Search for the Side Hustle: The Series

It is January 25th in the year of our Lord 2018 and I’m just releasing my first post for the year. This doesn’t mean I haven’t written a few, it only means that I haven’t written anything I wanted to put into the atmosphere. So thanks to my Gaily for holding it down when my posts were too snarky, too judgy or just not ready for consumption.

I’m starting the year with a series that I want to make a staple for this blog because 1) it’s something that’s on my vision board and therefore important to me this year and 2) I’m hoping all the people just like me can find inspiration in this series and start their own search if they want to.

Even though I’ve been hesitant to speak about salaries and jobs in the past, one of my personal goals this year was to have more authentic conversations about money - whether it’s what I’m making or what I want to make. I’ve started having some of these conversations and realize that a part of making it in Nassau means having multiple streams of income. Now, this is not to say that I haven’t thought about it before, just that I’ve always been stumped on what my side hustle could be. Most days I’m sure I don’t want to do what I do during my 9-5 outside of work so that already eliminates one thing. Oftentimes I feel like I’m creative but not creative enough to parlay it into a side hustle and I just don’t feel as if I’m necessarily passionate about anything enough to say I want to do it even when I’m already tired from work. 

However, it’s on my vision board to figure out what my side hustle could be. In the few short weeks that have made up 2018, a lot of people have been pointing me toward looking into food as a possible side hustle because I’m always cooking on Snapchat or tweeting about things I’m cooking. I got offered a foot related oppportunity and I’m still considering it heavily, however I’m unsure if I want to undertake something of that magnitude. But food is now an option for a side hustle. (Note: I was actually a culinary major for 2 years before switching to communications so it’s always been something I loved). So I pulled out my handy dandy idea journal and started trying to think about food related side hustles.  

One idea was obviously food blogging since  I already blog, but I’m not that great at developing recipes because I just cook by feeling. I haven’t completely ruled this option out, but for now I’m not feeling the whole recipe testing and building part of food blogging. Which is weird because another thought I had was offering recipes for sale for $1 after cooking the meal on Snapchat since people already enjoy my cooking snaps. I have people I run ideas by, so I told them about the Snapchat cook then sell the recipe idea and they said that people don’t often see the value in purchasing something like that so that might be a dud. And there I went, back to the drawing board.

I knew - and still know - with 100% certainty that I didn’t want to be cooking anything that people either had to pick up from my house (I’m weird about people knowing where I live) and I definitely wasn’t about to be a delivery service. So I started thinking of ways I could cook for people without that whole process involved. I think that I’ve possibly come up with a good idea and I’m currently trying to price it out. At the moment it seems like it’ll be a loss instead of a profit so not sure if I’m going to go through with it. But at least I’ve been spending time trying to come up with ideas and work out things I wouldn’t absolutely hate doing. If I end up going through with my idea, I guess the planning stages will be the next part of this series. If I decide it’s not worth it, I’m sure the next post will be about what the hell should I do now. 

If you have ideas for me, feel free to comment. If you think one of the ideas I explored but couldn’t commit to is better let me know that too! I’m open to ideas or help if you think we can collaborate on one of the above, as I’m passionate about food just not about measurements.

Stay tuned for part 2 - although I can’t guarantee when or what will inspire it’s release.