How to Follow Your Passion With A Side-Hustle: Identify your Strengths, Interests. . . and Thrive!

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Claire and welcome to this course on how to follow your passion with a side hustle, your guide to building a slushy life. In this course, I'm gonna show you my tips and tricks for following your passion without burning out. This is going to be with a side hustle or a side passion project. We're going to be diving into how exactly you can fit a side hustle into your life. How to choose right side hustle for you. I'm gonna go into detail in the first lesson about what a slushy is. But first, I'll just introduce myself and why I'm a good person to teach this course. I am a photographer, but I'm also a waitress and I am a teacher of marketing photography courses online slightly. It's a person with slashes in the job title. I'm basically a photographer slash waitress slash online photography teacher. That's what a splashy is and that's why I love to talk about this. I am a slushy and I've been living this lifestyle for a couple of years now. Over this time period, I figured out ways of choosing the right side projects for myself. And I'd love to share those tips and tricks with you today. Please watch and enjoy this course. And I'll see you in the breast lesson. 2. What exactly is a 'slashie'?: We're going to define what a splashy is. I have already given a quick one sentence definition of what this is in the introduction. But let's go a little bit more in detail. So a slushy is a person who works multiple jobs or has multiple passions. They cooled slushy is because of the slashes in their job title. So as I said, I am a photographer slash waitress slash photography teacher. But other examples are artists slash DJ, jewelry maker slash teacher, or even though cliched things like models slash actor, Actress slash director. These were the original slashes soap. I mostly mentioned the creative fields and that is where you'll find a lot of slashes. But actually, it doesn't have to be if you work in a tech startup doing even accounting. And you have an eBay store on the side or D pop store on the side, then you're flashy. It doesn't need to be specifically creative, just needs to be something you are passionate about or interested in. You need to be doing multiple things. I've started by speaking about job titles, but it can't just be people that are pursuing their passions. And as long as it's something that you are pursuing and a proud of and you would like to tell people, I would say you're a splashy or multi high finance. If you have a few of those different projects, it does sound quite overwhelming in some ways I understand that having lots of different projects, but I really want to stress that it's not about being on the grind, like hustling 247. Of course, some people might take it that way. But for me it's definitely not about that and it doesn't need to be about that. Honestly, it shouldn't really be about that because that's just kind of ways to add more pressure on yourself. But actually it's more about adding more joy into your life, doing things that you actually want to do. If you make a little bit of money on the side, great. But it's not necessarily about that, it's about adding more interests, pursuing more interests between them or passions. So what does this flashy life? Well, a slushy life is about adding more joy to your life, following your passions and more interests. It's about not being defined by your day job and exploring more things that make you you. So that's an overview of what a flashy is, what a slushy life and lifestyle is. So let's get into the next lesson and we're gonna be talking about some of the benefits of flashy lifestyle. 3. Why you will love being a slashie: Why you will love being a slushy. In this lesson, I'm going to give it three reasons why you will love being a flashy if you just need that extra little bit of motivation to get into this mindset, add, introduce some more passion into your life. Starting with number one, being a slushy takes the pressure off your passion. Relying on your passion to generate your entire income can make it more stressful and less fun. For me, it's a huge relief that I don't have to rely on my creative pursuits to pay the bills. I'm still madly in love with photography, which might not be the case if I was solely focused on it. If it was my entire career with my part-time job, working at a coffee shop. I'm safe in the knowledge that I'll be able to pay my rent and bills, even if I don't get booked for a single photoshoot in a full month. If I was a full-time photographer, I'd have to hit a certain number of bookings every single month. Slow couple of weeks could mean dipping into my savings or cutting back on expenses. It's hard to feel passionate about something when it's the difference between food on the table and going hungry, following your passion with a side hustle, on the other hand, can be a great way to take the pressure off. Another option is to actually focus on your passion, but have a part-time side job to supplement your income. This is what I do. This means that I don't have to go chasing after any old uninspiring photography gig. That comes my way. Just to pay the rent. Number to be in a splashy allows for serendipitous moments. When you work full-time in one industry, you end up knowing the people in your circle really well. At conferences on events, you see the same faces. You might work in the same office or be in the same Facebook groups when your network only consists of people who think like you onto work in same industry who have similar connections