Like many people I have a side hustle.
Coming from a place where money was tight, (my father left home when I was quite young and I remember writing letters to charities to get funding for school equipment amongst other things), has shaped my attitude towards relying on one source of income.
I’ve seen how a comfortable existence can be changed overnight. It’s shaped a lot of how I am as a person. And we were never as financially desperate as so many other families are right now. I can only imagine how they are feeling.
Anyone who thinks the poor are where they are because of ‘life choices’ and don’t deserve any support or sympathy haven’t got a clue about the real world.
My current sideline is an online arts and sports memorabilia business (www.ecmsales.co.uk should anyone be interested). It’s been sitting there in the background for the last 10-11 years, earning residual income, helping with cashflow when recruitment earnings haven’t been great.
Sometimes it’s a pain – sitting on my laptop working through monthly accounts, or adding products to the website or eBay when I’d rather do something else – like writing poetry! But the fear of not having a back-up source of revenue, something that I can pick up quickly if I ever lose my job, means that I’ve always kept it going.
At the moment I’m not doing much with it – the day job, where I’m currently recruiting in the UK, USA, Netherlands & Germany, is keeping me very busy, and Im often working quite long hours. So it’s pretty dormant at the moment.
It is a bit frustrating sometimes that I can’t invest the time or money to make something more of it – but then that would distract me from my focus on recruitment.
It’s unlikely that it will ever be more than a sideline, and I will at some point end up closing it, but I know that one way or another I will always have a subsidiary source of income.
I’m intrigued. Who else within my network also has a sideline? And if so, why did you set it up?
Feel free to share a link here for some additional free exposure. You never know who might happen to see it!