You’re set. But we should do an episode for a bigger budget one.

Mark Stephenson:
I like that. Or the independently wealthy people, side hustle. I like that.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Just the folks who already have some money are looking to invest it. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, okay.

Marc Vila:
And a lot of the episodes, we discuss things like that, about marketing and advertising and things you’ll spend some money in, paying cash for a machine. But this one’s a little bit more of, you’re working on a tight budget. And that’s typically these small business owners that are going to start with a tight budget. They don’t start because they’re afraid they’re going to fail, or they start up, get things going, and give up immediately.

Mark Stephenson:
Man, I see this all the time in the Facebook and Instagram comments and things like that. And it’s so frustrating that I can’t just slap folks around a little bit because they’ll say things like, “With inflation so high, nobody can afford that kind of price for equipment,” or, “I could never spend that kind of money,” or, “It’s a car payment.” So these are the people that they’re not even starting out of fear of failure. They’re starting out of some fundamental positioning in their minds about what things are and what they cost and things like that. So I just think it’s important to acknowledge that if you found this podcast and you’re not necessarily worried about failure, but everything just seems like a crap load of money to you and unattainable, that maybe this will reorient you. And maybe that’s the guaranteed part that attracted you. I can invest some of this money as long as I commit to it and I can still be successful.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And then we’ll get into some money soon. But when you think about a lot of businesses out there, if you want to start a food truck. Similar to hospitality, if you want to open up a restaurant, if you want to start a lawn care business, you’re going to invest more money than you would in what we’re going to be describing here.

Mark Stephenson:
In custom t-shirts. Yeah. Absolutely.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. So what’s great about this is you don’t need a truck or a trailer, you don’t need go through food inspections through the state. There’s a lot of great things. But I think this just rounds it up is, let’s go ahead and start talking about some of the money because the first step that we have here… And by the way, all this knowledge and all this stuff comes from our own personal experiences of failing at side hustles.

Mark Stephenson:
We are both serial side hustlers.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. I’ve started and thought of and not started and failed numerous times in my life since I was a teenager, and just for all the reasons we’re going to name. Also, just us working in the Facebook groups, working at ColDesi, talking to small business owners who are getting going, and then our friends and family.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I’ve definitely killed a few. I’ve killed a few very promising businesses in my time a side hustle. But I also kind of want to acknowledge those people that have started and then just packed everything up within the first month or two, because they got a little overwhelmed. So I think maybe this will help put you on the right track.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. It is. and it is overwhelming especially if you’re not prepped for it. So the first step, I think, before we get to money is you need to know what you plan to offer and then who will pay for it. And I don’t mean the business, but I mean the product you’re going to sell.

Mark Stephenson:
Right. And hopefully you’re working backwards. We do a great job in introducing people to the coolest technology on the planet for making custom apparel. Digital Heat FX, DTG Printers, DTF, Sublimation. The idea isn’t to start with, “Oh, this is the device I’m going to use to make things, let me figure out what I can make with them and who I can sell them to.” It’s the other way around. Like Marc Vila said, it’s, who are you going to sell to? What are you going to sell?

Marc Vila:
Right. That should be your starting point from the business idea. Now, there’s nothing wrong with saying, I would like to start a t-shirt business or embroidery business. Why? Because I think t-shirts or embroidery or signs or whatever it might be, awards, I think they’re cool and interesting and fun. And I’d like to sell that to people because right now I am a plumber and when I meet everybody, nobody’s really happy to see me because their house is broken. And I would like to be in the business where people are happy to see me because I just made a new sign for their business or I made t-shirts for a baseball team. And that just sounds like fun to me.

Mark Stephenson:
I agree.

Marc Vila:
So I think that the concept can start from a very broad concept that you want to sell t-shirts, but you need to have a niche market, which we talk about all the time.

Mark Stephenson:
Bunches of episodes. And it may be that you start with the market, maybe you’re a dance mom or you’re a cheer dad or an ice hockey dad. And you look around you or you are Marc Vila, and you take your daughter to ice-skating all the time. So you look around and there are all these people that are spending hundreds of dollars on jackets, embroider jackets that look terrible and you see an opportunity. It’s like, “I like embroidery. I’ve got a built in market here. Everybody spends a lot of money on these. Let’s take the next step because I know what I’m going to offer. I’m going to offer embroidered goods. And I know who I’m going to offer them too. I’m going to offer it this ice skating niche,” as an example.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. And there’s tons of this stuff and it’s all over the place. Some other things we wrote down like restaurants. Maybe you’ve worked in a bunch of restaurants, you’ve managed one or two, or you’ve been a cook in your area for a little while and you know a bunch of people in restaurants. So in restaurants you could sell to, you could sell aprons and Polos and t-shirts. And if you get a printer, you could sell menus and potentially signage for restaurants. And you have some connections, so you know how many employees they have, you know that each person buys a certain amount of shirt. You’ve got a niche, you know who you’re going to sell it to.

Mark Stephenson:
You’re a new mom. And you look around when you go to baby and me yoga, you look around at nine other women that have just dropped three grand on strollers and you’re looking at, “Oh, I could customize that with the baby’s name. I could do diaper bags. I could do their first onesies in bling.” You’ve got both that niche market, an affinity for it. You’ve identified that they’re spending money on it. And we haven’t gotten to a device that you’re going to use to make this stuff yet but you’ve got a good opportunity. You’ve identified a market. People spend money.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And it can even be a little more broad where one of the notes we made here. It’s just like local small business, because you recognize that there’s opportunity in your area. Maybe you are pretty decent at meeting and networking with people and you just say, you know what? I really think that my business, I could just go to the local business in my area and I can outfit them. Tons of them don’t don’t wear polo shirts, went to their meetings and maybe the closest place that does work doesn’t really do a good job or isn’t close at all. So there’s a lot of stuff like that.

