She's On The Money - Every day I'm (side) hustlin'

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

Attention entrepreneurs! Have you got a side hustle or a banging business idea you're ready to bring to life? Then this is the ep for you! Join us as we tackle the how-to of side hustling, covering everything from how to choose the side gig that's right for you and how to make some sweet sweet dollars from it PLUS, are lucky enough to have a chat with the brilliant Emma from The Broke Generation who imparts So. Much. WISDOM!!! Eeeeep it's going to be a good one!! (even though the control freak in us is losing it over mixing up the format of the pod this week, we'll be back to normal next week - promise!) Do you love the podcast SICK and want more SOTM? Of course you do! Join our Facebook page to share your money wins and money confessions, follow us on Insta for daily inspo to keep you on track and DEFINITELY subscribe to our newsletter, the written recap of the pod's key takeaways, including some bonus bits you won't want to miss... Finally, if you're in a money mess and need help untangling the muddle, simply record your qualm and send it through to us at [e-mail] and you may end up on the podcast! Your hosts are Georgia King and Victoria Devine. The advice shared on She's on The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's on The Money exists purely for educational purposes only and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Victoria Devine is an Authorised Representative of Consultum Financial Advisers Proprietary Limited ABN 65 006 373 995 I AFSL 230323.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She's on the money. She's on the money. Hello and welcome to She's on the money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by MYOB, a side hustler's best friend, but more on them later. My name is Georgia King, a copywriter and TV assistant with some savings, but no idea what to do with them. Just like last week, and the one before that, and also the one before that, I am joined by Melbourne Money Whiz, Miss Victoria Devine. Hello, Victoria.

Hello. Today's show is for the hustlers out there who have side gigs on the go and want to know how they can use their proactive side projects to accelerate their savings and wealth. But first, let's get into this week's Money Wins and Confessions. If it's all right with you, V, I'll go first because I'm feeling a little bit guilty, a little bit red-faced because it happened this week. Go, go, go. I want to hear.

I got a Mikey fine. What are you doing? Yeah, I ran to the tram. I got onto the tram. It was before 7am and for some reason I thought that it was free before 7am. That's just the trains though. Yeah, I didn't know that. That's what the inspector said to me.

So anyway, I got whacked with a, I think it was $283 fine. Oh, nasty. Yeah, should have tapped on. All right, well that's a learning out there for everybody else who thinks it's both trains and trams. It is in fact only trains. How did you go, girl? I went really well.

I actually have a money win for you this week, G. Are you ready? Please. Morgan and I usually go to the gym. We were with F45 and also had a separate Pilates membership, which really expensive. So expensive. But we totally love what we do and really like doing that before work.

Anyway, we decided to go check out a new gym that has opened in our area who offers functional fitness classes at exactly the same time as the F45 class we were doing and has a ripper Reformer Pilates studio. and we have now signed up and it's $30 a week compared to the exorbitant. Exactly. How good is that? And we get our Pilates and our F45 style classes in the morning. For like a quarter of the price.

Yeah, less than. So absolute money win from us. Well done, girls. I am all about it. Now, as always, V, it's been a great week for the She's On The Money community with so many members coming forward with their wins. Did anything stick out to you this week as being particularly sparkly? Yes and no.

i have one from jane she actually wrote in and said that she has a money loss to share with us and i thought that it was worth sharing on here because apart from finding it slightly hilarious sorry jane i also thought it was really fun to share with the group she said i was inspired by the podcast to think about a side hustle yes jane go she said she didn't have any talents like musical art so she responded to an ad for delivering junk mail it didn't say how much it was getting paid and it took her about 10 hours over three evenings to complete the letter drop and guess what she got paid what forty dollars and that is so hard labor whilst I'm not laughing she did post this in jest and said I politely declined next week and said that it's

probably not for me she then said her hunt for a side hustle is continuing and I think that this is kind of a funny money loss because it's not impacting her too much but also a really good learning she's learned a lesson that maybe if we're gonna start a side hustle we should work out first how much we're going to get paid absolutely oh god gee have you got one for us so i had a little scroll and mine is from lovely lydia who is sharing with us a money win she's written that every sunday at the market there's a stall that lets you fill a box full of fruit and veggies for 15 so you can pack it full oh yes and she uploaded the photo of the box yeah yeah yeah it's massive yeah so to make this food last because she does get quite a bit she freezes

