benefits of side hustling and working 9-5

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts

Defining Entrepreneurial Success

It is my belief that entrepreneurship should not be stamped as “successful” once it’s full-time. I want to completely change the way we approached entrepreneurship, and highlight side hustles along the way. It seems that side hustles are getting the short end of the stick inside the entrepreneurial community. And in fact, side hustles can provide us with so much insight. There are so many benefits we gain from side hustling and working 9-5.

For me, Side Hustling gave me so many opportunities in a way that full-time entrepreneurship couldn’t. Earning cash on the side of working my 9-5, taught me the value of multiple income streams. Then growing my side hustle and starting to match my 9-5 paycheck led me to start believing my career didn’t have to look like trading time for money. 

Working for yourself in any capacity is incredible. And even though I work for myself full time now, I am still rocking the side hustle life with two part-time businesses. I do this by organizing and prioritizing my schedule. Learn more about this inside my free workshop: Life-Proof Your Side Hustle. I owe all of my business success now to the years when I side-hustled around my 9-5 job. 

The 5 Major Benefits of Side Hustling While Working 9-5

If you’re itching to just become a full-time entrepreneur, or you feel strange about not wanting to pursue entrepreneurship full-time, I want to point out some truly great things about being exactly where you’re. Because no matter what your future steps look like, you should be enjoying the right now. 

In this episode, I am going to walk you through 5 major benefits of side hustling and working 9-5. I hope they can encourage you in appreciating where you’re currently at within entrepreneurship and prevent you from comparing yourself to anyone else; because we all know it’s apples and oranges. 

Benefits of side hustling and working 9-5:

• Being able to test within your business
• Having funds and being able to support your overhead
• Learning how to prioritize
• Gaining multiple income streams
• Balance and reprieve from entrepreneurship

Let’s dive into each one and take a look at the benefits from side hustling and working 9-5.

01. Testing Your Business

The first benefit of side hustling and working a 9-5 job is the ability to test a business. Starting a business is a slow process. There truthfully isn’t a reason for you to go “full-time” on day 3. As your business grows, it will require more time. But at the beginning; it really doesn’t.

And so a lot of work in building a lean, mean, money-making machine is testing to see what’s working. 

If you’re a new business owner, or you want to start a business different from something you’ve done in the past, side hustling is the perfect way to do this. And we should take this testing phase past only ensuring a business can earn income. 

You should use your side hustling phase to truly test the things inside your business, test how you can scale your business, how you can introduce multiple streams of income inside your business, and what your audience is really responding to. 

02. Money

The second major benefit of working your side hustle around a 9-5 role is money. This one may be a bit more obvious than others but something still worth stating. 

When you side hustle and work a traditional 9-5, or any other job, you can allow your full-time paycheck to cover the overhead and expenses of your side hustle while you grow the business. Depending on what type of business you have, your overhead cost will vary. This could look like supplies, systems, or subscriptions.  

Your full time job can front your side hustle overhead cost but it can also help pay for overhead expenses that can better move the needle inside your business. 

For Example:

What if after you budgeted, you came to find out that your full time gig can pay for let say the $100 of monthly overhead for your side hustle. This is the amount it costs to run your business every month. Maybe through subscription services like Canva, or your website hosting, or supplies needed. 

But that your budget also has an extra $300 per month to spend. And this comes from your 9-5 gig and after your living and personal expenses are paid out. 

You can take that extra $300 per month and maybe book coaching calls, or pay for ads, or hire a virtual assistant to help with admin tasks. 

All of these things can help your business grow faster while you work your full-time job.  And this is a major benefit of your full-time job supporting your side hustle instead of you having to dip into savings or racking up a credit card in order to start and grow a business. 

03. Prioritization

The third major benefit of side hustling and working a 9-5 is being able to prioritize the need movers inside your business. 

Side hustling gives you a limited schedule. Maybe at max you work on your side hustle 10 hours a week. Well that means you have 10 hours to make money. You have to learn how to maximize those 10 hours and what tasks you need to complete in order to make the most out of the limited time you have. 

Side hustlers master this skill over time. And let me tell you a secrete, this is actually a skill of millionaires. Millionaires don’t fill up their schedule each week with 40 hours worth of work. To help better plan and organize your business throughout the week, download my free printable planner for side hustlers right here.

So if you can learn through side hustling how to truly look at your bottom, learn what needs to happen, how to leverage resources to make your dollar (and your hour) go further, you will discover what I did. And that is, successful entrepreneurship is not found inside a 40-hour work week. 

04. Multiple Income Streams

The fourth major benefit of side hustling and working 9-5 is having multiple streams of income. 

I’m going to reference millionaires again. All millionaires, every single one of them, have multiple streams of income. Their income does not come from one place. And they don’t want it to. They own various businesses; or invest in various businesses. Or their business is set up to have multiple income streams flowing at all times. 

This concept brings security. When and if one stream gets cut off, another one is still flowing. This is something we should all consider, not just as entrepreneurs, but as a general public. 

Working for yourself full time, doing one thing, and securing income one way, is not your long game my friend. It’s not something that is going to bring you security and when and if there is a bump in the road, it’s going to be harder to recover. 

This doesn’t mean you need to open another business or do something completely different. It just means your business should diversify income. Bonus points if you can do it passively. 

If you want to dive deeper into this subject, go back and listen to episode 2 of Side Checks where I talk about realizing my food photography businesses needed to hire in order to do this and add security to my business. In this episode, I also mention when my wedding photography business (another business that I did full time, earning income through 1 way) stopped overnight causing my income to crash. 

05. Balance and Reprieve

The last major benefit of side hustling and working 9-5 that I want to talk about today is gaining balance and reprieve. This is a beautiful gift that side hustlers can receive through working a 9-5. Even if it’s a 9-5 we don’t love. And if you do love your 9-5, then this gift is even sweeter. 

Starting a business is hard. It’s not something that we can always come to easily. There are days when entrepreneurs cry, and scream, and compare themselves to others and question why they started this in the first place. I’m speaking all of this through personal experience. 

Being able to mentally turn our brains off from our side hustle and physically do something else gives us perspective, balance, and reprieve. A lot of times this is something we need to move forward in our businesses. 

Challenge yourself to reframe how you look at your 9-5 and see it as a place that is giving you a creative break so you can return to your business and do the best work. And as a place funding your business. There is entrepreneurial rest within your 9-5. We just have to find it.

Additional Tips For Side Hustlers

There are so many benefits from side hustling and working 9-5. And even though this combination may have it’s own challenges, it teaches business owners many valuable lessons. If you can find the benefits of side hustling and working 9-5, you can continue to set yourself up for success within entrepreneurship.

It’s important that we understand entrepreneurship doesn’t have to look like a full-time career. Entrepreneurship comes in many shapes and sizes. Many of which balance around a 9-5 job. To learn how to make the most of your time and avoid burnout, take my free workshop right here. Side hustling doesn’t need to feel strenuous due to a limited schedule. Instead, learn all of the benefits you can gain from side hustling and working 9-5.

---

Are you and your spouse looking for a creative side hustle idea? I have 97 of them! Check out my Free 97 Creative (and profitable) Side Hustle Ideas right here! This list is way better than what you’ll find when you Google search….