Side Hustle

5 Steps For Space When You Work From Home

December 1, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Work From Home Space Planning

With the rate of new start-up businesses at an all time high, many of us now count our homes as our offices before we grow to a point where moving out into a co-working space or a business premises is viable. And there are many upsides to the life of a home working solopreneur – no hours wasted on a long commute, greater flexibility, and the chance to have a working space that you love. Instead of hunching over the kitchen table crammed in among cereal packets, take the chance to create a home office that will inspire and make you more productive.

Balance Beauty And Functionality

Pinterest boards of beautiful home offices and glossy design magazines can be a useful tool to inspire you in creating your ideal workspace. Having a great looking office can definitely increase your enthusiasm for what you’re doing, but it’s important to balance aesthetics with practicality. You need a good desk space rather than that vintage console table and your office will have to accommodate less picturesque equipment, such as box files. Make sure your office actually works how you need it to, although a few pretty touches are also good. Make it a space you can be proud of and don’t forget to include some natural greenery, a place to display some personal items like photos or an inspiration board, and if you have room, a seating area where you can take a screen break, sit to have a think or chat to clients and enjoy your coffee.

Shop Around For The Best Price

When you’re kitting out your office, it’s easy to get carried away and end up spending way too much. You can get what you need without blowing the budget by shopping around for good deals. If there isn’t much to spare, sites like eBay make it easy to search for used office furniture. Many companies out there have a regular upgrade schedule and will be looking to offload things like chairs and desks in great condition. The same is also true for electronics – you can pick up laptops, printers and coffee machines on sale, and use specialist suppliers such as 1800scales.com to pick up postage scales. Make a list of what you need and then buy it gradually as you see a deal.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

The way that your desk is set up can have a huge impact on your productivity for the day, so take the time to get it right. Make sure the surface and your chair are set up so that the top edge of your screen is slightly below eye level. You may need to use a laptop riser if you have a mobile set up. This reduces the strain on your eyes. A good office chair with ergonomic design is worth spending a bit more money on. The keyboard should rest so that your arms run parallel to the floor and your feet are flat upon it. You will need to be comfortable, or long stretches of work will take their toll on your body.

Let There Be Light

If you can position your desk near a natural light source, then your days are going to be happier and more creative. For best results, siting it parallel to a window is ideal and will act as a natural mood booster as well as encouraging you to take micro-breaks and take in the view, which is extremely good for eye health.

Keep On Top Of Storage

The number one enemy of an organised home office? That would be lack of adequate storage for all those papers and files. If nothing has a home, it will all descend into chaos and you won’t be at your best in a messy, cluttered environment. Find some sleek office storage solutions – it doesn’t have to be a filing cabinet. Pieces of furniture which do double duty, like an ottoman with storage, can work well. If you know that you are the kind of person who needs to see something to recall it, wall storage could be a good option, or neatly labelled magazine racks organised on open shelving.

The Power Of Disguise

As offices are functional spaces first and foremost, by definition they contain items that aren’t so pretty – you just have to get good at hiding them! Bulky printing and packaging equipment can easily be concealed inside a cupboard when not in use, while devices that corral your power cords and stop them running all over the place and becoming a trip hazard are a must. You can also create a charging station for your laptop, tablet, phone and other devices by drilling a hole in a letter rack or the back of a desk drawer to run power cables through.

How Not To Lose Money On Side Hustles

July 23, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Whether you are looking to set up a trading account or become a freelancer or a contractor for a marketing firm, it is important that you are prepared for the challenges. You might invest money in your business or your property portfolio and see no return, or even make a loss. Below you will find a few tips on how not to get burned when setting up your side hustle in order to increase your earning potential.

Know Your Trade

Whether you are getting started with property investment or copywriting, you need to first study the market. Be the best version of yourself and improve your skills. You will need to learn how to manage your time and money, keep an eye on your projects, and seek advice. Being professional can help you avoid some of the mistakes amateurs make when starting up a part time business. Learn how to calculate your costs and find funding options.

Learn About Your Industry

No matter if you are entering a copywriting market or the property investment world, you have to do your research. There are several free online industry reports you can use to find out more about the trends, the most common mistakes, the chances of success, and the regulatory background. You need to know the political, economic, and market conditions of your industry before you decide whether or not your business idea will work.

Study the Competition

Instead of simply brainstorming and coming up with a business idea, you will have to find a way to differentiate yourself in the competitive marketplace. You must study your competition and offer more value for less if you would like to succeed. Collect quotes, price lists, and feedback scores from companies involved in the industry, so you can find a way to differentiate yourself.

Team Up with Experts

Nobody is born knowing everything. Chances are that you are not an expert in commercial properties, so why not seek expert advice? There are plenty of great companies offering help with commercial investment properties so you don’t feel like you are shooting in the dark when trying to make the right decisions. They will do the research on your behalf, so you can maximize your profits and minimize your risks.