Mark Stephenson:
Marc, both of us when people ask us what we do, if we say the words t-shirt or embroidery, they immediately ask us, “Can you do shirts for us?”

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Or, “Where can I get these?”

Marc Vila:
Yeah. All the time.

Mark Stephenson:
Every time.

Marc Vila:
All the time.

Mark Stephenson:
It’s like clockwork.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very consistent that somebody asks me to do something. I got a text message just the other day from a college buddy.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
“Someone told me you do shirts.” And I said, “Kind of.” But all in all, besides that, you have to narrow down who you’re going to try to sell to. And it can be more than one. But you’ve got to have a plan. If your plan is just, I’m going to sell embroidery to everybody who wants it, you’re going to struggle when it comes to reaching out to people and planning who you’re going to talk to and making your website.

Mark Stephenson:
Literally, I want everyone to write this down. The answer to who is your customer cannot be everyone.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
It literally cannot be everyone. The more people you try to sell to, the fewer sales you’re going to make.

Marc Vila:
It’s harder.

Mark Stephenson:
That is my prediction.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. It’s harder. You need to have a message that you deliver. And the reason is, if you’re going to sell embroidery or T-shirts or signage, it doesn’t matter, and you decide you want to, one of the things you’re going to do for your business, which is a great idea, is to start an Instagram.

Mark Stephenson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marc Vila:
Simple, it’s free, and you can reach people. Well, what’s that page going to look like if you’re trying to sell to everybody?

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
Right? Now, if you decided, well, I’m really going for Mom market, and maybe you have another one. Mom market and dance market. Both. So I’m going to do babies and I’m looking to do dance. Now you’ve got a message for your social media to look like. You know that –

Mark Stephenson:
I just got to flashback to the dancing E-Trade baby. I don’t know.

Marc Vila:
Oh no.

Mark Stephenson:
I don’t know why. But yeah I mean

Marc Vila:
I’m shutting the podcast off right now.

Mark Stephenson:
We’ve got tons of podcasts on this. We’ll link to ones about choosing your niche market that’ll tell you more. But I think suffice it to say, you definitely do need to know what you’re going to offer and who’s going to buy it.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So now that you’re in that space, the reason why this is first is just like what Mark mentioned, where you said working back words, meaning that you’re not deciding you’re going to buy an embroidery machine and then figuring out who you’re going to sell to. Even though it could be a little wishy washy, as I mentioned on, well, you do like embroidery, right? But it is very important that you have a market first, who you’re going to sell to, because that’s going to influence the decision you’re going to make on any equipment you’re going to invest in. This will help you decide if a cutter is the right option, if an embroidery machine is right, if a printer is right, if you want to do direct to garment printing or digital heat effects printing. It will help you decide that. It’ll also to help you decide if just one is good enough.

Mark Stephenson:
Right. And also, it may uncover a passion for you. So in other words, you may end up limiting yourself. Well, after you look at who your market might be and what you can sell them, maybe what they might pay. You may realize that, I thought I wanted to go into the embroidery business, but after I really look at my customers, I’ll probably do better with just printed T-shirts or with vinyl or with promotional products. There may be a decision point for you here.

Marc Vila:
And also the one piece of technology, but also the multiple piece is a big part of it. If I liked embroidery, like that was kind of the passion, which it is very cool. And if you are into selling and things like that, it might be a great thing you want to get into. And my niche was going to be restaurants, I would be concerned that I don’t have an option besides embroidery to sell to the bosses and the kitchen staff and the cleaning crew and things like that. Because the embroidered shirts might be great for the front of the house and the management, but really line cooks aren’t looking for an embroidered polo typically. Depending on the restaurant, they may be doing embroidery, wearing chef jackets, or they might just want T-shirts.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Right?

Mark Stephenson:
And it’s not necessarily fancy T-shirts. I think one day we’re going to do a podcast why everyone should own a cutter.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think we’ve done that one.

Mark Stephenson:
No. Let’s put it on the list.

Marc Vila:
So the step one is you know what plan, who you’re going to sell to, you know what you’re going to sell them, and you even have an idea of what they’re going to pay for it, I think. That’s the last little bit. You should know who are these people, what are they willing to pay? If you’re going to do embroidery, and you think that they’re not willing to pay more than 10 bucks for anything, then you’re going to struggle with trying to be profitable and embroider. You need something that’s faster. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Agreed.

Marc Vila:
That’s why it’s part of the decision making process

Mark Stephenson:
And goes to the next set of decisions that you need to make when you create an expense budget Because you’re going to have to look at what is it going to cost you on a regular or on a monthly basis to run your business just from the basics. Because it’s not all about supply cost for a printer or thread or even blank T-shirts, it’s the fundamental businessy stuff.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Stephenson:
Like your website, even if it’s a Shopify store, it’s going to cost you something every month. You might have e-mail costs. Marc, I know both of us have gone through these expenses recently to set up an LLC and to keep that up with the state.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You have state fees. You may want to have a little bit of money set up to talk to an accountant, to someone who’s going to do your taxes for you and maybe that’s next year. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
It might not be today, but it’s something to consider. Any state fees that you’re going to have to pay, licensing fees you may have to have. E-mail. If you want to have a website, Mariasembroidery.com and you want orders at Mariasembroidery.com to be an e-mail address. Then those things, all cost a little bit of money. All this stuff is pretty cheap too.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I think Google professional suite or something is like $12 a month.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Their most expensive one outside of going into what they would call enterprise editions is like 18 or something.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. But now they do add up. So if you’re paying a little bit every month for hosting, for e-mail, for the state fees, you could be up to a 100 bucks a month.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And then we’re talking about the customization business so you’re investing in a piece of equipment.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
So saying that, that’s going to be what? Anywhere from a 100 to 500 a month.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. That’s pretty good. I think somewhere in there. Probably, if we looked, our average customer spent about $300 a month.

