What’s your side hustle?

Come out of school and get an apprenticeship, come out of uni and get a job – work for 40 years, get a pension and have an enjoyable retirement. At least that was the way it was if you were a Baby boomer and born in the early 1950s.

The education, apprenticeship and workplace have made such changes in the last 50 years that would be totally unrecognisabl should the people from that era be transported in to the 2020s. For many centuries prior to the industrial revolution the concept of “work” was simply agricultural labour, if that was you actually worked for somebody. The old feudal system would mean a hierarchical system where the workers would be farm based with work almost entirely based around food and resources – job titles were minimal being mostly “farm hand” etc.

Then the industrial revolution, factories, the baby boomers, technology, the internet, the service industry, the gig economy, the contractor market have changed the idea of work beyond measure. Even in the last generation, there has been a systemic shift. The idea of a 9 – 5, based around a single office, factory or manufacturing site have all but disappeared.

So it came to pass that in the last 5 or so years, graduates, millennials and the like don’t come out of academia with a single, narrow-minded career path but instead have a variety of choices. Many opting to be entrepreneurs in their own right. When I was growing up in the 80s, if somebody was an entrepreneur it conjured up images of them having their own private yacht and being some kind of venture capitalist with a side line in owning horses for polo matches – or perhaps that was just me!

Fast forward to 2020 and you have entrepreneurs doing the type of endeavours that simply were not possible even 15 years earlier. With the advent of the smartphone – an app can turn the right go-getters with the right idea into billionaires. Just look at Uber, the world’s largest taxi company that doesn’t own a single taxi. There are Millennials who have set up microbreweries in their garage and now have multi-million pound turnovers with an ever-growing appetite for pale ale and the like.

From this developed the gig economy, social media marketing and the online business. Deliveroo, Uber, FOREX trading apps all allow those leaving education to have an almost instant access to markets, consumers, flexible working and the entrepreneurial endeavours that can allow for the accumulation of success in much shorter periods of time than previously.

There is now a further trend where even those commencing graduate schemes, internships, apprenticeships and those people newly qualified tend to have a “side hustle” or “side gig” alongside their main career choice this side hustle acts as a backup or supplement in terms of options and income.

These are just some of the “side hustles” I have come across, both the good, the bad and the weird: FOREX trading, Deliveroo driving, bar tending, Only-Fans, dodgeball umpire, silver bullion trader, online antiques resources, wedding prepper for pets, dough maker and app developer for the stamp collection market.

All of these had varying degrees of effort and returning profit but the key factor is that these side hustles gave at the very least some beer money and in the more efficient side hustles the chance to significantly increase the base salary. Not only that, but the “side hustle” increases a person’s breadth of life skills. Perhaps it could be viewed as a more creative and professionally developed attribute to a candidate’s CV than the classic “gap yah” of travelling to Oz and South East Asia.

This is perhaps no more fitting than during the Covid-19 generation as I am sure they may be known where the need to have an additional source of income becomes a necessity rather than an attribute.

In the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad the idea is reiterated many times that experience and tenacity in entrepreneurship far outweighs the benefits of the constraints of academia and such like. Even I have ventured into the side hustle in that I now have various trading apps- I research, bonds, stocks and shares – even the penny shares for what can supplement my annual income- not out of necessity but just as an additional focus and interest.

If I’m honest, the discovery of the “side hustle” made me venture beyond my day-to-day recruitment, my buy to let endeavours and get down to the grittiness of an actual hustle.

Just invest the money you can afford, spend the time you can spare and before you know it your side hustle could be the next UBER!