5. The 1-Page Marketing Plan — Allan Dib
A good product that nobody knows about is still a product that nobody buys.
That’s why learning some basic marketing matters even if you have no interest in becoming a “marketer.”
The updated edition of Allan Dib’s The 1-Page Marketing Plan organizes a marketing strategy into a nine-part framework designed to fit on a single page. The 2025 edition also incorporates updated examples, exercises, and newer marketing tools.
For a side hustler, that simplicity matters.
You probably don’t need a 70-page marketing plan.
You need clear answers to questions such as:
Who are you trying to reach?
What problem are you solving for them?
Why should they choose your offer instead of doing nothing—or buying from someone else?
Where can those people be reached?
What happens after someone discovers you?
How will you encourage a first purchase?
And how will you turn one customer into repeat business, referrals, or both?
Many beginners jump immediately to tactics.
“Should I start an Instagram?”
“Do I need TikTok?”
“Should I buy Facebook ads?”
“Should I create a newsletter?”
Those may eventually be useful questions.
But the platform isn’t the strategy.
A marketing channel only works when you understand the customer you’re trying to reach and the message you’re trying to deliver.
That makes this book particularly helpful before you start spending time posting everywhere—or spending money advertising something you haven’t positioned clearly.
Best for: Side hustlers who know what they want to sell but aren’t sure how customers are supposed to discover or choose it.
6. Profit First — Mike Michalowicz
Making sales feels exciting.
Keeping money is less glamorous.
Unfortunately, revenue and profit are not the same thing.
A side hustle can generate thousands of dollars while quietly consuming most of that money through software subscriptions, advertising, inventory, fees, equipment, contractors, and other expenses.
Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First takes a behavioral approach to business cash management. Instead of treating profit as whatever happens to remain after expenses, the system allocates money deliberately and makes expenses fit within what remains.
You don’t need to adopt every part of the system to learn something important from it.
The larger lesson is simple:
Pay attention to the money from the beginning.
Know what is coming in.
Know what is going out.
Separate personal and business activity appropriately.
Set aside money for obligations such as taxes when applicable.
Understand which expenses actually help produce revenue.
And don’t assume increased sales automatically mean the business is getting healthier.
This matters even more with a side hustle because small recurring expenses can hide easily.
A $20 subscription doesn’t feel significant.
Neither does another $15 tool.
Then another $29 platform.
Then a service you forgot to cancel.
Eventually, your supposedly “low-cost” business has a monthly expense structure that requires constant sales just to stay alive.
Revenue can make you feel successful.
Cash flow tells you whether the business is actually working.
Best for: Anyone who wants to treat a side hustle like a real business financially instead of waiting until tax season to figure out where the money went.
7. Atomic Habits — James Clear
This isn’t a business book.
That’s exactly why it belongs here.
A side hustle is often built during the least convenient parts of your schedule.
Before work.
After work.
During lunch.
On weekends.
Between family responsibilities.
During the hour you would normally spend watching something.
Motivation might get you through the first week.
It probably won’t build the business.
James Clear’s Atomic Habits focuses on systems and small, repeatable behaviors rather than relying entirely on ambitious goals or bursts of motivation. Clear frames the book around making incremental improvements and designing environments and systems that make useful habits easier to repeat.
That applies directly to side hustles.
“Build my business” isn’t a useful recurring action.
“Spend 45 minutes contacting potential clients after dinner” is.
“Grow my audience” is vague.
“Publish one useful article every Tuesday” is repeatable.
“Make more money” is a goal.
“Send five proposals every weekday” is a system.
The small actions aren’t exciting.
That’s often the point.
Businesses are usually built through things that become routine: creating, selling, following up, delivering, improving, recording numbers, and doing it again.
If managing a side hustle around your normal responsibilities is already looking difficult, the Income Idea Index guide to getting more done without simply working more hours also covers practical ways to protect focused time, reduce interruptions, and keep daily priorities realistic.
The objective isn’t to turn every spare minute into work.
It’s to create a routine sustainable enough that your side hustle doesn’t disappear the moment life becomes busy.
Best for: Anyone who frequently starts projects enthusiastically and then struggles to continue once the excitement fades.
8. Rework — Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Many people make a side hustle more complicated than it needs to be because they are copying what established companies do.
They write elaborate plans.
Hold meetings with themselves.
Build features customers haven’t requested.
Create five products before selling one.
Spend months preparing for a launch nobody is waiting for.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rework argues for a much simpler approach to building a business. The book pushes back against unnecessary planning, staffing, workaholism, meetings, and other assumptions that often get treated as mandatory parts of entrepreneurship.
That mindset fits a side hustle extremely well.
Your small business has one major advantage over a large organization:
You can move quickly.
You don’t need six approvals to change your price.
You don’t need a committee to test a new offer.
You don’t need three meetings to decide whether your homepage headline is confusing.
You can make something small.
Show it to customers.
Learn.
Change it.
Try again.
The danger is giving up that advantage by pretending to be a large company before you are one.
Professional does not have to mean complicated.
Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is create a simple offer, communicate it clearly, deliver what you promised, and respond quickly when something isn’t working.
Best for: People who tend to overthink, overbuild, overplan, or believe starting a “real” business requires corporate-level complexity.
Which Side-Hustle Book Should You Read First?
You don’t need to order eight books and spend the next two months reading before you start.
That would defeat the purpose.
Choose the book that matches the problem currently stopping you.
If you have no idea where to begin, start with Side Hustle.
If you already have an idea but don’t know whether people want it, read The Mom Test.
If money is stopping you from beginning, try The $100 Startup.
If you’re worried that a business will eventually take over your life, read Company of One.
If you know what you’re selling but don’t know how to attract customers, choose The 1-Page Marketing Plan.
If you’re already making some money and have no idea where it goes, read Profit First.
If consistency is your problem, start with Atomic Habits.
And if you’re making the entire project far more complicated than necessary, Rework may be exactly what you need.
Then do something with what you read.
That part matters more than finishing the entire list.
Don’t Turn Reading Into Another Form of Procrastination
Business books can create the feeling of progress without requiring much risk.
You read.
Highlight passages.
Save quotes.
Listen to podcasts about the book.
Watch interviews with the author.
Add three more books to your reading list.
And six weeks later, you still haven’t asked a potential customer to buy anything.
Learning matters.
But side hustles are built in the real world.
Eventually, you need to create the offer.
Ask the customer.
Set the price.
Publish the page.
Send the proposal.
List the product.
Make the call.
Run the experiment.
The market will teach you things no book can.
Some of those lessons will be uncomfortable.
They’ll also be specific to your idea, your customers, your skills, and your circumstances.
That makes them incredibly valuable.
The Bottom Line
You don’t need an MBA to start a side hustle.
You don’t need to read an entire library either.
But a few good books can help you approach the process with better questions.
Side Hustle can help you move from idea to action.
The Mom Test can help you look for evidence instead of compliments.
The $100 Startup can remind you that many businesses can begin smaller than you think.
Company of One can help you decide how large you actually want the business to become.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan can give structure to how you find and convert customers.
Profit First can make you think about the money you’re keeping instead of only the money you’re earning.
Atomic Habits can help you create the consistency required to build something alongside the rest of your life.
And Rework can remind you not to turn a simple business into an unnecessarily complicated one.
Read what you need.
Apply something.
Then get information from the place that matters most:
Real customers.
Because the goal isn’t to become someone who knows everything about starting a side hustle.
The goal is to start one.
