Many career professionals look forward to starting businesses for many reasons which could include either passion or the desire to become their own boss. Whatever the reason, building a business could be rewarding because of the promise of wealth creation. However, businesses are risky ventures. Reports show that 70% of start-ups fail, with about 30% failing within the first year.

Many have decided to take a rather cautious approach towards creating and running a business. One of those is starting it out as a side hustle while holding their 9-5. Taking the side hustle approach helps these “side preneurs” attain a product-market fit, get validation and attain sufficient cash flow that could meet their immediate needs. Companies like Slack, Craigslist, Oculus, Groupon etc., started out as side hustles. Today, they are successful businesses in their own right.

Many successful businesses have been built this way and beginning as a side hustle is one of the safest ways to start a business, especially for career professionals. However, given the nature of business, it can be very challenging to manage a career, while struggling to pull your venture off the ground. However, there are ways to run around this.

There are risk-free pathways and actions as you think of starting your business even as you still maintain your 9-5:
1. Build a community
2. Outsource tasks
3. Begin with Marketing
4. Engage a Virtual Assistant

1. Build a community
One of the safest ways to start a business is to build a community of your target audience. How? Offer content that is useful to them and bring them under one umbrella. There are many groups that need a support system as they navigate their journey. For example, Jobberman started as a community that helped job seekers get interview-ready before it became a full-scale recruitment site. This helped them build a database of eligible job seekers which made creating a recruitment agency make sense. Gymshark started as a central blog with articles on health and fitness information before it metamorphosed into a Gym and fitness apparel company. They used the blog to gather fitness enthusiasts and build a community of like-minded people.

Business owners can start by offering insightful content, events, discussions and opportunities for networking with their target audience. This helps them better understand the market and customer needs in a low-cost way and helps them save marketing costs when they launch.
The disadvantage of a community-first approach is that it can be time-consuming. Building a community takes a lot of time and results might take a while.


2. Outsource tasks
Depending on the kind of business you have, you can outsource a lot of things to agencies that have proficiencies in them. For example, suppose you are starting a software as a service business, you can outsource building the simplest part of your product/business usually called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a software development agency.

This will help you focus on fewer and more strategic areas like marketing, speaking with customers etc. There are usually lots of moving parts in a business. However, outsourcing helps you minimise them and leaves room for you to gain efficiency and time savings. However, there are ways to go around outsourcing because if it is not done right, it can be disastrous. If you must outsource, supervision is important and surprising because you are pressed for time, and you have to sometimes delegate supervision.


3. Begin with Marketing
Generating traction is very important for a business. It is imperative to be certain that there is a ready market willing and able to pay for whatever product or service you are offering.

To test the waters, you can advertise an offer, get paid for it and utilise money generated to purchase the commodity and supply the customers eventually.
For example, if you want to start a beef delivery business, You could advertise your offer via social media ads, get people to pay for them, utilize the money to pay beef suppliers, and get the beef and supply to your customer using a delivery company. This is a model that can help you minimize risk in a cost-effective manner and can be utilized for many other businesses.


4. Get a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant (VA) can help you with all the tasks listed above. They can build No-code websites, create custom designs, manage your outsourcing partners, talk to customers, help with marketing, etc.

Career professionals usually have to spread their time thin between their day job and their business, Therefore, getting a helping hand can be very helpful from early on.
Getting full-time employees in different operational areas can be very expensive and as an early business person, you try to be capital efficient. VAs are generalists that can handle a lot of things decently, saving you money and time.




Virtual assistants cover many areas of your business at a very decent price point. Great Virtual assistants can be very valuable as they are good at marketing, design, administration, stakeholder management and other tasks that make life easy for you.
They are polymaths.
Are you considering engaging a virtual assistant? Reach out to ExecutivePros at admin@executivepros.org

ExecutivePros provides an Expert Managed Assistant service. Our virtual Assistants, aided by best-in-class technology tools, are tailored to your industry with domain experts overseeing their activities to ensure quality service delivery. These VAs can help with sales prospecting, research and customer relationship management just to mention a few.

You can get connected to expert VAs from $350 per month, hassle-free.
To get started,
Email: admin@executivepros.org
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