Top tips to build your ‘side-hustle’
Earning cash working a side hustle
Whether it’s driving for Lyft on the weekends, renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb, or selling clothes on Depop, everyone has their own little side hustle that helps pad their paycheck. If your work skills are IT or design-based there are an abundance of platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to bring extra income your way.
But for many aspiring freelancers, creating a side-hustle is a first step to building an independent business and eventually working from home as a small business. This is a worthy aim, running your own company is the very spirit of being an entrepreneur.
Many new businessperson do, however, find it difficult to separate themselves as individuals from their new business identity. If you are working out from your living room this is a major trap to overcome. To maintain your professionalism as well as your domestic sanity, you must start by constructing the necessary boundaries between your business and your personal life.
It’s possible to keep your work life and home life separate. Before you can, however, you’ll need to figure out where your personal boundaries are. We’re all unique individuals, so what might make someone else uncomfortable may be fine for you. It depends on our needs, likes, dislikes, goals, and values.
The best way to do this is to have a business address and contact point that is separate from your home. Somewhere that you can receive business mail and packages and possibly meet clients and suppliers.
A tried and tested method to achieve this ‘state of grace ‘ is to set up a ‘virtual office’ that can offer you a business address and other business management services. Ideally, a virtual office should offer several key services.
A prestigious address to receive your mail is the key requirement. Your business mail can either be held for collection or forwarded to you efficiently and regularly. A London virtual office will show potential clients that you are centrally located regardless of where your business is actually carried out. You can also use a virtual office as your official registered office.
Secondly, it is ideal if your virtual office service can provide phone answering with a dedicated city centre telephone number. You can, of course, use a separate supplier for telephone answering but it is obviously easier if it is part of the virtual office package which is the case with old-established virtual office suppliers such as Hold Everything on London’s Regent Street.
Thirdly, a well-run virtual office will offer secretarial services such as opening your mail and alerting you as to the contents and even taking appropriate action on your behalf. This takes a weight off your shoulders as you are out there drumming up new business.
We hope you enjoyed reading about how to build a side hustle whilst not letting your business takeover your private life. This is a topic that is often overlooked in many business guides because it can be difficult to control. The most important thing to remember is to make sure you don’t put your business before your family or friends. If you need to, hire some extra help to make sure your business doesn’t take over your life. For digital work, you can usually find the help you need on platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork. Thank you again for reading, we hope this article helped set you on the road to success!
