From Side Hustle to Startup - Part 2 - Ep. 4 Financial Literacy by Naveen Sharma

Hello, people, friends, techies. How are you doing? So we are here again in a new episode

for this financial literacy series. And we know that we are talking about side hustle

and how to convert side hustle into business from last past few series. Today, we will talk about

the power of networking how do you network to make your business your side is more successful

and what are the opportunities uh how do we uh get to that opportunities how do we create

powerful network so that it can reap long-lasting benefits for us and all our businesses must not

just the first side itself but the series of side lessons we intend to start so first and foremost

our host is not here today so i am the host i am the guest it's the same manager who wears the

apron of chef and the doorbell keeper and everyone so so let's start with today's topic

if you have not already pick up a pen take that and then we can start uh keeping notes

how to create a good influencing network around you so why this is network why the network is

necessary because a single person we we already discussed in the past single person cannot do all

the aspects cannot cover all the aspects of a business or a side itself altogether if you are

doing it a small scale then you are just doing it for a hobby and that is how you start the

side hustle but if you intend to make way and if you intend to see growth then you have to start

delegating or offloading the work from you so that you can work on the growth of the company

so let's focus towards the idea of networking how do you start creating a network so obviously we

we are we are all on social media Pinterest Facebook Twitter WhatsApp LinkedIn that's the

professional network so we will we will exploit these platforms we will exploit our network and

networks of network in this platform to gain advantage in our business aspects or in our

So first and foremost is social media because everyone has smartphones, nearly everyone, and multiple phones

And then they have their personal profile, they have their business profile, they have business pages where they keep posting about what is happening in the world around their business logic or their business domain area

and that is how you exploit the social media how do we create posts what tools are we can we use

there there could be different mediums and channels which you know can be used so for

social media you can use canva cnva canva or all other tools similar to canva which offer free

services you can design your profile pictures with the business logo on it you can create the

back banners linkedin banners twitter social profile social profile linkedin social profile

and then you can also create a small adwords or infographics to attract more readers

And this is your personal domain. You start with your personal social ID

If you see that you are inclining towards the growth, then you create an official page or official channel

where you can start interacting more professionally with your target audience. And it always starts from your friend circle

your locality where you are presented. this moment within your reach you can deliver your services but if your side as in is now growing up

then you create more professional look of the towards the company towards your brand towards

your logo and then uh what type of services do you provide how do you cater to the support system

so there are uh at this state you at this state you need need to have a website you need to have

even a single pager website is good you need to have some official linkedin page official

facebook insta or twitter page based on your target audience if you are hobbyist or you

you are offering services like we discussed having creating a small sandwich based business

than insta facebook you intend to get more orders than linkedin right so so every platform has some

set uh target audience so for example if you are into performing arts like dance music pieces um

at least and maybe cooking plants etc then so if there is a much action then you intend to go to

tick tock because tick tock is famous for that instant uh you know uh kick that people see when

they watch these action videos so there are different uh platforms you need to pick better platform and use platform like facebook twitter instagram and linkedin to reach potential um customers and to promote your services or products

you are building you can create social media posts infographics videos and live stream as i just said

to showcase the benefits of your uh product and services and what target audience can more expect

What is the value you are? So basically keep this simple logic in mind

People do not pay for the product for their ingredients, right? They pay for the value

So if you are intending to create value, then always think about your service and your product from the consumers

your users perspective. and basically we are tech domain guys so we we think everyone is a user but user is two

applications but if it's a consumer of your service of your product then it's consumer right

so business can be consumer and customer can be consumer government can be consumer anything can

your consumer so so this is this is what how you exploit a social media starting from personal

network and then expanding to professional face of your brand then second thing comes in

email marketing so for example you build a single pager website and people

create some orders so you you create their email ids with you obviously with due permissions

so there are gdpr there are other policies uh in action which allow you to request permission to

keep their personal identifiable information that pii information their name their email id their

get card information their banking information and any other information which can connect to

a single individual so that's a security practice but as a business owner you should also keep in

mind that if you are using some customers email to upsell your product to market new services

you should have a specific permission for that and generally what people do is they create

terms and conditions they create privacy policies cookie policies and other information policies when at their website so when people are registering they automatically sign off