to you. You're missing out. For one. You're missing out on challenging your way of thinking or doing things. You might even be missing out on new clients or opportunities. Think about it. If you're a graphic designer and you spend most of your time with other designers, you're unlikely to randomly meet someone who'd like to commission you for design project. The designers, you know, we'll just do it themselves with our own skills. You're never gonna get hired. Your circle is too homogenous. Now, what if you're a graphic designer, but you're also a bartender? In this case, serendipitous connections can occur. Perhaps the bomb manager needs someone to redesign the drinks menu. Or a customer you get talking to needs new business cards. And what about the other slash easy to work with? Perhaps the waitress slash actor needs posters for her one woman play out of the blue opportunities like this to make this flashy lifestyle both lucrative and exciting. Number three, being a splashy makes life interesting. Finally, I'm grateful to be as flashy because it's simply ****** up my life. I think it'll spice up yours too. Don't get me wrong. Having lots of different projects and responsibilities across different jobs and industries can be stressful at times. But it's also fun. Every day is different when you juggle a day job with a side hustle. For instance, in my life, when I get bored taking orders for customers, I can remind myself that in just a few hours I'll be free to dive into my photography. And if I have a bad case of creative block when taking self portraits, I have the luxury of being able to switch to my other job and focusing on drafting up a script for my next lesson. Instead. They have it. There are three reasons why you will love venus flashy, and embracing the side hustle. The rest of this course I'm gonna be sharing step-by-step process of building a slushy life and embracing a side hustle without burning out. 4. How to find your strengths: In this lesson, we're gonna be identifying your strengths. This is the first step in finding a cytosol that's good for you and a passion project that's good for you. In these lessons, I'm going to be focusing specifically on a side hustle or a passion project. I don't want to get too confusing and bug downs with the intricacies of being a slushy. Some people might be Asahi by having two part-time jobs, something like this. But I'm gonna be speaking about side hustles or side passion projects because that's something that fits into everyone's life really, if you have a full-time job or, or you're studying full-time, you can add a side hustle or a passion project into your life. It fits in with more people's lives. So how to choose the good side hustle for you? Well, the first step is to identify your strengths. There are a number of ways to figure out your strengths. Of course, one way is to just think about your life and work experience. What do you particularly good at in your day to day life? You can ask yourself these questions to prompt you. What tasks and dogs to your colleagues rely on you to do? Why? What is your go-to answer when you're asked in an interview for your greatest strength, what are your household responsibilities? Why do you in particular take charge of these? What tasks do you feel most confident doing? What subjects did you excel out in school or university? When you enter a state of flow? Flow is when you are immensely focused on the task at hand, so much so that you lose track of time. Simply put, when are you in the zone? Have a think about your answer to those questions and you should start to see what some of your strengths are. You can also ask your friends and family what your strengths are. Sometimes they can see us better than we can see ourselves. Finally, there are loads of free quizzes that can pinpoint your strengths. I recommend doing the VIA survey of character strengths. You can find this online for free by simply searching VIA survey of character strengths in a search engine will go into VIA Character.org. It's important to think about both the soft skills you possess. These are the personal attributes and personality traits that are hard to measure and also the hard skills. These are specific technical skills that you probably learned on the job, perhaps at university or on another course. Examples of soft skills include time management, leadership, problem-solving negotiation. Hard skills can be anything from SEO marketing to UX design or Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, javascript, anything like that, anything you need specific training for that you couldn't do otherwise. I'll give an example of my own strengths. I would say that I have good communication skills that I've developed for customer service jobs, as well as doing presentations at university. My friends or family, you might say that I'm a creative person, which is another soft skill. On the VIA survey of character strengths. My signature strength was curiosity. An example of a hard skill that I have is that I can edit photographs using Lightroom and Photoshop. Now it's your turn. Write down a list of your strengths. At least ten, include a mixture of hard and soft skills. Next to this list, right? Another list of at least ten possible side hustles that relate to these strengths. Don't worry right now if you can't actually imagine doing any of these jobs, just get them down on paper. If it makes it easier, look at one strength at a time and then write down one side hustle that relates to it. For instance, if one of your strengths is audio production, next to it, you could write stop my own podcast, or simply freelance podcast editing or take a soft strength like attention to detail. A related cytosol could be proofreading resumes or documents. Even if a side hustle that comes to your mind doesn't sound appealing right now. Just write it down if it speaks to your strengths, don't worry, you're not committing to any of these ideas. This process is, is just a brain dump, just getting all these possibilities down on paper. Write down at least ten cytosol that relate to your strengths. 