Side hustles are a gold mine of lessons, but there’s one that’s come up a ton lately. It’s an idea that seems to be behind so many of the skills I strategies I rely on most.

When it’s just you, there’s nowhere to hide.

There aren’t a dozen other people who can pick up my slack, there’s no previous wave of momentum from the last marketing team I can ride, there aren’t people searching for my brand name after seeing it over and over again at tradeshows for years, there isn’t a pool of existing customers I can lean into, there isn’t a base of monthly website visitors I can optimize, there is no email database or social following to talk to.

I have to build all of that one visitor, one subscriber, one follower, one conversation, and one new user at a time.

Either my marketing works or it doesn’t.

It’s as simple as that.

But lowering my shoulder into that challenge and straining against the weight of my competitors and markets and channels until, finally, I feel that first little self-sustaining turn of momentum? Man, that’s tough to beat.