Ep# 093: Make Your Side Hustle Your Main Squeeze Without Burnout With Kat Harris

I know some of you listening in haven’t taken that leap into full time business yet so you’re still juggling life as an employee and as a business owner. So how do you know if and when it’s the right time to take the leap?

Well, I asked someone who’s been there!

Today we have the lovely, Kat Harris on the show - a Brooklyn based online educator, content creator and female empowerment advocate! But she got her start as a full time photographer and was featured in publications like GQ, Forbes, People, and US Weekly.

So - while her full time gig was thriving, she was feeling called to her passion project that wasn’t really producing much (sound familiar?)

I wanted to know all the things…

How she made her passion project a profitable one?

How she knew when to take the leap?

What the transition looked like?

And whether she thinks full time entrepreneurship is right for everyone!

Let’s tune in, shall we?!

We chat about...

Monetizing Your Side Gig

For a while, Kat’s side gig, The Refined Woman, was just an expensive hobby. For five years she didn’t make a penny because she couldn’t figure out how to monetize it. It was a time suck and a money suck, but at the end of the day she felt so strongly that The Refined Woman was what she was supposed to be doing.

She realized that brands weren’t taking her seriously and people weren’t wanting to hire her because she wasn’t taking herself seriously. The big change came when she started treating her side gig like it was the real thing, even before it was.

After that, figure out what your secret sauce is and put your blinders on to everyone else!

Need help figuring out your secret sauce? Click here!

Managing Scaling Your Side Business While Working Full Time

Be so strategic with your time. Try block scheduling -- find a chunk of time that you can dedicate to your side business and stick to it. Don’t check your email first if you get derailed by it and put your phone in airplane mode.

So own your time, don’t let your time own you. When you operate out of that responsive flight mode rather than an intentional zone, you will often get to the end of the day and feel like you didn’t actually get anything worthwhile done.

Productivity Hacks

Kat utilizes the Pomodoro Technique
Make a list of the top 3 things you need to get done that day and make sure they get done

The Right Time to Take the Leap

Would you bet on yourself? Analyze your work ethic and your drive and your successes and failures and your business model… would you bet on yourself?

You might not always feel 100% ready, but once you take that jump and actually need to make it full time, you’ll get ready. When you need do to it, you rise to the occasion.

However, it’s also totally okay to wait to take your business full time until it’s in a place where it can financially support you! Sometimes jumping too early and having to hustle 24/7 leads to burn out and resentment toward your business.

Both options are good options. You have options! You just need to figure out what feels right for your life and your business.

Is Entrepreneurship for Everyone?

“Absolutely not! I do not think it’s for everyone! I have people come up to me all the time who think my life is so cool because I get to work my own hours and work from anywhere, and I’m like, ‘yeah, but you have a 401k and a retirement program and insurance that’s paid for!’”

Starting a business is really hard. And when you own it, it’s not a 9-5. Even if you try to practice healthy boundaries, like a 40 hour work week, taking the weekends off, a full 24 hours each week with no social media or email, scheduling regular times to rest… it’s hard work.

We don’t always have to make our side gig a full time thing. Our culture today puts so much pressure on us to do that in order to feel successful, but you can keep your side gig your side gig if you actually do like your full time job! It can just be icing on that cake.

This was such an important conversation to have for those listeners who are on the fence about their side hustles. You do have to get scrappy, you do have to be resourceful and work hard, and you absolutely have to have your Why etched on your heart, but if you do have all of those things, there is no cap on what you can do with it.