marinates or preserves where she can to make the most of it. Yes, $15 for a box full of fresh fruit and vegetables is an absolute bargain. So I'm all about that. Perfect way to start your week. Well done, Lydia. Now it's into today's main chat. Side hustling. So many people seem to have side gigs going on, be it jewelry making, yoga instructing, candle making, pet sitting, babysitting, dog walking instant influencing podcasting all of the so many things we get the gist recent figures showed that more than 1 million Aussies have their own side hustles in addition to their usual full time jobs V why do you think we're seeing such a rise in side hustles at the moment I think we're in a position where we all have so much more opportunity because we are able to see the

opportunities that other people are uptaking before the rise of social media I don't think that there was the clarity around what we are actually capable of and seeing other people do things and thinking oh I could do that that doesn't seem so hard or I could you know pet sit and I also think that it's a lot easier to have a side hustle because we're able to connect far easier now than we could ever before so things like uber pet sitting selling candles online babysitting are all increasing because we have those online platforms that actually connect us to the people who need those services whereas previously it would be about posting an ad in the paper and hoping someone saw it. I'm actually really excited about this topic because we

recently did the She's On The Money community survey. We had 2,700 responses and, G, it turns out that 20% of all She's On The Money community members that responded have a side hustle. Yeah. What other reasons would you say, like maybe rising costs of living would be a good example of? Yeah, I think rising costs of living is a really good one, actually, G. People need that extra bit income especially when we are living in a city it is so expensive rent if you've got a mortgage on top of rent if you are grocery shopping it is so much more expensive than it used to be and side hustling is a really good way to bring in that extra income and support yourself financially through a time that maybe you aren't able to support yourself to the capacity you would want

to and in saying that I also think it's a really good way for people to test out a job that they potentially might like but don't want to commit full-time to jumping over to another full-time job so side hustling gives you that experience without the risk associated obviously b it will vary from hustle to hustle but for those considering starting a little side business what things would you say they need to be mindful of before diving right on in there there's a fair few things i mean i think a side hustle is a really exciting thing to start but the first thing that i'd want you to consider is your work-life balance is this side hustle going to take over all your free time and if it is is that something you want

to actually happen can you actually fit this in with full-time work is that going to impact your capacity to perform at your full-time job and is it going to impact your capacity to hang out with your friends or see your partner or you know go and see your family so I think these things need to be taken into consideration before you do that but on the flip side of that that's often why people are starting side hustles it's to provide more for their families see their friends more and actually have something that they really like in their lives I also think it's really important to work out why you're doing it like what's the reason are you doing this for additional income if so maybe pick a side hustle that's more aligned to that additional income or are you really

passionate about candle making like you mentioned before G I think if you think that that's a really beautiful thing and you could commercialize it in a way that people are going to purchase your product and you are really passionate about it like where is your drive coming from and what does that actually look like for your future business because if your intention with a side hustle is to start it for additional revenue maybe an all organic soy candle business that only uses pure essential oils is not the best way to make money if you don't want to put the time and energy into branding and marketing that because obviously the cost of those materials is far higher than the cost of doing something else. So I think it's about just working out why you're doing what

you're doing and then to overlay that you guys have heard it a million times but does it align to your values? Is this something that you actually want to do over the long term and are you going to sustain it? For me doing my side hustle of this podcast and my copywriting as a freelancer it's important that the work really aligns with my values and contributing creatively in the media space is very important to me. That's what I'm quite passionate about. And I hope she's on the money is also something you're passionate about. That's a big part of it. Yeah. Ensuring that those values align means that you're not going to get seven weeks into your little side hustle and then lose all steam, you know, and then feel deflated in yourself as well. I also think it's really

important to point out here, if you start a side hustle, it doesn't have to be the thing that overtakes your full-time job. I think in this age of the entrepreneur, you're in a position where often people say I've started this side hustle and there's this expectation that you're going to grow this side hustle to a size that it can overtake your full-time job I don't think that that should be it I think we should be celebrating that people are bringing in additional revenue and if your side hustle turns into a big business amazing fantastic I'm so excited for you but often people who do side hustles do it because they're supplementing a full-time income so that they can create a lifestyle for themselves and that's amazing so we've got lots of stuff now to consider

before we dive in to our side hustle but what about people that have already started their side hustles maybe it's not going that well how do they reinvigorate their hustle I think that's a really good question G because I think a lot of people start side hustles and maybe don't structure it properly I know a lot of people often start a side hustle with the one bank account so they don't separate their side hustle income from their regular income so they start spending it, but they haven't taken into consideration any tax consequences or potential fees that they need to pay. So they don't really separate it out and budget it. So I think the important thing here is separate your finances, put the money from a side hustle into a separate bank account. It's super

