On KickstarterForum, there have been 400 replies since I asked the question “What is your day job? What is your passion project?”
After reading through 41 pages of replies, I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of creators on Kickstarter have a full-time job and then their pet project or passion project on the side. Usually, they work on it after work or on the weekend.
Considering that Kickstarter was founded in NYC and has their offices in Brooklyn, this is not surprising. Many new yorkers have a full-time job and the passion project they are pursuing on the side, whether that’s acting, comedy, writing, or a startup company.
Of course, a lot of creators love their full-time job and consider what they are doing on the side as more of a hobby. This post is more geared towards the creators who want to make that side project their primary gig.
Below, I’ve gathered a few bits of wisdom from personal experience that will increase the chance you can make that side project your primary focus and get paid for doing what you love. Let me know if you find them to be helpful via comment.
Secret #1: Improve other people’s lives.
The only thing that matters is the degree to which you improve the quality of other people’s lives. You can: solve problems they experience with a product or service, entertain them, or positively affect their life with a scaled service (radio, tv, blog, podcast).
To full-time on our passion project, you can either:
1. Improve a large number of lives in a small way.
2. Improve a small number of lives in a big way.
3. Do both simultaneously.
Keep in mind that these are just examples. The main way I measure the amount that a product or service improves someone’s life is how much they spent on it ($$$) and if they were happy with the purchase.
Example of #1: Create a book that entertains a reader for two weeks or the amount of time it takes them to finish it. It might cost $10 to buy the book. If a small number of people like the book, you won’t have the funds to take time off work to go full-time on producing the next one. If a large number of people like it, you will.
If you get $1.50 per book in royalties, you would need to sell ~20,000 per year to go full-time.
Example of #2: Create a new smart watch that is 10x than existing models and solves pain points for users, particularly fitness lovers. If it retails at $250 and you are lucky enough to personally profit $100 per watch, you only need to sell 450 per year to make a living. Obviously, this is simplifying the manufacturing and human resource process, but you get the idea.
The key here is that you are providing a lot of value over the lifetime of the watch to a small base of users (fitness lovers).
Example of #3: If you create an application like Facebook, write a blog, build up a youtube channel, you will likely be providing a small amount of value for free to a large number of people. This value takes the form of helpful or entertaining content.
You will also be providing a larger amount of value to a smaller number of people, which can take the form of paid advertisers or people who buy products that you’ve made, like an ebook, which comprise a smaller section of your audience.
The key here is that you need to be providing enough value on both fronts for you to go full-time.
Main takeaway: You need to get out of the red box to go full-time on your side project.
For more clarity, watch this video where Y Combinator’s Paul Graham explains the concept.
Secret #2: You can be helpful in multiple ways.
As I talked about in my other post, regarding alternatives to seeking angel investment for a company, the easiest way to go full-time on your project is to find new ways to serve your customer base or audience.
Although most companies are founded on one product or service, rarely do companies survive on just one product or service. You don’t need to wait until you make a creative or business product that resonates enough with your target customers to get you out of the red box above. You can serve them in other ways.
How else can you improve their life, aside from the singular product that you are working on?
A great example of an entrepreneur who finds new ways to please his customers is Dr. Dre, who not only is a rapper and music producer, but also created an awesome headphone company, Beats Electronics, which will be bought by Apple for $3 billion.
He has found multiple ways to serve people who like listening to music and over time, has increased the amount of people he serves and the amount that he improved their life.
Often times, improving a customer’s life in even a small way will also give them the trust needed to consider taking a chance on your product or listening to your album.
Never stop thinking of ways that you can provide value to your target market, whether that’s through products or services. Just make sure they are good ones!
Secret #3: Seek to understand your customers emotionally, not logically.
This goes for artists, creative types, and entrepreneurs. If you are writing a story that you don’t intend to show to the world, then you need only write a storyline that you like. If you plan to share it with the world, or any other product you create, then you need to think about whether or not they will like it and how it will move them. You need to get inside their head.
One of the bigger mistakes that I’ve made is trying to understand customers from an intellectual perspective rather than an emotional perspective. Typically, when you’re setting out with new projects the terms “business plans” “forecasting” and “customer archetype” come up frequently. The problem with these terms it that they pull you up to a birds eye view of the battle field, rather than bringing you down to what’s actually happening on the ground.
By spending time with your customers and really trying to feel what they are feeling and being empathetic with their problems, concerns, likes, desires, and dreams, you will increase the chances that you will create a product that they will love.
Intellectually, a customer might understand they should work out 3 times per week to lose fat and stay healthy, but whether they commit to that or not usually has to do with their emotional mindset. If you want to build a fitness product that will have a measurable impact on their behavior and thus get them results, you need to start with emotions rather than logic.
Once you understand your customers or audience as well as you understand a family member, then you will have a much higher chance of creating something for them that will get you out of that red box in Secret #1.
Secret #4: The fastest way to learn is to fail.
Everyone hates failure, particularly public failure, but I’ve found that the fastest way to accumulate knowledge in an area is to try out a bunch of stuff and see what works, what fails, and why it does so.
If you launch a Kickstarter campaign, the only downside is that you learn more about marketing. If you raise a bunch of money but fail to hit your goal, you’ll have learned a heck of a lot about how people respond to your work and what they like and don’t like.
Obviously, it’s important to read everything you can get your hands on about your industry or niche, but at a certain point, the only other two ways to learn is through experimentation or reaching out to people who have been there, done that, and asking them questions.
The faster you are willing to learn, the quicker you’re going to be able to get out of the part-time gig box and into the full-time creator or entrepreneur box. It’s just like playing a hard-to-beat game on your smartphone. At first, you’re going to die and fail miserably. After a while though, you’ll be able to anticipate what’s going to happen in the game and adjust yourself accordingly until you beat the first level. The faster you go through this learning cycle or the longer you play the game, the easier it becomes.
Teenagers don’t get good at video games because they naturally have better reflexes. They get better because they spend 10 hours at a sleepover playing the game non-stop with friends.
Secret #5: Be Consistent.
The enemy of all progress in life is inconstancy. When you’re young, if you stop practicing a sport or musical instrument, you will fall behind. As you get older, if you want to lose weight, you need to stick to a diet and exercise regimen consistently over an extended period of time. Finally, if you want to go full-time on a creative project or business, you need to keep at it.
In the same way that you might put aside money for your 401k that will compound and grow over decades, you must invest time in a goal and spend it learning, creating, and doing. If you do, it will also compound over time and get you into the green box and you’ll be working on your passion project full-time.
