Why You Should Start a Side Hustle in 2019 and Beyond
Hey, everybody. Chris here with sidehustleacademy.com, and in this week’s video I’m going to be talking about why you should start a side hustle in 2019.
The reason I want to talk about this is because maybe you’re somebody who is on the fence about starting something or you’re looking to earn some extra income or you want to be able to do other things, and you’re thinking maybe a side hustle might be a way for you to start earning an extra income on the side.
In this video, I’m going to talk about five major reasons why you should be starting a side hustle this year and going forward because I think that it’s going to change the way you run your life and what you do in your life going forward.
I know it’s certainly changed my life. I’ve been doing it for about 15 years now and I’ve been making a decent income for a long time now.
It’s allowed me to do a lot of great things. I’ll get to that in this video. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “Man, is this for me?” I just want to tell you that a side hustle is for literally anybody who wants to start one.
You don’t have to be specialized or a specific type of person to start a side business or anything like that. Anybody could start one. Anybody could do it.
It just takes someone to take the will to put themselves out there and just do it. I’m going to get into that in this video so let’s get started.
#1 The Opportunity Has Never Been Better
Number one reason why you should start a side hustle right now in 2019 is that the opportunity has never been better. When you think about it, the opportunity has been huge. Let me give you a little story.
When I first started in 2004, I started working with a network marketing company. That was my very first side hustle. I did that for four and a half years.
Back then, the internet was just getting started and there weren’t all these great things out there like YouTube even yet. Those things did not even exist yet, so the opportunity wasn’t nearly as ripe as it is today.
Literally, YouTube got started in 2005 and the internet marketing era was just getting started at that point, but I didn’t know how to tackle that, I didn’t know how to get into that because it seemed complicated and you had to know all these crazy things like HTML and CSS and stuff.
I kind of stayed away from it. I got into this network marketing thing with a few friends of mine and did that for about four and a half years. It really didn’t go anywhere.
I didn’t make a lot of money with it. I learned a lot of stuff. I sold insurance and investments and stuff. Got some licenses. Learned a lot of stuff about business and finance.
Fast forward to 2008. Things were changing. This little thing called WordPress was really starting to get big and I signed up. I got into WordPress, a WordPress site set up.
A site called stumbleforward.com, it still exists to this day, it’s still out there if you want to check it out. That was the very first blog I ever started, and I started that blog under the assumption I was just going to write content and put it out there.
I literally had to have someone set it up for me and I had a brother who was really good at things like HTML. Back then, you needed to know all that stuff because WordPress was a little bit clunkier back then.
You had to manually do a lot of things. To do those things for me was tough, but he knew how to do them, so he could set it up. For a lot of people, that was a stumbling block. They couldn’t go and set up their own website so that was a lot tougher back in 2008.
Fast forward to today 2019, and it’s totally different. It’s way different today. WordPress, you literally click a button and WordPress sets itself up. That’s it, you’re done.
It’s great because now you have a platform you can create a business on, and not only that, there are other platforms that exist that you can start building your business on.
You don’t even need a website to get started your first side hustle. You don’t. You need a third-party platform, and back in 2008, 2004 when I was first getting started, those platforms didn’t exist.
A good example of that is Udemy. Udemy didn’t start until 2010. You can create your own online course. You don’t have to have a website. You can set it up, put it on Udemy and start making money with it.
That’s a huge opportunity right there.
Those opportunities were never available back when I was first getting started, but today those opportunities are still available.
There are tons and tons and tons of these kinds of platforms that exist out there today that you can go out there and take advantage of like Teachers Pay Teachers or Udemy or Fiverr. Those are just a few that come to my mind that I think about.
There are marketing platforms that are available today that weren’t available. Facebook was just getting going in 2004, and today the marketing experience, the marketing opportunity on Facebook is huge. I already said YouTube, but Google is another one.
Their advertising platform is huge. You have these mega advertising platforms where you can reach large numbers of people and start bringing them to you and building your brand, building your business, growing your income.
you never had that back in 2004, and today you do, so that’s why I think the opportunity has never been better and it’s always getting better going forward. That’s the first tip is that opportunity has never been better than it is right now in 2019 and going forward.
