Building a low-risk side hustle in football is a great way to build momentum and keep motivation high as you're progressing.
In this episode, I share 5 steps to building a low-risk side hustle in the football industry.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Small Wins, episode 22. I am your host, Yvan Delia-Lavictoire. It's a pleasure to talk to you once again. I got a lot of good feedback from the episode last week. Hope that it helped or inspired a few of you.
Today's episode we're going to talk about the low risk approach of choosing a side hustle in football. It sounds negative, I think low risk sounds like you are not adventurous enough or that you don't want to go all in on this amazing football journey that you want to take.
At the same time, what I've noticed and experienced, I should say, is that look, the world, let's say the space of football or the opportunities in the game are almost infinite.
As a Canadian, North American man, there are so many opportunities down the like now and down the road. Everyone mentions it, everyone puts it in their pitches and decks. But 2026 men's World Cup happening in North America is kind of the message that everyone is sharing about why you should build in football. I get it, I've also used it in my decks.
Essentially the approach I want you to look at or explore, at least in this episode, is how do you build something that's sustainable for you as a future entrepreneur or as a future freelancer, but also build it in a way that gives you motivation and helps you kind of build consistency as you go. Like I said, there are so many opportunities, there's so much happening in the game that you kind of want to go all in right from the get go. And that's very admirable.
That being said, I've seen a lot of people start go all in, and then after a few months, after a few, maybe even years, you sense that fatigue, that the energy levels dropping.
Whether you like it or not, even if you're building something that you're passionate about, it still means that you're running a brand, you're running a business. You're getting all maybe the downsides of running, operating a brand. It's quite the challenge. And what happens is they end up falling out of that journey or falling out of love for the game because they've been tired, they've been exhausted by what's happening.
The way I look at it is as especially from a side hustle point of view, obviously if you're getting millions of dollars injected from investors and all that, that's a different story and we're not going to talk about that in this episode.
If you're looking to really explore your passion for the game and want to build something that gives you energy, gives you motivation, inspires others, provides value driven service or product in football, then having that low risk approach is a great way for you to at least kind of start dipping your toes in and seeing what works, seeing what you're interested in, seeing how you can apply certain skills that you have or how you can develop new skills. But essentially how do you build a low risk approach. Let's address that.
Step 1 - Explore your football story
First thing that you should really get clear on is really about educating yourself and what you're interested in. So football is a massive game, a global game that's played in 200 plus countries, I believe, or if not the entire world, but essentially you want to look at at least start diving into the specific niche or area of the game that you're interested in.
When I talk about that, maybe it's something a bit more broad or something, maybe that's on the field or off the field or specific to a region or country or a league. Essentially that's going to be one of the things that you want to really get clear on or at least start clarifying in your early stages.
The other one that you want to explore is what you're interested in and then having kind of a complementary set of skills that you want to either build on or explore. So to give you an example so if you're interested in coaching, then that might be your you're going to have to look at what kind of skills you want to develop or what kind of skills you need to have to be coaching. If it's writing, if it's illustrating, if it's doing content creation, or if it's analyzing video or games or anything like that.
Really, again, get really super clear on the set of skills or the knowledge that you're going to need to have in order to go that route. Once you have those areas within the game that you're interested in and the areas of expertise or skills or learnings that you want to have, kind of you mix them up together and start really analyzing what you want to do and make kind of a better or more informed decision in that sense. So that's number one.
Step 2 - Do the research
Step number two is really about evaluating what it is you want to do from a, let's say a financial point of view. We're all passionate human beings. You're probably listening to this because you love the game. If you don't, I don't know why you're listening to this episode. But anyways, but essentially, again, at this stage, it's really, really important that you get real about what it is you want to do.
I've heard a lot of people say I want to try to do something in football because I love the game and I want to give back. But the background message that they're telling themselves is, hey, I want to earn a living. I want to make money in football. I've seen a lot of people excel in the game and make money in it and now it's my turn, I want to do it.
At this stage, really about again, you assess what you're passionate about you assess what is going to guide you. But at the same time it's really even more important to explore and to start researching about these different areas that you want to explore and see if there is market demand, if there is competition, if there are maybe new trends or emerging trends that are coming your way.
Having the sense of understanding maybe the financial, again the financial aspect of football is going to be really important for you to at least give you kind know, start helping you set actual goals for yourself.
If you're getting started with, let's say you're getting started with coaching, obviously you're not going to become the coach of a Premier League team or a top division team next month, but maybe you can start looking into, hey, is this something that's profitable for me? Is this something that I can offer as a maybe private service for players or different sets of athletes? Can I look at if I can do group coaching? Can I explore my potential avenues as a volunteer coach at my local club and see if there's more options down the road?