easy to set up a bank account and potentially get a debit card for that as well, because then you can put all your transactions in one account. So if you're paying for subscriptions or, you know, a MailChimp subscription, you can put that on there and at least have a really clean account that has all of your income, all of your expenses and all your transactions in one place and make the most of your time. How long are tasks taking you? Like what are you doing that you could cut time down on? Are there things that you could outsource as well? So like if you're doing something and it's taking you 10 hours, is there someone that would do that task in one hour that you could pay $50 to to do that task yeah that then means you have 10 free hours to generate

revenue in your business so I think we need to sometimes spend a little bit of money to make some money but we really need to put a little bit of strategy and thought into those decisions before we make them not just go oh I'm going to outsource it because that's what good businesses do yeah it's like all right well if you outsource this and you're going to incur this cost of 50 or $100, how are you going to make that back? What does that look like? Because to be honest, sometimes it's just worth doing it yourself. They're really good points, Victoria. And I guess speaking with a lot of my friends who do have the side hustle going on, they find it hard to value their skills. So establishing what you're worth and what people are willing to pay for that.

How do you figure that out? Stop undervaluing yourself. So many people are doing this. They are undercharging clients for the work they're doing or they're charging clients what the work is worth, but putting too many hours into it and not reassessing those goals and having a chat with them about, hey, is this taking me 10 more hours? I'm going to need to up my prices or I'm going to need to invoice you for this. And I think it is totally fair and reasonable to go back to a client and say, hey, I did more work on this than I needed to, or just make sure that you're really valuing the piece of work before you even start. So have a think about it. Is this going to take me five hours is it going to take me 10 hours what does that look like but I think putting a value on

your work is very very hard and it's something I even struggle with but I think it's a conversation to have with your friends as well I find as well a lot of my friends because they're kind of starting out people will come to them and be like oh can I have a discount like kind of family friends or people that are kind of connected to them how do you say no to that I know it really grinds their gears if your friend has a side hustle and is breaking their back doing a whole heap of work to try and supplement their income it's a bit disrespectful to ask them for a discount if you want to support your friends who have a side hustle support them by going and buying their product full price support them by going and showing them that you believe in their product

and you are promoting them so what about when you're putting a price on your work how do you know how high to go and how low to go I know if you go too low people will think it's cheap and they won't value your work for what it's worth how do you find that medium that's such a behavioral psychology thing and I'm glad you brought it up putting a value on your work is really important we all go through the stage where we need to prove ourselves and you know do some work that is potentially undervalued but once you get through that initial phase I think putting yourself in a position where you go, no, the work that I do is good and it needs to be valued means that you're going to find your people. You're going to find the people who believe in the value that you have

and they are able to reciprocate that. So you create the community of people that you want instead of having a community of people that just don't see your value. So I think it's really important to also pick the people that you're marketing to. It's important to pick the people that you are trying to get to engage with your product. What do they look like? How does that work? You know, if you want to be a dog walker and you want to charge a premium, well, what type of person are you looking for? And what is that service that they would expect in return? Because I'm telling you right now, it's more than the cheaper dog walkers. So where is that value going to come from and how do you help them to see that? Now, V, we touched on GST before, made my skin

crawl, feeling a little bit sick about it because I don't understand. Can you talk to me about tax and what we need to consider. Do we need ABNs? What else do I need? Tell me the things, wise lady. All right, wise lady G. I know you probably don't want to hear this, but if you've got a side hustle, you do have to be paying tax.

Yeah, I'm sorry. A side hustle is actually an activity where you are generating business income, so you do need to pay tax on this. Do you need to be earning a certain amount to have to pay tax? How does that work? Technically, but all your business income actually needs to be declared to the ATO. Whether you end up paying tax or not is a different story based on how much revenue you're generating in addition to your full-time job. But I'm going to preface this conversation really quickly with that I'm

not a tax professional. I'm not an accountant, but I do know that you need to be declaring all your income. And that means registering your business as soon as you start it with the ATO and making sure that's all up and running and one thing I would say is do your research work out how much money you need to be putting aside for tax because the worst thing that can happen is you start a side hustle and you're like sweet I've got all this additional money coming in start living your best life and then comes June 30 which by the way is my birthday great day let's try change the perception but I think it's really important to then not get stung at tax time with a big tax bill that you no longer have that cash to pay so v does this tie into the separate bank accounts

thing is that going to make this easier because i'm going to bum it on the microphone sorry you are being incredibly dramatic this episode you are absolutely correct it does make everything clearer having a bank account that just has a list of your expenses and a list of your income is going to mean that you know what you need to be taking out for tax and reserving and you could potentially have a separate bank account where you put the money that you're putting aside for tax once you work out how much tax you need to be paying each year. Are you free after this? Because I'm going to need that. I am. Would you like a coffee?

