This week, I'm sharing my side hustle story, from my early days putting myself through college to building my freelance writing business on the side of my credit union day job. Listen now:
Check out the assessment tools I mention during the episode:
- DiSC: More info and a free online assessment tool
- CliftonStrengths
- Myers Briggs
- Sacred Money Archetypes
Also, leave a question for a future Q&A episode by using the voice message option on your podcasting app or emailing me. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss any of our future episodes with other side hustlers and experts to help you deal with some of those small and large issues that come up when you're running a side hustle. I'd also love it if you could share this episode with any of your friends you think would be interested and leave a review and a rating in your podcast app. Get notified of new episodes and other updates by email. Sign up today.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Side Hustle Spark Podcast, the podcast for women who want to start and grow a side hustle into the business of their dreams. I'm your host, Jennifer Roland Cadiente, and I'm starting out this podcast by replaying my origin story. I hope you enjoy hearing how I got started and how I picked and started my own side hustle.
So today's podcast guest is me, after listening to some of our interviews with other side hustlers and some experts, some of whom also have some side hustles, I thought it was time to share my side hustle story. So I started as a side hustler in college, I worked at a movie theater. I actually started that job when I was in high school, and I worked there for five years. So all through college, pretty much. And of course, that was a time back in the 90s when you could actually put yourself through school without taking out a bunch of loans by working a job on the side.
I studied journalism in school. So my first year of college, I got a job at the daily newspaper, the Oregon Daily Emerald at the University of Oregon, in the ad design department. So I was designing ads. And then, as you know, I worked there for four years, I think. And you know, as I worked there longer I started doing pagination work. It was really kind of an exciting time, because when I first started, we were doing like manual paste up with xacto knives and the wax roller and everything, and we transitioned really quickly into doing it all on the computer.
So as I was studying journalism, I was also doing, you know, a lot of design work, which is something that was starting to be really required of writers. And I think it was, you know, it was nice that, you know, I was getting paid to be learning some of the skills that I would need to be able to get a good job after I got out of school. I also did journalism, peer advising when I was in school. So, you know, you can see it's always been, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, to fill my time.
Once I got into my last year of school, I quit the theater, and I started working as an editorial assistant at the International Society for Technology in Education. And I started out, you know, supporting the magazine that they did for members, and that actually grew into a full time position that I stayed at for over 12 years. So over the in my time there, I worked on the newsletters, the research journals and the magazine. But because journalism pay is not always that high, I also wanted to make some extra money on the side. But I did that in the easiest way possible, by doing work for ISTE. So I was in the publishing department, but I also worked as a freelancer for the books department, editing some of their books and editing the conference programs for the conferences department, and eventually that became something that wasn't allowed because of the way that we were being paid. So I quit doing that, but once I left ISTE and started working at the credit union, I was actually I was able to keep freelance writing in the educational technology field, so that helped me, you know, kind of keep that part of my expertise up and, you know, bring in a little extra money.
So after I was at the credit union for a few years, I worked in the marketing department there as the staff writer and doing design work, mostly for the member newsletter and, you know, promotions and things that we needed to do, I decided that, you know, once, once we had our son, that made that what I wanted to do was to freelance write as my full time career. So I started looking at what it would take to really, you know, make that happen.
So I joined a community for freelance writers, which was really helpful, and then I started doing some work for them, and, you know, built up my knowledge and my expertise about what it takes to really be a freelance writer. And, you know, start getting some retainer type clients, which, you know, are the things that really keep your income steady, and then doing ongoing but piecemeal work for other clients, I focused. On a lot of things that would give me a byline and that were for high profile companies. I worked as a blogger for Samsung for quite a while. I also worked for, you know, some companies that were smaller, but that gave, you know, some good, good clips. And I wrote for some print magazines. Then you know, when it was time to really start marketing and getting myself out there to build this into a full time business. I decided that my goal was to be earning at least half as much as my full time salary by the time that I left. And the reason, you know that I set that goal was that, you know, once I left full time work, our expenses would go down some because I would be driving a lot less, and we wouldn't have to be paying for daycare. And that, you know, all the extra time that I would have after leaving that 40 hour a week job and not having to commute anymore, I would have the time to market and build that up, but I would still have some steady income that I knew was going to come in, so that we weren't going to take a huge cut in income. I set myself a deadline of when Jasper started kindergarten, that was the first year that we were going to have full day kindergarten here in Oregon. So we really wouldn't need daycare. And so that, you know that part sort of led that decision a little bit, but one of them is still mistakes I think I made when setting that deadline was it was kind of far into the future, and I waited until exactly then to make it happen. I quit working the Friday before Labor Day, and school in Oregon starts the day after Labor Day. So like, I took it absolutely down to the wire.
So my advice for you is, you know, to maybe really look critically at the deadlines that you're setting to get into this as a full time gig. Are you setting a five-year deadline, because it's actually going to take you five years to build it up. Are you setting five years like the drop dead? Like I have to have made this happen by then, because that's the that's when I have to be out of the stay job. And if it's that drop dead, maybe see if you can make it work on an earlier deadline, like give yourself a year instead of five years, because you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish when you know you have a deadline. So now that you know, now that I am a full time freelance writer, I've been doing this for six and a half years, and I decided that even though freelance writing gives you a little bit of that controlled chaos, because you're not working for just one client. I needed to do something different. I needed I needed a new side hustle, and so that's where the podcast came from. Over the years, I have found that one of my favorite parts of freelance writing is doing interviews, and that's what a podcast is. It's just me talking to people for 30 minutes to an hour, and that is super fun for me. And I thought, you know that this grow your side hustle idea is something that could really help a lot of people. You know, I hear from a lot of people who want to do what I did, who want to grow their business into a full time thing instead of just a side business.
So this podcast is my way of helping people, you know, figure out how to do that. So I'm sharing, you know, that's why I'm sharing other people's stories, and I'm doing it in a way that I just really enjoy, by doing those interviews. So another thing that I think is really important is to figure out what you need to know. What what do you need to learn about business? What do you need to learn about yourself to be able to make this work. So I love a quiz. Love, love, love it. I have spent way too much time taking buzzfeed quizzes. I grew up taking, you know, Cosmo and 17 magazine quizzes in the printed magazines, and I couldn't I just can't resist a quiz, but they can be a big time waster. So instead of just taking a quiz, I like to take a quiz that will teach me something about myself that can help me be better in business. So when I was at the credit union, we did the DISC assessment and. Lift and Strengths Finder. And I learned that in so with disc, you know it measures, measures, your your dominance, your influence, your stability and your compliance. And I found that in both my natural and my business side, I am high s and high C, mid range, D, in my natural life, at the time, I was in a position where dominance was not needed for my role. So that was pretty low, but the I is low across the board. So I'm not, you know, I'm not an influencer type the Clifton Strengths that I think really plays, you know, is really similar to that. I as the Woo. My Woo is very, very low. It's 33 out of 34 and so, you know, one of the things that I've learned, you know, is compliance in particular, you know, is about following rules. And so I do like to know what the rules are, and you know how I can follow them, but I do have that, you know, if I think the rules are stupid, I'm just going to ignore them. But in general, I want to know what the rules are. I want to follow them to the letter. And on the CliftonStrengths, my top strengths are intellection, ideation, learner, strategic and empathy. And that I can definitely see, you know that I like to think strategically. I like to look to the future and see, you know how what the effects of what I do now are going to have, you know, 5, 10, years down the line. And I do like to spend a lot of time thinking, which is, you know, that intellection, another tool that I found really helpful as a business person is the money archetypes. So that is part of the trainings that Denise Duffield Thomas of Money Boot Camp offers. So I'll put a link to the money archetypes quiz that you can take and find out you know what, what your archetypes are, and what that means. So I am an accumulator, ruler and nurturer. So the as an accumulator, you know, I want to, I want to make more money, and I want to hold on to it. And as a ruler, I have a lot of ideas of ways to do that, sometimes too many ideas, but I still, you know, I have enough ideas to keep me going and finding ways to accumulate. And that nurturer, you know, is that is wanting to take care of people, and that's, I think, one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to start this podcast is, you know, that I can talk to people one on one, but with a podcast, I can reach a lot more people, a lot, you know, more frequently than I could if I was just answering, you Know, your question here and that person's question there. As I said, also, one of the things I like to do is find the training on the things that I like to that I need to do. So I took, you know, Becca Syme’s Write Better Faster course, and we used the DISC profile and our Clifton Strengths quite a bit in that. We also used Myers Briggs, which I've taken so many times. And I, you know, I took it in college when we were doing peer advising, because it, you know, it's considered a way to help you not only understand yourself, but also understand the people that you're advising and working with. And so I am a strong I and a strong F, my s and my P are really kind of close to the to the boundaries there. So I am an ISFP, but you know, I'm I, I'm pretty N and pretty J sometimes. And you know, one of the things, you know, the I, the I is so strong, the introversion. And that does mean, you know that I do. I need to spend that time thinking. I need to spend that time by myself, you know, figuring out, you know, what I need to be doing. But it also one of the things that an introvert enjoys, is talking to, you know, people, one on one. And so that's where, you know, the interviewing, I think, has come into into play, is that I get that one on one connection with people. And I mentioned earlier that I joined a freelance writing community to help me learn, you know, how to market myself as a freelancer.
So you know, as you're thinking about what skills you have, think about what skills you might need, that you could take a course on, like, if you need to learn marketing, you know, where can you find some marketing training? If you need to understand the technology that you'll be using, where can you learn that and or if you need, you know, general business accounting classes. You know you can always look at your local community college and their small business assistance programs. There are tons of, you know, low cost or online training options that can help you get the skills that you need to really build your business up. And finally, you know now that you've taken some time to listen to this and you know, learn what I've done, I'd love to address some of your specific questions you know about what what you need to do to grow your side hustle so you can use the voice messaging option that shows up on Apple podcasts and Spotify or anchor if you're using the web link, or you can shoot me an email at Jennifer, at Jennifer hyphen roland.com, and I'll put that email address in the show notes so you don't have to try to remember it. I'm really looking forward to doing a Q and A episode with all of you in the future.
Thank you for joining me today on the side hustle spark podcast, I'd love it if you could fill out the survey to help me plan future episodes at side hustlespark.com See you.