The concept of side hustling wasn’t new to me – I had always been a side hustler for as far back as I could remember. But once I joined the corporate world, somehow the art I previously dominated had been lost the further up the corporate ladder that I traveled. I did, however, learn a lot of ways to run a legitimate business from these corporate exploits.
Namely, Lesson #1 – how to have a ‘reduction in staff’ every few years in order to keep salaries at the top consistent with the contract that had been signed in order to attract said ‘talent’ to begin.
**The Layoff**
It wasn’t like I was surprised when I was called into human resources that day. It was well known that the ad agency I worked for was struggling. I take that back. It was well known that the pirate ship was f***ing sinking. So much so, the last public email I was able to fire off before my server access was denied began with the subject header “Man overboard”. I’m sure they wish they had cut my access off a bit sooner. So then why, if I knew for months that day was coming, was I a bit annoyed it was happening *that* particular day? Well you’re currently reading it. After writing 6 books, I had finally come up with the idea for my next project. It was to be a chronicle on how to maintain a big wig corporate job while side hustling significant income on the side. “Dominate while you dominate” was to be the theme. And I was to begin applying for side hustle gigs to write about within just a few days from now.
Instead, that day I found myself cleaning out 8 years of advertising memorabilia & corporate accolades, in a tiny window of time while top flight security stared. Should I go get another corporate job while spending months often needed to get up to speed in a new role? Sink hours/weeks/months mastering new systems and policies to get to a point where I then could have enough mental energy to start writing? (writing a book is not something you just pick up and do like most side hustles, you have to be in the right mental space). Or should I get a simple job and change the premise of the book to “how to dominate at side hustling while working a menial job?” Most people pivot from a major business idea after a long retreat or trip to some far off location. They report having an epiphany from Costa Rica and come back to change everything about the trajectory they were initially travelling towards.
Now on **Day 1**, did I have all of the most important elements of the project established yet? Not even close. But I did know **one** very important thing – if I didn’t do this now and commit to documenting the results over at least a 2 month span, I would never do it. It is **so** easy to get trapped back into the perceived “security” of a full time corporate job. With health benefits. And free Wi-Fi. And corporate discounts on editing software. And Disneyland passes And.. Because after all, I didn’t know if this new age version of side hustling was about anything to begin.
For all I know, this grand experiment can be a huge fail with the only benefit of teach others **what not to do**. So my thoughts were that I’d better get started while I had the chance and make a book out of it so I could recoup about half of the money I was going to lose out on from not having a paycheck. There are sooo many ‘opportunities to make money’ out there today. Currently, we are living in what experts call a “a gig economy” – one that hasn’t even begun to show its full strength yet. But even with this, here I was still working full time corporate jobs over the last 8 years, while building traditional businesses on the side. 15 years ago, side hustling meant one of three things in the hood: a part time job, something slightly illegal, or a **pyramid scheme**.
I mean, was it finally possible to make something significant, say $10k legally, over the course of 2 months in this new gig economy? A fat $10,000.00 in 60 days without a formal job, a degree or any experience? And if so, how do you sift through all the ‘opportunities’ to find the ones actually providing the type of money that can really affect your life? I mean $10,000 is the kind of money that can get a person out of credit card debt, pay off a horrible car loan or even jump start the funding of a business. **And what if you could even scale** **up from there?**
This rule was put in place to be able to cover as many side hustle types for this project as possible. Focusing on one new side hustle every 2 months would force this book to never have come out. It was also used to support my thesis of **diversification** being as important to all things income related. Just as it is in the investment game. Especially since I had just been laid off from a job that would have rattled most others who live check to check.
Diversification is the only way not to have your livelihood controlled by **one** corporation. If I **couldn’t** master these side hustles enough to extract $10k over 2 whole months ($5k/month), did they really live up to the hype? Based on all of the “you can make $35/hour headlines” from their company’s marketing department? Should there be a class action lawsuit based on these false claims? But perhaps most importantly, at least initially, I was operating on the assumption that this would be a mighty fail and I’d be in another job close to the 2 month mark anyways.