Marc Vila:
Okay.

Mark Stephenson:
You can definitely start for 100, 150 bucks.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. You could start for a hundred. Depends on the equipment you want to buy. If you’re buying more than one piece of equipment, which model you’re getting. And that’s why if you speak with someone at ColDesi, they’ll guide you to that stuff.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Actually, we just had a meeting this morning with various people in management and sales and they were discussing how they want to continue to educate our sales folks so they understand the different pieces of equipment and how to consult customers with the best piece of equipment.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. For what? And that’s one of the powers that we’ve got. The ColDesi superpower is the ability to put you in the place that you need to be, to match what you want to do with the right piece of equipment, because we don’t all just one thing. And I think it’s great that the sales management brought up the idea that they wanted to make sure that the sales people were getting continuing education on the different piece of equipment, their capabilities, what matches together well. Thanks for bringing that up. It’s good.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. All that stuff. So you want to add all this up.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And don’t forget, I really like this last bullet point because I wouldn’t have thought of it. You’ve got to budget some money for samples, because people are always asking us for samples. I guarantee they’re going to ask you for them, especially if you don’t meet the in person. You’ve got to set aside some money for screwing things up or practicing as we like to call it, of practicing, which is going to be maybe it’s blank T-shirts or rolls of fabric that you work on. It’s backings and thread or ink or transfer paper. It’s things like that. And it’s also the items for testing.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Stephenson:
I know that Marc is always talking about the idea that you really need to just buy this shirt and test it before you sell something to a customer.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Colman and Company doesn’t have minimums.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, you can buy one.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. You can buy one of something. So buy one.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. No, I recognize you buy one shirt, and then you have to pay a shipping fee. And most of these apparel warehouses, all have a little handling charge. So I’m not saying that’s cheaper, free. But if you’re budgeting all, all this together and you’re going to say, “I’m also going to put in X amount of dollars to have some sample T-shirts, some sample hats,” you’re going to get a piece of equipment you don’t know how to use. So you’re going to have to have some blank shirts or hats that you’re going to… Even if you are putting a design on the front and back and on the sleeve, then flipping it inside out and putting it on the inside too. But you’ve got to have materials to practice. If you’re buying a digital heat effects printer, you’re going to quote unquote waste paper. Right?
Nobody considers when you’re learning to drive and you are going out in the car and practicing driving in back roads or in neighborhoods. My dad taught me in the storage facility parking lot where we had a storage facility. So we just up and down the aisles at two o’clock in the afternoon when nobody was there.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that.

Marc Vila:
Anyway, nobody says that that’s wasted gas.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. That’s funny. I was laughing as you started that story because I immediately got it. Nobody says you’re wasting gas while you’re learning to drive.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. But if you use a piece of paper to learn how to use your T-shirt printer-

Mark Stephenson:
Oh my God.

Marc Vila:
You feel like you’re wasting paper. But this is all budgeted in. And then we put testing in there too because somebody’s going to say, “Hey, can you do a hat?” And you’re going to say, “I’ve seen a video on how to do a hat, but I’ve never done a hat.” So you’re going to want to have a blank hat that you could just make because before you officially tell that customer you can give them a dozen hats tomorrow, you should feel comfortable that you can make one pretty successfully.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. Agreed. And you can make this expense budget as involved or as simple as you want. These are the things that are focused on just the business. But it could be maybe there’s gas involved if you do deliveries, or you could put your time in as part of your expense budget so you recognize how much time you’re going to spend. Or maybe there is advertising cost already because you know you’re going to spend a certain amount every month to be on the local diner menu.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. A school newsletter or maybe you advertise the dance studio wants $300 a month to put a little sign by the entrance. Whatever it might be, what I would say, for this one, specifically in this case, this is a bare minimum budget though. This is a bare minimum for me to stay in business budget. Because if you keep adding on the expense for the diner-

Mark Stephenson:
Good point.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. The expense for the diner, the expense for the advertisement, the expense for this, you’re going to put yourself at $1,500 a month and then you’re going to say-

Mark Stephenson:
You’re going to block yourself.

Marc Vila:
“I can’t afford to start that business.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So this is like a minimum, this is a stay in business budget, which I would say-

Mark Stephenson:
I’m going to put you on the spot.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Sure.

Mark Stephenson:
What would you say that number would be?

Marc Vila:
Okay, well, I’ll just do math real quick then.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
Simple math. I think you should have a basic website, which is going to be 20 bucks a month.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay, after it’s made. Yep.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, after it’s made. And honestly you get something at Wix. And if you can super, super simple, you can whip it up yourself. Simple.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Simple, okay? 20 bucks a month.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay.

Marc Vila:
E-mail, 15 bucks a month. This is a G-mail business service or something like that.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay.

