Hustle while you work
Side gigs outside your regular job can bring fulfillment as well as money
COULDN’T we all use a bit more money?
Chris Guillebeau, host of the popular Side Hustle School podcast (from iTunes), is passionate about helping people who are already working regular jobs to create new sources of income. He’s certain that all it takes is to find something we’re already good at and excited by. Then, it doesn’t take that much time each day to develop that passion into extra cash.
On his daily (and concise) podcast, Guillebeau gives listeners encouraging, real-life examples with practical how-tos.
There’s the 17-year-old high school student who started a holiday pop-up shop at a mall and now makes more than $7,000 in monthly profits.
Then, there’s the busy new father who created a part-time hustle teaching guitar lessons and now earns $5,000 to $6,000 a month while working 20 to 25 hours a week.
“I want people to see this is not something so huge or insurmountable, and it takes less time than you think,” says Guillebeau, author of the new book “Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days” (Crown Business).
“I want to help people learn that once you realize where a good idea comes from, [you can] turn that idea into a real product or service, and monetize it,” he says.
Guillebeau, 39, of Portland, Ore., knows from experience. A prolific and successful side-hustler himself, he began selling goods on eBay while working at FedEx 20 years ago. He’s now a New York Times best-selling author of “The $100 Startup,” while also teaching, podcasting and organizing an annual weekend in Portland called the World Domination Summit.
This flexibility has enabled him to visit 193 countries (that’s all the countries of the world by some counts) in 11 years.
How do you get an idea for a side hustle? In addition to focusing on what your passion is, develop curiosity and observation.
“By looking at problems or encounters in daily life, you can get half-dozen side hustle ideas on any given day. This often leads to unexpected results,” Guillebeau says.
It also helps to have a unique outlook. An Orthodox Jewish mother of two and administrative assistant found that there weren’t any good products for keeping her wig and head scarf in place. She developed a band to do just that — and discovered she had a market that includes drag queens and cancer patients. She’s now earning $4,000 a month.
But what if you are having trouble coming up with ideas? Guillebeau suggests you first come up with a list of your skills.
“Not just ‘what you do for work,’ but everything that you’re good at, with no topic off limits,” says Guillebeau. “Everyone’s an expert at something, so if you can’t figure it out, ask your friends and colleagues for feedback.”
The next step is to find a match between one of those things and something that can be made into a product or service. “In other words,” he says, “idea to income.”
Alan Kerzner, director of Temple University’s Entrepreneurship Academy, says an easy way to do that is to find something you are spending a lot of free time on anyway.
“If you are spending hours looking at exotic travel places every day just for the fun of it,” he says, “figure out how to monetize that into a Web site.”
One of Guillebeau’s favorite side hustle sto- ries is about Sarah Hannington, a marketing executive in Florida who wanted to give her clients personalized Valentine’s Day candy hearts. Unhappy with what was out there, she figured out how to manufacture the hearts herself, and used her marketing skills to get the business on the first page of Google search results.
She’s now making $100,000 a year, he says, and keeping her full-time job for increased financial security.
But with such a high-profile side hustle, is there a chance that employers may not look kindly on their employee-turned-side-hustler?
“As long as it’s a noncompetitive activity, then companies don’t have a right to fire you — and I don’t think they would want to,” Kerzner says.
“But with the economy these days, the number of employees and managers has been decreasing while the work requirements are increasing,” he says. “So there is the risk — and it’s real, I’ve seen it — that even though you are doing your job fine, if your side hustle becomes too well-known or if you spend too much time talking about it at the office, it may be seen as a lack of dedication to your fulltime job.”
The answer, says Guillebeau, is “to handle it with discretion.”