Is Side-Hustling the New Path to Passion, Career, and Entrepreneurship?

In my years as a relocation consultant I have met many people who tried to set up a successful business in Germany. Some of them succeeded drastically, whereas others failed. In many cases, the success or failure of their self-employment path determined their general success in Germany, alongside the positiveness of their experience as expats.

In the past month, I thought a lot about "doing your own thing", or entrepreneurship, as we used to call it in the past. I would like to use this newsletter to share some of my thoughts with you.

The thing I wonder about the most when it comes to side-hustles vs. full time entrepernurship is: have we become more down-to-earth and less dreamers? Thinking of my generation when we were young, many people decided to just go for it and do their thing. If it failed - or if they didnt want to do it anymore (like myself), we would just revert back to employment.

This seems to be less of a thing now, as people become more self-concious and aware of the power in full time employment. I wonder if side-hustling with all of its micro-activities is the new and innovative wave of entrepreneurship.

Hear me out and share your thoughts here ??

Is passion an important key factor in being successful?

One of the things I often hear when people want to compliment me at work is that they are impressed about how passionate I am about my work. In the modern world, we often learn to put value on "??doing what we love??" and on "??keeping ourselves engaged??". Doing what we love and being passionate about our work is often seen as a key factor for a ??successful and ??happy career.

But is it really the key to success?

Recently, I heard a story about a person who quit her day job (in marketing) to start a yoga school since she was passionate about yoga. That ended with her not earning enough to pay for her life expenses and needing food stamps to survive ??????

This story might be an urban legend, but I'm wondering if the message here is not to follow your dreams, or if it's rather to balance between dreams and realism when making career decisions, and to be smart about how we act.

Can one decision change the course of your life completely?

A few years ago, right before I changed my job, I read the book "Impostor Syndrome: A Novel" by Kathy Wang (btw: huge book recommendation if you're looking for a funny book abut the behind the scenes of social media), by in which the protagonist's life deteriorated and she thought it was because of one bad decision. One of the sentences that stayed with me was about how crazy it is that one bad decision can destroy everything you did in your career and everything you have achieved so far.

It can be a decision to pursue or not pursue a promotion (for example because of a guy/lady), to change jobs, to resign and start your own thing or to relocate to a new country can change the course of your life completely.

I realized that sometimes it's difficult for us to perceive that on the spot when it happens, so I'm wondering if the best strategy is to just make the best decisions we can at that point in time while trying to consider all parameters, and then carry the responsibility for our decisions and know that at the end - its all temporary. (??Spoiler Alert??) Even the life of the protagonist in Impostor Syndrome work out at the end.

Side hustles as an "eating the cake and leaving it complete" solution

I feel like in the past, people used to take more risks and start their own thing, completely resigning from their day jobs - whereas today, people are more careful.

Maybe its because in the past, the digital world was not as developed, which left a lot of room for creativity and innovation: there was a time, 10-20 years ago, where startups were booming and succeeding like crazy, which left us with many great inventions that influence our daily lives until today. However, nowadays, I read its not as easy to make it as a startup.

Maybe it has to do with the financial crisis for us simple people, or with the implications of the loss of wealth over generations, side hustling is trending as a mean to unload creative energy, generate some side income and do things you're passionate about even if they dont pay well.

Personally, I am a fan of this trend, as it allows to eat the cake and leave it full: enjoy all the benefits and challenges of having a full time job while also enjoying the perks of self-employment and doing creative things you love without finding yourself living off food stamps.

In the next months, I will give this stage to some talented entrepernuers who are side-hustling and full-time self-employing to continue driving this discussion forward. Want to be featured? Share your high-level story in the comments - I will reach out to the ones I find most inspiring :)