Marc Vila:
Or your website service might even offer that with it for the extra five bucks or something. Your state fees, which I’m just going to say is probably going to be something like 10 bucks a month. So now we’re at 20, 30, 40.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep. 40 bucks.

Marc Vila:
I’m going to put the e-mail at 10 because I think it’s a little more realistic. So website, 20. E-mail, 10. 30. 10 for the state. 40. A machine monthly payment, you said 300 was about the average. So we’re at 340. And then money for samples, practice, et cetera, we could probably be pretty slim on that and just round it all up to 400.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I like that idea. With fluctuations, right? That’s your regular budget, but I think that’s great.

Marc Vila:
Yes.

Mark Stephenson:
400 bucks a month.

Marc Vila:
400 bucks. And this is like, I am in bare bones business budget, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So now the next step for success, now that you’ve done that is your budget money for no income coming in at all. Once you have a number, 400, you need to work that into your current money that you have an income that you have coming in on a regular basis from whatever that is, your full-time job, retirement money, money in savings, whatever it is, you need to be prepared to spend this money for an undetermined amount of time on a monthly basis.

Mark Stephenson:
So basically imagine that you’re going to buy a nice car for 400 bucks a month. You’re going to put it in the garage.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
You’re not going to drive it. That’s a great way to think about, you’ve got a monthly expense for a certain period of time to keep the business open, regardless of whether or not you leave that car in the garage or you take it around and drive it all the time, that’s going to be your minimum spent.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And how are you doing it? It’s like you cancel Netflix so you can get a business e-mail address.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
You stop going to Starbucks every day –

Mark Stephenson:
Wait, is that what happened in Netflix last week? Because I lost a crap load of money on that.

Marc Vila:
Probably. You stop buying Starbucks every day, then you can own a machine.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
You eat out less. You don’t eat out one less time a month. You take eating out down by once a month. So if you eat out five times a month, you eat out four times a month. Now you have a website. Eat out one less time, and now you’ve got enough money for samples in practice. This is stuff like that by generic brand of something like that. This is all very shoestring stuff and small business stuff. But if your dream is to really start this business and you want to get going and you’ve got to find 400 a month to get it going, this is different ways you can do it.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And let’s point out, and we’re going to make this point a few times is, it’s not just for next month, it’s $400 a month for as long as you want that business to be open.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Stephenson:
Right? So it’s not like you’re just figuring out the sacrifices that you can make next month so you can get started. You’ve got to really plan like Marc Vila said to not make any money. And if you can do that, then I actually think that should be near the top of the guaranteed ways to be successful.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Is to really just plan on, Hey, this is what it’s going to cost me to stay open and I’m going to stay open. And here’s how I’m going to stay open no matter what.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Now saying that, I don’t think it’s a bad idea for anybody to jump in and say, “I am going to make this business work. I have 90 days to do it. And if I don’t, I’ll fail.”

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
If you choose to do that, then kudos to you. You’re taking a leap of faith and you’re going to hustle and plenty of people have success stories taking that leap of faith. This is a guaranteed success plan though.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
That’s the difference.

Mark Stephenson:
And I got to tell you, there are people that are doing it this way, because just in the Avance machine group the other day, there was at least one person that was saying, “You know what? I got the Avance and I got it four months ago, but life got in the way and I haven’t been able to touch it since.” So now they’re going through training and they’re learning how to use it. If they had not been in the position where they could make that 400 bucks a month to keep things alive, then they would’ve had serious financial problems, but they didn’t. They just had to buy their time and wait to all the timing was right again.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve talked about plenty of times where you can, in just recent episodes. Well, if your payment is 300, you need to sell 30 shirts. That’s the number that we’ve said.

Mark Stephenson:
10 bucks a shirt. 10 bucks a shirt.

Marc Vila:
It’s a common. If you make 10 bucks a shirt, 30 shirts. But really with this one, what we’re getting in here, this is the guaranteed plan for success. If you’re not putting yourself on, I have to be successful by day 71 or I’m going to fail. If you put yourself in a position to say, “As long as I choose to keep this business open, I can keep it going.” And that’s part of the guarantee for success. And that’s not always the case that exists. But if you can make it happen and if you can’t make it happen, then all change things. Change things, just like I said, spend less money so you can have money budgeted aside. And then when you start making money, get Netflix again if you want it, or start going to Starbucks every day.

Mark Stephenson:
There’s probably still nothing on, but you could.

Marc Vila:
You could go back to those things. So you would need to –

Mark Stephenson:
So that’s the budget for no income step.

Marc Vila:
The budget for no income step is, so you’ve got an idea, you know how much it’s going to cost to keep that up and running at a bare minimum level, and then you’re going to budget that. I am going to keep this business at this bare minimum level and then I’m going to do these next steps to make money.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes.

Marc Vila:
Almost lost my water. Okay.
So the next step is planning your work time.

