5 questions to ask yourself before starting a side hustle (and the one skill you'll really need)
The RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards Gala presented by Women of Influence is like the Royal Ball for a Cinderella like me, the kind that daydreams of owning and operating her own business more than anything else. I left the gala bursting with ideas and inspiration thanks to women like Kate Ross LeBlanc, CEO and co-founder of Saje Natural Wellness and Kathy Gregory, CEO of Paradigm Quest. In fact, I left early — I had a business to start.
Like many other people my age, I'm obsessed with having a side hustle. I have a wonderful job that I'm grateful for, but I'm also a content marketing consultant and contributing writer for this lovely blog at CBC Life. I've been a freelance makeup artist and ghostwriter too. Millennials like me (I'm technically a Millennial, even at age 34) are drawn to a side hustle for the added financial draw, yes, but also because they fuel forward momentum and a sense of stability just in case.
Having a side hustle isn't something Millennials invented because we felt it was a cute way to get rich. A side hustle is a second job, re-branded, for those of us who need an extension on our everyday salary to pay off student loans or cover high rent. This statement resonated with me also: "your side hustle can keep you from feeling pigeonholed." Having a side hustle is the best medicine for feeling bored, because there's no excuse for that.
But how do you start a side hustle? You can begin by asking yourself these 5 questions:
- How long can you commit to a second job?
- What is your ultimate goal?
- How many hours per week will this take?
- Do you need to cancel out anything in your schedule to fit your new side hustle in?
- How long will you commit before considering quitting?
I've answered these 5 questions a billion times and devised a trillion clever business ideas. But, I'm weak on one crucial skill that every single one of the Canadian women entrepreneurs I admired at the gala possessed: follow-through.
Follow-through is where I tend to get stuck and there are approximately an infinite amount of articles deriding this trap, the one where you simply don't do what you want to. No fewer than ALL of the women who delivered speeches on Sunday night warned against fear — not fear of failure, but fear of hard work. It is a commitment to hard work that can convert a side hustle into a burgeoning business and turn a Cinderella like me into an entrepreneur like Eva Sun, Alyssa Furtado and Marlo Brausse — the list goes on, and one day I want to be on it.
If you are an aspiring Canadian entrepreneur and dream of turning your side hustle into a burgeoning business, follow along with me at CBC Life where I'll be writing about turning a side hustle blog into a business with a special focus on content marketing and sales, my professional specialty.
There, I've committed — now share this post and help hold me to my follow-through! I'll be back next week with some juicy insider stuff on how to market your blog to advertisers.