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What are your thoughts on hustles while you work on your business?

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

BlueMoon

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Jun 3, 2018
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Many businesses take quite a while before they take off and generate solid income (in my own experience and countless others I've witnessed). And so, if you want to bootstrap it, you will have to find ways to generate income while you work on your business.

This is exactly what I'm doing right now as I'm working as a freelance marketing consultant.

But as you've guessed it, it's not a good way to generate good side income (obviously), though I might do a very big project for a Hollywood celeb (you all know him).

I've been pondering different routes I can go right now and was hoping to get the ball rolling on how you guys look at these situations.

Basically, I look at them like this:
Door #1:
Work somewhere (either fulltime or parttime) and hustle in the weekends/evenings.
Door #2: Continue with freelancing while working on your business.

It's a situation I often have found myself in (and friends who started/own businesses) and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this?

I don't mind irregular income, but the added stress (financially, emotionally, bitching clients) can also negatively affect my focus on creating a fastlane business in the 'off hours'.

Vice versa, this problem could be solved by working (parttime) in a new industry, but of course, the flexibility will be severely hindered in that situation).

How are you guys tackling this challenge (if applicable to your situation) and why have you stepped through one of these specific doors?

Look forward to your thoughts
 
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Hassen

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Mar 13, 2015
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I switched from freelancing to working somewhere full time, (and inadvertently took a year-long break from entrepreneurship after failing my first business attempt), but personally I have found it beneficial in several ways.

I started in an industry that I had skills for but no experience of, at a small company. And after I got my feet in the door and actually learned how to do my job, I switched to working for a bigger company instead, the biggest in the industry across the country.

1. Here I have a flexible schedule.

I start working earliest at 10am and can remain working remotely or at the office until however late I want. Personally I really hated jobs because I couldn’t get up in the morning: I could do late nights, but never be on time for a 9-6 workday. Now it’s far more tolerable for me and I also can have days off whenever I want, so I go traveling abroad for half a month when I have the money, currently I do these trips three times a year.
Also I don’t drive or take public transportation now, which was what made past jobs unbearable. Now I can afford to take taxis to and back from work.

So in this sense it’s kind of like working freelance anyway, plus the steady work. And to be honest, I was never very productive working at home, but now I can work on stuff at the office and nobody checks on me.
Well, in fact once the boss did walk past me and asked what I was doing on my computer, I said slacking off. And he just walked off casually. Work culture here is people don’t care when you leave or where you are as long as work is being done.

2. Even at a surprise to myself, I’m really good at this job and I have learned a lot, developed a sort of expertise even, and now I’m able to provide people lots of value.
I learned by having tons of practice on the job but also working & brainstorming with coworkers, something freelancing didn’t give me.

This is the first job I’ve had where I feel I’m excelling, learning, and providing value to people. I’m also becoming more humble and willing to learn various skills needed in different aspects of building a business.

At the moment I’m thinking of moving away from the slowlane by trying to offer people services and consulting outside of the company, and also developing some scalable informational product. I say “trying” because I know my first attempts will probably fail or not generate much profit, but I’ll need the experience and it’d be nice to use my skills to help more people.
Today I just had a client, originally referred by an old classmate, pay me $1500 in advance for 20 hours of my time & consultation services, because earlier I had provided him value by giving him free advice. He’s also raving about how I’ve helped him and promised to do a positive review when I put up the consultation service online later this month.


3. I was made a manager soon after coming to this company, and this has given me a lot of experience managing (well, duh) and dealing with people in general. Brushed up on my communication skills. I manage about 40 people, though I also have a senior manager to report to & help me out, whom I learn a lot from as well.
Before I never had a similar opportunity and I wouldn’t have had this if I were still freelancing.

4. Working in a large company and being responsible for a bunch of people, I’m now working on using this platform to learn & try things like leading a team better, training people to accomplish new tasks, managing my time better, collaborating with others, and even marketing.
Here when we (the senior manager and I) have a marketing idea for our department, we can try stuff on the company’s budget and with the marketing department’s tech support.


So overall taking up this job has been an eye-opener to me and is now giving me more ideas to pursue than the generic e-commerce store which was all I knew about a year and a half prior. I still plan on doing a new e-commerce store this year though, but now I have a decent salary to help fund it, and I have a new humble & curious attitude to learn more, such as about obtaining online traffic.

Also I’ve noticed one attitude change for me, it’s that I’m no longer afraid of difficulties. At my job I overcame a lot of bullshit (such as the last manager before me just bailed out leaving me nothing to work with, but still shit had to get done so I pulled grueling hours for a few months) to eventually solve problems & accomplish very satisfying results. Very valuable for me. I used to be the kind of dreampreneur looking for the silver bullet.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

WinYourself

Bronze Contributor
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Aug 11, 2013
50
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Freelancing is in most cases a terrible hustle.
Too much time spend pitching, not enough time spend earning.
Job is better in this case.
Exception would be if you have already an high paying high demand skill e.g. lawyer, programmer, engineer....
If this is not the case I would focus on a hustle that can provide a basic income without eating all your time and energy.
Flipping things, traffic abitrage, leadgeneration....
 

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