Yes, please. Here for it. And now a quick chat about the sponsors of today's Sad Hustlin' show, MYOB. As I mentioned at the top of the pod, MYOB is a sad hustlin' stream. To put it simply, MYOB take care of the boring bits of business like accounting and expense tracking no offense of course to the lovely accountants out there listening so that you can focus on the parts of your venture that you're the most passionate about myob's cloud-based accounting software makes managing your business easier you can access

your accounts with myob anywhere anytime plus with great apps like receipt capture you can spend more time running your business instead of on the books or crying into your coffee because you've made a mess of the book work by doing it the old-fashioned way you don't want to be crying into our coffee that would be a waste of a latte. Another great perk that thousands of Aussie businesses are already loving is that MYOB help out with the tedious process of invoicing, allowing you to easily keep track of sales and expenses with just the click of a button. We've only really just scratched the surface of the many capabilities of the platform today, G. So to find out more about how MYOB can help with your side hustle, visit myob.com. And make sure you check your inbox for

this week's She's on the Money newsletter, where you'll find a special offer from MYOB that will help you smash your 2020 business goals. I bet just for a moment there, you thought I was going to introduce the listener question. Alas, that's not happening this week. We're not always that predictable, guys. Instead of our listener question and our money diary, Victoria sat down to chat side hustles with a friend you may already be familiar with, the fabulous Emma from the broke generation. Where'd you start? Why? When? Where? How? Okay, I've kind of always been a bit of a side hustler. Way back at kind of like high school and uni, I would sort of sell my clothes on eBay and stuff because eBay in the UK is like quite lucrative. Then it kind of progressed into

me having quite a good eye for things that would sell really well, sort of back before there was online shopping, which makes me sound 100 years old. There was kind of a bit of a culture of if something was seen on the very early iterations of bloggers or in like Cosmopolitan magazine, it would sell out really quickly so I would kind of have a good eye for what those things were and then buy them and then sell them on eBay when people would pay like double for them I kind of wish I pursued that but I didn't you've been like a designer buyer I know RIP me but then I kind of stopped side hustling for a while and then got really back into it when I moved to Australia when I was 22 so five years ago and I started doing freelance writing just purely kind of

started because I needed to get a full-time job and I just needed to kind of get some connections with some agencies so I started freelancing there and then got jobs from that and kind of dipped in and out of freelancing and that was like my main side hustle so I would write website copy blog copy that type of thing and then now I've moved more into obviously I have the blog a couple of years ago I started doing uh cat sitting so I go to people's homes go to their homes feed their cats while they're on holiday um I'm all for it I just I wish I'd known that that could have been a job for me before I started doing money but it's so great they're the best clients in the world because they can't speak um and then I also sell secondhand clothes on my Instagram account

called mid-size thrift so for mid-size gals size like 12 to 16 so I find stuff in markets and thrift shops yeah and you blog about that too right like you talk about going to the op shops and picking up things and like what around Melbourne is a good place to pick up a bargain right? Yes. Amazing. I love it. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got into freelancing? So like, where did you start? Did you advertise online? How did you find your first clients to freelance to? I've pretty much got where I am because of sending a shitload of cold emails. Also using platforms like, it used to be called Odesk, but now it's called Upwork. There's getacopywriter.com. So I've been sort of blogging and contributing to really early

iterations of blogs and online magazines I suppose which was obviously unpaid kind of online internships type thing and then from there I started getting some paid work through platforms like Upwork and things like that the income started really really low like $20. Yeah we were speaking before this interview and you were saying you always have to start low because you've got to prove yourself but like what does that journey look like? Yeah it's a really difficult journey because at the beginning even though I don't believe anybody should work unpaid unfortunately we live in a world where you have to do things to get opportunities so if you can do stuff for free or for very little money it does help you build up a portfolio you have to start really low and

then at that point when you are starting to charge you kind of want to go low ball because you want the work especially if it's like a client that you really really want to work with you are going to go low so that you get it especially if you want that sitting on your portfolio so you can say you worked with them right exactly so it's really balancing the value that they're giving to you it isn't money so if it's a big client and they've mentioned possibly future work or you think there could be referral opportunities or it's really really what you want and you know you're going to be able to leverage it to get other work then going low I would still go low now if I had the right opportunity and I've been doing this for like eight nine years the difficult part is when

you get good at what you're doing and you can charge more but you are scared to charge more because you're scared that the work will go away but it doesn't happen all that often and you do need to know your worth because ultimately your time gets more expensive as you get more experience so even if you're thinking oh well I might as well do it for 200 bucks because I'd rather do it for 200 than not do it for 400 yeah you need to be quite self-aware of when that stops being true personally when I'm increasing my prices in my business because I know that what I'm putting on the table is now more valuable it's very easy with new clients because you give them a clean quote and they go well that makes sense how have you renegotiated payment terms with clients who

