This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
All right, all right. What's up, friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School here in the midst of the holiday season. We're going to talk today about when my side hustle took over my life. It is, in fact, a story in the segment known as Failure Friday. Every Friday
we get to hear a story of something that does not go super amazing. It is, in fact, a collection of short stories, cumulatively, about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course failure. You get to hear directly from a side hustler who has struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise encountered that big obstacle. And these stories vary, but often they start with an idea. Then they go to when the idea meets reality and what do you learn, how do you regroup from it. Today's story comes from Kevin. He's a tech professional. He starts
offering design and development services on the side. And as the business grew, balancing it with a full-time job in personal life, those things that we all have, it becomes overwhelming, leads to stress and performance issues at work. So what does he learn from it? Not just, oh, that's a bummer, but also what does he learn? How is he able to move forward and how might we either move forward in this situation or prevent it from happening in the first place? That's the whole point. So let's hear it today from Kevin. I'll be
back with a few words of wrap up at the end. Hi, I'm Kevin, a full-time tech professional who started this little side hustle by offering website design services. It kind of started small, but it quickly grew as my demand increased. So I was getting a lot more referrals. I'm landing bigger clients and I'm making good money on the side, which all sounds great, right? But what seemed like this like really
cool opportunity, it kind of spiraled out of control really fast on me. Initially the work was manageable, you know, I'd take on a project or two and after work or on the weekends, right? But, you know, as the business grew, so did the demands on my time and eventually the website design, you know, they would require constant client communication and the revisions and all the updates and everything. So, you know, my clients, obviously they wanted quick turnarounds, so more meetings and urgent changes to everything that's done. So my schedule just got crazy overloaded. So I started waking up early for my client projects. Then I go
to my full-time job and then I'd stay up late doing revisions. My weekends were basically non-existent because I'm just doing nothing but work and trying to hit my deadlines. So my side hustle basically became like a second full-time job and I was basically, I was exhausted. That unfortunately led to my performance at my regular day job kind of slipping, you know. I mean, I was tired. I was unfocused. Every time I go into a meeting, I was barely keeping
my eyes open. And, you know, thankfully nobody said anything, but you can tell when your colleagues can tell, you know. So my partner became frustrated with my lack of availability and the joy that I had in the both of the jobs, it basically disappeared. And it was just replaced with stress and deadlines. I didn't really fully grasp just how difficult it would be to balance a time-based business with, you know, these other commitments. And,
you know, unlike other product-based business that I'd done in the past, like client work requires a lot of active involvement for every single project. It's not something I could just do on autopilot or whatever. So didn't take very long, but I hit a breaking point. My stress was overwhelming. I was really at risk of losing my day job and my relationship was suffering. So I had to choose, like either scale back my side hustle or let it go completely.
So what I decided to do is drastically reduce my workload. I was turning down my new clients and finishing my existing projects without taking on any more. And slowly things improved, you know, my performance at my full-time job recovered, and I was able to put a lot more time and care and energy into my personal life. So that experience taught me about the challenges of running a time-based service business. You know, it's easy to get caught up in that growth because, you know, you're super excited about all these extra projects and the money, but you got to be realistic about just how much you can take on without burning yourself out. I learned, I got to set boundaries and be really selective about
the projects, you know, and have a good balance. Honestly, looking back, hindsight 2020 and all, I wish I had been more strategic, like setting things up better. Instead of trying to do everything myself, I could have just outsourced parts of my work and that would have helped me create a better structure around my time commitment. And while it was a hard lesson, it definitely helped me become way more aware of just how much I had to manage my time moving on in my future projects. Well, listen, I just want to say since we're in the midst of the holidays here, I know a lot of people out there are doing a lot of things and I honor you and I salute you because life is hard. So if you get discouraged or if you get caught up in stuff, just like
happened here with Kevin, it, you know, it happens and the goal is to have it happen before you hit the true breaking point. I think Kevin used that phrase here in his story, but you know, there are different levels of breaking point, right? And you want to try to kind of see it coming and see it off at the past whenever possible. Just wanted to say that if you're in a difficult situation right now, we've got a new year coming out and sometimes a new year offers a chance for a reset. So if you need a reset, well, just, you know, hang tight, hang in there. We can change things up and do something new. You
don't have to do the same thing you've been doing just because you've been doing it. So I'll leave you with that encouragement today. Again, thanks to Kevin. Thank you, our listeners, for being out there, for being amazing, 2,911 episodes and counting. I'm so grateful to be able to make this podcast. More is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is
Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project. From the Onward Project.
