Starting a side hustle

One of the most common questions I get asked on speaking engagements or my other social channels is how to start a side project, a business or additional income stream. For the longest time (maybe during our grand/parents’ era), it has always been a choice between pursuing a career, business, save the world, and/or pursue one’s passion, or purpose.

But times change due to shifting generational behavior and an increase in access to information as well as opportunities; the lines between these factors start to blur, creating a new kind of work lifestyle: Side hustling.

Many millennials want to start their own businesses as young people are naturally entrepreneurial, but without a steady flow of income it could prove challenging to jump into starting a new venture. Here’s where side hustles come into play.

What is Side Hustling?

It is a hobby, service offered, or freelance pursuit one has outside of the usual 9-5 full-time job. It could also be a simultaneous pursuit of another passion or interest without quitting the day job. It is basically another way to make cash on the side or make productive use of one’s spare time.

For example, you are perhaps a BPO professional by night and an event planner by day. This is not as simple as seeking to make money alone but an expression of one’s creativity, artistry, interests as well as their other potentials that they can’t express or do at work due to one’s “Job Description.”

Starting a side hustle

One of the things I learned from one of my out-of-school mentors during college is that, the easiest types of businesses to start are services-types. All you have to do is reflect on your skills and try to monetize that skill as a start.

Now if you are still not sure or you don’t have a detailed plan to launching something while working, or just don’t know how to get started, here are some ideas:

1. Services Based Hustle – These vary from freelance events planning, tutoring, consultancy, and perhaps even physical related jobs that can be done on the side. Skills that can be done online fall into this category too; in fact, most BPO type of work can actually be done at home so long as you have reliable internet and relevant software or tools: web development/designing, graphic, animation, virtual assistance and so forth.

2. Buy-and-Sell Hustle – You can do this online and offline. It can be small like a sari-sari store items, or as big as gadgets, cars, even real estate or sell insurance.

3. Product Based Hustle – Arts and crafts, food, fashion, digital products (content, software or even start ups), manufacturing ..etc.. start by finding a market gap or an underserved market.

Indeed, a day job can be rewarding, but there’s one thing more meaningful than steady income and the occasional perks and that is to work for yourself. So get started, follow your curiosity.

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose, for even in failure or defeat, there’s always valuable lessons to be learned which will still help you out in the future!

“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.”

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Originally Published in Philstar - The Freeman Newspaper last January 17, 2017.