got you at that start point where they were paying you $20 an article and now you're worth $75 an hour like what does that journey look like yeah that was a really difficult aspect of it I recently had to do it for my pet sitting clients because again I went in really lowball because you're entering somebody's home when they're not there they don't trust you yeah stuff right yeah so I just had to raise my rates for that and it was because of you know public transport goes up every year petrol is ridiculous at the moment my car is being used more the rate has to go up and i think it's you've got to be really careful that you explain i kind of drafted the message out to my fur families as i call them and it was like i'm really sorry petrol's gone up and i hope you

understand and i was just like don't be apologetic don't apologize absolutely because it's unrealistic for i mean look at metro metro gets more expensive every year like they're not sorry about it no if you bought the same can of soup from the supermarket every year it would go up because that's what inflation is so I haven't raised my rates for them since the very beginning which was two and a half years ago and you just have to go in and say that it's factual and again price it so some of my clients are on preferential rates because you still want to work with them still want to work with them they're really near my house with things like that it's quite easy to balance what's valuable because if they live far away it's more petrol it costs you more

so there are some that are on rates and yeah balance whether or not you want to raise the rate or whether you want to offer them a preferential rate if you have tell them that you have yeah absolutely then they see that there's value and that you value them it's really just communication and being okay to walk away if they say no if they kick up a fuss and you go okay we'll just keep it how it was that rate's never going up because you've just completely relinquished all your power and it sounds as though this whole side hustling and side business area is a lot harder than people make it out to be would that be true in your case yeah it's definitely harder than it seems because people see on the surface like oh wow you come home and you get paid $75 an

hour not every hour I'm working is paid $75 an hour because sometimes it's pet sitting which is obviously way cheaper than that sometimes it's selling clothes online which is no money until I've sold the item and I have to physically invest in product which is a whole other ball game which I wasn't really prepared for got to also charge enough to cover your costs of how much it takes to maintain it and you can get lazy in the beginning because you're not making loads of money that you kind of think oh it's just really small I won't you know do proper invoicing or won't pay for an accounting software or an accountant but it's worth doing even though it feels counterproductive at the time because maybe it costs more than you're making it's definitely

worth it because you're leveling up and you're preparing to scale and I think that's a trap people fall into with a side hustle they think that it's always just going to be a bit of extra coffee money but it doesn't have to be you can earn the same in your side hustle as you make in your full-time job yeah absolutely and I love that you're saying you can make the same as your full-time job in a side hustle you didn't say you can make enough to quit your full-time job so I'd love to know a little bit about your opinion of side hustling turning into full-time work or potentially not turning into full-time work like how do you view a side hustle like where does that fit into your life I read a blog recently called why you don't have to work for

yourself to be successful I think that the side hustle culture has really fallen into the trap of it being kind of a bridge between um you know hustling working really hard and staying up till midnight and listening Tony Robbins at 5 30 in the morning but eventually there's such a culture to that as well drinking coffee with butter in and oh no we stay sitting here without almond lattes yeah there's a real the culture of the hustle being really hard at the time but eventually it'll all be over because you'll be working for yourself and you'll be your own man and that kind of thing but I think what people forget is if everybody did that we wouldn't have a developed economy because if everyone was just working for themselves it wouldn't

work the same way yeah and I don't think that that's aligned to a lot of people's values and like no one's going to be surprised that I'm going to say that values are really important here but I think that if you are really happy in a full-time job there's absolutely no pressure on you to go and get a side hustle or get a job or start your own business that is outside of what you're doing like you can be a passionate enthusiastic well-rounded person without being a business owner employment is very demonized at the moment um when actually if you have a full-time job and a side hustle you can afford to take real big swings in your side hustle because you're not relying on the income to pay your rent absolutely so yeah I've just spent four thousand dollars on

a new website for a blog that doesn't make any money which guys is by the way beautiful I'm pretty happy with it I wouldn't be if I was doing my side hustle full-time I wouldn't be in a position to make that kind of investment because it's pretty much every dollar I've made from all four side hustles in the last few months gone straight back in whereas because my job pays my bills I can take bigger swings and I can grow more and you get to do take loads of risks and make massive mistakes while someone else is looking after your bills being paid I think that there is a lack of clarity on what it actually means to have a side hustle because Instagram and Facebook and this whole internet community make it seem really glossy and shiny and a little

