The internet is full of tips for people looking to make a bit of extra cash on top of their existing income, and in recent years the term “side hustle” has become more or less inescapable. Even while we have been in the midst of a pandemic that is still far from over, the tendency for people to evangelise about using the time to find another income stream has been non-stop.
While there’s plenty of reason to feather the nest where possible, it might be argued that adding extra work to your life might be the very worst thing you can do for your work-life balance. Instead of looking for another side hustle, perhaps the smartest thing you could do while life is on hold is to see if you might be able to scale up your existing hustle and make it your full-time job. As we will see below, doing this can have a range of advantages.
You already know you can do this
If you’ve been making a modest profit from a side hustle, then you’ve been achieving everything that you can with the time and effort you have available. You’ve also been - although you may not have thought about it this way - testing out a potential future career by doing it on a smaller scale. With more time and resources available, there is a real chance that you could make it into a proper, thriving business that can fund you full-time. For sure, there are other questions to ask, but knowing you can do something successfully is a good start.
You have the blueprint for making something bigger
If your side hustle involves using materials and machines, or any other equipment, it’s likely you will already know what you’d need in order to make it function on the next level. You’ll have less research to do than most when it comes to scaling up. If you’ve been selling bottles of your home-made wine at festivals, you’ll know that going up a level means more bottles, more crates and looking at a slat conveyor so you can move bigger volumes. You’ll also have an idea as to who you need to speak to when it comes to getting bigger orders.
You’re likely to enjoy it more than a 9-5
By and large, people take on side hustles because they’re less impactful on their everyday life; the hustle is usually something you do because you already know a bit about it. That’s invaluable when it comes to scaling things up. With the best will in the world, a lot of us face the working day with little enthusiasm when we’re working a standard job. When you’re running a business that you control, in a niche you know, and can write your own rules, then there’s less need to drag yourself out of bed to do it.
Scaling up your side hustle isn’t without its challenges, but if you’ve been making it work up to now then it’s worth looking at making it more permanent once we’re past the current situation.
