In many families, individuals work two or three jobs to bring enough money home to cater for expenses such as food, fees and other bills. Mostly, side hustle jobs are pursued to complement monies made from one’s permanent job.
However, there is a growing trend where people are now turning their side hustles into their permanent jobs due to the money they are making from it and also the fulfillment it brings. Such is the story of Tiffany Grant, who was formally employed and managed side businesses.
Tiffany studied business administration and management at the university and aspired to get a good corporate job and work towards being the executive assistant to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company after university. Her first job was a receptionist but she soon found out that she had little interest in what she was doing.
It was during this period that the idea of being her own boss occurred to her. Tiffany hadn’t accumulated enough resources to start her own business and so made a shift in career path, this time, going into human resource.
“I started at a new company and I loved my work in HR, being able to tackle new challenges every day and help employees at all levels of the company make the most of their benefits. I even got to put on my financial education hat every so often,” Tiffany told grow.acorns.com.
In 2017, she decided to become a ‘dual-preneur’ by starting a side hustle while in formal employment. She started with Money Talk With Tiff, a financial education and coaching service. Today she runs five other businesses with her husband.
They include DanJai’s Natural Products, a homemade soap company, a custom tie-dye apparel company, a video production firm, and a logistics and shipping business and a rental company. Tiffany has now turned her side hustles into a full-time job which now bring in $10,000 each month.
The transition from working a full-time job to turning side hustles into a full-time job had not been easy. For the first year in business, Tiffany ran things part-time and spent more money than she earned. “I was fortunate to have my day job to fall back on and to help me cover some business basics like a web domain, tools, and software,” she says.
Tiffany says when she left the corporate world to focus on her businesses, she had saved up four months’ worth of expenses.” It was a slow start, and I ended up having to use some of those savings to cover the shortfall,” she says
However, three months in she was making enough from working with clients that she didn’t need to rely on the emergency fund.
Tiffany advises aspiring entrepreneurs not to be motivated by money alone but should have a strong foundation for why they want to start an enterprise.
“If money is your only motivation, my best advice is to not take the leap. For most entrepreneurs, cash flow is going to be rough in the early days of your business. You have to have a cause outside of the money that motivates you
“Find your ‘why’ and make sure it is a strong foundation because odds are things will get shaky. My ‘why’ is the lives and financial trajectories I have been able to help change. I personally live with anxiety and depression, and some days are harder than others,” she says.