#2 It Gives You the Opportunity to Do Things You May Have Never Been Able to Do
Number two. Gives you the opportunity to do things you may have never been able to do before. Think about that. If you earn a side income, right now you might not be able to do certain things.
For example, before I started my side business, I wasn’t really able to take a vacation anywhere. I wasn’t able to go to a lot of places because I just didn’t have a lot of money, and if I did, I went on weekends between my job and stuff like that.
I wasn’t able to go like on a week vacation. That didn’t happen till after I started my side business. My job just didn’t allow for it. We had bills, we have all these things our kids want to do.
There are just so many things that cost money these days and it didn’t allow us to do the things that we wanted to do in our life. This side business started to provide that for me.
I can remember one of the very first vacations I was able to take for an entire week. I almost felt kind of guilty for doing it because I had never done that before, but it was amazing to me because I had earned this income, I made it.
I was able to pay for a vacation and to do something like that was just almost asinine to me because I just had never done that before. It gave me this huge opportunity to do something like that.
Maybe that’s something that you want to do. You want to start a business and you want to do things like that. You just want to take a week vacation.
Maybe you’ve never been able to do that with you and your family and you want to do that now. This will give you that opportunity.
Now, it’s not going to make you tons of money right up front, but you’re going to have to work for it. You’re going to have to put some time and effort in.
Once you start to get that money in and start to reinvest in your business and you start to grow things and you’re starting to make a thousand, 2,000, $3,000 a month, well, now doing those things becomes available to you.
What you were never able to do before you can now do. That’s number two. It gives you the opportunity to do things you may have never been able to do.
Just to give you an idea of this, I started… this last week I got back from Destin, Florida. This is a picture from my balcony right here.
This is an actual picture from my balcony. I’m on the 23rd floor of this condo in Destin, Florida, literally 800 feet from the beach, and I could walk right there every morning, go on the beach every day for a week.
We did this just with my family and it was amazing. It was an awesome trip and I think back, if I had never started my side business, I would have never had this opportunity.
#3 Less Financial Stress
Number three, less financial stress. When you think about it, if we could get rid of one type of stress in our lives, I think financial stress would be that one because when you think about it, stress causes a lot of health problems.
When we start a side business and we earn this extra income, we’re able to cut that stress out in our lives.
We’re able to go about doing these things, enjoying our life, and then financial stress melts away. When you think about it, the last thing anybody wants to do is lay in bed at night and worry about financial stress, and a side hustle is a great way to alleviate that problem.
Here’s a good example. A few years ago I was dealing with this exact same problem. I had a lot of bills and not enough money and get that dread in your stomach, that financial dread. “Man, how am I going to pay for this? How am I going to deal with this?”
Then, you start to think about ways that you could possibly do it, just like you’re doing right now. Trying to think, “Why I can start a side hustle, how I could do that”, and then you come up with some idea.
For me, I started a blog and it started to earn a little bit of income, started to make that little bit of headway and alleviate some of these issues. It wasn’t till about the second year where things started to pick up and changed a lot of things for me and that financial stress was gone.
There’s a statistic they say that when somebody earns something like… I thinking… I don’t have an exact number on this, something around $75,000 a year that the financial stress and that part of stress goes away for most people because technically it’s enough money to basically do whatever they pretty much need, to pay the bills they have and stuff like that without having any big issues.
That’s what a side hustle can do for you. It can provide that extra 2 or $3,000 per month, that extra 30 to $36,000 a year to change the way you deal with money.
Instead of it always being this stressful subject for you, it’ll be more of a, “Hey, I got the money to pay for this. I got this credit card debt that came in and it’s 1500 bucks. No big deal, I can pay it. Not a big deal.
Oh, we want to go on this vacation and, how are we going to pay for this? Or pay for that?” You can pay for it now. You can deal with those things.
You can build up an emergency fund. That’s one thing that I did with the money that I earned is I built up a nice emergency fund with my money so that way I could deal with my financial issues when they arise, so when something does come up, like for example, I have to take my kid to the doctor and I had to get him tubes.
It cost $3,000. I used to worry about that. The first time I got my kid tubes for his ears, I had a really big issue with it because it costs so much money, but today, I don’t want to spend $3,000 every single day or something like that.
That obviously wouldn’t be good, but when that problem does arise and you have an emergency fund and your side hustle has helped you build that up, that makes a huge difference for people.