Mark Stephenson:
Man, I’m telling you if you are a side hustler, a true side hustler, you’ve got an eight to five job that takes it out of you, and you’ve got one or two kids and they’ve got sports activities, then man, you really have to plan your time on when you’re going to accomplish things. Because I know two business owners, small business owners that are pretty successful, but they literally work all day, and then three days a week, they’re at highlight practice or soccer or tennis. And on the weekends, they go camping once a month. They’ve got a whole life. And it’s not like they have an entire three days a week that they’re not doing anything. You’ve got to hammer this stuff out if this is what you want you’ve got to let make sure that and planning this out, planning your work time and actually setting it aside is going to be key because you can cut your expenses. You can do all of that stuff, and you haven’t used any of your time yet. And this is where that takes place.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And the number that we kind of wrote down here is, you’ve got to find five hours a week for the business.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, which is good and conservative at the same time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a reasonable number to say, this is the minimum thing you’re going to put into the business and you’ve got to plan it. And the time when you can. And it’s got to be relatively unbreaking time, which means this isn’t going to be something you’re going to easily cancel. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
Just like if you committed to like-

Mark Stephenson:
So it’s consistent and continuous blocks of time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Consistent and continuous. If you’ve got your kid in baseball or something like that, every week you’re going to practice and every week you’re going to the game and you rarely miss one, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
That’s what this is too. So it can be Tuesday, 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM before work starts, before school kids stuff. It could be Thursdays from eight to 10:00 PM when everyone’s in bed. It could be just Saturdays in the morning.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. For me, it’s Sundays in the morning, Sundays in the morning. Get up like it’s a regular work day and you work for three or four hours.

Marc Vila:
And you find your time. I’ll tell you, I’m not great at this. I admit it.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay.

Marc Vila:
I admit it. I’m not great at this. But I feel like I’m getting better over time, and I’m finding times that are good at this. This is not something that I’m great at. You can have all your strength and weaknesses and you recognize them, but this is something that’s important if you particularly want to be successful.
By the way, we’ve lost Mark’s video for anybody watching this. Hopefully he’s still with us.

Mark Stephenson:
There we go.

Marc Vila:
Okay, there we go.

Mark Stephenson:
For a minute, I was just the ColDesi globe, which I don’t mind.

Marc Vila:
You can watch us on YouTube if you’re listening, by the way.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
And you can see our hand gestures and Mark’s cool Tampa artwork in the background.

Mark Stephenson:
And I make funny faces during the… Marc Vila does close-up magic. I don’t talk about that a lot, but sometimes I’m quiet just because I can’t believe he can do this.

Marc Vila:
I’ve got a mini Rubik’s cube right here.

Mark Stephenson:
He apparently created that out of thin air just while we were talking. So that was great.

Marc Vila:
So you’ve got to have some time budgeted for the business and you got to do it every week. What this is going to allow you to do is, that’s going to allow you, what was above this, or the before this I should say was that you’ve got money that you’re spending every month without income coming in yet.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
This is what you’re going to do to help make sure that that doesn’t stay forever because that’s not the goal. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
If you don’t put in the time every week, then eventually you will never make any money. And that will just be a continuous expense forever because you’ve –

Mark Stephenson:
You know what? Now that you said five hours, I wish we had decided that $500 a month was the budget because now five hours, $500. You could divide that up a little bit easier.

Marc Vila:
We’re going to just say 500.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I like that.

Marc Vila:
Okay. But honestly though, but the concern about saying that stuff too is, if you decided to just get a heat press as your business, you may be financing like 30 bucks a month.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes, absolutely.

Marc Vila:
And now you’re at like a hundred or something like that to own a business. If you decide it to buy a DTF printer, you might be at 1500 a month, and your other monthly expenses to maintain and are going to be a lot more. So maybe two grand a month. But you find your space. In addition to those scheduling, five hours or four or six, something like that is, you need like some floating time is what I would call it.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay.

Marc Vila:
You’re going to need time where, this is every day, answer an e-mail from a customer, reply to a text message, reply to a social comment. This might be like 10 minutes a day, or less. But you just need to be planned for that because you don’t want to be doing business with folks and your scheduled time is Tuesday morning for an hour, Thursday evening for two hours and Saturday morning for two hours, that’s your five hours. And then somebody e-mails you Saturday at noon and you don’t reply to them until Tuesday.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
You won’t get the business.

Mark Stephenson:
But I do think it’s okay to establish that you do have times that you’re going to respond when you’re talking to your customers.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
So someone fills out a request on your website or something, and maybe the thank you page says, “Hey, thanks for inquiring.” You can typically expect a call back from me at 12 o’clock or sometime between 11 and one, or I don’t know about you, but first thing in the morning. If you want to talk at seven or eight o’clock in the morning, let’s jump on it. I like to start early. So you can propose that you don’t have to be like, your phone isn’t on fire when it rings. So it’s great if you can pick up, but sometimes if you’re scheduling the side hustle around the rest of your life, it’s a good idea to say, “Oh, five o’clock noon, eight o’clock in the morning, that’s when I check my e-mails and my texts, and I respond to correspondence.”

Marc Vila:
Yep. And it’s all also, if you’re going to do this floating time, let’s say it is on Saturday. You’re just going to float some more time Saturday night in between dinner and having some beers with friends or something. You’re going to float just a quick e-mail check.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes.

Marc Vila:
And you check the e-mail. If somebody put in an inquiry on website that says, “Hey, I’m thinking about getting two dozen hats.” You can also just reply and say, “Hey, I wanted to let you know I got this. Busy family weekend here, but I’m going to go ahead and follow up with you on Monday afternoon.”

Mark Stephenson:
I love that. And the other side of that is I occasionally don’t sleep well. And I’m notorious inside the company for waking up at 2:30 in the morning and sending everyone e-mails, because I immediately go through my to-do list in my head, is you can actually schedule your e-mails.

