Online Team Buildings as a Side Hustle
Any team in the world right now is in a desperate need of team buildings. Can you hold one for them? If yes, then you've got yourself a side hustle!
This article is a part of the series: ‘Online Side Hustle Ideas (on a silver platter)’. Here’s a list of all past and upcoming ideas.
Remember the times when you would get a Friday off to get out of the city with your colleagues for the weekend? This time used to be called “team building”.
It later evolved into having a drink over Zoom. And yes, a drink can bring a team together, indeed. But when you’ve done it two to three times, you get bored with it.
The problem
Staying at home has impacted every aspect of our lives.
The biggest victim – our social life.
And if you have been working for some time, you would know that a big part of a working adult’s social life is their time with their colleagues.
With no workplace to go to, we have lost touch with our colleagues.
We are in desperate need of socializing with our teams.
And HRs are suffering the most, as they must solve this problem for their companies.
The solution
There are plenty of fun social activities to engage in online – brainteasers, code-breaking, personal facts guessing, trivia contests and much more. So many fun games that could be played!
And there are many people that host them for a team. Apart from the HRs, also professional team building companies or even fun people who are looking for some extra income.
Teams desperately need entertainment and online team buildings are more needed than ever.
Target customer
Any team in the world is a prospective customer.
Interestingly, there is a difference between the people who will use your service and the people who will hire you for the service. While every team in the world is your target user, the decision-makers are the HRs, team leads, managers, and business owners.
Make sure your website is catering to the needs of the decision-makers, while your service is to that of your users.
How to start this as a side hustle
There are three key ingredients:
Figuring out the activities
Making sure you get paid for that
Discovering your clients
First thing’s first, activities.
You can simply Google those and you’ll get a very long list of fun games.
However, it is very important to know the people you’ll be dealing with. For an IT team, it may be much more appropriate to double-down on mental challenges. These guys will prefer solving a good brainteaser to opening up about their family. Rule number one for an IT crowd: don’t make them speak if they don’t want to.
If you are dealing with a sales team, things will be quite different. Ceteris paribus, salespeople love to speak. So you have to design games that will keep them in the conversation, otherwise, they will probably be feeling disconnected from the team building. Guessing games, impersonation games, and even ‘game show’ formats could be more appropriate for them.
Finding a way to charge them
That’s generally the only problem you need to solve for yourself. Luckily, we have a solution for you – 3veta.com. It’s a place where you can create a website in minutes to showcase your offering (e.g. teambuildingsonline.3veta.com). That’s the link you’ll be sending to your prospective clients (the HRs, team leads, etc.).
Apart from that, 3veta has built-in video and payments. Therefore, you’ll be able to host the whole session on your own website (platform) with your own branding and receive the payment prior to the event.
Discovering your clients
This one is quite easy. Simply connect with HRs on LinkedIn. Doesn’t matter where they are in the world. Simply pitch them this idea. Remember – this whole “team buildings” problem is their problem. You are the one solving it for them. Let them know about this idea and I assure you that many of them would be more than happy to outsource structured fun to you!
While HRs are the best place to start, you can go “one level up”.
Reach out to managers and team leads, including founders, co-founders, etc. These are the people that pay the price of low morale. Therefore, they usually task the HRs with solving this problem for them. Therefore, team buildings are originally their problem.
You can reach out to specific employees. Look for more outgoing people, who would not be afraid to propose this idea to their team.
Finally, if there was one niche to focus on, I’d go for IT teams. Generally, they have higher funding than other teams and are more likely to have fun with “quiet” games, making your job a bit easier.
Extra thoughts
Have different pricing tiers for teams of different sizes. A team building for 8 people should cost more than a team building for 4.
Focus on teams that are between 5 and 10 people. Scientific research has shown that the best teams are between 6 and 8 people. If someone says their team composes of 20 people, they have a problem. Don’t make this your problem too, because it will seem like your services are bad, when in fact you can’t include all 20 people in any conversation.
Restrict your services to smaller teams. 10 people should be the absolute maximum for an online activity. If you’ve got more people on a call, they would either speak over each other or be marginalized.
Restrict your services to be for “larger” teams (more than 3 people). If a team consists of 2 people and their manager, there is not much you can do about their morale in an online team building. Remember – you need a critical mass of at least 2 teams to play any game in a meaningful and interactive manner.
Talk to the team lead or HR prior to the call. Ask them if there is anything particular they want to achieve, if they want their team to be more open about their personal life or if they have a new employee they want to get onboarded.
Make sure you recognize quickly the people who will do anything to sabotage the game. There is always someone who thinks “this is stupid”. Make sure you don’t step on their toes and develop mechanisms to restrict their say. Never start with them or put them in the spotlight. This opens the stage for them to sabotage.
Need help starting with this idea? Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or directly on my email: iliya@3veta.com.
Looking to start a side hustle but that’s not right for you? You can find a whole list of similar side hustle ideas here.
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