I. Working from Home is HARD. Getting started is HARD. But so is keeping up with inflation, depending on only your weekly paycheck, and starting from scratch if you were to be shown the door.
The challenge when starting an at-home business or a side hustle is this – you are NOT an employee with a guaranteed paycheck. When you are a hired employee (even in a management or specialty position) you DO things you don’t want to DO because they pay you until you actually want to DO it – or you do it simply because you know if you don’t you are out on the street. You have to do the training, follow “orders” that may not always make sense, and PRODUCE- or you won’t get to work there very long.
And in return when you get a paycheck, you get a hit of dopamine, and your BRAIN tells you “Keep going, this is working!”
The company pays for what you need to DO to start making them money. Upper management and those above you are the ones trained what to say to you and what to teach you. The benefits and paycheck are put in front of you are like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey on a 1/4 mile track, and if you just keep your eyes on the carrot after a lap or two, you figure it out.
If you do everything they say to the level they expect AND the company is making money, at the end of the year you may get a small raise, barely above the rate of inflation. If you get promoted, they may give you more, but usually, they demand more. Even without a raise, they usually expect more out of you with fewer resources and less help, and you crank out more and more and more out of fear of losing your job. OR you find a better opportunity and do it all over. It’s a big rat race, and it can be fulfilling to work until exhaustion each day, it can pay the bills, and it makes the time fly and life fly by the seat of your pants. We can enjoy some great benefits and pizza parties along the way, it can be just what we know so it’s our comfort zone, but more likely at the end of the day, it wears you out to dare venture out into the unknown.
Here it’s maybe not fun, but you know what to do, you know what to expect, and you get a little bribery called a paycheck at the end, and they give you just enough time to forget about it and start fresh with rose-colored glasses as you head back there Monday at 9 am sharp. You can probably smell the free Coffee. And the money is just enough to get you through another week to get you a whole new paycheck to keep you another week.
It’s not the best deal on your end, but it’s familiar. Like that elephant tied to a chain that it can easily rip right out of the ground but it tried so many years ago and it couldn’t break free back when it was an infant. So it’s given up since then. It does not know it can ever succeed because he’s been shackled at the Circus and working for peanuts. Are we really that different??
II. A Side Business can be your way of escape, but it’s going to be harder to stick with it because there won’t be instant results, and there will be obstacles that come out of nowhere to try and derail you. You aren’t going to get that dopamine a lot of the time, and you may get your brain telling you to RUN because it’s not familiar and it’s not your comfort zone.
In a SIDE BUSINESS, it’s easy to listen to your mind here, and just cast it aside. You are too tired from work to put the 15 minutes or 50 minutes you wanted to spend on it today, the cat needs a vet visit, your daughter wants to go to Chuck E Cheese on your one day off to get caught up, you want to be in your office after dinner to make some calls but now it’s going on 10pm and your clients are in bed but your kids aren’t. You plan on doing it when you get your ducks in a row, but when you finally get the time blocked off to start, you find you can’t find your ducks.
The challenge is BIG – but here is the take-home of this whole thing- the rewards are big too. You can make more on the side than you do at your full-time job IF you find a side gig that pays residual income. I just listened to a young lady that worked full time at a state job and didn’t even have a lunch break to build her business. She only had time to do her business on a restroom break where she would quickly do a post and reach out to some folks to check out her business. Then she would listen to training on her drive home. She makes now after a few years 3X a year part-time at her side business then she does FULL TIME at the state. She keeps her state job because of the benefits.
Famous author John Grisham wrote ONE page a day when he was a full-time lawyer, and in a year he had his first novel. That novel is still making him money today. That law firm stopped paying him the second he left it to write full time.
This is NOT a spiritual piece – I am NOT talking about where you will spend eternity at the moment – BUT I am saying on a certain level, when John Grisham reaches his death bed, he will NOT say, “MAN, I wish I never left that comfy cozy law firm and that great guaranteed health insurance with the $0 deductible plan to instead go and write my dream.”
