This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up? Welcome to a brand new week. Hope you're doing okay out there in this holiday season as we approach the end of 2021. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, the daily podcast all about ideas for making extra money without quitting your job. We look
at that question through all sorts of different angles, case studies, tips, ideas, actions, questions and answers, which is what we have today. A question we've never considered before. A listener is wondering about, is side hustling dependent on the broader economy? Or perhaps, how much is it dependent on the broader economy? Does it matter what kind of project you're talking about? Is this generally speaking? How might it affect your plans and ideas? If you have an
existing side hustle, let's say, or an existing small business, how much do you need to pay attention to what's happening in the economy? I'll bring you that detailed question in my answer in this short episode. Hello there, Chris. This is Angela and I've been listening to the show since episode one. Over the past two years, the economy has been crazy. The stock market has reached new
heights and everyone is quitting their job and all while we're seeing huge supply chain problems around the world. I thought the pandemic was going to take us into a huge recession, but clearly I was wrong. You've talked about trends a few times. I'm wondering more about the big picture. How much of side hustling is dependent on the broader economy? Did people
start taking on extra projects when they're worried about cashflow or losing their jobs? Is this a good time or a bad time to take a small or medium-sized risk? Thanks and hopefully you'll continue side hustle school next year. Hey, Angela. Thanks for being out there. Thanks for asking the question.
Let's pick up on this point about taking a small or medium-sized risk. I believe it's always a good time to take a small risk. A small risk is an investment in yourself and that's why I'm advocating pretty much every day that people start projects that are going to diversify their income and therefore create more security for themselves. I tend to think the question about risk is more relevant, like risk in the economy and such, it's more relevant for a business in which you're taking out a loan or otherwise making more of that medium-sized risk. Your big business, your life business, that kind of thing. We tend to focus here on things you can do without spending
a lot of money and also where you'll know fairly soon how it's working. That's the side hustle school way. When it comes to the broader economy, I'm sure people's behavior changes at different points and such, but we could divide it into market-specific impact and just the economy at large. For market-specific, Angela mentioned supply chains. If you're importing stuff from overseas, you already know that it's expensive and slow, especially these days. You need to increase
the buffer time, potentially make it backup plans if possible. As for the economy at large, we saw during the pandemic that consumer spending went up in lots of ways. It went down in categories like restaurants and cruises, but home exercise equipment and software and telecommunications and many others went way up. Generally, I think it's best to choose a project that's not really dependent on too many outside factors. It doesn't necessarily rise and fall based on what's happening with the broader economy or anything else. That way, to go back to the part about risk,
you have less of it in the first place. I'm not always thinking what's happening in the world this week that's relevant for the side hustle that I'm going to recommend or that I want you to have for the next three years or whatever. It's okay to think that way, but I think you're going to be more successful by just looking at yourself and your skill set and the time available to you now and your goals and thinking about it from that context. That's what I think about that. Listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Take care of yourself out there. Be
sure to check up on somebody else as well. I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