Marc Vila:
Oh yeah, you’re right. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Stephenson:
If it’s after hours, if you want to put the kids to bed and it’s 10 o’clock at night, you want to spend two hours returning e-mails or something on those lines, you can write them all up and just go into Google or office and schedule them for delivery tomorrow morning, so you’re not ending up having a long conversation until 1:00 AM about an order.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. There you go. I think that’s clever too. So you’ve got scheduled time that you dedicate to the business. This is like doing some marketing, doing some work on your website, going into Google and posting stuff, going into social media and posting. All that stuff. It’s just regular stuff you’re going to do. Fulfilling orders. You know you’re going to do all your order work on Thursday, evenings and Saturday mornings, something like that. Then you have the floating time. It doesn’t you’re going to do it every day, but you’re just going to know, mentally prepare, every day at lunch I can just check my e-mail real quick.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Or if somebody wants to schedule a call with me to chat, so I’ll offer them, these are time slots when I can do that when those show up.

Mark Stephenson:
Not on your in the office company computer? You would do that on your mobile device, would be my suggestion.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s great. And then you’ll also need to make sure that as far as time goes, you’re going to need some business hours availability to some degree.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, absolutely.

Marc Vila:
So if you are side hustling, 6:00 to 8:00 AM and 8:00 to 10:00 PM, because your family, kids are in bed, it’s not during your day job, nobody will interrupt you during those times. That’s great. Nothing wrong with printing T-shirts from 6:00 to 8:00 AM every time. But you will have some clients at that are going to want to talk to you at two o’clock in the afternoon or noon or 5:00 PM. So you’re going to want to prepare, how will I handle those situations. And Mark, you mentioned earlier, you can say to somebody, “Hey, my best time’s super early in the morning, 7:00 to 8:00 AM. Do you wake up that early?” 50% of people at least are going to say, “Sure.” You know?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
I don’t know what the number is, but plenty will be like, “Yeah. That’s fine by me.” If not, then, when do you have lunch breaks at work? Or can you take 15 minute breaks? Or can you call? Do you commute on the ride home? Is that a good time, or the ride in, is that a good time? But you’re going to want to kind of mentally prepare for that. How am I going to handle people that want to talk to me during business hours?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, I like that. That’s a good point.

Marc Vila:
All right. So we have a few more things to cover in 10 or 15 minutes, I think.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. So I think that it’s because those are the things where covered the things about getting into business and laying out the not failing part of the business and getting ready for customers. And now we’re over the hump and we’re into starting to make money. And that is to create some realistic sales goals to get your business to profitability. And what I think is, is you’ve got to work out, and you could look up under one of the 57 ROI podcasts that we’ve done so far. Is if you use the rule of thumb, you’re going to make $10 a shirt, just make sure that you’re going to at least do that.
Now, you know how many shirts it’s going to take you to be profitable, because you know what your monthly expenses, your drop dead monthly expenses to stay in business are. How many shirts do you need to sell before you are at break even. If it’s $500 a month, you’re at 50 shirts a month. That means 51 shirts, you make 10 bucks. 60 shirts, you make a hundred bucks. You know what? What’s a realistic goal for you. Look at the potential customers that you’ve got, the time that you can spend and figure out how many shirts you can sell.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I think that this is just a great one. This is just, how do I get myself from investing my personal money to the business quote, unquote, paying for itself.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
And all this stuff is simple, but this is how you do it. And there’s always extenuating circumstances like meteors and stuff. But for the most part, this is a basic concept, especially when you’re just a really small business and it’s just you, and you’re trying to hit a dream so you could quit the day job or have more money. These are the steps you’re going to do so you don’t fail. So you need to figure out what that number is to get yourself to profit. And then that’s goal one.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
All right. The next thing I would say is, you’ve gotten to goal one and hopefully surpassed it because you’re putting the work in, you’re keeping the business going. And now you’re to the point where maybe you’re profiting 500 bucks a month.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
After everything. Right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
So your expenses were 500 and you are making 500, so you put 500 in the bank. Don’t empty the profits is the next step.

Mark Stephenson:
I like that. The next step is not to do something. Right?

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Don’t spend all of that money.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah, which is hard, I think, at first, because you’re working and you’re putting in a good amount of work and you made $500 and you’re like, “Dang, I’m paying myself five bucks an hour. This stinks. I would like to take that money.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
But you’re investing your time. And you’re investing your time towards something else. You’re investing in building something up that one day you’re going to be making good money and you’re going to be paying yourself a good profit out of this business. But in the beginning, when you’re just getting to profitability, don’t empty it all out.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And it could be, what do I need to do to get to $50,000 a year? Am I going to have to spend additional money to get to 50 a year in profit? Am I going to need more equipment? Am I going to need to invest in marketing? So you’re setting aside, maybe half of your gross profit from your business once you start making money just for growth as you get started. Eventually you could probably take it all. But for now, I would start aggressively looking towards the future once you’re in profit mode. Now I’ve got some money in my pocket, I’ve got 500 or a thousand dollars. What can I do to turn that into $10,000 in sales? And then you listen to five more podcast episodes-

Marc Vila:
There you go

Mark Stephenson:
About Google advertising and about how to sell more and doing sales calls and all that stuff, so you really start to grow at that point.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I think this is a great personal choice in what anyone wants to do with this. I think just the one key to guaranteed success is you don’t empty the profits because there will be a time where you’re going to wish you had a nice little bit of money for the business. And if you’re just barely skating at a zero profit level, because you’re paying yourself all that money, you’ve got no money that you’ve put aside to take the next step.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. We know that you never know what’s going to happen.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
There could be a plague.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Sure.