to this policy that they accept that yes by visiting your website by creating login

at their website you can use this for marketing and then you might have seen that there is a special

banner which says opt-in message that i can receive newsletters or marketing offers from

your company but you need you also need to think if you can cut this email marketing piece

uh how long you can survive on the organic organic uh type of marketing that is creating videos

personal videos saying thanks uh getting customer reviews and feedback obviously with their

permissions so for any sort of use of customers information their feedback there you need explicit

permission that you can use it for uh branding and your marketing and getting more customers

right and definitely when you start posting these uh feedbacks on your social media on your

post social media it will boost your rankings your products um you know reach your overall confidence

your consumers have in your product and service so this will be fairly visual then then there is

a trust pilot website you can enroll that and you can paste your trust pilot ratings on your social

media that you know hunter subscribers say it's like five out of five rating for everything related

to the service or the product so this is this is how you start your marketing channel so any people

any uh consumer registering to your website visiting your website if you are capturing their

email or taking it from your social media uh their social handles or anything then you and if you have

your their permission to use in your marketing programs then you can start creating decent

newsletters to send them uh new offers or your thoughts or receiving you know collecting

feedbacks about some product uh so you can create different groups of these consumers for example

regular customers for the customers which give you a very healthy feedback or the customers who

have left the shopping cart in hung state in the you know they just add the products in the shopping

cart but they'll never fulfill the orders so you can create newsletters for different type of

audience and this is everything this is the you know uh crux of email marketing that you use it

intelligently for specific target audience and then you upsell your services it's it can be a great way to achieve uh you know customer engagement and keep them informed about

new product new enhancement in the services based on their feedback now third type of marketing

channel or networking channel could be webinars so we are hosting this webinar we are obviously

clear creating a ripple effect we are sharing this information free of course so similar

similarly within your domain expertise you can start hosting webinars it can be free webinar

like C-sharp corner or it can be paid webinars where you give various domain

specific knowledge to the target audience who intend to receive that and they are willing to pay for that kind of specific information which will enhance their skills which will enhance their knowledge which will enhance

their insights. And then they can take some important decisions based on the knowledge

departed by you so it can be you know webinar so basically webinar um cannot be given for a

sandwich business but webinar is good for training business webinar is good for financially

financial literacy business webinars are good for technology specific domains or even launching a

new robotic product something like that so webinars again is a great way to create awareness

and build the networks and uh in the end i'll tell you how these all platforms are necessary

to build a good network your customer are your network if they refer you for to their friends

and family and you give some portion back as an incentive to them definitely it's a healthy

the network you are building and very organic way now coming forth again is the referral marketing

so if you encourage your customers to refer their friends and family to your product and services

you can offer incentive as i said the incentive can be discounts it can be some long-term bonus

or you know some incentive can be one more few more things i will explain that when you have

media social media influencers so influencers are always getting paid for the product they are

referring to right that is first thing but if you want to cut down the influencers from your

marketing strategy you go to the other you know other side hustlers or other local businesses

within your locality who are promoting different kind of products so you can offer their coupons

to your customers so it's like cross engagement and then similarly your bonuses your incentives

and coupons can be given to their customers so it's a b2b engagement of expanding the reach

sharing the common sharing the population who are using their services among themselves so

it's very very decent way and innovative way of expanding the reach minus the influencer or any

other paid networking or advertising anyway so this was the referral marketing then it's a content

how do you expand your reach and create network by content marketing you start writing about it

For example, how did you curate some sort of, you know, plant from some X disease or if it was not getting etiquette light and, you know, and then you can write your knowledge about it

How to keep plants, this type of plants, how much amount of light they need, how much amount of moisture, air moisture they need, something like that

