The Value of Side Hustles - Kathy Robinson

Don't Retire, Refire Podcast

Kathy herself is a shining example of having multiple "Side Hustles" These are paid additional areas of work outside your main income earning career. She is a career coaching, runs a "gig" platform for career coaches across the east cost of the USA, provides small businesses with marketing and digital strategies and lastly is involved in executive coaching. She defines the purpose of side hustles falling into two main categories, income earning only or a "pivot strategy". Sometimes we need to bring in additional income to feed the family. Such work will normally use low level existing skills such as driving an uber car. Other times we want to develop new skills to perhaps move into a new line of work that calls us and feeds our soul. These new skills can be strategically developed with a pivot strategy. She likes to think of this as wanting to go from career A to career C, however C can be very expensive and take a lot of time. An alternative is to go from A to B using a pivot strategy as a smaller step to develop some skills and experience that might be useful ultimately in the work of C. Such a step also allows us to gain direct experience of what working in C might really mean for us in terms of fulfillment and daily joy. A growth/learning mindset who is experimenting there way forward can be helpful here. Many people might feel that they don’t have enough time to develop a side hustle, in which case Kathy recommends a little book written in 1910 by Arnold Bennett called "how to live on 24 hrs" - a good summary of which is in Wikipedia. Kathy can be contacted on [e-mail] or her website www.turningpointboston.com.