My First (Successful) Hustle
Posted on July 18, 2022 • 5 minutes • 1014 words
Perseverance pays off and some other failed attempts…
I am a hustler… Currently, not a very successful one but it is what I am!
From a young age I turned to the internet to make money. From the age of 13 or so I began my hustling journey, my first idea was to sell domain name ideas on a site where you submitted names that aligned with company pitches. Unfortunately, 13 year old Chelsea was not as genius as she thought here and I never actually had my domain name submission selected. After many hours, I amassed a grand total of $0. But I was young and it was nice to dream of the riches that I thought could be mine!
My first partial success came shortly after. I participated in online survey sites, earning points to cash out and put in my savings account. My savings were a sacred thing, rarely drawn on. I’m the daughter of two accountants… Need I say more? While I probably made about $200 over my time working the surveys, the time it took definitely wasn’t going to see my living the lifestyle I wanted for myself.
The lifestyle I want is one where money is not something that prohibits me from doing something. I don’t need endless riches, just enough to lead a very comfortable lifestyle with a good amount of travel ideally. Young Chelsea was actually quite wise, when I was 10 I wrote that I wanted to be a millionaire… Why not a billionaire you ask? Well I wrote that I wouldn’t want to be a billionaire as if I were to lose my riches it would be too much of a loss to accept.
I continuously had business ideas but didn’t have much success in executing them. They were often technically focused and I was not the most tech savvy individual in my youth. Adulthood rolled around and I focused on study so that I could build a good career and income for myself. At this stage, the dreams of young Chelsea were just a distant memory. Similar to a lot of young adults I had no idea what direction I wanted to go career wise, so I started a Bachelor of Engineering. Why? Well with the Bachelor of Engineering in New Zealand you get 1 year of general engineering classes before specialising. The different engineering specialisations were so different I felt confident I would find something over the course of that year!
After completing my first year I had found what I was looking for… Software engineering. It was a good career path and offered the opportunities I wanted for creativity and to create the side hustles I had always dreamed of. But it wasn’t an easy path… I struggled at uni although my grades showed otherwise. I was balancing representing New Zealand in Curling with study and sometimes was out of uni for a couple of weeks at a time. To make matters worse, it felt like a lot of my class had actually been coding since they were in highschool (or younger for some), so I was constantly playing catchup.
Many all nighters later and I had my degree, the next step was finding a job and I found one relatively quickly. There was a high demand for software developers… I had chosen well. But the lifestyle I dreamed of was not one I could achieve through just a day job.
I started app development and found a passion for it. While I released many apps I could never reach a large enough audience to make any noticeable income - although I did learn one thing… If you have to choose one platform to develop apps for then start with iOS. It’s less of an issue these days as cross platform app development tooling is so much better but at the time the options were slim. The reason to choose iOS is that while they have an annual license fee and often stricter app policies, it means their App Store is less cluttered so it’s easier to get noticed.
Over the years I have also tried my hand at various print on demand businesses, KDP books and content creation ventures. However, once again I struggled to reach the audience I needed to make any real income.
So with all these failures how did I find the motivation to try again? Well I like to think I learned something from each of these that will help me in my next venture. I have picked up development skills I wouldn’t otherwise have that have helped me grow my career, I have picked up graphic design skills (although there is room for improvement), I have learned about pieces of software that can make your side hustle life easier. I have picked up scheduling and organisational skills. All while choosing side hustles that have a very low entry cost so that failures are not a huge loss… I’m here to share all these tips with you to help you also work towards the life you dream.
So what would I say is my biggest success so far?
In December 2021, I decided I wanted to build a YouTube following. There were several motivating factors for this outside the extra income it could bring in… Firstly, my public speaking is below average at best and I wanted to work on this. Secondly, it gave me the opportunity to learn different tech and share with the tech community. Thirdly, it allowed me to build up an online following for which I could promote my future products to.
My channel is not monetised yet, although it is only about a week away! I believe this is the right approach to gain the following I need to live the life I dream of and create many forms of passive income that will work for me and allow me the flexibility to live my life to the fullest every day. And if it doesn’t work out, I am still growing skills that will be beneficial to me in my career!