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You have a great side hustle that you love doing. Is it time to start doing it fulltime? Could you quit your job for this gig?
A lot of people have the dream of being their own boss. I know how it was working for other people. It was soul sucking at times. I much prefer putting more hours into a business that is my own. It took me time to build up my side hustle into a fulltime business, and I ended up being thrown into the deep end due to the 2008 recession.
You have some time to think and plan. You know that eventually you want to do your side hustle and quit your job. Is now the right time to do it?
Can you match your income with your side hustle?
A lot of people fall into the trap of quitting their job because their side hustle* makes the same as their fulltime wage. This is great, but you’ve just been used to having both the side hustle and your fulltime wage. If you quit your job now, you lose that extra income.
Can you afford to do that? Maybe you know that you could double the income with your hustle by working on it fulltime, so it could be worth the risk. However, you need a plan in place.
Make sure you have a plan to build up the hustle income to match exactly what you have with the hustle and the job right now. You’ll also want to put money into a savings account to last the length of time it will take to build up that hustle. You then had that money for cash flow needs while you build.
Did you put all the hustling income straight into savings anyway? This is when you don’t need to worry about the dip in income as much. You’ll want to be able to build the hustle income up so you can still have savings, but at least you’re not affecting your initial cash flow too much.
Is there room for growth in your side income?
Remember that your hustle is creating extra money for you. It’s important to make sure this side hustle has room for growth.
This could be possible if you had more hours to put into the job. What if you don’t want to put more hours in? What if your plan was to work the parttime hours? Where is the room for growth with this in mind?
Assess what you really want to gain from quitting your job. Look at whether you can continue to grow your side business. If you can’t just yet only because you don’t have the hours, it could be time to quit the job with a plan in place for growth. If you can’t for other reasons, you’ll need to assess if quitting your job is the right thing right now.
Do you want to do your side business fulltime?
Sometimes, the push to quit your job to go fulltime with the side hustle is from other people. Your partner may question why you’re not doing something you enjoy all the time, or your friends may think you should get out of the rat race.
The truth for you is that you don’t mind the job. In fact, you like your job. As much as you like your side hustle too, you can’t see yourself going fulltime with it.
If you don’t want to do this all the time, then don’t do it. The time may come in the future where you do want to do it fulltime. It’s okay to change your mind, and it’s also okay to have this on the side earning extra cash instead of making it a fulltime business venture.
MORE: Can you make a living writing at content mills?
Is it time to take your side hustle fulltime? You don’t have to if you don’t want to!
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