Category: Find a side job

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Business Earn More Entrepreneurship Find a side job Finding a job Love What You Do Side Jobs

Here’s Your Plan to Turn Your Passion Into Your Career

Doing my dream job part time, still working full-time with full dread! How long did it take your confidence to make the jump? Should I set a time/deadline for myself?

How do you get money to come to you? To do what you want to do because you love it and not for the money.

So if someone said to you that they love to write and have always thought they were going to be a writer but found themselves always working in the Defense Industry, what would you say to them…  especially if you saw their written work and writing potential …?

A lot of people want to turn what they love to do into what they get paid to do. It was a common question in last week’s AMA, and I often get emails from folks looking to quit their job. Usually they’re asking permission, but sorry, not-sorry, that’s not how I roll.

Test Your Mindset

Since it comes up so often, I want to be very clear about my philosophy on dream jobs:

You probably can’t make money doing what you love. Writing, for example, is a good example. And I say this not because you’re not a tremendous, dedicated and talented writer, but because you’re not a good marketer. And to make money, you have to be good at sales. Most people who are good at writing aren’t that great at sales, or simply don’t put in the time and effort to sell. But making money on what you love requires you to sell what you love. Do you think you can do that? Here’s how to check. Finish these sentences:

“Sales makes me feel…”

“Business makes me feel…”

“Marketing myself makes me feel…”

If you answered anything but “excited,” “creative,” “energized,” or “awesome,” to those three statements, you can’t sell what you love. Not yet anyway. It will require a major mindset shift, and a good dose of coaching and knowledge.

You can use your full-time job to support your passion. We put a lot of weight onto our passions to support everything in our lives. We want what we love to do to give meaning and purpose to our days, and add money to our bank accounts. But it doesn’t need to be that way. We don’t have to do what we love for money. We can make money in a different job to support what we love. There’s a tremendous freedom in that, actually.

Try a mental mindset shift where you think of a full-time or part-time job as the catalyst and support for your dream work. Instead of thinking of it as something you have to do and dread, think of it as this great thing that allows you and pays you to do what you love. Because a regular paycheck isn’t anything to sneeze at!

When you’re able to align money as something that enables you instead of prohibits you from doing what you love, I guarantee you’ll be in the position to make a lot more of it.

The Plan

If you can make both mindset shifts above, you pass Go, and can proceed with the following plan to turn your passion into your career:

1. Make some money. If you can’t make money now, you probably won’t be able to make money later. You already know how to do what you love, but do you know how to make money? Get a raise. Get a side job. Build a side hustle. Rent out your extra room on Airbnb. Sell your old stuff. However you choose to earn more money, make a lot of it and store it away like a squirrel would store acorns before the worst Winter of his entire life.

Shoot for a six to twelve month emergency fund, and max out all your retirement accounts too. With a full-time job and extra income coming in every month from just one of the activities listed above, this will go much faster than you think. Depending on your hustle, you could be good-to-go in three to four months. 

2. Make some more money. Now that you’ve made enough money to support yourself for awhile, should you quit your job? HELL NO. Now you start making money with the-thing-you-love-to-do. If you think you can’t start your passion on the side, please stop reading right now. I hate you. For the rest of you, now is your chance to use all the sales and marketing lessons you learned in step one and apply it to building your passion business.

The goal is to make enough to cover your expenses when you quit, so that you don’t have to dip into your emergency fund at all. I also like to make enough to continue saving a bit too. Just depends on your risk tolerance. This is made much easier if you have a partner or spouse and their income can help support you both.

3. Reassess your goals and dreams. If you’ve gotten to this point, f*ckin’ amazing work. I’m beyond proud of you and I don’t even know you. But now I want you to look around and assess what a suh-weeet situation you’ve got. Because I always advocate for folks to have multiple burners running hot. Why? Because it’s when you have the most control. You don’t have to take shitty clients because you don’t need the money. You don’t have to stress out about your maniacal narcissist of a boss because you don’t need the money.