That makes a huge difference. Starting with just getting rid of the stress and getting less financial stress in your life, a side hustle will do that for you.
#4 Build Relationships with Like-Minded People
Number four, it’s going to help you build relationships with like-minded people. This is one thing I love about doing a side business is because you get to know people that are more like you.
What I mean by that, whatever you choose to do, let’s say it’s starting a blog or getting into Uber or doing something on Fiverr or creating online courses or something like that, over time you’re going to build relationships with people.
You’re going to go to conferences. You’re going to meet people on social media. You’re going to talk to them and you’re going to get to know people.
I did this a few years ago. I got to meet a bunch of people. I went to a conference called FinCon. It was down in New Orleans and ended up meeting this great guy by the name of Brian.
It was an amazing experience because I’d never gone to a conference quite like that one and met a whole bunch of people, but people that just really had this interest on a very specific niche topic that wanted to talk about that.
That wanted to talk about not only that but grow their business and, “Hey, what are you doing? How can I do this?” You could throw ideas.
When you’re doing business yourself, it’s not a lot of fun because you don’t get any interaction. That in itself just makes it kind of boring I can say I guess, but it just makes it feel like, “Man, there should be something else to this business.”
When you start a side business, over time you’re going to get to know people, just like I did when I went to FinCon. I got to meet this guy named Brian and we have talked on the phone.
We’ve started a little Mastermind ever since and it was great. It’s able to kind of throw ideas and talk to like-minded people. When you talk to somebody who doesn’t really get into your topic, it’s entirely different.
You know how that is. They don’t get into it like someone who really likes that topic. You can really talk about it. You can geek out per se on the topic and it’s a great way to kind of alleviate that and gain that perspective.
It’s just one of those facets of being and running a side business that I really like. Again, that’s number four, build new relationships with like-minded people.
#5 Grow as a Person
Number five, the last great benefit to starting a side hustle and why you should is it will help you grow as a person. I can’t tell you how many skills I have learned over the years by starting my own side business.
Everything from just doing some basic HTML, CSS, but to doing things like this. Doing a video, creating videos and putting them up on YouTube to writing great quality content on my blog posts.
Being able to set up and run plug-ins on WordPress and all the technical facets. I’ve learned so many things.
How to market and grow my business, and that’s probably been the greatest thing I would say because marketing was something that never came easy to me and I still don’t think it does, but I’ve learned a ton of things over the years and it’s helped me grow as a person.
The things I have learned how to do from a marketing standpoint have been huge. Just being able to tell people how to, for example, if I’m going to promote an affiliate product, how would I go about doing that?
Or, if I’m going to create a YouTube video and how I’m going to talk to people and share it. How would that process? Or, how I’m going to start a podcast. I did at one time do a podcast.
I’ve learned how to do that stuff, how to set that up. Just how to grow my business and build my influence, build my brand, those types of things. I’ve learned how to do all that stuff.
Start my own membership program, which I’m actually in the process of doing right now, starting my own membership program. Just all these different things that I have learned that helped me grow as a person.
I‘ve also gained a lot in soft skills as a person, being able to talk to people and win friends and influence people, stuff like that. That has gotten a little better with me.
I’ve always been that person who’s been more of an introvert, and now, I don’t have as many issues with that as I used to and it’s great because it’s helping me grow as a person and it’s always getting better.
It’s not perfect, but it’s always getting better, and that’s also why you want to start a side business. If you’re somebody who doesn’t get out much or wants to get involved with more people and grow as a person, this is definitely a great way to start growing your business and why you should start a side hustle in 2019 and beyond.
That is number five and that is my five reasons why you should start a side business in 2019 and beyond.
Wrapping Up…
As I’m wrapping up this video, if you’d like to learn more about how to start your own side hustle if you go to sidehustleacademy.com, I got this free guide here to help you.
It’s 3 Steps To Find & Validate Profitable Side Hustle Ideas. I think that’s where a lot of people struggle when they’re first getting started with their side business, and in this guide, I show you how to find your ideas.
I teach you how to validate them and pick the one that’s right for you. Also, make sure you get a chance… if you want to get more quality content like this, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I also got regular blog posts going on on my blog, so go ahead, check those out and you can get all of that at sidehustleacademy.com.
Thanks, and be sure to check out next week’s episode.