Invest In Your Education

No matter which business you would like to get involved in to earn money as a side hustle, you will need to invest time and money in your own development. There are fantastic free and low cost courses available that will help you open your horizons and improve your knowledge. Alison, for example, has a number of great business-related courses; from money management to marketing. You need to learn how to budget and manage your time, no matter what your chosen side hustle is.

To maximize your chance of making a profit on your side hustle and reduce the risks, it is important to learn how to gather information and improve your skills needed to succeed.

Fatal Foibles That Can Flummox New Freelancers

July 20, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

The younger generation has a much harder time in the present day job market than their parents did, despite (on paper) having some pretty big advantages over them. Today’s twentysomethings tend to be better educated than previous generations and despite the pervasive stereotypes that depict them as slothful, indolent and self obsessed; going into paroxysms unless they have access to their social media feed, they tend to be a hardworking and reliable bunch when given an opportunity to prove themselves. It’s proving themselves, however, that’s the rub for many young graduates entering the workforce. Even graduates who got great grades struggle to find graduate level work and all over the world graduates pour out of higher education institutions and into non-graduate low pay, low skill jobs that waste their talents. Furthermore, many employers expect entry level employees to first put in months at a time as unpaid interns. For those who don’t have the luxury of parental support, this is simply untenable.

Millennials Self Employment

But the younger generation aren’t just staring down the barrel of a difficult job market; they’re on the cusp of an economic revolution in which the gig economy is changing the way in which we trade goods and services. In the face of an inhospitable job market, yet with living costs proving more and more challenging to even well paid graduates, more and more young people are turning to self employment as a means to earn a crust. Indeed, it’s estimated that around 47% of millennials in the workforce freelance at least in some capacity. And make no mistake, earning a living as a freelancer has some distinct advantages. It’s a way to make a living doing what you love and what you’re good at. It gives you the opportunity to hone your administrative, organizational and entrepreneurial skills as you manage your business and hustle new clients. It provides excellent networking opportunities and allows you to really take your career, your livelihood and your life into your own hands rather than slaving away in a job for which you’re overqualified and underpaid.

But in lieu of a proper retirement plan, sick or holiday pay and any sort of job security, freelancers cannot afford to simply scrape by. They need to ensure that they’re firing on all cylinders and making good money so that they can save responsibly and plan for the future. That means avoiding these working and productivity foibles which could either compromise the quality of your work, limit your income or decimate your work life balance…

Going in cold

The good news is that there are no shortage of businesses who are desperately in need of the skills and attributes you bring to the table who don’t have the budget to take on new staff and use freelancers to achieve the best of both worlds. The bad news is that it could take some time for you to build up your reputation and establish enough of a clientele to make freelancing sustainable. While many freelancers are always hustling for new clients, it behoves you not to quit your day job (sorry) just yet and to establish yourself as a freelancer in your spare time, scaling up your operation until you’re ready to go full time.

Failing to charge what you’re worth

It’s possibly the most common foible among nascent freelancers, especially those who have only recently graduated. Their lack of experience gives them a disproportionately low sense of self worth. While experience can certainly sharpen and hone your skills, your talents as they are now are still an eminently marketable commodity.

Many new freelancers get a lie of the land on sites like People Per Hour and try to race their competitors to the bottom in the hopes of getting more clients. The trouble with this mentality is that the best clients are motivated by quality rather than price. Moreover, if you start off with lower rates and garner a handful of clients who reward you with more business, you will place a long term cap on your earnings as you’ll be afraid to increase your prices lest you alienate them..

Relying on “handshake agreements”

When you’re starting out in the freelance game, it’s all too easy to neglect the legalities that could end up protecting you, your reputation and your budding business. While handshake agreements can and do work in the freelance marketplace, it’s important to protect your interests with contracts, especially for new clients, and send invoices which can be traced and chased. You can use any of these free invoice templates if you don’t want to start from scratch. A paper trail will not only protect you legally from non-payment or disputes, it will make you better at managing the business side of freelancing.

Freelancing

Wasting time staring at a blank screen

When you’re working for yourself, productivity is everything. Productivity can make the difference between a good month’s pay and a great months’ pay. It can make the difference between landing top tier clients and staying on the breadline. One of the biggest productivity sapping things you can do, however, is waste time staring at a blank screen. Yes, everyone gets creative block. Yes, it can be enormously frustrating. But if you try and fight through it you’ll end up frustrated or produce poor quality work that you throw out as soon as you cast a fresh pair of eyes on it.

When your creative mojo abandons you, don’t be afraid to take a break. Get out of your home office, go for a walk, read or do something to relax your mind and recharge your batteries and don’t come back to your computer until you’re raring to go.

Trying to race yourself to the finish line

AT the same time, an equally counterproductive strategy is to try and race yourself to the finish line day after day. If you have a particularly fecund Monday and get all of your work finished by 2pm yet the following day you call it a night at 6 or 7pm that’s simply the nature of the beast. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to rush to an early finish. The quality of your work will suffer and while you may find yourself making your deadlines, you will return to your computer the next day to find a whole lot of revisions waiting for you.