5. How to find your passions: Now we're gonna be looking at how to identify your passion. Now this is a big one, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to help you pinpoint the passion that is your life purpose or something huge like this. But I'd rather you think about it a little bit smaller scale and just think of it as something you're really interested in. That's what we're looking forward today. Because I think the word passions really scares people off and they think that they do need to look for their life mission. We're going to take away some of the pressure of this word and we're just going to look at it as things you're super interested in. Because for somebody to become a passion, you need to actually start doing the thing. We're going to find something that you're interested in that you want to start doing or you want to do more of. This is gonna be your passion for the purpose of these lessons. Passions or interests. It doesn't matter what you call it. What's important is you get clear on the activities that you find enjoyable. Why is this important when it comes to picking a side hustle? Well, to build a slushy life and avoid burnout, your side hustle should be something that gets you pumped, something you're excited to get up already four or something you are motivated to work on during the weekend. If you add an unenjoyable cytosol into your life, then you're just adding more work to your plate and gaining little from it. Sure. The extra income is nice, but if it's something you're doing just for the money, when you already have another regular job, you are on the road to burnout. How to find your passions or your interests? Well, I recommend doing some soul searching. You can ask yourself some or all of these questions. What do I spend my free time doing if I had a day ultimate self, what is the one thing that I would do that day? What am I? Creative outlets? What were my favorite things to do as a child? What are my main hobbies? What do I like to read about? What documentaries do I like to watch? What are they about? What activities do I like to do on holiday? What do I do to de-stress and unwind? How do I keep fit and healthy? List of hobbies, interests, passions, and favorite activities should be beginning to form in your head. That's great. Now it's time for an activity like we did with their strengths. Write down a list of at least ten of your passions, interests, and hobbies. Then beside this list, write down list of side hustles that relate to these passions. I want you to forget about if you have the skills to these jobs right now, just focus on what excites you. Even if you don't think you're particularly suited to a side hustle, write it down. For instance, my list of interests include travel, graphic design, and reading. From my list of side hustles, I wrote down, launch, travel YouTube channel, create an Instagram and blog for reviewing books and design logos for businesses. At this stage, it doesn't matter that I don't have the design skills needed to create professional logos. This exercise is just another brain dump where we're listing off all the possibilities. So write down at least ten possible side hustles. Try to think of new ones, ones that you haven't already written down in the loss, the activity. By now you have two separate lists of side hustles. One list that speaks to your strengths, and another that speaks to your passions. 6. How to identify your passion project: In the past two lessons, we've been looking at your strengths and your passions. And now it's time to 0 in on something that speaks to both your strengths and your passions. So this is getting close to finding that passion project or that side hustle that you're gonna be working on. You're not necessarily committing to it for life. But it should be one with a lot of potential that you're excited about. This is the cytosol that you will keep in mind as we go forward with these lessons. How are you going to choose just one side hustle out of all the options you have in front of you from the previous two lessons. Well, I have another activity for you. Get a large piece of paper, ideally A4 or larger. Draw a Venn diagram with two circles that intersect at the middle. Title one circle passions, and the other one, strengths. Now you are going to put all the side hustles. The ones you've wrote in the last two activities in to this Venn diagram. If a side hustle is a job that is purely a passion and does not play to any of your strengths. You can put it in the passion circle. If, on the other hand, it is purely a strength and it's not something you'd actually be interested in doing, put it in the strength circle. And finally, most importantly, if it's a side hustle that speaks to both your passions and strengths. Put it in the middle plot of a Venn diagram where the two circles intersect. To give an example, I would go through my own Venn diagram. In my passions circle I have design logos and BR Fashion Stylist. This is because I'm interested in sign of fashion, but I don't believe this fit with my strengths as I don't currently have the advanced design skills or fashion knowledge. Then on the other side of