And how to get it back!
“God is very fair. He gives everyone 24 hours.”
“You have time to do anything you want. Just not everything.”
Great advice … if you actually follow it!
I'm a side hustle hoarder.
In the worst way.
I post a list in my weekly newsletter Side Hustler's Progress of my hoard:
- Eight websites spanning personal finance, online presence, coin collecting, making money online, and weight loss
- 21 domains
- 130+ stories on Medium
- Followings on X, Mastodon, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky, Substack, YouTube, and Facebook
- Two YouTube channels, neither monetized
- Pinterest boards
- Several Facebook groups, one with nearly 23k members
- A mailing list of 300+ wonderful subscribers
- Two newsletters (one daily, one weekly)
- Two website design and maintenance clients, one free and one paid
- A reselling presence on eBay
- Products on Gumroad
- Accounts with sporadic affiliate or referral income
- A piano student with leads on others
- A few dozen musical arrangements and compositions
- Occasional tutoring, and music services at weddings
If you want to stop here, that's how I tanked my creator focus in 47 easy steps.
I kept adding and adding. I'm not getting any real traction on any of them.
I'm doing a thousand things in all different directions, and the net motion of my online presence is basically zero.
(Greg McKeown has a great visual of this in Essentialism. This is the idea.)
So, yeah, that's kinda where I am.
My latest “focus:” Threads
My wife has enjoyed being on Threads. It's a supportive place, and a haven from some other similar platforms that have taken a turn.
Some other creators began posting over there. I started chatting with YouTube creators, and then Gen X, and then Digital Marketers, and then general Content Creators.
(See a pattern here?)
I looked on there after one of her posts went crazy. She says it's because it was a dog post, but it still went crazy! Nearly 300 likes and even more comments.
From a Dadpreneur
Last night I signed up for Adam Dukes‘ email newsletter.
The question he asked as a call to action in his welcome email was this:
What’s the ONE thing holding you back from creating & launching a digital product of your own?
(I tend to answer these, especially if they promise to respond to every email.)
This was my answer:
I have so many things online right now (blog 20 years old, YouTube channel, social media platforms, email list that only gets 12% open rate, Substack, Medium, Threads, …) it's hard to focus on a product without feeling like everything is falling apart.
So it's probably digging myself out of what I've been doing online to develop a good product to profit from.
His response:
It sounds like you're doing way too much, and spreading yourself too thin. Been there, done that for years. I found success when I went all in on one platform (Threads) and sold one offer (Threads Unleashed) for months.
I know where you're at, as I used to be on all the platforms, trying to do all the things. I was constantly spinning my wheels. Focus is what did it for me.
Fact-check: He actually has been there, done that. His YouTube channel has 860-plus videos spanning 14 years. He really has been all over the map. At one point he was posting on how to work on every platform, one after the other.
The way forward?
“Focus is what did it for me.”
Deep down, I knew he was right and that this was the answer.
It is the answer.
From the smallish collection of creators that I've seen who try to do it all, it's hard to launch from there.
I'm having problems launching from there.
The way forward to a better outcome, though, is painful.
It involves a bunch of hard choices.
Shedding endeavors that have run out of steam, or never gotten off the ground.
Mourning the sunk cost. It's gone.
Also, being at peace with that.
But most importantly, not getting into the hoarding pattern again.
The road ahead is uncertain.
But watching someone figure it all out might help.
Once a week, I bare my side hustle soul and show the good, the bad, and the ugly:
Side Hustler's Progress, one week at a time.