Steer clear of these bad habits, and a long, happy, fulfilling and rewarding career as a freelancer awaits.

The Different Faces of Side Hustle

March 5, 2018 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

Side Hustle Hustle — Photo by Jonas Svidras on Unsplash

[Article republished from “Mondays with Mike – 2/19/18” email newsletter ==> Subscribe to get weekly newsletter in your inbox plus FREE REPORT]

Being part of several freelance/side hustle/work from home groups on Facebook, I get to see the different types of questions that come up. I started to notice a few trends or commonalities around each type of group.

Work From Home

They’re focused on opportunities like Virtual Assistant or Transcriptionist or Customer Service jobs. These are part time gigs that typically pay by the unit, deliverable, or hour. And the rates are typically really low. These are often below minimum wage jobs (if you calculated the rate hourly rather than by the unit).

Many of the people here are just trying to survive. Many have limited skills or education. Or they’ve had major life impacts like divorce (stuck raising kids alone and have lost the second income provider from their lives) or health issues.

Here it isn’t about doing what they want or reaching their full potential. They’re just trying to survive. Many times they’re desperate to make money. And make it fast. This is where many of the scam artists and get rich quick and MLM purveyors hang out and prey on their desperatation.

You see the pain and frustration of just trying to put food on the table. But complex solutions and even paying for a website or web hosting is too much money.

They’re often looking for a work from home option because they have kids and can’t work in a normal full time job around the pick up and delivery schedules of their kids. With the internet this has become a more viable option. There are a lot of work from home opportunities out there. But you often have to cull through many bad ones to get to something decent.

This is a place the Facebook work from home groups can be immensely helpful. Many have gone through the frustrations themselves and are more than willing to provide good guidance.

The main side hustle crowd often has the basics handled. They have some spare time on their hands that they’re willing to devote to a side hustle. But the side hustle or freelance work has to generate something substantial enough to be worth the effort and prioritizing over family time.

Here is where online marketing, affiliate marketing, coaching, and freelance tech and design work fits in.

You’ll see web designers, Amazon product marketers, authors, and people who have their eyes on the big dollars.

For these people you’re finding most have a good day job and just want an extra couple hundred dollars to a few thousand on the side each month.

A handful also want to eventually leave their day job and do their side hustle as their full time gig. But this is a low percentage of the whole. The rest are just looking for a little extra money and to learn, have fun, and create something meaningful that their day job doesn’t provide.

Sometimes the work aligns and supports their day job. Or it is what they do on their day job just applied as a freelance business. They may be a game coder during the day and do more coding as a freelancer at night. Or they’re an internet marketer who’s day job is in digital marketing but maybe just a small portion of it.

Entrepreneur/Startup

Then there is the group who is going full bore to create a new business full time. They may start as a side hustle but their goal is to create a business that can more than replace their full time income.

This is a much bigger operation and often involves more contractors and employees that the work from home or side hustle model requires. This is true business building. And it takes a certain personality and mindset. You have to be comfortable with higher levels of risk. And you need to be someone who can both sell a big vision and also build and manage a team of people as the operation is often much more complex than the side hustle model. Many times there is more than one founder as each person brings a different skill set to the operation.

This is where big valuation dollars are found and money is made or lost rapidly. This is where the Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors, and Founders hang out. They’re looking for the next idea they can leverage to the stratosphere. Something, that if developed right, can create the next Google. But typically about 1 out of 10 are hits and the other 9 flounder or go under.

Employee Route

The final route is typically the easiest to maneuver. The entire business world is set up to make being an employee easy. They give you the rules and you follow them – just like school. You’re accountable but typically not to the same level as the founder.

The good side of this is predictability. You know when you go to work. You know when you leave. You get a paycheck every two weeks. You get holidays and paid vacations. You have most weekends to yourself.

The downside of this is you are still at the whim of your manager or the employer. If they don’t manage things well you essentially only have one client (the business you work for). And you could be out of a job in an instant through no fault of your own.

The other problem with this is you aren’t designing your own future typically within that one company. You may design your career but the company may or may not be a long term play.

Whereas with the Entrepreneurship model you are charting your own course.

So what is the right model for you to work?

Ultimately it is up to you. It is your choice. Only you know your skills, interests, family situation, and risk tolerance.

I know for me the side hustle plus employee route has been the best. It allows me to have a core career that I’ve developed and is now coupled with my side hustle that allows me to create and provide value in a different way. And it is something I can leverage into my retirement years and scale up or down (on the side hustle front) as makes sense.

So what about you?

Where are you at? Have you thought about your situation? Are you do for a change?

If you’re considering your options, email me. You may find it makes sense to work with someone who’s been through several of these options and can provide guidance to help you along your journey.

Or maybe you’ve already gotten started on one of these and need help getting to the next level.

Either way, have fun and let me know if I can help.