things, I have my passion circle. One thing there is flip items, which is buying items second-hand and selling them for a profit. And freelance copywriting. These are in the strength section because I think I could be quite good at the side hustles, but I'm not quite excited about the prospect of actually doing them. Finally, in the middle of my Venn diagram, where the strengths and passions circles intersect. I have written travel YouTube channel, books to Graham and Instagram account about books and sell Lightroom presets. These three side hustles speak to both my passions and my strengths. Go ahead and do your own Venn diagram. Like I've explained, the side hustles in the intersection of the circles are your most promising side hustles. If you only have one side hustle in the intersection, you've found your side hustle to pursue. However, if you were like me, you might have a few side hustles in that section where they speak to both your passions and your strengths. In this case, simply choose the one that you are most excited about, and also one that you think you'll realistically be able to do. Personally, I chose cell Lightroom presets as my next side hustle. As I knew, I could easily set up an Etsy store to sell them. And I'm also excited about experimenting with different presets. It honestly doesn't matter which one you choose. If you have multiple side hustles that are playing to post your strengths and your passions, then you have multiple options that would be just as good as each other. So just pick one and run with it. By now you should have one side hustle that you are excited about and that you have the capability to actually do. Now I don't need to stress out too much when you're looking at your list. If there is nothing there that's super speaking to your soul or I don't know, just don't stress yourself out too much looking at this, You're not going to be necessarily dedicating your entire life to this. Firstly, it's gonna be on the side, so it's not going to take up all of your time. And secondly, you're giving something go, it's an experiment. You can always come back to those other two lessons and pinpoint a new strength or a new passion, you can revisit these classes. Life is a journey to experiment these things on the whole point of introducing a side hustle or a side passion is to enjoy it and to experiment with it. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Don't freak out. This isn't you're not committing to the rest of your life to do this. However, if it goes well, of course it might be something that you do for a very long time. 7. Keep motivated by knowing your why: By now you've pinpointed your side hustle or your side passion that you're going to be focusing on. In this lesson, we're going to get really crystal clear on why you're focusing on it. We're getting crystal-clear on why you want a passion project, why you want a side hustle in the first place? We've already gone over some of the reasons why you might want to be introduced in a side hustle in a previous lesson, however, in this lesson we're going to get a little bit more personal to be writing down is specifically why you want to do this passion project in particular, defining your why is really important. Because doing a side hustle is not easy. Of course, side hustles can be fun and super rewarding sometimes, but they're not always. When you've worked a full day at your 95, it can be hard to get yourself to actually work on your side project. There can be a strong temptation to chill on the couch and watch TV or endlessly browse tiktok. But if you know why exactly you're bothering to work on this new project, you are more likely to actually put in the hours and make it a successful venture. Let's find your why. So in a previous lesson, we said, why you'd want to be a slushy is one takes pressure off your passion. To be the flashy allows for a serendipitous moments. Three, the slash eat makes life more interesting. You can definitely take inspiration from those lies if they are relevant to you, your chosen passion project. But you'll also have some personal reasons while you're doing your chosen side, hustle. For example, with my side hustle selling presets, my list of y's could look like this. I'm doing this side hustle because I will improve my editing skills as I experiment with different presets. I can put the extra income I make from sales towards new camera equipment. Selling on Etsy is also a form of marketing, meaning more people find my photography and hopefully some people will hire me in the future. And I love editing photos. It will be fun to make edits and experiment with Lightroom presets that I will later cell. Of course, your y could be very different to mine. But I hope my example gives you some ideas. Remember that while financial benefits like additional income, can be a great why money shouldn't be the only reason that you are working on a side hustle. This lesson is activity is to write down the reasons why you are doing your side hustle in the first place. I encourage you to think of at least three different reasons. You can then stick them up on your wall, fright them in your planner, or save them in your notes app and look at them often to remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing. With your white in mind, you can start slotting your side, hustle into your schedule. 