bit sexy yeah so I think that there is just this perception that side hustling is really cool and it it obviously is like we're here but it is one of those things that you should be doing it like what is your side hustle and I just think that pressure can sometimes be really unnecessary yeah and the pressure to make loads of money from it right away if you go into it just to make extra money it probably isn't going to last I think you need to see it as a long-term thing and kind of be serendipitous with it because I'm not sitting here I don't want people to come at me in two years and be like you're doing your side hustle full-time and you said you never would because I'm not saying I never would don't come at me because it was good yeah I'm not saying it will

never go full-time and I might but it's not that's not why I did it I didn't do it as an escape route from my full-time job yeah it's works in tandem with that and something I love about you and what you talk about on your blog is not necessarily what you make it's actually how you use it and you mentioned just before that people are going into side hustles to make money and that's obviously a reason that we pick it up but like why should people get side hustles so if I was starting today and I was saying Emma what do I do how do I do it why should I start a side hustle what would you say? Can you make money from something that you love doing because obviously yes don't go in just to make money because they don't start out very lucrative. I mean I love cats

and you just told me that I can make money from cats so I'm here for this please tell me your secret thing you've got to look for things that you love and then gaps in the market that you can fill um that said there doesn't have to be a gap in the market I think a lot of people shy away from side hustles because everything's already been done um but that isn't yes okay if you're going to go and say your side hustle is going to be a fashion blog I'd say the market's a tiny bit saturated yeah but just because obviously there's already cat searches if I'd done a quick google search oh there's cat searches in my area I can't do it then yeah I wouldn't be worried yeah give yourself a chance to try and test it out and see if people take it up um again send loads of cold

emails or advertise on facebook you can you know do facebook ads really cheap now um but i think a really good way to start a side hustle is set aside whether it's a hundred bucks five hundred bucks a thousand bucks and say that that's your like startup money yeah and be okay with losing that uh if it doesn't go anywhere but it's an investment right it could swing either way yes so to make sure that you don't go down the rabbit hole of plugging away money at something that isn't going to turn into a lucrative side hustle yes set aside some money that you're okay with spending on that and just try different things i got into pet sitting using an app called paw shake a bit like i was saying about the writing there's so many websites and apps now that are literally

designed to help you make money um no you shouldn't stay on them forever because they take big fees and they need to make money too so be smart about it but it can help you like i said get experience so I was on Paulshake for about eight months and then I came off of that yeah and platforms do take a lot more than you think they take right they do um but I mean in the case of Paulshake they were also paying my insurance and my insurance is almost a thousand dollars a year so before I had clients I wasn't in a position to pay for that so take it with a grain of salt quite often they're taking care of something that you would have to I mean I don't doubt there are pet sitters that don't have insurance but yeah and I think and it's being safe I think if you're doing something like

going into other people's homes I just want that security and not even as a client but if I was doing that I'd want the security to know that I was safe doing that and that I wouldn't ruin anything that couldn't be fixed and I would end up in a whole heap of debt because that's absolutely counterproductive to the reason you were there in the first place right exactly so if I said to you Emma I really want to start a side hustle and I know what I want to do let's say I want to be a dog sitter what steps do I need to take like where should I be going first of all I'd start treating it like it makes a lot more than it does smart so set up a spreadsheet track your expenses because things like that type of side hustle do incur a lot of expenses there's

obviously kilometers get savvy with tax people forget tax on their side hustle but it's also not taxed high I get this a lot oh it's not worth me getting a second job because it's taxed so high but they don't take it's no more tax it's the same amount of tax that you already pay at your marginal rate right exactly and then also think about the brand and the marketing of it you need people need to know about you and depending on what type of side hustle it is but we'll use the dog sitting example um they need to think about what they need from you so do they need experience do they need to trust you do they need all of the above do they want you to be a female I mean I think I get a lot of work because I'm a female people wouldn't necessarily want a man coming into

their home if they live alone that makes sense so yeah think about what they need from you so my cat sitting business um including my name and my suburb name so people knew I was female um and then they knew exactly the areas that I would service um obviously you need to be a bit smart about business names in case they're taken or if you want to trademark but that's that's you know that's not really the super early stages you're not going to trademark it on day one necessarily and then you really want to think about the actual brand you might think that just because it's your small dog walking business it doesn't need a brand but using photography and consistent colors and fonts you can do loads of things on really free tools like canva now oh i

love canva i started most of the she's on the money stuff just using canva they have so many good templates yeah it doesn't have to cost you a lot to start a business and make it look professionally marketed right exactly and then eventually you'll kind of graduate to more paid tools like photoshop and things you can start off really low cost and get your assets and get everything kind of like well-rounded don't leave any holes you might want to make booking forms or anything like that that can help kind of legitimize the offering because you don't want it to look like it's your first day doing it and yeah just kind of lock down that messaging as though it's a global business and then if you one day are a global business you're ready to be yes absolutely

