As you may already know, I currently work full-time on top of my passive income streams. I came back from nomading over a year ago now and am currently settled back in the Bay Area. I’m quite happy at my job so I work on my own projects on the side while working my day job! I wanted to create this post on how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job because I’ve been on both sides of the coin – working full-time and having side hustles, as well as quitting and going full-on with entrepreneurship.
Many people believe that it’s not possible to hustle on the side and think that it’s a half-ass attempt towards entrepreneurship and passive income. However, I believe that it can actually work, and there are benefits with having a full-time job while side hustling.
If you’re a more risk-averse person (like me) who’s thinking about entrepreneurship, you could start off with side hustling while keeping your day job. Here are some tips on how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job.
5 Tips on How to Balance Your Side Hustle with Your Full-Time Job
1. Appreciate Your Job!
There are many benefits to having your job. It’s easy to go on a thought train thinking you’re wasting tons of time at work and that you’re not getting as far as you want in your entrepreneurial goals. However, on the other side of the fence, there’s a lot of stress that can come with not having a steady paycheck coming in regularly.
Aside from health concerns, this stress can also lead you to bad decisions when it comes to building your business. When you have financial troubles it’s easy to shift your focus from working towards your ideal life and purpose to merely working for money. This can steer you off track from what you really want in life and what your entrepreneurial goals actually are.
Lastly, having a job allows you to invest your extra income into your business. Sometimes I find that a little surge of investment into your business can make a HUGE difference in how far your business goes. Like many entrepreneurs talk about, it’s important to hire out sooner than later, and it’s crucial to invest in yourself and your work.
2. Organize Your Time
When you have a full-time job and want to side hustle, it’s necessary to organize your time wisely. Since you’ll be spending a majority of your day at your full-time job, you’ll really need to squeeze the most out of your weeknights and weekends. These are really your only times to get cranking on your projects, which means you can’t dick around and watch Netflix or play video games after work. You’ll have to make sacrifices in order to get your passive income going.
The best way to stay organized is to PLAN to PLAN! You need to actually set time in your day to plan out your days and months. Figure out your goals, milestones, and action plans so that each action you take is intentional. Here’s a post I created to outline how I keep organized with my goals and milestones. And for each day, write down your most important to-do’s. Create time blocks for when you plan to work on certain tasks. Pat Flynn even recommends doing only one specific task per day, e.g. writing day is Monday, filming day is Tuesday, etc. That way you remove that distraction period when you switch between tasks.
3. Network
Networking is super important when you’re hustling. Being around that group of people who’s doing the same thing as you not only holds you accountable and gives you new ideas, but also helps you feel less lonely in a lonely world. Entrepreneurship can be lonely! You’re walking a path that’s less traveled, which means less people are doing the same thing as you. You’ll actually have to put in effort to find like-minded people. The people you surround yourself with can give you a HUGE leg up in the space.
4. Outsource When You Can
When you want to balance your side hustle with your full-time job, you have the disadvantage of less time and the advantage of more capital. To leverage your income to the maximum, you should hire out as soon as possible. By hiring people to do different tasks, you’re able to streamline your processes and reduce time wasted on tasks that don’t require you.
For example, it’s necessary for you to work on YouTube videos that feature yourself. You have to film these videos because you’re the face of your brand. But editing can be handled by other people! YouTube thumbnails can also be designed by others. There are a lot of tasks that don’t actually require your presence, so hire those tasks out and focus on what’s necessary to expand your business.
5. Build Profits and True Fans/Customers Before You Leave Your Job (If You Plan to Leave)
If you plan to leave your job, it would be wise to build up some proof that it’s all working. You have to make sure there is a need for what you’re creating. If there is no demand, then a lot of time and effort will be wasted creating something that nobody wants or needs. Getting some traction will help create a smooth transition from working a full-time job to quitting (if that’s what your goal is). It’s not completely necessary as I’ve heard of many cases of entrepreneurs diving in head first with no traction and being very successful. But if you’re more risk averse like me it helps to have some proof of “it will work”!
Conclusion
I hope these tips help on how to balance your side hustle with your full-time job! A lot of these tips are actually good pieces of advice even if you’re an entrepreneur full-time. But they’re even more crucial when you have less time on your hands. I believe that if you have focus and work efficiently and persistently, you’ll be able to succeed with whatever side hustles you have. It just requires action.