8. Find time in your schedule for your side-hustle: By this stage, you must have a lot of ideas about what you wanted to do and you're excited to get going. But of course, you need to find some time to fit it into your already probably very busy scheduled between your household responsibilities, family commitments, and everything else. It can be hard to find the time to dedicate to a side hustle or a passion project. But it's very possible you just need to do a little bit of planning. You probably already have a busy life filled with work responsibilities, personal appointments, family commitments, and a bunch of miscellaneous tasks. You might be wondering how you are going to fit yet another project into your hectic schedule. Well, adding the side hustle into your life is possible with a bit of planning. Firstly, consider what your average day looks like. Think about the answers to these questions. What time do you wake up in the morning each day? What do you have to do before you leave the house? Do you have children to attend to or other responsibilities? Do you work nine to five job. If so, is it really 95 or is it more like 530 or six or later, by the time you clock out, how long is your commute? What time do you get home after work. What do you spend your evenings doing? What time do you go to bed? With these questions answered, your average day should be forming in your mind. Now, are there any quiet or wasted moments in your day that you can use to work on your side hustle instead, you're looking for a chunk of time. Ideally at least one hour each weekday or of course, you can devote two or three hours a day if you like. If you wanted to get more serious about your side hustle, if you're working a regular office job, your best bet is probably either in the morning before you go to work or in the evenings. Could you get up an hour earlier to work on your side, hustle, waken up before the kids do, for example. Or perhaps you can cut down on your evening Netflix binge and instead work on your side, hustle for an hour after dinner each weekday. If you can't find an hour in your weekdays to work on your project. There is another way. On your weekends, you can devote some time to your side hustle. If you can focus on your side hustle for five hours on a Saturday afternoon, for instance. You're doing just as much as someone doing one hour a day off to work. Ideally, you want to put in time in your calendar and stick to it. You can do this at the beginning of each week or each month. Treat the chunk of time that you schedule like a dentist appointment. Meaning you should keep it free and honor it by showing up at this time to work solely on your side hustle. I recommend working at the same time, every day or every weekend so that it becomes a habit. Of course, this all depends on your own personal schedule. You might work irregular hours, for instance. In this case, you would need to be more flexible. I might not be able to plan so far in advance. Instead, look at your work schedule as soon as it comes out and schedule in time on your calendar there. And then if your calendar is starting to look super busy, I encourage you to look back at the why you wrote in the last lesson. This will get you motivated to make time for your side hustle. That said, don't forget that a side hustle is on your terms. You can always take a break or a day off if you feel overwhelmed. More on that in a later lesson. 9. Doing the thing: what to expect: Step six, get to work. You've chosen your side hustle, you know your why, and you've carved out some time in your schedule to work on your side hustle. Now it's time to actually get to work. It's tempting to jump straight into the fun part of your side hustle, especially if you chose a creative one. Say, for instance, you started a cupcake business on the side, your mind is already running away from you with ideas for new flavors on toppings. You're excited to get into the kitchen, to experiment, to get baking and taste testing, and all of that is great. Your side hustle is supposed to be exciting and fun. But when you're starting out, it's important to remember that the time spent creating your amazing product or doing your service will only make up around 50% of your work. The other 50% needs to be spent on the business side of things. At least at the beginning. You're going to need to strategize to market your product or service and do general administrative tasks before you dive straight into creating or doing the thing, whatever that thing is for you. Use some of your side hustle time this week to think about these questions. How am I going to monetize the cytosol? How much should I charge for my product or service? If it's relevant to your project, ask, Where am I going to sell this product or service? How am I going to promote and market my side hustle? Do I need to register as a business owner or freelancer? Those are just a few questions for you to think about. As you brainstorm. Be sure to take notes and write down your action items. These are your to-dos, the business activities you'll be working on. As your side hustle grows, you may find ways to automate these activities or could even higher freelancer to help. When that time comes, you could cut back on the amount of time you spend on the business activities. But until then, you'll have to give equal amounts of time and energy to the essential business tasks, as well as making your product or carrying out your service. 