It's really about understanding what's out there in terms of demand, in terms of what the market looks like: ompetitors, maybe complementary services that might compete with what you're doing and seeing what the trends are as well. I think once you're able to really research those opportunities or at least areas of opportunities, you can start really again finding that well not finding but addressing that intersection between what it is that you like, what it is that you can do or want to do and where the money is.
I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but where the opportunities are and where the again opportunities for profit and generating revenue are so totally real here. We love the game. We do it because it starts from a place of passion rather. But at the same time you got to be real with yourself.
You got to be very honest early on because I wouldn't say if you're not honest with yourself but rather if you get started and you're doing this by just telling everyone and telling yourself that you're just doing this because you love the game. But at some point I'm not saying you're going to get disappointed but there's a risk of you being disappointed or lacking the motivation because you're not seeing the opportunities come in or you're not seeing maybe the dollars come in as well.
Step 3 - Set realistic goals
I'm really being truthful here but at least having that thought or that thought process is going to be very helpful for you in building that low risk approach to your side hustle.
in the same direction that we're going with identifying opportunities but really about setting realistic goal for yourself and for your side hustle. Again, I don't know how to say this but sometimes the word side hustle maybe has a negative tone to it because it's like oh, I'm just going to do this as I'm watching TV and as maybe after dinner tonight or I have some time off on Sunday I'll get going on this and it is perfect like that.
I think that's the goal of having a side hustle is you're doing it outside of your regular working hours or you're doing it outside of your regular work life balance. But at the same time, I think it's important that you set clear, specific, measurable goals that you want to be achieving. So when I do talk about realistic goals, there's three, I would say methods that you can well, not methods, but three ways of setting goals.
Basically, you have a macro goal, which is almost like your long term, like 90 day or even more if you want, but like a quarterly goal that you want to set for yourself. So in three months, where do you want to be, what would you like to achieve? Maybe it's in three months I want to make my first dollar working as a football coach, or I want to sell $100 online for a product that I'm about to release. So that might be your specific long term goal.
What happens after that is once you have that 90 minutes goal, 90 minutes summer, I'm stuck in the game. But 90 day goal, you can break that down into. You can either do monthly goals, weekly goals, something that's, again, still big, that you can start, that you can also manage, but at least you have kind of a milestone. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. But milestone for that bigger goal. So let's say you have a bigger 90 day goal.
You can have three important monthly milestones that you want to be able to reach during that time. And then, because it's a side hustle, I wouldn't recommend you to have daily goals.
That's wild, that's crazy.Maybe having a weekly goal or having a 14-day goal that you can set up for yourself might be a great way for you to start listing the tasks that you'll need to do every week, every two days, every two days to make sure that you're reaching that biweekly goal. So that's probably a very simple way to do it.
The principle of setting goals is really about very like, you have to be very clear on what the goal is. And I know that's very hard because I can tell myself I want to make $25,000 in 90 days for my idea. But then every week what I'm doing is I'm watching TV and I'm watching games and I'm playing soccer with my friends. That's probably not going to happen.
Again, the importance of being realistic is not only in the goal that you're setting, but also in understanding what your routine looks like, what your life looks like, and making sure that you're also being truthful about your daily life.
And again, it's a side hustle. Keep in mind that the full principle of the side hustle is that you're doing this again, maybe outside working hours or during free time that you have important here is really to it's a balance between being flexible and accountable.
I know it's easier said than done, but really making sure that having those goals or setting those goals is a great way for you to stay accountable. So develop some kind of a method for you to have your goals written somewhere or have them visible somewhere within either on your phone or on the wall of your office or in your calendar, but at least having that as like an accountability check in, but also having the flexibility.
Because you know that there's going to be other things that are going to come in your life that might change the way or change your approach to this side. Hustle. So that's number three.
Step 4 - Start small
Number four, and this goes back to what I was saying earlier is really about starting small.
Starting small by no means, yeah, it doesn't mean that you have a small vision, you have a big vision, you have those 90 day goals and even if you want an annual goal or a big, big goal that you are seeing down the road.
What it does to you and to your side hustle is that again, it's minimizing the risk that you're putting in this side hustle because there's so many things that you're going to be learning along the way, not necessarily the skills that you want to develop, but like new things that are going to be happening. New trends, new curveballs, new obstacles, new wins, whatever it is, you're going to learn a lot of things, and starting small ensures that you're keeping or maintaining that flexibility, to tweak things, to learn things, to grow at a gradual rate, to make the most of.
