How to Build a Side Hustle into Any Schedule [+ 3 Examples You Can Follow!]

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This week’s post was written by Cody from Fly to Fi. It reminds me so much of when I was trying to find time for my side hustle as well when I still had a full-time job. Good stuff – another testament that it can be done! 

You want to start a side hustle, but you “can’t find the time”. You “literally can’t”!

What if I told you that you’re thinking about it all wrong? What if you discovered that these limiting beliefs were just roadblocks capping your income potential?

In this post, I will show you exactly how to build a side hustle into any schedule, regardless of your job, hours, or location. Ready to unlock your inner side hustle?

Analyze Your Situation

The perfect side hustle for you depends on a multitude of factors, but most importantly, how do you spend the hours in your day? And are you spending them on the right business model?

Are you a construction worker?

Do you work in IT?

Are you a personal trainer?

I understand that many of you readers may have two or three jobs, but the analysis is still the same. Determine how each hour of your day is spent and figure out how to monetize it.

To illustrate what I mean, I’m going to tap my magic wand and create characters out of my previous questions:

1. Joe the Construction Worker
2. Sarah the IT Specialist
3. Zeus the Personal Trainer

Now let’s walk through a typical weekday and determine how each of these people can make money.

Joe the Construction Worker

Joe is a 40-year-old man with a wife and two kids. He starts his construction workday begins at 6:30 AM and works until 2:30 PM. After picking up his kids from school, doing some household chores and cooking dinner, it’s around 6:00 PM. Joe then plops on the couch and watches his favorite TV shows until bedtime at 10:00 PM.

Not-so-fun fact: Did you know the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV per day? (That’s a lot of time for side hustling)

Side Hustle Ideas for Joe

• Pick up some contract work at night or on weekends.
  • There is always demand for skilled labor and often times these projects have extremely high per-hour earning potential.
• Start a YouTube channel or website showing how to use specific tools / complete specific projects.
  • Joe can actually create content while he’s at his day job. Double win!

Sarah the IT Specialist

Sarah is a single, 28-year-old woman. Her workday at the IT firm typically begins at 9:30 AM and leaves work by 6:30 PM. She goes to the gym afterward and gets home around 8:00 PM. Then, she finishes her night reading a book until it’s time for bed at 11:00 PM.

Side Hustle Ideas for Sarah

• Freelance IT work
  • People are always looking for help with technical issues and many times are willing to pay top dollar.
• Review/Edit books and other reading material
  • Sarah clearly has a knack for reading. Why not pick up some work editing books or other reading materials?

Zeus the Personal Trainer

Zeus is a married, 35-year-old man. He makes his own schedule, but he’s typically at the gym for at least 6 hours each day for clients. The rest of his day is spent creating individual workout plans for his upcoming sessions. He usually unwinds at night by watching a movie with his wife until he falls asleep.

Side Hustle Ideas for Zeus

• Build an online presence
  • This side hustle is open-ended for a reason. There are so many platforms to grow your brand on the internet nowadays (Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Website, etc.) Since Zeus is already doing the personal training, he might as well record himself and take pictures doing workouts and use that material to grow his online presence and monetize it.
• Create a digital workout plan
  • Right now, Zeus spends an enormous amount of time customizing each client’s workouts. However, if Zeus were to create a bunch of custom workouts and upload them to a digital platform, he could earn revenue in perpetuity with the same workout plans.

Side Hustles are for Everyone

If you noticed, all of the side hustles suggested for our case study participants either (a) tied into their daily schedule, (b) aligned with their skill set, or (c) both!

Although these side hustles may be specific to each of their skill sets, are plenty of side hustles that require low-to-no skills. Each of the case study participants seemed to have a few hours of downtime each day. Let’s see how they could monetize that downtime with creative side hustles … or maybe even start their own online business!

Sharing Economy

• This includes anything that involves making money by sharing the assets you already own like house-sharing (Airbnb), ride-sharing (Uber/Lyft), and car-sharing (Turo). Depending on your location, you could potentially earn thousands of dollars each month with these side hustles.

Gig Economy

• There are dozens of sites where you have the opportunity to make money by completing “gigs” or “tasks”. My personal favorites include Fiverr, TaskRabbit, and Freelancer. If you’re highly skilled in a specific area (graphic design, coding, SEO, etc.) you can earn handsome dollar-per-hour profits.

Item Flipping

• You can find insane deals at yard sales, thrift stores, clearance sections, etc. If you can capitalize on these deals and then turn around and sell the items on Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, or FB Marketplace, you’ll start to earn a significant little stream of side hustle income.

Building an Online Business

• I saved the best side hustle for last. Even though it’s certainly more time intensive than the side hustles mentioned above, and you might reap the fruits of your labor from the start, building an online business can generate MASSIVE returns over the long-term. At some point, you may even be able to take your hustle to startup.

Do You Have What It Takes?

No matter what your occupation, economic status, gender, age, race, or any other factor for that matter, you have the ability to earn side hustle income.

Every person’s story is different from the next, but if you are creative enough, you can find ways to earn an additional $10, $100, or even $1,000+ every single month. Over the long term, these additional income streams will pay huge dividends and will supercharge your financial journey.

Once you get bit with the side hustle bug, you won’t be able to stop.

Just to prove to you that I walk the walk and talk the talk, here is my typical weekday.

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5:45 AM – 6:30 AM: Wake up, shower, and work on side hustles for 15-20 minutes before leaving the house.

7:00 AM – 8:20 AM: Work on side hustles for the entirety of my train commute.

8:45 AM – 5:15 PM: The ol’ nine-to-five grind

5:40 PM – 7:00 PM: Side hustle the entirety of my train ride back.

7:15 PM – 8:15 PM: Gym. (Alright, this doesn’t make me money, but working out is a priority for me)

8:30 PM – 11:00 PM: Work on side hustles until it’s time for bed!

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At my age, I have the freedom to optimize nearly every minute of my day into a money-making venture. I’m not saying you have to be that hardcore, but you may have pockets of time where you could be side hustling instead of doing something else.

Huge thanks to Chenell for this guest post opportunity and I hope that I ignited your side hustle spark!