This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How can I get started as a busy parent? This is a question that comes up from time to time. Shout out to all the parents out there in our community. We got single parents, we got people in two parent households, some households where there's more than one person working full time and starting another project on the side, all types of situations. So in this episode, we're gonna dive into the world of e-commerce and freelance writing for the super busy.
That's what we're talking about specifically. Today's parent, today's busy parent, wants to enter one of those fields perhaps. So let's talk about how you can streamline tasks and perhaps make this idea thrive even with a full plate. Dedicated to everybody out there who's caught in the whirlwind of daily responsibilities. Let's try to get you some practical advice.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. I'm gonna bring you this question, the detailed question from our listener and my answer after this quick message from our sponsor. Stay tuned. [Music]
So while juggling a full time job and parenting responsibilities, I'm on the hunt for a side hustle that fits into my hectic schedule. E-commerce or freelance writing seems like a viable path, but the challenge lies in finding the time to start and sustain it.
Now I know you aren't responsible for my life choices, but how can I carve out dedicated hustle time? Are there specific ways to streamline tasks for busy parents like me looking for guidance to make this dream a reality from my home in Austin, Texas? And thanks for any help you might have. [Music]
Parents of the world, I salute you. Balancing full time work, parenting, and a side hustle is no small feat.
Thankfully, you're not alone. You're not the first person who's done this. So what I wanna say here, I've got a couple of tips, but actually at the very top, I wanna say the choice of side hustle is most important. Before we talk about how to find pockets of time during the day and such, I feel like most important thing is what kind of project are you doing? Because some are far more conducive to a stop and start kind of work style.
Some require long blocks of dedicated focus. Some require specific appointment times, such as coaching and such or consulting or any kind of client-based business or the challenge there is scheduling. So if you have an open schedule, then that might work. But for, I know a lot of busy parents, especially those who are working jobs as well, they are pretty inflexible, like they have a lot of constraints. And so what you need to do is just consider those constraints on the front end, as opposed to trying to do something that is going to wreck your schedule and then ending it up with a situation where you have to compromise one way or another all the time.
Choosing the right side hustle is not just important, it's critical. And here, let's see, we have a couple of ideas, freelance writing, e-commerce, both of those can work. Freelance writing, your income is gonna be fairly limited. There's not a ton of upside for that, whereas e-commerce, it's a totally different business, but there's a lot more upside, right? If you have a product that's taking off, you can sell, I don't wanna say an unlimited number of products 'cause there's constraints that come in as you scale, but you can sell a lot of widgets, whatever it is that you're selling.
Whereas freelance writing, you are limited both in terms of the marketplace, like there's just not a ton of great freelance writing gigs out there that are well-paying. And then also, even if you could get a bunch of those gigs, your time, like you have a natural capacity cap of the amount of time that you'll be able to spend on those projects. So it's not only for freelance writing and e-commerce, for any business idea, you can kind of ask yourself, what are the constraints I have? How would this project work within those constraints? Or if it wouldn't work, what else could I do if it would be difficult?
So make that choice in the beginning. And then as you design the business, simplify as much as possible, delegate as much as possible if you can. And by delegation, it's not only about giving it to somebody else to do because there may not be somebody else there, I realize that. It's also kind of delegating to tools and learning to use AI tools and learning to use like Shopify, for example, if you're doing something e-commerce, it could also be WooCommerce or another platform. They have so many integrations and apps and plugins, and it can be overwhelming to be fair, but also a lot of these tools can make your life easier and help you save time.
And so you could also do that with freelance writing, or you could also do that with another business model. So I think choosing the right hustle is important, leveraging technology, simplifying your business, getting that minimum viable product. That's one of those startup phrases, which I try not to use too often. We don't use a lot of startup-y language here, but I do like minimum viable product because it's like, what is the simplest product that I can create and have out in the marketplace in a reasonable time, let's say 30 days, maybe 60 days, doesn't need to be much more than that. That's really exciting.
So I want to help as many of our listeners as possible get to that point. That's my encouragement to you and to everybody out there, try to get to that point within 30 to 60 days. And we've got lots of examples of people who've done it. If you have a question, some feedback, notes, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Speaking of notes, there are in fact notes for every episode.
This has been 2,670. I'll be back again tomorrow with a new one. It's always completely free. You can listen wherever you want. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
