4 Considerations Before Starting Your Side Hustle
Whenever I hear from lawyers about their desire to switch courses in their career, the conversation always makes its way to money. No matter how much money they make or have saved in the bank or 401Ks, every lawyer seems to think that as soon as they leave their job, they won’t be able to afford their “lifestyle.”
Although I am 100% sure that the road between full-time, paid attorney and pennilessness is a long one, the best way to combat the fear of going broke is to start a side hustle before you leave your job. A side hustle is a way to dip your toe in the entrepreneurial waters. You can see what you like and what you don’t. You also get to test your business idea to see whether it can support you in the long term.
When it comes to attorneys and side hustles, things get a little complicated given the nature of our profession. To that end, here are some things you want to consider before walking down the side hustle road.
How Much Time Do You Really Have
If you’re like me, you underestimate how much time you need for everything even downtime. Our culture is replete with sayings like, “sleep when your dead” or “work while they sleep, learn while they party.” But those sayings do not apply to a profession like the law where you are already expected not to be sleeping on behalf of your cases, clients, and law firm. Instead of beating yourself up for sleeping instead of devoting the only 6 hours you have left in a 24 hour work day to your side hustle, go to bed. When you wake up, take a good hard look at your week. If you only have 5 hours per week to start your side gig, you only have 5 and that’s ok. You can do something with those 5 hours for sure.
Hire Help From The Beginning
Because we’ve already established that sleep is essential and you probably only have a few hours per week to get your side hustle going, the best way to manage your time is to hire help for the beginning. When I still had a full-time job and started my side hustle, I hired one of my non-attorney friends to help me with administrative tasks like following up with leads, scheduling meetings and creating marketing materials (aka flyers and brochures because that’s all I was doing back then). By hiring help immediately, I was able to multiply the amount of work I was able to accomplish in my limited free time. My friend also helped me to overcome some personal fears I had about selling in general. Because she wasn’t as close to my budding business as I was, she was able to attack the sales process with gusto. Her energy helped me overcome my mindset issues and helped me get clients quickly.
Remember Ethical Requirements
When you start a side hustle as an attorney, you also have to consider any potential ethical conflicts when choosing your business. For example, if you are a prosecutor, it’s probably not a good idea to start moonlighting as a defense attorney even if you can quickly get clients and even if those clients are in another county or state. No matter how careful you are, your bound to get into some ethical hot water.
If you are not choosing a side hustle that is entirely outside of the law, try selecting something that is related to the law, but doesn’t amount to giving legal advice. Whatever side hustle you choose, make sure you’ve cleared the ethics hurdle first before you get started.
Remember It’s A Hustle Not A Hobby
The great thing about side hustles is that you can test out your business idea without severe consequences. If it works, great. Keep doing what you’re doing and then use the money to save or reinvest in the business until it’s time to quit your job. If it doesn’t work, that’s cool too. You’ve lost nothing and can quickly try a new approach.
Whatever you do don’t turn your side hustle into a hobby with no destination. What I mean by this is don’t get caught up building a website, designing your business cards, or making sure that your logo has the right pixel ratio on your homepage. Your focus must be on attracting clients and making sales. It’s the only way to test the viability of your idea. For everything else, keep it simple. Use a pre-formatted website builder like Wix or Squarespace for your website and hire an inexpensive designer on Fiverr to create a simple and clean logo for you. All of these things can be changed later, but they can be tremendous time wasters in the beginning if you’re not paying attention.
Do you have a side hustle? What are some of the things you had to consider before you started? More importantly, how is it going? Let me know in the comments below.