Ah, the life of the self-employed entrepreneur. Vast wealth in the bank account, a gloriously furnished office looking out into an enormous and lush garden, and a fully-furnished home cinema waiting to be enjoyed as soon as this next assignment is out of the way.
Of course, that’s a pretty illustrious vision of the entrepreneur’s life. Some business success-stories will enjoy these kinds of opulent lifestyles, but it’s by no means a given.
But, other than the hope of one day being able to afford to drop by the nearest Mercedes dealership and drive away in whatever you want, what’s the point of investing time and effort in a side hustle?
Glad you asked. Here are a few great reasons to have a side hustle, which have nothing to do with money.
1. It can keep you hopeful and inspired for the future
One of the primary benefits of a side hustle, is that it gives you something to get excited and hopeful about. Thus, it has the ability to raise your overall quality of life and turn you into the kind of person who actually enjoys life and has a positive inclination, rather than the type who moans about everything all the time.
When you have a side hustle that you find genuinely interesting or engaging, you’re constantly in the process of opening new doors for yourself. Maybe the side hustle will become a fruitful career option one day, and maybe not.
In any event, the side hustle allows the chance to enter into the equation so that you’re not putting all your eggs in the basket of your day job.
2. It makes you a more knowledgeable and interesting person
A side hustle will, by necessity, require a high degree of learning, problem-solving, and applied thinking.
When all is said and done, the side hustle will broaden your knowledge and as a consequence of that, will make you a more interesting person — even if only to the kinds of people who are naturally fascinated by the subject at hand.
And it’s not just linear knowledge that you acquire when working on a side-hustle, either. A side hustle as an affiliate marketer, for example, may teach you about SEO, WordPress web design, basic web coding, USPs and marketing best practices, and the particular product you’re marketing.
3. It helps you to refine your business skills and become more potent in the workplace
Your side-hustle does not have to be directly related in any clear-cut way to what you do as a day job. It’s nonetheless, the case that the skills and insights you acquire from working on your side hustle may have the potential to radically transform your professional life for the better.
Working on your problem-solving skills in one arena help to sharpen them in all areas. Finding out something new about one dimension of the business world is likely to have applications to other areas of that world.
A side-hustle can simply make you more skilled and potent in whatever else you do, professionally.