When you make the decision to start a side hustle, the next thing to figure out is when to start a business… Do you balance full-time work and your web design business?
Or do you quit your 9-5 and focus solely on your new online business? Being an entrepreneur is all about making tough decisions but fortunately, I’m providing you 4 reasons why starting a side hustle while having a full-time job is a good idea to help make your decision easier.
In case you don’t know too much about me – I went from being full-time employed to laid off and involuntarily unemployed, back to full-time employed.
When I was laid off, that’s when the idea of becoming an entrepreneur came to fruition. I had tons of time on my hands and was stalked by this Facebook ad that promoted an online course to help me work online and travel the world.
The smart thing would have been to take that course immediately and start working on my business while I was unemployed. Instead… I remodeled my kitchen…
At the time, I was about 50% positive I wanted to start my own business but I let my fear get in the way and spent my money on new kitchen countertops and paint for the cabinets instead of investing it in my future.
I did, however, save that course in the back of my mind and when I was full-time employed again, I purchased the course and dove into the contents.
Different Ways to Start Your Business
I took one path to start my business – starting a side hustle while working a full-time job – but there are so many different ways you can go about it.
Here are a few examples:
- You’re full-time employed and you start a side hustle to work on during your downtime.
- You quit your full-time job, secure a part-time job, and spend your remaining downtime working on your business.
- You voluntarily or involuntarily become unemployed and spend all your downtime working on your business.
Many of you might be in that third bucket right now. If you are, I highly encourage you to invest your money and your time wisely. Because by the time we go back to normal life – whatever that maybe – you could very well go from unemployed to full-time web design freelancer.
If you’re still working a full-time job, the rest of this blog post is meant for you!
Do I wish, when I was unemployed, that I would have spent my time and money wisely by purchasing that course I saw, educating myself, and starting my business? Yes, 100%.
But at the same time, looking back, I can see the benefits of starting my side hustle while working my 9-5.
4 Reasons Why Starting a Side Hustle While Working Full-Time is Actually a Good Idea
Here are 4 reasons why starting a side hustle while having a full-time job is actually a good idea.
First reason: You’ll be less attached to the outcome of a sales call
When you start having sales calls – maybe you’ve had some already – you may realize that you get super excited, followed by feeling ridiculously nervous, and then followed by either “who cares what happens” or “I need to land this client.”
In my first handful of sales calls, I felt like I absolutely needed to land the client. I had a full-time job, so I didn’t feel this way because I needed the money. I felt this way because I didn’t want to feel like a failure.
Spoiler alert: bombing a sales call doesn’t mean you’re a failure. If you remember from one of our other previous blog posts, as an entrepreneur failure is a feedback.
But anyway, at a certain point I stopped feeling like I needed to land the client and instead thought “who cares what happens.” An amazing thing happened; my sales calls went so much smoother.
When you detach yourself from the outcome of a sales call, you’re more relaxed, more confident, and more likely to secure a new client. It’s much easier to do this when you aren’t relying on that sales call to turn into a client to pay your bills.
Reason two: You’ll have time for trial and error
Since you aren’t relying on a sales call with a lead to turn into you having a new paying client, you also have more time for trial and error. Because you have a full-time job and aren’t relying on your side hustle to pay your bills and sustain your lifestyle, you can easily try a new strategy for marketing, sales calls, onboarding, etc.
You can even try offering different services or packages to see what type of work you enjoy the most.
If it doesn’t work out, no harm, no foul. You can make changes and try again!
Number three reason: You’ll have money to invest in your business
As a full-time 9-5 employee, you have the advantage of having a predictable income. (Although, as I mentioned in this post here, working for someone else isn’t necessarily more stable than freelancing.)
With that predictable income, you’re more likely to be able to invest in things like courses or tools that will fast-track your business and help with automation or simplicity.
Personally, I put aside a small amount of money each month to put toward courses and tools like Canva, Tailwind, and Elementor. You could also put your money toward tools like Dubsado and Mailerlite that will help you automate your web design process and grow your audience.
Starting your business without a full-time income is still doable – you just have to be more strategic with where and how you spend your money.
Reason four: You’ll have constant motivation
When your reasoning for starting your own business is because you don’t feel fulfilled by your work or you want to spend more time traveling the world or you want to work from home so you can spend more time with your kids, then being in your 9-5 is a constant reminder of what you don’t want.
The boredom I felt while working my 9-5 was a constant reminder of the fact that I wanted to get out of corporate Macedonia. Because I had that constant motivation when I got home from work I was even more motivated to work on my business.
Without that constant reminder, I would have taken even longer to grow my business to the point where I was able to pay my bills and sustain my lifestyle.
Recap
You might choose to continue working your full-time job while you start freelancing. You might choose to work a part-time job, so you have more time to work on your business. Or you might quit your job completely to make building your empire your main focus.
Whatever works for you, works for you.
But if you’re like me and you plan on starting a side hustle while having a full-time job, you have some benefits here:
- You’ll be less attached to the outcome of a sales call
- You’ll have time for trial and error
- You’ll have money to invest in your business
- You’ll have constant motivation
