If you read our post on How To Overcome Fear and Start Your Business, you might be ready and eager to start your very own business journey. To finally pursue those dreams you’ve been drooling over in the office, Googling in you spare time and working on in your mind.

But when it comes to leaving your 9-5, soul destroying as it is, we come to our first roadblock.

What if the business fails? What will I do for money? Is this what I really want to do? What if I am no good at business?

The list goes on.

You might even be the other end of the scale, where you are ready to just burn all the bridges, flip your boss the bird and high tail it out of there.

Stop.

I strongly recommend you consider the side-hustle.

 

Benefits of the Side Hustle

Less Pressure Financially

 

So, let’s start with the obvious. Having another source of income to support you when you are starting your business takes a huge amount of the pressure off financially.

By having a back up income, you have more leeway to invest in tools that your business needs, rather than having to DIY everything for yourself.

This helps make sure that when you are making decisions for your business, you can take into account matters other than money. Of course, you might think that all business decisions should center around what makes you the most money.

However, decisions driven by fear and the desire to make money is the quickest way to short term gains and long term ruin. So having that financial security allows you to make the best decisions for your business.

Decisions driven by fear and the desire to make money are the quickest way to short term gains and long term ruinClick To Tweet

Plus, let’s be real, new businesses rarely make a huge profit straight out the gate. So having a second source of income isn’t just good for your business, it’s good for you too – because most of us have that powerful need to eat.

You Can check it’s What You Really Want To Do

 

Long term followers might know that, once upon a time, I thought I wanted to be a fashion blogger. I spent a long time designing my website, thinking of how I could monetize it and how I could link it into my current projects.

Then I came to write a blog post.

I wrote one, felt pleased with myself and then realise I had already exhausted all my ideas on what to write. I also realised that I had zero desire to take any photos of myself wearing said outfits, because I hate having my photo taken.

I also don’t like spending money on clothes.

Reading this, you might say “Sarah, clearly being a fashion blogger was a ridiculous idea”. And you would be 100% right.

Not All Of Our Interest Turn Out To Be Passions

 

In the planning stages, I was filled with passion, ideas and excitement. It wasn’t until I came to excuse this plan that I realized planning was excited, doing was exhausting and impractical.

As creatives, we often have thousands of ideas and projects we want to try. We daydream, we doodle and we plan.

But if you have a side-hustle, it gives you the flexibility to try all of these out, with the pressure of having to make it work. You can use this time to find your true passion.

The one thing you want to do, day in and day out.

 

You Can Get It Wrong & Experiment

So this leads on from the point above. You have the flexibility to mess up and go in the wrong direction.

You can test things out, without the fear that one wrong oblique reference to Firefly might turn your audience off in droves. You can also experiment to see which social media platforms work for you best and try out different marketing strategies to see which your audience responds to.

You can try approaching your topic from different angles. It’s tempting, when you see other people in your niche being successful, to stick to the topics and the approach that they use. After all, they are successful, so obviously that’s the best way to do it.

Firstly, doing something the exact same way someone else is doing it means that, at best, you will always end up being second. Also, after a while, you will feel the same constricting bonds of restraint that you feel in your 9-5 because you are still not really doing what truly sets your mind alight.

It’s time to step out and experiment

The problem with an untested approach is, let’s be honest, that it might not work. If you’ve quit the 9-5 and headed out into the world, it can be different to go with something new because there is a less of a guarantee that it will work.

So use this time, side hustling away, to try new things. To try new approaches. To do new things within your niche. If it doesn’t work, then back to the drawing board.

But if it does work? Congratulations, you’ve just created something unique.

Room To Learn

By having some income coming in and keeping on top of your saving you have the finances to attend courses that you need in order to train yourself in the new skills you want to acquire. Good courses tend to command a price that, without a predictable income, might be a little daunting.

I’m not saying that you should go and spend thousands on a course. However, for example, when I first decided I wanted to be a graphic designer, I had absolutely no experience or knowledge.

Luckily for me I live down the road from a large arts university. I used the money I was making from my ghost writing job to pay for a course on drawing with Adobe Illustrator.

Although it wasn’t sky high, the tuition fees of taking a course at a university, as you can imagine, weren’t cheap so it was definitely good to have the income available, in order to allow me to take a professional course.

More Time To Play With

Secondly it gives you a little more time. If you are not rushing to start filling up your day with clients and sales, then you have more time to dedicate to your education.

Now time can be a dangerous thing. One of my favourite old adages is Parkinson’s Law, which states that: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

Basically, the longer you give yourself to complete a task – the longer it takes.

I had already started to take on clients before I finished my design course, which forced me to really get ahead and learn on the job. In fact, when I started taking on clients I did not feel ‘ready’ but I did it anyway.

If you give yourself unlimited time to learn, it will be a long time before you ever feel complete ‘ready’ to take the next step. You might never feel that way.

So don’t use your job as a safety blanket to fall back on. If it helps, give yourself a deadline to learn the basics of what you need to get started. One of my friends, for example, circled a date on her calendar in a year’s time and said “that is the day I quit my job, ready or not.”

Conclusion  

Starting your business as a side hustle is a great way of reliving the pressure. It will allow you to explore, to make mistakes (we all do) and learn whilst keeping the stress of finances and pressure to succeed at bay.

I should say, to be fair, that starting a side hustle is hard work. It does require dedication when you come home from your main job, whether that be full or part time, to sit down and start work.

Convinced? Grab our launch checklist and resource containing all the steps you need to launch your side hustle.