Mark Stephenson:
There could be inflation that bothers people. There could be something that happens with you or your family that you can’t get back to the business in a little bit. You could need an equipment repair that isn’t covered under warranty. Having this war chest of cash because you’re not spending all of your profits on yourself is incredibly powerful because it gives you safety to stay in business and it and it gives you the platform to grow.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. If you’re bringing in 500 a month and you’re not touching it at all, in six months, you’ve got $6,000 in your business bank account on a business that was a shoestring budget Last year.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Right. And that’s a significant different place to be in, and especially if you want to reinvest or something like that. Now, if you choose to take some money, I just said don’t take more than half. So maybe, hey, I’m putting in this work every month. I would like to take my family out to a pretty nice dinner one a month as a reward for of the time I’ve put in this. So we’re going to go out for a $200 steak dinner once a month. And if you choose to do that, this is all your dream. I guess, that’s the point. You could do whatever you want.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And this is one of the rare cases that Marc Villa and I are not going to judge you.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. I don’t care. Yeah, it doesn’t matter to me.

Mark Stephenson:
We’ll judge you on a lot of different stuff, just e-mail us and ask. This isn’t one of them. You do what you want.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You do what you want, which is great. And then the next one, which is about not judging really is, you grow at your own pace.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Or not.

Marc Vila:
Or not. This is you. There’s no race. The only person you’re racing is yourself. You can’t judge your success about other people in groups, Facebook groups, or friends or family, whatever it is. If all you make is $500 profit a month from this business and you end up like putting in, “Hey, I put in like five hours a month to this thing now and I make 500 bucks and I’m cool with that.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. That’s awesome.

Marc Vila:
Then the business stays for itself. You made 6,000 bucks this year. And you’ve got it down to a science where you’re not even putting in those five hours a week, you’re down to five hours a month and that’s all you do. And you take half the money out every year and you go on a vacation and you buy a new TV and a new grill with that three grand, then that’s good.

Mark Stephenson:
Every year, just nothing but TVs on every wall of the house-

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Every year.

Mark Stephenson:
And grills littering the background.

Marc Vila:
Every year. Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Listen, I’ll tell you. We’ve got customers that do the whole range. We’ve got customers that have million dollar plus businesses and they’re extremely happy with that. And then we’ve got customers that just started because they wanted to make stuff for the friends and family and turned it into a little $500 profit center on top of that.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Stephenson:
We’re into all of it.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Right. We support whatever that choice is, as long as you make the choice and don’t let the choice be made for you.

Marc Vila:
And if the goal is to get to 10 grand a month, and you’re still at 500 six months later, because I hit a roadblock here and I hit this. Are you still in business? Yes. You’re not failing. Are you paying all the bills? Yes. You’re still making 500 bucks a month. It’s not much, but it’s a side hustle and you still don’t like that you’re putting in 20 hours a month and it’s been six months and you’re not there yet. But this is your pace, your whatever choices you’re making. And the reason why it’s going slower is your own thing. You got sick. Well, now I’m only putting in an hour a week because I injured my leg, whatever it is.

Mark Stephenson:
And you really have to be careful. I know from personal experience, there will be people around you who are not doing what you’re doing. They’re not pushing the side hustle and they will occasionally just kick you in the kneecap for no reason.

Marc Vila:
You’re going to have that brother-in-law.

Mark Stephenson:
It’ll just be no reason like, “Oh, you’ve been doing that for so long. You suck. You’re not making any more money. Why are you wasting your time?” “Well, because I’m trying to do something and you’re not, so go watch Netflix.”

Marc Vila:
There you go.

Mark Stephenson:
Can I come over, because I haven’t finished car, or whatever.

Marc Vila:
No, it’s so true. And you just grow at your own pace and you just figure out whatever you need to do to talk to folks that are asking you, “Oh, you made a million bucks yet?” You know?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. By the way, I just want to point out, we’re going to wrap this up soon. I just wanted to point out that you can talk to Marc Vila and me.

Marc Vila:
Oh yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
If you’re stuck, if you can’t get past a certain point, if you’ve been at that $500 a month for longer than you think you should or you’re looking for ways to grow, then you can send us an e-mail. We’ve hopped on a phone call or a Zoom or something with a bunch of people over the years just to see if we can’t troubleshoot a little bit and push you in the right direction.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And that’s part of this. This podcast is getting folks going or helping them get in a place where they don’t feel like they’ve got this drop dead time. If I don’t get this thing by then, this will help you get way past all of that and get yourself to a profitable business. And there’s one last step.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
So after you’re growing at your own pace, you just need to plan your next big steps. What are they? This is not what you do before you start. This is what you do, I don’t know, every day while you’re running your business because you’re going to see new things as you learn. You’re going to see new opportunities. You’re going to talk to clients that, “Oh gosh, I just found a new niche market.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
But that niche market is going to require me to do this.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So you’re going to look for new growth opportunities. You’re going to look to reach for more customers. Maybe you want to start going to fairs and farmers markets. So what am I going to do? I’m going to plan for how much that’s going to cost. How much, if I need to invest in some sort of a tent or table. Do I want to advertise online on Facebook? What is that going to cost me? How much am I want to plan for that? You just need to be planning your next steps.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And keep notes on it, because it may be that 30% or half your customers are asking you for something that you don’t sell yet.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
So maybe that’s the next big step is, “Well, I’ve had people, I got an embroidery machine. People have been asking me for printed T-shirts for a year or six months. What is that step going to look like for me? And how much am I going to make from it?” Or maybe it’s something completely different. It’s the marketing opportunity with going to a fair or you get introduced to a purchasing agent for a school system. And they say, “You know what? The people that do our jerseys are terrible.”

