How to Launch a Side Hustle While Working Full-Time

One of the keys to building wealth is increasing your income. Most 20-somethings don’t have a savings problem, they have an income problem.

You’re trying to pay off student loans, graduate from a college lifestyle, and invest for their future all while working with an entry-level salary. While I believe the fastest way to increase your income is focusing on your primary source of income, aka being a top performer at work and negotiating salary increases because of that, I’m also a fan of rolling up your sleeves and hustling to make some additional income on the side.

Not only is side hustling a great way to make some extra cash to deploy against whatever financial goals you have right now, it is also a great way to learn about business, develop additional skills, explore other career paths, and most importantly, learn how to independently make money.

So with all of this in mind, I invited my friend Genesis Hinckley on the podcast to discuss side hustles. Know as genuinelygenesis on Instagram and TikTok, Genesis has been hustling since she was a kid selling coconut popsicles on the side of the road in Bolivia. Growing up low-income, she learned firsthand how to turn her hard work into cash. Now in her 20s, she’s graduated from selling popsicles to working in big tech full-time but she’s still hustling on the side, growing a real-estate empire and content business.

In this conversation, Genesis and I are going to answer a ton of questions about side hustles including whether are side hustles even worth it, how to make time for your side hustle, how to convert this hard work now into passive income in the future, and most importantly, ideas for your first side hustle.

What should I do is always the biggest question I get when discussing side hustles. So aside from some of the side hustles Genesis discusses in this episode, here are 5 other ideas you can consider for your 1st side hustle:

Retail arbitrage: find undervalued products in one market and sell them in another. My personal favorite is garage sales. I find underpriced items at local garage sales and resell them on Facebook Marketplace.
Deliver food and groceries: Popular apps like Grubhub, Doordash, and Instacart have made it easy to find this kind of work and fit it into your schedule. Plus you don’t have to interact with people.
Get paid for your creative talents: if you learned a particular skillset through your day job or a hobby such as graphic design, writing, or voice-over work, you can get paid to help other people with the same service through sites like Fiverr and UpWork.
Offer lessons: are you well-versed in a musical instrument or a sport? You can put that knowledge to use and teach other people to play.
Sell baked goods: people love cakes, cookies, and pies. If you’re good at baking, you could put your talents to use. You can start with friends and family and expand to farmers' markets over time.

This is going to be a great episode. One of many that we have planned for this year so if this is the year you get serious about your financial future, hit the follow button because there are a whole lot more of these episodes coming.

Let’s get into it. I hope you enjoy my conversation with…Hispanic-American, first-generation college student, and miss poor but no more…Genesis Hinckley.

Key Takeaways: