Alan R. Simon - Side Hustles for Dummies

Side Hustles For Dummies

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022934337

ISBN 978-1-119-87013-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-87014-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-87015-9 (ebk)

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 12

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 4
3. Chapter 9
4. Chapter 10
5. Chapter 14
6. Chapter 15

When you entered the work world, you might have thought youd do that job and only that job until you left that company one day. Until then, your day job (or your night job, if you work evenings) would be your only job.

Not so fast. Tens of millions of people in the United States, and hundreds of millions of people around the world, supplement their primary jobs with some type of business activities on the side. These people all spend at least some of their professional lives embracing the idea of side hustles.

I should know, because Im one of them. My entire professional life has been filled with side hustles.

In 1982, I was a U.S. Air Force computer systems officer, writing software on an antiquated 1960s-era UNIVAC mainframe using an even more ancient 1950s programming language. Microcomputers (PCs) were just coming on the market and were all the rage, and I was concerned that by the time my Air Force commitment was up in the mid-1980s, I would be way behind the curve when it came to the newer technology of the day.

I started a computer consulting business on the side, writing PC-based applications for small businesses and not-for-profits in Colorado and Arizona. That side hustle spawned another one when I wrote my first book for McGraw-Hill, How to Be a Successful Computer Consultant, which described how to create and operate what we would refer to today as a side-hustle consultancy. That first book led to a revised edition a couple of years later, followed by 30 more technology and business books over the years.

Eventually, my consulting business and those writing projects spawned other side hustles, including university teaching, video courses for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) and Udemy, and writing novels.

And Im not the only person in my family who has embraced the idea of side hustles. My wife started an online boutique while she was doing business consulting, and that online boutique led to her latest side hustle: building and maintaining Shopify sites for other small businesses. My parents had a side-hustle mail-order business back in the 1970s, in addition to my dads full-time job. My father and uncles owned a chain of retail record and video stores in Tucson from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, but one of my uncles started a side business for used records, which, in turn, spawned yet another side hustle selling used CDs. Finally, a century ago, one of my great-grandfathers was sort of a pioneer in the world of side hustles: His day job was owning and running his family produce store, but on the side, he was a bootlegger, making and selling illegal alcohol during Prohibition!

In some ways, a side hustle is like any other job, or running any other small or medium business. But the very nature of side hustles the fact that youre doing something alongside a full-time job, or perhaps alongside other side hustles that youve got going presents unique challenges, as well as unique opportunities, above and beyond a regular job or self-owned business. Understanding those challenges, and taking advantage of those opportunities, can be daunting as you jump into the side-hustle game.

Thats where Side Hustles For Dummies comes in.

Side Hustles For Dummies helps you make sense of the ABCs acronym anarchy, buzzword bingo, and complicating confusion that you frequently find in short articles, blog posts, and online videos about side hustles.