So you can start writing blogs. And obviously, if it's a valuable and unique information, then you can start sharing it on your social handles, personal and professional both

and then you can start also giving a right feedback then you can pick who are the top

readers who spend the most time on to read that or who shared it most among their PR network then

you can give them small discount coupons or some incentives of any kind so it's it's like organic

marketing trend so that was content marketing so you can start publishing

even from today you just need to have a blog on your website blog company and

then a method to share these blogs whenever these blog posts are available

to your different channels so one nice thing is today there are technologies

free plugins options available where can you can write or you know 10 15 20 blog posts but they

should be relevant and genuine and then with the keywords in that and some images so you can create

and schedule these blog posts so every wednesday at 10 a.m you release one blog post so so if you

intend to use content marketing make sure you keep up a schedule because people are

you know habitual to form habits and habits are nothing but doing something at a certain frequency

it could be habit of drinking habit of smoking habit of craving for pizza

drinking water anything so it's it's a sort of neuroscience that it's a craving for doing

something so you need to do something at certain frequency so whether you do exercise you release

some video you share some information they had to be said and content marketing basically

deliver great fruits when you use that frequency model here anyway we next is a

influencer marketing we already talked about it that there are people who have a huge fan following

and then they promote your product they test your verify their product again as per their own

standards and then they give the true uh reviews to their network or to their network uh peer group

there to their audience and then they create short videos they tag you in between that there's the new

service product i like this that much there are three weaknesses but a good influencer also talk about weaknesses but in a very positive way right that this is new product still working on it long way to go but i think that it was a good value for my money something

like that so that find that influencer who speaks who is honest to the products who use this decent

language to give the proper feedback on the shortcomings and still people follow him for

or her for you know this true opinions and definitely it will boost your sales you can

run special campaigns during the influencer campaigns so that influencer can say okay

i tested i got it at ten dollar but right now they intend to run a campaign after listening

our review so it's now eight dollar for a sandwich so and this is for um you know uh if you put up a

post and comment or something like that some action they need to take to get that incentive right

something like that so then there is a paid advertisement we all know that google adwords

facebook ads linkedin ads all that stuff so it's very uh you know complicated and as a side hustler

or the startup you just leave it to the experts i will not say that you cannot do it but it will

eat up your too much of time that you will be engrossed in just managing this adwords and all

that stuff you will go away from your business planning so don't do what you don't know and leave

it to the experts just outsource it so that you can focus on your core business then it's a

Networking. So we are talking about networking under networking. So it's a networking means meeting local business partners

local business, attending business events, and networking opportunities to promote your business

and connect with the potential students. Sorry, students if you are running a program

or connect with the potential customers for your product and services whatsoever

so this again will give uh you the opportunity to learn about local businesses and then you can

co-partner with them in engaging uh marketing opportunities like i explained a few minutes back

next is collaboration so you can uh collaborate with other businesses so you can bundle the product

and the you know service and you can sell it as a whole or home service has the largest chunk of

network they can sell it as a whole and then you can work out your benefits support structure or

something like that how do you uh even if they are selling your product how do you still become

responsible for the service of that product or the service ultimately if there are some support

level issues or something the end consumer should not suffer and again and again i'm saying that

that you should always keep this in mind that the customer should not suffer he he should be paying

for the value you are generating in their life it's as simple as that then last is community

engagement so you engage with your local community to promote your products and services this can

include hosting tea parties at home giving presentation or workshops in local schools

or charity organizations or and then you can offer some sort of incentive there so that they say yeah

it's a nice thing to have and we value your product and service and then you can generate free

feedback from that as well so feedback always improves you and as a product owner myself i know

that feedback customers feedback about my poc product my finished product is so damn important

that it can change the whole uh perspective of having the product there on the table

so so just be open for the feedback and as a product management

mentor I know I often tell this to my audience that feedback feedback and feedback these

this is the only thing which helped you make better product better service and

you stay in your business for long other than your competition so so this was just

the gist of today's session i hope you start networking in one or many ways today as we

got to know but i also would like to receive feedback on these videos so whenever you

see these videos on g sharp tv uh our youtube channel or wherever just give the feedback

what exactly you want to know what exactly you want to um you know learn um then i would

definitely start covering that topic area of interest as well so in a nutshell today we

talked about importance of networking and how it is directly related to the marketing

and your business growth and what are the different channels so it's social media

email marketing webinars referral marketing content marketing influencer marketing paid advertising

networking collaboration and community engagement but there could be more if you find any other way

to market why don't you just write in the comments and share with our viewers and i think they would

be they would be happy that you too contributed in some way to their business growth so with this

notion i'll take your leave and we will see you again in 14 days thank you bye bye keep

watching these videos keep commenting and keep giving us feedback thank you