Intro to Side Hustle Diary
Date: Sun Apr 5, 2020
So I’ve decided I am going to start blogging about all aspects of my life. I want to be a better writer, communicator, and story-teller so I thought sharing my thoughts and ideas may help that out. There is going to be no form at the moment (or even grammar checking). I thought deciding that early on may skew a discovery phase of blogging to pour out my thoughts. I did want to group my thoughts into the way that I think about these things so at the moment I have them categorized them as projects: Software, Courses, Rental Property Investments, Youtube.
Software
First UniSuite.io- It’s my grand plan of having a framework, which all my other software business ideas are based on.
I am interested in the “web” market, where people are trying to set up websites for their business, personal blogs, and ideas. Right now the common approach is a website builder like “WordPress” or “Shopify” which are obviously great options but they usually require an upfront cost. I want to build software for people who are and were like me where I wanted free software to do such things so I can reap the benefits of immersing myself and business with technology. This is the main “Why” of unisuite: “Get more people access to a free-tier of web apps to improve their ideas, businesses, and creativity.
Then there are steps to my “grand plan”. Create a free tier Software as a Service (SaaS) business for the different side-hustles that I am involved with: Screen Printing, Catering, DJ services. If I can capture a market there then I can extract the foundation’s these SaaS businesses are built on and branch out to different “Verticals” which is fancy talk about taking on different markets/businesses. Eventually, sell the different SaaS businesses that are built on top of the foundation (which would be UniSuite.) Then have unisuite be the main hub for people who are first trying software to see a return on “learning and using the product.”
Right now I am working on the screen printing software business. I am trying to implement all the necessary pieces that a SaaS business requires such as a landing page, payment gateway (using Stripe in the meantime) after users upgrade from the free version, being able to create user accounts (which I am using Google’s Firebase for user authentication and account management), and lastly be able to create different objects which could be “products”, “orders”, “clients”, “ingredients”, “services”, that can be easily created and associated to the user.
version 0.1 of screenprinter.io
Courses
I think education is such a fun thing to get involved with. I don’t have much experience with it, but I think I could make the difficult thing I’ve learned easier and fun to consume.
Right now I am working with my brother to create “Start your T-Shirt Clothing Line with Screen Printing – The Complete Guide from Idea to Launch.” We’ve had a couple of years in the screen printing business and thought we could share an extensive insight on how to start your own screen printing business. We’ve also taken an in-person course on screen printing which was super insightful and we wanted to create a digital version of somewhat of what we learned there and what we learned from our experiences.
Currently, we have our notes for the course in Google Docs separated by the different sections we are going to offer in the course. That was decided between my brother and me with research into different courses and how we thought the flow of information would make the most sense.
It’s still a huge work in progress where we are writing down all the content that will be shared within the course. Then it’s be piecing together the presentations, shooting video of ourselves reading a transcript and editing all the clips.
Rental Property Investments
Currently, I have a bunch of my investments tied in with the S&P 500, and I am looking to diversify my income. I thought before I separate my investments into different stock & bond investments (such as investing in international markets), I thought I would invest in something a bit more tangible such as rental properties.
I don’t have a clear philosophy of investing yet, but I believe you should only invest in things you know about. You don’t have to know deeply about the thing, but if you can’t explain to someone why you decided to put your hard-earned cash there, then you have no business being there.
Of course, some people draw a lucky hand and can make a fortune investing in things they know nothing about (like BitCoin), all the best to them, but it’s just not my style. I’d rather be conservative and thoughtful about my investments and get rich slowly.
I’ve inquired about a rental property investment last week on a single-family home with an unfinished basement on the market for $77,000 in the market (Omaha, Nebraska) that I am trying to snag for $50,000. I’ve been approved for a $61,000 mortgage loan with a 20% downpayment (estimated ~$500 payment per month) which seems super ideal (even though I was hoping for the full $70,000) but can’t always get what you want.
I was thinking of putting less than $20,000 in renovating the basement to be a second unit which I could rent out to a tenant and eventually move out after a year (or however long it is in the state of Nebraska that you have to live in a property to consider it your primary residence.)
I still have a lot to figure out there, but I think it would be a good start to educating myself on renovations for a home, seeing how much my investments return once I move out.
Youtube Channel
Similar to the course, I want to teach people the very valuable skill of “coding.” Mostly on how to make web applications, but it would be nice to have a source of income deviate from this, but ultimately I want to do it to show peeps how easy it is to create some projects with coding.
This one is very early in the things I want to do for it. Right now I only have a Trello board with some ideas of videos I want to make but haven’t 100% dedicated to it just yet. I am structuring the Trello board as such:
Final thoughts
This upkeep of side hustles and ideas can get kinda stressful. Especially with having a full-time job (I am contracting full time right now at a FAANG), also spending some time helping run Mio Tees (Screen printing company) and Del Rio Mexican Cuisine (TexMex Catering). And of course, you have to set some time aside for your mental health, physical health, and spending time with those who you love and care for.
A quote I have seen recently is:
“Obsessed is a word that the lazy use to describe the dedicated.” – Unknown
This sparked me into being more diligent about my time spent on my side hustles because I tend to creep to them when I feel a surge of creativity. But I have to have a mental shift to working on these things by habit/plan rather than by surges of creativity. I thought of creating a small app that would set the daily items I have to do for the day and track how often I due them and how many days I don’t (maybe a pattern of working on things more early in the week than later arises that I can learn from) – but working on this would be a distraction to the other items on my list. I also want to make a “feature” tracker (like the screenshot below) for me to stay on top of what has been worked on, but again, I have to stay on the course and stop getting distracted by these other projects:
– For future “diary” entries, I am pretty sure the be a one to two paragraphs rather this ramble of a blog, but again. No form just yet to this. If you read this far, thank you and thanks for hanging in there. As I continue to work through these entries, there be a more concise form (hopefully) but I am keeping it rather loose until then.
ADIOS ❤️