too many times do i see people shooting themselves in the foot because they've structured their business in a way that they aren't ready to scale and when we say scale we're not talking about going from earning a hundred dollars extra income each week to six million we're not talking about that scale we're just talking about you know really ramping up the costs because when you have a business that is generating you forty or fifty thousand dollars a year you do have accounting fees you do have things that you need to pay like tax and not GST yet but tax and at some point in the near future you'll need to pay GST on that money and I think being able to pay that is really important and if you're taking half of it in cash and not declaring it you're making

it really messy for yourself yeah absolutely other kind of tips on starting up a big thing I like to do is try and find someone who's already doing it really well and go for a coffee with them some people network some people you might think oh why would they give me tips because it's competition but if they're a good person they won't see it was competition 100% I think that there is so much room in this industry and this country in general for everybody but also on a more behavioral psychology level people love talking about themselves and if you reach out to someone and say hey Emma I would love to grab a coffee with you it's my shout I just really want to ask you a couple of questions about how you've become so amazing it's very likely that that person is going

to feel complimented by that and want to create a relationship with you and you know some people are too busy so don't be offended if they say no or some people might just not want to engage in that but the worst thing someone can say is no so it is always worth your time to be like hey I'd love to grab a coffee with you and if they say no no harm done you're still in this position where you were really lovely and reached out to someone for a coffee and that's that's something I would love people to do yeah exactly you can get a lot from them and in terms of just on the spot you can get information from them and tips and you know words of warning or where to get the best insurance or really tangible stuff like that or it might be a referral down the line if you meet up with a

established dog sitter she might in two weeks say oh i'm actually going away um can you do one of my bookings for me and then it kind of spirals from there um i think people really underestimate the value of networking in inverted commas i guess the last tip as well is something i really like to do is it kind of starts with setting up those marketing assets and stuff but do taking those steps really helps you prove to yourself that you're going to do it um a lot of people say to me like oh I've tried to start a blog so many times I just haven't written the post or whatever I wrote 35 blog posts before I put my blog live because I put 15 up and then I scheduled the others one a week for the rest of the weeks so that if I got lazy or I got busy or I got sick

yeah it would take care of itself and it also before I spent any money on hosting and domains and all that stuff I had content proved I had content proved I was bothered enough to do it prove that i actually had the time to do it yeah i love that so anything that you can do to prove to yourself that you're going to do it before you actually spend the money and put the effort in to start doing it is really valuable emma what good is a money podcast without having some pervy stuff i would absolutely love to ask you a little bit more about how much you earn doing these side hustles spoken you know in roundabout ways of like you can add this and you have to pay tax so tell me like how much are you making from your side hustles and is it worth it so i will break

it down from pet sitting pet sitting really is my extra splurge money it's not a lot of money i'm not saying it's the most lucrative industry in the world and i don't charge a load for it because i i do really love it and it's very simple it's at a place now where it kind of looks after itself i've got regular clients and they go on holiday all the time so i'm not really I'm gonna hit you up after this believe me so from that I probably made three or four thousand dollars a year it's not a lot but that is still a lot of money that you didn't have before exactly and it's also in dead time like the hour before work if I go and feed three cats I've made sixty dollars before breakfast yeah amazing obviously before tax and expenses the online thrift store

has been a bit of a journey because I originally built it out as part of the bro generation and Oh, yeah. And then you broke it off and kind of made an extra Instagram. Yeah, because I felt a bit weird about it was kind of triggering people to buy things as much as I think thrifting is really great. It's a real good money saving activity. I also was like kind of going against my own beliefs. There's a lot of dissonance there because, yeah, I was kind of shoving things that people wanted in their faces when I didn't want them to spend any money. So I separated it so that if you do want to buy clothes and you want to buy the second hand, you can go and find that content. yeah yeah since I split it off in sort of October so what four months ago I've probably made about 1500 2000 that's pretty good not bad considering it's getting paid to shop

absolutely and it's something that you said before you loved doing I love doing it I don't spend a lot of time on it um because it is a case of do a collection put it up post it and then I won't touch it yeah until I do another one the freelance writing is where it's really grown the most uh Like I said, back in the beginning, sort of five, six, seven years ago, when I first started charging, I was getting paid $20 to $40 per piece. Now I'm charging $65 to $75 an hour. And I've been making with those types of activities between $8,000 and $10,000 a year before tax on top of my salary. This year, I should be set to double it. So I should end the year on $20,000, which I'm pretty excited about if it carries on.

