This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
You are listening to Side Hustle School, the one and only podcast bringing you daily stories, tips, questions and answers, and all kinds of fun stuff organized around the theme of making extra money without quitting your job, preferably using the skills you already have and without going into debt. All good things. We've got a lot of listeners all over the world who are trying to make that happen for themselves. And I'm so glad to bring you this podcast, as I said, every single day. My name's Chris Guillebeau, by the way.
Without further ado, let's jump into today's segment. It's known as Failure Friday. Failure Friday is a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. All the things that go wrong. You get to hear directly from a side hustler who struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise encountered a difficulty.
That's kind of what today's story is about. It features Gerald from the Midwest, and Gerald kind of wants to remain anonymous, beyond that short description. You'll understand why when you hear the story. This is a really fun one. Perhaps we should dedicate it to everyone out there who's working on something of their own during company time.
That's right, we're gonna title this, "My Boss Discovered My Side Hustle by Accident." All right, let's hear from Gerald. [Music]
This is Gerald, and I live in the Midwest. I don't wanna say my last name for reasons that will become obvious very soon. I work a fairly normal job for a large company. I have to be in an office since the company was never that excited about allowing remote work, and I was jealous of all the people I knew who were secretly running their side hustles or even extra jobs during the same hours.
I do have a lot of free time while I'm there, however, so I figured I might as well use it productively. I also work in a corner where no one can really see what I'm doing on my computer. After trying out a bunch of ideas, I started learning SEO, on the job, of course, and began spending part of my work day building out content websites supported by Google AdSense. Before I go on, let me be clear. I still have responsibilities for my job, and I make sure no balls get dropped.
But a lot of what I do for the job is just monitoring some systems. If there are no problems, I'm honestly just spending a lot of time reading the news online, which is often depressing, of course. So when I got the idea to learn SEO and try building those websites, I went for it. The first two months, nothing exciting happened, but in month three, I earned $300, and then $500 the next month. When I got close to $1,000 per month a few months later, I started to get excited.
If this growth rate continued, within a year or two, I'd out-earned my day job income. Even better, I was improving at SEO, and the time it took to build a site to profitability was less and less. Just one problem. One day I went to lunch, and my boss happened to walk by the corner where I worked. He was probably being nosy, but at the same time, I hadn't hidden things very well.
On my screen was the dashboard I used to tally my earnings, which looked different from any computer software. Oops. When I returned, I was asked to meet with the boss, my boss's boss, and a representative from HR. Thankfully, they didn't fire me on the spot. I just received a positive job evaluation two weeks earlier, but they did say, "Hey, you can't do this anymore." I agreed to keep my side hustled to after hours, and so far, I've honored the agreement.
But I still have the same amount of extra time at work, and it's frustrating to go back to reading the news for two hours a day. In retrospect, this disaster was entirely preventable. If only I'd covered my tracks better, I likely could have kept it up for many more months, if not indefinitely. My boss even told me off the record that he wishes I just didn't get caught. He understood that I was still fulfilling my responsibilities, but to fulfill his, he had to report my off-company adventures to HR.
I don't have any plans to leave my job, so for now, I'm just kinda stuck. The good news is, I didn't get fired, and I still have the websites I'm working on. I just have to work on them at night now, which is cutting into time with my family and my softball league. Lesson, if you're doing something like me, make sure to change your screen saver when leaving for lunch. [Music]
Thanks so much, Gerald, really appreciate that story.
Good tip there on changing your desktop, your screen saver when you're leaving for lunch, if you are working on something you shouldn't be, or I guess if you're looking at something, you shouldn't be, that too. But most importantly, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Hope Gerald was able to find a way to move forward one way or another. And if you're in this situation where you are starting your side hustle during company time, I mean, there's a lot we could say about that. We have had other episodes about it.
You know, I would say the short version is just make sure you're actually fulfilling your responsibilities, like your main responsibilities. And from there on out, probably the most important thing is be careful. All right, well, that's it for today. If you've got a question or an update about your side hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. This has been episode 2085, 2085.
We're gonna be back again tomorrow with a new episode. I hope you'll tune in. Once again, it's Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
