Mastering the Side Hustle: Entrepreneurship as Your Parallel Pursuit

"A side hustle is the first small step towards your Startup Dreams" — Dr. Anu Khanchandani

A side hustle is the best alternative people have. Nearly half of the Americans are doing some kind of side hustle after their day job.

What is entrepreneurship?

Starting entrepreneurship as a side hustle is so common these days, as it is more connected with the passion and interests of the person than their duty or responsibility. 

Entrepreneurship is a sport of mindset, hard work, skillset, and marketing. It is a way to discover new possibilities and make things possible that were thought to be impossible.

Entrepreneurship is not a way to generate revenue, settle in life, or complete tasks and submit to someone. It’s more than that. It’s about fulfilling your dreams by creating and extracting value from your ideas, which involves a good amount of risks. 

Of course, you must have some ideas that you want to evolve into reality. That’s your reason to be an entrepreneur! You can’t do that as a job. But yes! As a side hustle, you can start your entrepreneur journey. Starting that as a side hustle is the best option you have.

What is a Side Hustle?

A side hustle is a kind of self-employment undertaken to add extra side income or turn your passion into reality apart from the regular daily work.

A side hustle should not be confused with a part-time job. You get freedom in your side hustle, and in an informal tone, it can be said that you are the boss of your own. It is also seen as an entry point into entrepreneurship. 

Side hustle provides you a way to test your entrepreneurial skills, grow the customer base, develop a mindset, look for a team, and give a slow start to your passion.

Side Hustlers vs Full-Time Entrepreneur

A full-time entrepreneur is into business completely, while a side hustler is in a transition mode from an employee to an entrepreneur. 

You can be an individual with a few clients or customers, that you manage in your weekends or off-hours, while a full-fledged entrepreneur is a whole team working vigorously for a number of clients in a more planned manner for full time.

How to Be a Side Hustler?

Being a side hustler is easy; all it demands is proper time management, involvement, passion, the right mindset, and persistence. Here are the 5 simple steps to be a perfect side hustler.

1. Analyze What You Want

Since side hustling isn’t about doing any random work. If you are not clear what exactly you are trying to do as your side hustle, you end up reaching nowhere. 

Basically, a side hustle is all about your passion, your dream work, that you want to do; that can be completing your comic book to developing intelligent software on your idea. Your side hustle work is not meant for gathering livelihood, rather it’s about gathering zeal and enthusiasm for living by doing what you like.

So, take a piece of paper, track your past, and figure out what you want to achieve in your life. Do you want to bring a new revolution by forming an NGO, or do you want to build a new renewable power source for the world?

It can be anything practical that you have a good idea in. Make sure, you aren’t listing down impractical things in that list.

2. Fix a Regular Time

Doing side hustle isn’t your regular 9 to 5 job. Hence, finding out time before and after a job is what you need to plan for your side hustle. 

Weekends, early morning, and after dinner; are common among side hustlers. Make a timetable, cut down unnecessary hours, and add it to your side hustling work. The more time you give, the better result you can expect. However, ensure that you maintain a proper work-life balance for good health.

3. Be Clear on Why

Another important question for side hustlers; why are you doing it. Is it for money, adventure, passion, product, or just for fun? Most businesses start as a side hustle, as Americans know the value of side hustle. 

The more clear you are with your “WHY” part, the better vision you will have with the future of your side hustle.

4. Set Up a productive workspace

A workspace is an important factor for work quality, and performance. Just like you have an office for your day job, which is mostly work-from-home in the present COVID-19 scenario, you need a workspace for your side hustle work as well. 

Get a table, separate devices like a laptop or desktop (if possible), get related books you need for your side-hustle, notepad, and other essentials, and build an appealing workspace. It can be a corner of your house or your empty garage, or simply be another table in your room. A great workspace works like a magnet to motivate you for work. 

If you have a teammate, ensure they have enough space in that workspace.

5. Analyze the outcome

No task or project is complete unless you can track down the outcome and study the result. Whatever work you are doing as a side hustle, build a report card for that.

Cross-check what work you have done, monthly or weekly, and what results you have drawn out of it. Also, how these weekly or monthly results are progressing towards the ultimate goal of your side hustle. How much revenue you have generated from it, what is the investment you have made in your side hustle so far? Note down everything and analyze it. 

Such reporting helps you stay confident, and clears your path along your journey. 

These five points to note down are worth investing your time and energy into a side hustle.

Wrapping up

Starting entrepreneurship as a side hustle is a great alternative to those who are planning to bootstrap a business or company, or those who can’t manage funds for their passion so easily. 

In fact, the majority of the business prototype or initial models are built as a side hustle.