But I'm at $10,000 already and it's only jam. so there's still six months yes incredible yeah so it's exciting thank you so much to add yeah it's really nice to see it growing because it I did get a little bit deflated um you do plateau in career and inside hustles you you plateau in your experience so I'd sort of was making like eight nine for the last couple of years I've declared the same thing and then there's expenses and it's all a bit kind of like oh is it am I growing I've sort of my accountant must be laughing at me because it's not going anywhere absolutely not um but no um it has grown this year which is great and then with the blog because it's such a similar discipline to the freelance writing

um i guess some things may have eventuated from having the blog but they're ultimately freelance writing so they've gone in that 20 000 pot um i have done a couple of i have done a couple of ads um on the break generation but obviously i'm very careful because it's quite a specific industry it's also a highly regulated industry so it's not like i'm batting away teeth whitening with a stick it is so challenging it's very challenging and I obviously only want to promote things that I really believe in and actually use I know everybody says that but particularly with banking it's really difficult um I have had opportunities I've turned down because I just don't think that it's a good thing to promote anything I have promoted I do genuinely think

is worth promoting and it is a message I want to spread um but yeah we're talking you know around the one to two thousand mark yeah overall for you know 18 months of content it's not the most lucrative one on the books but it's a personal branding thing so yeah absolutely that's amazing thank you so much for sharing that with us everybody likes to get a little bit pervy and go yeah but what do you know people love that you're working on something that you're really passionate about would you say that all of this side hustle and extra income is worth it yes um actually one of my goals for the year was to hashtag goal setting uh was to tune in more to when i'm tired and overworked and not when other people are telling me that I am that is such a struggle

like you've said that and we've both got this smirk on our face I think that both of us have potentially been told a lot like oh you must be so tired it's like I'm not tired I'll show you tired yeah um it's it's a really interesting one that because yeah I am working a lot and I filmed like a day in the life on my Instagram just because I wanted to be that kind of person and it's so fun I it's fun maybe I'll do one do one people love it but yeah I was sort of up at six and I was doing some emails and I didn't get um nasty comments but they were quite confronting because people were obviously a bit spiky about that and they were like why are you doing emails at 6am and I'm like well I work 8 30 to 6 so when else am I going to do them I think I get

energy from my side hustle I'm very empowered and I feel strong and excited and like buzzed for everything else I do in my life when I'm doing my side hustles so don't stop doing them just because someone else thinks you're burnt out because you'll know if you're burnt out I know what burnt out feels like so a lot of people don't realize they're burnt out until they are burnt out what are you doing to check in with yourself to make sure that you are still okay and not tired because it can be exhausting in itself being told by people that you're tired but how do you identify that you need a little break yeah it is difficult to um to identify besides you know I fainted at work or something then you're probably pretty tired maybe maybe don't let it get that far

so how do you check in before then yeah exactly um I kind of judge it by my mood I'm generally quite a sort of upbeat chatty kind of person so if I'm finding myself getting really snappy with people um I know I'm burnt out or I have PMT who knows same same we both need a sleep um or if i'm finding myself not wanting to do the thing um whether it's you know do instagram content or if i often i'll have no ideas um quite often like what i post on stories people always go how do you know what to post and i'm like i don't even think about it it just it's like a stream of thought about some content and i spat it out into an insta story and here we are so if i've got no ideas i know i'm burnt out and you'll you'll have specific cues that you'll probably

know from your own personality it helps if you really know yourself quite well to know when something is off it might be the way you're communicating it might be the way you feel it's not literal tiredness because often when you're on a high you won't feel tiredness even if you're exhausted so try and pick up on other cues or ask a partner or a friend if they ever notice when you're a bit different and actually call you out on that and it might be a good indicator that you're doing too much I love that and I think it's really important to point out here that just because you have a side hustle doesn't mean you have to be this like hustle personality like you can take a nap you can step back and say okay I'm going to do what's best for

me and at the end of the day doing a side hustle regardless of your passion or regardless of the reason you're doing it it's actually to increase the way you live life it's to add value to your life either through the content you're creating or the activity that you're doing or through the money that you get to you know go on another holiday or you know be able to afford something that you weren't able to afford before or pay off more of your mortgage like however you're using that I think you need to step back and go is this worth it and am I giving myself enough space to be happy and be present and if you're not maybe have a think about it so I love that thank you so much for sharing it that is all we have time for on our side hustle podcast today but before we head off

let's wrap the boring but important stuff the advice shared on she's on the money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances she's on the money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision and fear not we promise victoria divine is an authorized representative of consultant financial advisors proprietary limited abn 65 006 373 995 afsl 230 323 we would so love it if you all joined us in our facebook group where our community shares tips and tricks every single day free of judgment just search she's on the money on facebook and join us if facebook's not your thing you can also find us on instagram we're at she's on the money aus happy hustling guys see

you next week