If you have a book in you, a hit record, something – do it and if it takes off great, if it doesn’t you didn’t quit your day job.
3. The easiest and most affordable way to start your own side hustle is to earn extra income is to find a Network Marketing business.
IT is also LEGIT and smart to build additional income streams as well- DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT (do not!) SEE taking a venture in a Network Marketing Company the same way as you taking a seasonal job at Kohl’s gift wrapping sweaters.
What I teach is this- WHY should you choose NETWORK MARKETING no matter what else you want to do? First, network marketing is a SMART way to siphon off the money you already would be spending anyway. Choose something you already are spending money on and flip it around to become a side hustle. Do you love COFFEE? Could you lose 15-150 lbs? Why not drink weight loss coffee with a Network Marketing company? Starbucks won’t give you a dime to drink their coffee NOR tell others about it. But if you instead buy weight loss coffee as your business, you are investing in yourself, your health, and you have something you can make money on. Pick a product you would buy anyway and set an initial goal to build it big enough so you get free products. Then find a few others who want to get free products. Soon you can be making an extra $500-1000/ month part-time and that is going to be attractive to a handful of people who follow you or watch everything you are doing. It also will come up naturally when you have a conversation with the waitress or cashier or your insurance salesman or your car salesman.. If they complain about business being slow, you can ethically say, “I found a way to make an extra $1000 a month part-time and I’m able to help a few people this month do the same. Are you open to taking a look at how I earn extra income?” If they say NO, it’s seriously no big deal. If they say yes, invite them to your service or opportunity.
You absolutely NEED to dive into Network Marketing and learn the right way to do it – it will train you to do sales, it will teach you how to market anything from a blog to a book to top leaders, and it will help your attitude. Your attitude will determine your altitude. Our thoughts are 90% negative on a daily basis – that isn’t an exaggeration. You do your job and complain most of the time. But developing thankfulness is NOT taught at your job. Mindset is in a network marketing business. You learn to be a leader, get on a path to embrace personal self-development, you soon want to spend time building your business and reading good books instead of binging on Netflix until you are a drooling zombie, and you will find yourself around positive people who found a path that transformed their lives. IF you change your thoughts, you seriously can change your life.
In a side business, you can do it with a small DAY IN DAY OUT plan of activity – called a DMOA – or Daily Method of Operation – PLUS regular and intentional personal development. Developing a mindset of perseverance, of learning to be positive instead of the constant complainers who just complain about their job and never take action to change it, being coachable and being willing to follow a system or listen to a mentor show you the ropes — all that is important for success.
The employee thinks everything that is not time-for-dollars is a scam – because they can’t see past what is right in front of them. They look at something new and say, “it will never work” and then they go right back to jobs they can’t stand and hand their souls back to Corporate America and would rather complain than change.
The challenge with an at-home business is you really want to just embrace the discomfort, embrace the initial growing pains. And keep at it until and despite. Until you see results – and despite no boss telling you what to do.
Coaching makes a huge difference – and what is awesome about network marketing and many at-home businesses is for a small price you get free training and likely a free coach of sorts.
I have invested a lot of time and energy into learning but it doesn’t have to be expensive. I got into business for $150. I am in a coaching and accountability group that is just $20 / month. I am in a free business group on FB. There are AFFORDABLE groups that offer powerful training and so much value that they always always always OVER deliver. I just went through their 7-day TIKTOK training and it was $1 to do it and it provided hours of training by experts, a community group to ask questions, fun assignments, and more. You learn more than a business degree in some of these courses.
Yes, it’s hard to figure out an at-home business. But I didn’t quit my day job – I just found a way out of my day job gets kicked to the curb.
BUT being broke, working until the day you die, being controlled by cooperating America where you are always having to chase that paycheck carrot they dangle in front of you, is also HARD.
Choose your hard.
If you want to parter up, send me an email to MikethePharmacistCo@gmail.com . If you are on Facebook, send me your link, I will send you a friend request, and invite you to our private Biz group, SEU.
MikethePharmacist