How to Start a Side Hustle When You Have a Full Time Job

I’m sure a lot of you out there reading this and understand how hard it can be to start a new business while trying to juggle full-time work. You might be working a full-time job, or perhaps you’re studying full-time, or maybe you’re doing a mixture of both. That is much work on its own, but also be building up a business on the side is much work. I understand because I do it.

When I got a dose of reality and discovered what it’s like working a real job, I found out that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. It would be by the time I woke up in the morning, made my commute to work each day, got through all the work that I had to do, then finally made the commute back home. All I wanted to do in the evenings was nothing. I just wanted to watch YouTube. I was too tired, and so for a month, I languished, and I did nothing.

However, I had already had a taste of success, and I knew that honestly, I wanted to get rich and unless you were born into wealth the only exact real way to get rich is to build a business.

Jobs have income caps you only have a finite amount of time to exchange for money every day. However, with the business, you can hire other people and use their time to make you money. Unlike jobs, companies don’t have income caps.

If I wanted to get rich, then I had no choice. So I created my website as a side hustle. It was really challenging and I had sleepless nights while creating it. So if you were working full time, you’re studying full time, or you’re doing a mixture of both that is full time and trying to build up a business on the side I understand that that is not easy. So I decided to write this article to reflect on what techniques I use to stay motivated and to also think about the mistakes that I made and that I see other people making as well.

1- Don’t Fall for Shiny Object Syndrome

I think all of us have suffered for shiny object syndrome at least once in our lives.

• I’ve got a great idea for a business!
• I’m gonna start a dropshipping store!
• It’s going to be amazing!
• Oh, what’s this affiliate marketing?
• Cool! I’m gonna start an affiliate marketing website.

Now I know that I have fallen for shiny object syndrome in the past, but in general, I have a natural resistance to it. I’m good at staying motivated on one thing. Also, I think that that helped me a lot. Unfortunately, I am highly unusual. Most people are very susceptible to shiny object syndrome.

I genuinely think that this might be one of the most common reasons that people fail as starting a new business and to figure out why you just need to look at the mats.

You have 24 hours a day. You need 8 hours for sleep. You need 8 hours for work. You have 1 hour in there for commuting and preparing for work. And, that leaves you with just 7 hours a day.

With those 7 hours, you need to cook, clean, manage your life. And you need to juggle friends, family and have downtime so that you don’t go insane. For most people realistically they might have 1–2 hours a day on weekdays to be able to dedicate towards their business. So that means that collectively I’ve got 5–10 hours every week. Of course, weekends are a prime time to work so maybe you were very disciplined, and you work 8 hours on both of those days. That means that you’re working 16 hours on the weekends. In total, that means you might have 20 to 26 hours on average each week to work on your new side hustle.

Now consider this, people often ask me the question “If I’m looking to start a new dropshipping store, how many hours should I dedicate towards it each way?” And my answer to that is at least 15 to 20 hours. Once your store starts making sales, you need to be prepared to set aside at least 1 hour every day to manage your orders. That is really low compared to most businesses.

Well, as you can see, most people barely have enough time to focus on just one new business or one new store.

2- Wake Up Early and Invest in You

Some of you reading this will be night owls, and you will do your best work at night. If this is you, you’re lucky because it’s going to be easier for you to start a business on the side.

Why?

Well, because you are your best most creative, most sharp at night. And where are you at night? -You’re at home working for yourself, not at your job. This means that you can shop as your best self for you and your business.

I’m a night owl, but most people aren’t night owls. They work best in the morning. When they were working, they had an epiphany. They wake up in the morning, get ready, go to work when they are on beast mode. When they are fresh and rested, they have an excellent job for their boss and spend all of this mental energy on the job. And when they come home, they are tired, not just physically, but mentally as well. So, what you really need to do is to go to bed 1–2 hours earlier each evening.

3- Stay Healthy — Don’t Get Sick

When you’re working full time because your most limited resource your time is going towards your job and so when you’re working full time or you’re studying full time, you need to be careful to maximize your free time. So that you can spend it on your new business, now, the sacrifice will pay off down the road, once you have enough money that you can quit your job, then you will gain much extra time. Especially once you have enough money coming into the business that you can hire people to do tasks for you. And the meantime though, you need to be careful with your time, and you can’t afford to get sick. Being sick can be long-term lose.

4- Find Something that You are Passionate About

Image source

As a consumer, I had insider knowledge and made during market research a whole lot easier because I understood what the market wanted. And that freed up my time because I wasn’t spending as much time doing things like product research, I could instead use that to do things like learning about how to work with dropshippers and manufacturers.

When you’re first starting your new business, there are so many new skills that you need to learn so why not make it as easy for yourself as possible by picking something to sell that you already know about. That applies whether you’re getting into e-commerce as I did or whether you’re starting a service based business, try and see if you can sell something that you’re passionate about and know about.

The second reason, of course, is that it’s a lot more fun to build a business around something that you like. And if you find it fun, then you’re less likely to procrastinate.

5- Budget Your Time Like You Budget Money

Let me ask you a question:

“How would you create a weekly budget for your money?”

1. Write down all of your weekly income
2. Write down all of your weekly expenses
3. Minus your expenses from your weekly income

Sometimes your finances are super healthy, you’ve got lots of money left over, and that is awesome. However, sometimes it’s the opposite. You find that you don’t have any money left over even worse your expenses are higher than your income, which means that you’re now in deep.

So what do you do?

You have to find ways to cut down on your spending. The same goes for our time. Could you keep track of where you’re spending it? You might find that you’re wasting way too much time on YouTube that you should instead be spending on your new business.

Here is the truth: probably the most significant difference between those with a rich mind search versus those with a poor mindset is how they approach their time.

People with a poor mindset will exchange their time for money any day. But rich people, they understand that time is the scarce resource that in fact, money is something that you can get more of. Because you can build a successful store, you can create a successful business and then you can hire people to run that for you. Moreover, with that passive income, you can figure out there and use the time that you’ve gained back to build another successful store. And so on and so on.

How to Start a Side Hustle When You Have a Full Time Job was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.