I think starting small, what you want to do is really as you're getting started, or even before you're committing yourself to this idea, I think you want to start on a small scale, whether that's for going back to the coaching method or the coaching example is that maybe you want to start with a few sessions and see what the demand looks like, what the process looks like, what your workflow looks like in prepping the session or emailing the athletes before the game, or doing a post training recap. If you're doing something creative in space, really, if it's creative work, maybe look at how your process is developing or what you can tweak to improve your process.
I'm trying to find other examples but basically if you are looking at building maybe a collection, I know that's a big, big trend, but if you're thinking about doing merch so if you want to do merch, for sure you want to do all the types of merch.
I don't know if the word merch is I'm not very knowledgeable at merch but if you want to do t shirts, hats, sweaters, jogging pants, tracksuits, socks, I'm exaggerating. If you're doing all this right from the get go, you're going to get lost. I wouldn't say that you're going to get lost, but there's a risk that you can get lost in all of that. Maybe from that example what you can do is look at it from a smaller scale.
You can focus on one specific item that you want to be selling or even if you want to even more or amplify. Not amplify, but minimize the risk. Rather you might look at having a presale or having something that you can do on a preorder basis or just do it with a few friends and see what the feedback is like. So it's really about really testing the testing the waters.
Step 5 - Learn and iterate
Last but not least is really about learning and iterating I think as you're building a side hustle side hustle as you're starting small, really start to gather feedback, data, insights that you're getting throughout your journey and use them to make informed decisions and see how you can improve that side hustle that you're building. Starting small is great like I said, because it's a really low risk approach which is the reason that you're listening to this episode.
It's also a practical one because it allows you to really start focusing on a stronger foundation. That foundation might be or will be kind of the setting stone for something that you bigger that you have in mind. But at least having that ability to really start small is a great way for you to tweak small things as you're building your audience, as you're developing a new service or product, but also minimizing the risk that it goes out of control because the brand has grown to way too big.
The focus here is on putting a system in place for you to start gathering data, insights, feedback, whether that's a spreadsheet, whether that's kind of a working document, whether that's you automating. Maybe I say that because I've used it.
If you have like a Google Analytics for your website presence, for your website performance, then maybe setting up a monthly report or things that you can look at and that can help you identify maybe new ideas or things that you need to improve or things that you need to tweak the same process or the same method can be applied to social media.
If you're active on Instagram or any of those platforms, you have access to a lot of data that you can look at. Maybe one thing that I would recommend is maybe don't look at it from a post by post method or approach, but rather maybe a bigger set of data that you can explore. Look at the 30 day trends that you were able to get, maybe look at how many comments you got or how many DMs you got about a specific service or inquiry or people that want to learn about your site or your brand.
I think the last part about iterating is really about you using this set of data, using all this information that you're getting to really kind of, again, fine tune and keep tweaking the foundation of your brand and side hustle.
Let's recap
Here's a recap of this episode in which I share 5 steps to building a low-risk football side hustle.
Step 1 - Explore your football story
- Educate yourself
- Identify the specific niche of football that you're interested in
- List skills you want to use or learn to build your side hustle
Step 2 - Do your research
- Get crystal clear on your motivation
- Get real about why you want to do this
- Measure Passion vs Profit
- Research the market and competitors
Step 3 - Set realistic goals
- Identify one or many macro goals (90-day goal)
- Set clear milestones for each macro goal
- List weekly or biweekly micro goals
- Stay flexible and build accountability
Step 4 - Start small
- Starting small doesn't mean having a small vision
- Put your idea to the test with a small audience, or look at offering one product or service.
Step 5 - Learn and iterate
- Learn and develop new skills
- Gather and analyze data, feedback and insights
- Keep tweaking your side hustle based on the data you get
I hope this was helpful. It might have been an episode that's a bit more robust, but if you want to just go back and relisten to it and see where you can write down notes or ideas that you might have for your own side hustle, then by all means go do it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode, hope you're enjoying your own journey with the game. I know it can come with ups and downs. You can have doubts, you can have challenges, but all in all, it is a beautiful game.
We do it because we love the game and we want to join this amazing space, meet new people, earn income, let's be honest, earn income in football, just even travel the world because of football, watch games, really enjoy it for what it is. I think it's important to stay passionate with the game.
If you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoyed the latest episodes, I would love it if you could just leave a star review or a comment on your favorite podcast platform.
First of all, it's amazing because it keeps me going. Second of all, it might be the way or the convincing element that someone needs to listen to this episode and discover that they also have an amazing story with football.
Thank you for tuning in to Small Wins. Keep building your football story, keep enjoying the beautiful game, but more importantly, keep celebrating your Small Wins!
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