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
That’s an opportunity. You want to write that down, see what it’s going to take to get to the other side and fulfill that chance at making more money and decide if that’s your next big step is in that direction.

Marc Vila:
And I’ll say this to wrap up the next step and really just the whole thing is, if you’re doing all of these steps, you are probably going to fill up the time that you have to work with orders fast.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Fast. You’re going to get to a point where, “I’m putting in five hours a week, I need to up that to 10, or I’m not going to be able to make any more money or grow.” You’re going to fill up your order fast. You’re going to fill up your machine quick. So it’s like, we talk about growing at your own pace and being stuck at this profit level for a short period of time. Those are all extenuating circumstance stuff. Regular folks who are dedicating time and asking for referrals and going out and looking for business and doing networking and following all the stuff we’ve talked, the common story when you’re doing all those steps is, I’m too busy. I’m too busy and –

Mark Stephenson:
I don’t want to ruin the whole point of this podcast, but we hear, “I started making money on my first month.”

Marc Vila:
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
“90 days, my machine was paid off.” We hear stuff. We don’t want to make it seem like you have to slow go it.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
But that’s the point is, this is the reasonable safe approach.

Marc Vila:
This is the guaranteed success. The problem that I have with the stories of quick success is there are potential points of failure that can happen. And if you are not prepared for that, by your money and your budgeting and kind of figuring out the time you’re going to work and all stuff, if you’re not prepared for any of that stuff, then any hiccups you get can lead you towards a failure.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. Agree.

Marc Vila:
Rather than just, “You know what? I had a hiccup, I got stuck. Now I’m still making only 500 bucks a month like I was in month two. I got stuck for three months because X, Y, Z. But I had planned out the money, so I knew I could pay the bills. I planned out the work. So even though I got stuck on these other things, I was still putting in the work, even though I was working, catching myself up from mistakes,” whatever it would be, that’s how you remain successful and you remain in business rather than giving up.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, even like I said in the beginning, the lady that had brought up the idea that she got her Avance embroidery machine, but didn’t touch it for three or four months because life got in the way. That’s somebody that may have not gone through this process, but clearly had the resources planned out where normally people get angry with us about things like that, for no reason other than they couldn’t accomplish what they wanted to in that period of time.
This is the way I do things personally, the way you’ve described, Marc Vila, this is it. I only do things, I only embark on things that I, 100% know, that I can afford not to make money on at all. So I can run the whole side hustle business, doesn’t cost me more than a few hundred bucks. And I can keep it open for as long as I want to, just ready for opportunities or until I can devote that time to making it successful.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Then when you do have success, don’t be shy about it and be ready for it to go pop. Because the other end of that is that you tell people that you’ve got this amazing side hustle, printing custom T-shirts, and you’re making a crap load of money. That success is going to bring people to you. It’s going to be, “Hey, you know what? I got a buddy of mine that’s killing it in the custom T-shirt business.” “Oh, really? I need custom T-shirts.” And they want to do business with somebody that’s successful. So you are going to be top of mind for a couple of reasons.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. And I still just want to throw it out there that, I’m not discounting, because this is not… Sorry, I’ll just say it differently. This podcast is specifically the guaranteed success plan for your side hustle.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. Guaranteed success plan, side hustle.

Marc Vila:
Side hustle. Right. But folks gamble and win money and folks gamble and lose money. And if you would like to gamble, gamble. And you could do the same thing with starting a business. You could say, “Hey, listen, I got 10 grand. I’m throwing it in and I need to make money in six months, I’m going to hustle my butt off and make money in six months. And if I don’t do it, then I failed.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
And if you go into that one, I don’t have any problem with that plan either. I’m not going to judge anybody for that either. But that’s not what this podcast episode is about. That’s why we’re not discussing that stuff.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. Yes. We’re not going to talk about the fact that every Easter, I go to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
And I spend a couple of hundred bucks on slot machines, knowing full well, I’m not going to win.
All right. I love this episode. Thanks for coming up with it, Marc Vila. This has been the guaranteed success plan, according to Marc Vila, for your side hustle or a small business. Mark Stephenson has no liability for the guarantee in the success plan, but I do support everything that we said here.

Marc Vila:
Well, and we’ll wrap up by saying, here’s why the above plan is a guaranteed for success, asterisk, not really. But it is. The plan changes a bit over time. So we’re not saying that the whole plan is, this is one thing. There’s a lot of thinking about things and changing things, and what are your plans going to be in learning. You don’t have a budget drop dead time. So you’re saying that like, “Listen, it’s going to cost me 300 bucks a month to own this business. I’m prepared to invest that until it works, whether it’s 30 days or six months or 18 months, I’m going to do it.” The budget’s not only money, but it’s time. You’re saying that before. I’m spending five hours a week.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
And then you start with a clear plan on what you’re going to sell, who you’re going to sell it to. So you can wrap everything up. And if you’re doing all those two things, you’re going to have success and how big that goes and how great it is, is a combination of how hard you work, how lucky you are, how good of a salesperson you are, all the other million other things that come in.

Mark Stephenson:
Right. Good disclaimer. Good disclaimer.
All right. This has been Mark Stevenson

Marc Vila:
And Marc Vila.

Mark Stephenson:
You guys have a great guaranteed side hustle business.

Marc Vila:
There you go.

The post Episode 171 – Guaranteed Success Plan for your Side Hustle / Small Business appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.