10. When to step back: 3 Rs of a slashie life: In this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to the three R's of flashy lifestyle. Those are reflect, remixed, and recharge. So reflection is a huge part of all life. And especially when you're trying to introduce a side hustle or a passion project into your life over the first month, on the first six months and certainly the first year. You want to be carving out some time to look at your reasons why, those reasons why that you wrote down why you're doing this passion project. You have to look at them and reflect on them. And make sure that the passion project you're doing is having a positive impact in your life. And his meeting those, why's that you set out for yourself or if it's not necessarily meeting them, have your reasons for doing the passion project changed? In this case, maybe you can write some new wise. So for instance, say one of your y's is that you want to fine tune one of your skills. In my case, when I was creating Lightroom presets and selling them, I wanted to fine tune my Lightroom editing skills and really improve those skills by editing and different lighting conditions and so on. When I reflect on how it's going, I can see that I have been educated in different lighting conditions and I have been improving my skills. So far. It's going good. Even if my presets aren't selling, I don't want making a lot of money from them. I'm still getting value out of this passion project. So for now, I'm going to continue to do it. If one of your y's is to improve your skills, then ask yourself, am I improving the skill by doing this pattern project? Maybe you're not, maybe you've come to a wall. And this could be something as simple as maybe you're a guitar teacher and you're teaching other people how to play the guitar. But your own teaching beginners and you're just going over the same old three chords. You feel like you're not learning anything. But if your y was really important for you to actually be improving, you could reflect and you could see that you want to change things up. That's where remixing comes in. Remixing is just rejecting and changing around the way that you do your passion project or your side hustle. In the case of the guitar teacher, maybe they realize that teaching isn't a good way to be learning new skills. Perhaps they phase out the teaching that they were doing. Instead they focus on producing new music. If you come to some realizations during the reflection process that you're not reaching the goals or the mission that you set out to do, then that's fine. Just embrace the remix. Like I said, if remixes changing things up. If you're really at a loss, say in our example of a guitar teacher who isn't enjoying teaching, isn't learning anything new from teaching. And that was important to them. And for whatever reason, they don't want to start creating their own music. Maybe they just got sick of doing the guitar. That's absolutely fine. Remixing can also being ONE right back to the drawing board, going back to identifying your strengths, passions, and choosing a new side, hustle or passion project. So it's really up to you. However, what I would say is don't be too quick to completely abandoned your side project. Because it could just be that you need to recharge. When you reflect, you might realize that you're feeling drained and even though you love what you're doing, It's just a little bit too much with your other responsibilities. And that's absolutely okay. So in this case, you need to recharge and regardless of how you're feeling, you need to make sure you recharge so that you never burn out as well. So even if you don't feel completely overwhelmed, check-in and make sure that you've had enough breaks and you've had some time away from your side, hustle, as well as your main hospital. Let's be real. I do want to keep on stressing this slushy life is never about hustling so hard that you burn out or it really shouldn't be. So check in with how you're feeling and take an hour off at the very least. But if it's more than that, if you're feeling more overwhelmed than just taking a day off, then take a week off or take a month off. It's really up to you. That's the wonders of like a slushie life is that it is up to you how much effort you put in and also when to take some time and step back honestly, to shelve it for as long as you need to reflect then in a week or a month and see if you're ready to dive back in and you can make some more time in your schedule to start doing your passion project. Again, one thing I would say is if you are doing recharging, which you should be at some point, make sure you do write in your calendar when you're going to go back and at least see how you're feeling and seeing if you can jump into it. You're feeling really burnt out and you know, you need a week off or we call it a take that week, but do right in your calendar for the next Monday coming up to reflect on how you're feeling and if you're feeling up to it, then jumping back into your routine and scheduling more sessions to be doing your side project and your side hustle. So those are the three R's of slushy life. And finally, we're going to wrap up in the next video. 11. Your turn! The class project: Those are my tips on living as flashy lifestyle. Your class project is what we've already discussed. So don't forget to do that. It's identifying your strengths, your passions, drawing out that Venn diagram, putting in your strengths and your passions, and ultimately finding that one passion project that you're going to work on. So please do do that. And if you feel like you want to share, take a photo and put it in the class project section. I'd love to see what you're gonna be working on. And that's pretty much it for me. I love if you could follow me on up by Claire P on Instagram, on tiktok, the same username at by Claire P. Or if you want to check my photography, find me app shop by Claire P on Instagram. So yeah, definitely follow along there as I'll be sharing more tips and also share in any other courses I do in the future. Yeah, that's it. Thanks a million.