Note: I published this last week, but only sent it to 0.06% of my mailing list 🤦🏻♀️
I side hustled for 9 months before I became self-employed.
With a full-time job, I also had a 2-hour health routine. And I’m no ninja; I love watching an episode of Brooklyn 99 with lunch and binge TV shows on weekends. But was able to manage all my commitments and even find success.
You can ace side hustles without losing your soul. It’s not as extraordinary as the world makes it sound — the feeling, yes; the work bit, no.
I’d substantially increased my income and got decent freelance opportunities.
Most importantly, this made me feel more confident than ever before.
Here’s how you can ace your side hustle even if you’re a full-time employee like me.
Navigate the employed vs freelance rut
We’re currently living in a world of instant gratification. Lots of people online are raving about their freedom lifestyle, the one that allows them to travel the world and earn $100k by being on their laptops.
I think that’s brilliant for them.
But what you see today is the result of the thousands of hours they churned at work. Why am I telling you this? Because after we earn a few hundred (or thousand) extra dollars from our side hustles, we find ourselves asking, should I quit and live my dream life?
My clients paid me much more than my fancy corporate job, and there were many times I thought of being self-employed after seeing that number.
Take it one day at a time. Don’t worry about the outcome; focus on your inputs. If you’re creating, do it for the joy of creating. When you attach yourself to an output, your production will be affected. If you start a side hustle with the intention to quit your job (output), you will work in a way to attain it instead of actually putting your heart in your side hustle (input) and finding joy in it.
Since your 9–5 takes up most of your day, it’s easy to get allured with your side hustle if you’re making money.
But don’t instantly jump off the wagon because you see money coming in; you don’t know yet if pursuing this side hustle full-time will give you the same kind of happiness.
Key advice:
- Spend a few months (or years) in your side hustle.
- If you want to take it full-time, have a plan in place.
- Network with others who are in the same field as you.
- Save enough money!
You’re allowed to be busy or lazy
The internet is full of self-help gurus telling you to be productive. Funnily, they also tell you that being busy is for people who are lazy and unproductive.
But when you have to work 9 hours at your full-time job, come home and cook, exercise, do household work, and get time for yourself it’s difficult not to be busy. After five days like this, spending your weekends focused on your side hustle at the weekend can be exhausting.
Results won’t come if you’re too hard on yourself. It’s more fun to do something when you enjoy it! This comes from not being fixated on the outcome. If you aren’t having fun, it’s not worth it. If you are, you will make time to pursue it and the motivation will come intrinsically.
Cut yourself some slack, because doing a full-time job isn’t easy. It drains you out mentally.
Applaud yourself that regardless of that you’re doing something which makes you feel alive as compared to most people who don’t step out of the hamster wheel to even go and take a walk.
You circle around this thing called life, which has its ups and downs. It doesn’t make you less productive or lazy. Please be kind to yourself, it will give good energy to your work, to you, and those around you.
Key advice:
- While you set goals (more on this in the next section), take enough rest to replenish.
- Compare your performance with yourself, and improve.
- Find your sweet time before/after your 9–5 which helps you focus, and try to work at the same time each day.
Set your goals (even if you don’t achieve them)
Think of what you’d like to achieve with your full-time hustle.
- Would you want to grow your audience for your podcast? What is your target audience?
- Would you like to write a book? What would it take to get there?
- Do you want to upskill yourself with an SEO certification to up your writing game?
Set your goals with a yearly and monthly goal. You don’t need goals for all months, but say the coming 1–3 months is okay. Attaining something becomes smoother when you know what you’re going after.
Then, set smaller goals linked to your primary goal of becoming a podcaster, author, or writer. Little milestones to motivate you to keep your side hustles going in the right direction.
The first month I wrote on Medium, I set huge goals which I obviously didn’t achieve. Six months later, I know my strengths and skills much better. But had I not set goals, I would’ve been nowhere close to where I am.
Start with smaller and attainable goals because let's be honest, the majority of your day goes in your 9–5. Take it up from there.
Key advice:
- Set one primary goal — where do you want to be 6 to 12 months from now?
- What can you do this month to get this?
- How would you break this month’s into weekly goals?
- Each week, reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and re-strategise.
- Repeat the above step each month too to reflect on your month.
Your passion may not be your business interest
We all think, “I want to pursue my passion” when we consider pursuing a side hustle or a dream career path.
I love being fit. It’s something I’m truly passionate about. I have been into a healthy lifestyle since I was 18. I haven’t just battled obesity but have grown so much as a person in this journey. I've read countless research articles about food and wellbeing and a few books too.
I can confidently coach you on how to achieve your fitness goals.
I realized I could turn my passion into an income stream. I could create workouts as micro-ebooks, and charge $100/hour for consultation on being holistically healthy because I know I can give people the results they want.
I thought this would be the dream; instead, it sucked.
In July 2020, I consulted 2 women for 12 weeks on their exercise and nutrition to help them achieve their fitness goals. It sucked the life out of me to create weekly workouts and be patient when people made mistakes. I quickly shifted fitness back to a passion, and not a side hustle.
Throughout my fitness influencer days (major cringe), I thought I’d ace a business related to it because I’m good at the field. But just because you’re good at something doesn’t necessarily mean you’d ace it if pursued as a business.
While we have a natural tendency to do what we love as side hustles, we should leave some things aside as personal passions. You don’t have to know right now if what you’re doing will work or will not; it’s part of the process of discovering yourself.
Your side hustle doesn’t need to be a side business. It could just be purely for joy because life is too short not to do things you love. And you’re lucky that you still have the safety net of a paycheque coming in while you experiment with yourself!
How to solve for this:
- Hit and trial: give your idea a try, either you do well or you learn.
- Keep learning about what's going in the market and try your hand at it (I tried coding because it’s lucrative and failed)
Summary
With your full-time job, a side hustle can either be your happy place or just another work. With some mindset shifts, you can make it your happy place and ace it. These are:
- Employee v/s freelance rut: Whether you get early results, keep big outcomes on hold and focus on creating.
- You are allowed to be busy and lazy: you are breathing and don’t function on batteries.
- Set your goals: If not achieved, re-strategize — it’s a learning process.
- Your passion may not be your business interest: and if this happens, something exceptional will come your way soon. Keep at it!