“The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.”

Seth Godin

My journey towards internet marketing success was not a straight path. It was anything but straight. I tried a lot of things and picked up different kinds of jobs to ensure that the money kept coming in.

At that point in my life, all I wanted was to stop having to depend on my parents for every nickel. That wasn’t too much to ask, right?

I picked up a couple of side hustles on the way. Some, I enjoyed; some, not so much. When I started building my side-hustle businesses, I had three different things in mind.

The first thing was my short-term goal. I wanted to work on something that would make me about $500 monthly to pay some bills.

Gaining an extra income in that amount was a big deal at the time.

I wanted to be able to eat what I wanted, whenever I wanted it, without having to search my wallet for some spare change.

People often do what they don’t love to make money.

If you haven’t been faced with that decision yet, at some point you’ll have to decide whether or not you want to make money or follow your passion.

I often ask myself why this was always hard. Then, I realized that most of the things we are passionate about might not bring us much money in the early stages.

So, we’re faced with a dire need for cash on one hand, and following a passion that won’t yield the kind of money you need on the other. It’s a cycle I’ve seen over and over.

This is why people take up jobs in the mall and stuff. No offence if you work in the mall. I think mall people are great!

But I’m sure that when you were a kid and said you had a dream, you never meant standing behind the checkout counter at Walmart for hours, swiping a price-tag tracker over groceries and tissues.

Once I was able to make money to pay some bills, I’d move on to my medium-term goal.

I needed to build enough income to cover most of my daily expenses and needs such as food, drink, rent and so on. Then I could quit my job and do the things I wanted.

And when I had enough money for the bills and all of my daily expenses, I’d start investing my money to build a system that would help me make passive income. This would allow me to live my life without worries.

This was my **long-term goal **when I started trying out different side hustles.

All of these were my goals whenever I started a side hustles. You might have different goals.

Set your own goals!

You might just want something that will help you pay bills or make extra income. You can also be like me. I just wanted to be able to eat whatever I wanted.

You can write down your goals in your journal or a note-taking app. I think writing stuff down makes it stick better. So, try describing your short-term, medium-term and long- term goals.

Again, these were mine:

• **Short Term: **To build extra income of about **$500 **a month to pay some bills.- **Medium Term: **To build more income to cover all my daily expenses, such as food, rent, etc.- **Long Term: **To earn passive income that allows me to live the life I want.

As I said, you might have different goals. So, set your own goals. These were my mine.

A Walk down Side-Hustle Memory Lane

As I sit here. With a grin on my face, I’m thinking about how fast the time has gone by. I’ve done quite a lot for a man who’s just hitting his third decade…