Tips On How To Grow Your Side Hustle As A Full-Time Worker

Many workers are starting to see reasons why they should have a side hustle. As a result, this is now the ‘gig economy’. Having another means of income can be beneficial for a number of reasons, however, this is not something that every employee must venture into.

You need to be certain it’s something you are comfortable with. Otherwise, let it remain a hobby as running a business however small is no easy feat!

It’s a way of reducing your dependency on your main source of income (i.e. a backup plan for your life or career). A side hustle is also one way of reaching financial freedom, as you are able to increase your residual income most especially if your full-time income isn’t good enough.

Some workers want a side hustle as an additional source of income to complement their take-home pay, others want to use the extra money for a project or travel fund, etc. so it’s important for you to set a goal in mind. It can be a bit of a hassle to juggle or multitask two things at a time and that is just how it goes with side hustling particularly if your aim is to grow it over the years to eventually become your full-time income.

The issue here is that you don’t want to become less productive and possibly lose your main income while your side hustle is still in its infancy. Also, you don’t want to become too busy and drained so much that you are unable to spend time growing your side hustle.

In this article, you will discover how to go about growing your side hustle aka your small business while maintaining your full-time job and being productive on it.

1. Work on your time management

One of the best ways to grow anything you put your mind to is to invest your time wisely in it. If you work a full-time job, you might feel exhausted at the end of the day. Therefore, it’s important to think of ways to manage time wisely.

For instance, you can spend a quarter of your lunch break brainstorming on a new project for your side hustle. If you take regular walks at work to avoid living a sedentary lifestyle, you can respond to one or two emails when taking your walk.

It’ll also pay you to write out what your daily tasks entail and see how much time you spend on it. Next thing? Schedule/ block off time for your full-time job responsibilities, side hustle tasks, along with personal tasks in your calendar as a form of reminder and motivation.

2. Model similar businesses in the industry

When starting out, you might not know all the ropes to success but that is where benchmarking comes in. Look at successful and established businesses in your niche and study what works for them. You can then model their business practices and apply it to yours while maintaining a distinguished advantage.

This will help you grow your side hustle without making unnecessary mistakes that can be costly. You will also save some time to focus on your full-time job which provides your main source of income presently.

3. Simplify your tasks with innovative tools

If you are able to reduce the amount of time you spend on some activities for your side hustle, which you don’t necessarily like, you can focus your energy on what really matters.

For instance, social media marketing has proved to be important for a small business; however, it can be time-consuming.

Tools like Buffer, Later, etc. help you manage social media scheduling across a number of social media platforms while you focus your spare time on other areas of business development. This way, you’ll be more productive on your full-time job and have additional time to spend on other areas of your side hustle. You can choose a day of the week to focus on scheduling all posts or articles for each week.

4. Identify your side hustle days or hours

As much as you are encouraged to work hard/ smart and invest hours into your side hustle, you should also remember to have adequate rest because your health should come first and burn out is real! Hence, a good way to maintain a balance is to decide on what days or hours you want to dedicate to side hustling.

For instance, you can select three days in a week to dedicate to working on your side hustle. So maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday will be days dedicated to side hustling with Saturday exclusively for cold calling and building new clients. Alternatively, you might want to dedicate 4 hours every weekday after 7:00 PM to work on your side hustle.

Do what works best for you depending on your full-time hours and time/days when you are most productive. However, recognize that to grow your side hustle, you need to be more intentional in taking the extra step to work on it and that could mean dedicating days or hours so that you are not burned out.

5. You don’t need to learn everything at once

Finally, maximize the skills you already have and avoid wasting time trying to learn every new thing out there. Sure, you need to learn some skills, but remember that a good way to stay productive is to use the skills you have already acquired on your full-time job.

For example, if your fulltime job involves financial literacy, this could mean that you can spend less time learning anything financially related to your business at its infancy and focus more on other areas of growth for your side hustle.

You will keep tweaking and making changes to your side hustle as you grow it and you’ll learn along the line as most businesses do. Also, where you can, you should be willing to delegate certain tasks if it’s becoming too time-consuming.

A good way to grow your side hustle is to invest your time and money (in certain cases). Since you earn a living from your full-time job, you can spare a few bucks to help grow your side hustle while maintaining your sanity and health.

What are other tips you will add to this list? Leave a comment below! Read other side hustle articles and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog for exclusive updates.

*A short version of this article first appeared on The Guardian Nigeria.