Anytime you don’t need the money, you’re in a better negotiating position for your life, your goals, and your dreams. It may be more work, but it’s less stress. And it leads to the greatest financial security. Which is what keeps most of us from pursuing our dreams in the first place.

4. Leverage your network. Before you replace your dread-job with your dream-job, reach out to your existing network and ask them if they are looking for the services you provide, have contacts that might be useful, and any other ways you need help. Be specific about what you’re looking for. When I took my consulting business full-time a few years ago, I was able to replace my full-time salary within one day of sending emails out. That’s the power of weak ties. I didn’t email a bunch of my best friends. I emailed folks I had met a few times and kept in decent touch with.

I’m not trying to be a debbie-downer here, but I want you to be realistic about what it takes to succeed since so many people are not. Most emails I get from people are from folks who love to dream. And if that’s your jam, dream on.

But if you really want that-thing-you-love to make you money, go through this plan step-by-step. I’ve seen people skip a step here and there, but only because they have super advanced mental capacities. I know that seems weird, but most of us aren’t ready to do what we love. We’re just ready to quit doing what we hate. If you change your mindset and follow this plan, you can do both.

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Business Earn More Entrepreneurship Find a side job

How to Create a Self-Employed Budget

The majority of self-employed workers seek independence to be their own boss, retain a flexible schedule and build unique career paths. Still, many find that with increased control comes increased responsibility, and economic viability is harder than anticipated. Before you decide how many lattes you can afford as a self-employed worker, you need to take control of your finances. Over at US News and World Report, I talk about five steps to build your self-employed budget. Read it here.

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Find a side job Finding a job Side Jobs

3 Cover Letter Tips that Will Get You the Interview

If you’re sending out endless cover letter and résumés to email oblivion, stop. Over at US News and World Report today, I talk about three strategies to make your cover letter stand out and get you in the door for an interview, where you can really shine. Read it here.

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Earn More Find a side job Get a Raise Happiness Side Jobs

Don’t Quit Your Job Until You Make Some Money

To come to terms with opting out of your career, is primarily to come to terms with money. The first step toward leaning out is to get a raise. Maybe a side job. Also, max out your 401(k) and your Roth IRA. Fill up your emergency fund – and feel free to call it a “screw you” fund if it helps you contribute more. Because opting out? It’s best suited for those with money.

Our money paradigms  – often negative – say that those with a lot of it are undeserving, and came by it via luck (“the rich get richer”). And in times of enormous uncertainty, like now, we seem to be more comfortable leaving things up to chance. Things will work themselves out; everything happens for a reason. This sort of fatalistic thinking puts us in the depressing position of being in less and less control of our own lives. But we used to be a lot more self-reliant. We used to actively manage our lives.

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it,” said Thomas Jefferson. Luck used to be “perceived as something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled. It was not this weird external force that couldn’t be understood,” argues PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. “Today’s default view is more Malcolm Gladwell than Thomas Jefferson; success, we are told, seems to stem as much from context as from personal attributes. You can’t control your destiny. Things have to combine just right. It’s all kind of an accident.”

Le sigh. A big reason I chose to “lean out,” was specifically to ensure that my life wouldn’t be left up to chance. And I spent a good two years preparing, long before my “Enough!” moment. The financial viability of taking a break, and exploring your options comes with a price tag. Mine includes a six-month emergency fund. Plus, I have side income and no debt. Even though I quit my job, I didn’t quit my side projects, which I actually enjoy. So my six-month fund will last much longer, more like a year. I also have a fiancé, and together, we split expenses. Practically, if I lived alone, I would probably spend less, but psychologically, his support makes taking risks easier.

Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses. And fifty percent have less than a three-month cushion, while twenty-seven percent had no savings at all. Several people in the last category have told me they want to leave their jobs since my last post. Why? If you hate your job now, if you are stressed and exhausted, it will only worsen when you are sitting watching daytime television and have nothing in your bank account.

