Episode Details

What do Apple, Nike, Under Armour, Instagram, and Groupon all have in common?

It's not just that they're hugely successful, multibillion dollar companies. They also share a common birth – they all started life as side projects of their founders.

I've been reading Nike founder Phil Knight's autobiography Shoe Dog recently, and I highly recommend it – very readable and interesting. He was working as an accountant at Price Waterhouse whilst establishing what we now know as Nike, and when he needed to spend more time on the business, he switched to become an accounting professor at his local university. It was several years into the business before he quit his day job and devoted himself full time to his enterprise.

So if businesses as enormously successful as these can spring from a side hustle, perhaps you can attain your Financial Autonomy goal by using the same approach. Let's take a look at what a side hustle is, and how you might be able to use this approach to gain the choices in life that you're yearning for.

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NBN Co commissioned some research earlier in the year looking at how Australian's were using the internet to generate additional income. The report found that the majority of Australians (80%) are looking to this as a way of finding fulfilment outside of work, and 1 in 4 are already earning additional income online. A similar study in the US found that 28% of those aged between 18 and 26 were working on their own, on the side. Of those almost all (96%) worked in the side hustle at least once per month, and 25% said they earned more the USD500 per month.

Certainly the increased comfort and normality of internet commerce is a key enabler in the rise of the side hustle trend around the world.

And whilst online businesses are perhaps the most popular of side hustle options, plenty of other opportunities exist too, from running a food stall at a local market, to teaching yoga classes of an evening, or pet sitting for people when they go on holidays.

Perhaps before we go too much further, let's just define what a side hustle is to ensure everyone is on the same page. What we are talking about here is something that you do outside of your normal method of earning an income, that produces additional income. So in the Phil Knight example I mentioned earlier, by day he worked as an accountant, and then in the evening and on weekends, he built this little running shoe business.

Now in the Nike example this ultimately became his full time job, but that doesn't have to be the objective. Maybe your side hustle is just a way to build up some savings, or pay down the mortgage quicker. There are all sorts of ways that you could use a side hustle to achieve your Financial Autonomy dream.

I used to work with a guy who hired out inflatable jumping castles for kids parties on the weekend. He ended up employing his daughter in the business full time.

Research undertaken by Manpower Group also highlighted how the side hustle concept linked to the idea of the "gig economy", finding that 40% of Australian millennials preferred to work a number of part time jobs, rather a single, Monday to Friday, 9-5 job.

One aspect of the side hustle concept that I really like is that it enables you to give things a try, to experiment. To test ideas and see if real people are willing to part with their hard earned cash for your idea.

I've spoken in the past about the Lean Start Up methodology. A key concept in there is how many cycles can you go through of putting an idea out in the world, obtaining real customer feedback, tweaking your offer based on that feedback, and going back out to market again. The more times you can run through that cycle, the greater the likeli