Take care of yourself. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to make millions when you opt-out. You need to hustle enough to cover your expenses. And if you can’t hustle now, while in a job, by getting a side job, or asking for a raise, you will not be able to support yourself without the protection of an employer.

The first step is money. The first step is not to figure out what you want to do with your life. It’s not to discover your one true passion. It’s not to come up with a great idea.  Passions are fleeting. Most ideas aren’t very good. Learn how to make money. Start now. Build the habits. Money allows you to do great things. Money allows you to quit the job you hate, or keep the job you love. I’m not talking obscene wealth. I’m talking enough to provide for your later years, enough to make your current years nice, and enough to lean out if you so choose.

Luck, Thiel says, “defeats one’s ability to shape the future.” Don’t leave your life up to chance. Lots of things don’t happen for a reason, but many do, and for a very specific one – that is, because you made an intentional and deliberate choice. You showed up. You did the work. Don’t opt-out to live a romanticized artist’s or entrepreneur’s life with no money. Money does in fact buy happiness. Make some.

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Accountability Earn More Find a side job Generation Y Love What You Do

How to Decide Between Money and Meaning

2012 was the year of money. I made a lot of it.

Making money is easy, making meaning is hard. Making money is finding it where you can get it, and last year, I found it everywhere. I had six different sources of income (eight, if you’re the IRS), that made me more than six-figures. Mostly from my pajamas at home, sometimes with a sandwich at a coffee shop.

Making money is fantastic. People that tell you otherwise, I don’t get them. Money feels good, and earning money feels real good. There’s something particularly great when you earn it directly, without a middleman, something about proving your worth.

Especially when your main activity prior to bringing in the cash was the torture of “What should I do with my life?”, “I want to do something meaningful!” and “I’m not living up to my potential.”

Making money after a constant wringing-of-the-hands is freedom. At least in the beginning. Making money after a career in non-profits and startups (my first job out of college paid me $26,500), is all the more amazing to me. No background in banking, no experience in sales. Just desire (and if it’s not obvious, a lot of work, positioning and connections, lest I perpetuate the myth of the American Dream).

Salaried jobs have a ceiling. You work, and “get a salary and a status bump with every sideways leap… flightiness is the new aggression,” argues New Yorker’s Nathan Heller. After job-hopping, you work and make more when you do more. And then finally, you work more until you realize you can’t make more. You hit the ceiling. Maybe with some maneuvering you could earn an extra $20K a year. But most people hit the ceiling and then settle.

I hit the ceiling and looked for a window.

It started with a dinner party. I met the owner of a small business, followed his company, and noticed an opening for a full-time marketing professional. I pitched him the idea that I could do everything in his job description for two-thirds of the salary and half the time. The next day, I still had my full-time job, and signed my first client.

“Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces,” argues the Atlantic.

Creating a portfolio career, where we have more than one job/employer/client at a time is not for the feint of heart. Many of us have employers, precisely because we don’t like what we do. It’s easier to shift personal responsibility to the organization. It’s easier to play a pre-defined role instead of create your own. And despite being the most entrepreneurial generation, for many Gen Yer’s it hasn’t sunk in yet that a salaried job carries just as much risk as a do-it-yourself career.

Regular emails from young graduates land in my inbox, frustrated by their Starbucks career, anxious for “real work.” Their search for the elusive dream job lacks any real direction or enthusiasm, except for an insistence that they don’t want to be part of the sixty percent of America who can’t put a finger on what’s holding them back from their goals. Not knowing our purpose in life, it’s unbearable. “My insatiable desire for more money, knowledge, time and freedom leaves me perpetually unsatisfied,” argues blogger Ryan Stephens.

Gen Y’s overwhelming anxiety began long before the recession, and has only deepened after being forced into jobs we should feel grateful for, but instead only make us feel claustrophobic. Pile on the generation’s massive debt and unconscionable unemployment rate, and we’re at a loss to do anything but ask, “Now, what?”

I chose money, at least for the short-term. I paid off my student loans, maxed out my Roth IRA, built a six-month emergency fund, bought a new wardrobe twice, nested our new place, and paid for a two-week European vacation (with real beds and adult dinners). I chose money over settling. But I also chose it over meaning.

It’s here I’d like to say I proved my hypothesis – that you should make money, and do what you love on the side. But jobs that pay well require your full attention. And insatiable desires to change the world don’t just go away (darn it).

So 2012 closes how it started, between making money and creating meaning, a rock and a hard place. I’m relieved to have my finances in better order. I’m proud to have proved “my worth.” And I’m still desperate to do something with my life.

How do you reconcile your dreams with a paycheck? 

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Earn More Find a side job

How to Pay Off Your Student Loans in 3 Months

At the beginning of this year, I got a side job and paid off my student loan debt in three months, after spending almost six years making the minimum payments. If I had kept making the minimum payments, it would have taken me something ridiculous like 10 years to pay them off. Over at Brazen Careerist today, I reveal how I did it. Read it here.

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Career Find a side job Negotiating

Should You Tell Your Career About Your Side Job?

I have had a lot  of side jobs, from blogging to consulting to working for my boyfriend’s company where my boss was on the Board. In every case, I cleared what I was doing on the side with the company that paid me a full-time salary. So, I know how nerve-wracking and potentially awkward the conversation can be. Over at US News and World Report today, I give five tips to help convince your boss that moonlighting is actually good for everyone involved. Read it here. 

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Career Find a side job Self-management

3 Unconventional Ways to Love Your Job

It’s hard out there for a career. If only you had more challenge, more money, more responsibility. While you can and should ask for all of these things (going direct seldom fails), it’s not always that easy.

Here are three ways to build your self-confidence on the road to being one of those annoyingly awesome people who light up when they talk about what they do.

1. Get a side job. If you’re not ready to quit your job that sucks, get a side job consulting or freelancing. More cash means you’re able to create financial padding if and when you do decide to leave. But more importantly, getting distance between you and your current job is essential for creativity. When you stretch your muscles, your new job will stimulate ideas for your old job, and vice versa. Everybody wins.

(Sidebar: Should you tell your boss? Yes. No need to get fired over something silly. And no need to make it a big deal either. Just say you’re doing work for a company/friend/non-profit on the side, and of course, you will put your current position first. If there are any concerns whatsoever, you’re happy to address them. Easy peasy. And if it freaks you out to even think about another job, try blogging, volunteering, or taking a class. Don’t cop-out.)

2. Try being nice. If you’re not too happy, chances are it shows at your desk. When we start to feel like we’re “owed” a better position, resentment builds. Let it go. Be extra nice to your co-workers and boss. Get an attitude adjustment and move on. Being the bigger person isn’t easy, but no one is noticing you huff and puff anyway (and if they are, they don’t enjoy it), but they will notice a bit of extra sunshine.

Making other people’s jobs easier will not only make you feel good, but it is also the quickest way to advance your career. Being likeable is relationships is everything.

3. Reject another job offer. There’s nothing more powerful than rejecting a job offer. This works because it reminds you that you have a choice. Especially in today’s economy, we’re being conditioned to believe you should be grateful for whatever job you have. But who wants to be unhappy? Rejecting an offer lets your brain and heart know that you still have a choice. Your skills are in demand. If something were to happen at your current position, you’d be okay.

Of course, you may discover you’re stoked about a new opportunity and move on. That’s okay too. The point is to get some grease under your behind and start moving. It’s easier to show potential employers you’re amazing when you don’t need a job tomorrow.

Each of these ideas are designed to help you realize, how you choose to spend your time, how you make your money, how you give value to the world – those are all up to you. It’s up to you to love what you do.

 Do you love your job? Tell me in the comments whether or not you enjoy your current position, and why.