The Difference Between a Hobby, Jobby and a Business

What role does your side hustle play in your life? Is it something small for extra spending money or do you have big ambitions? Both are okay!

Everyone has their own reasons for pursuing a side hustle, whether it’s paying off student loans (hello, most of us in this field are seriously crippled with debt!), saving for that dream second honeymoon in Paris, or downsizing your client pool.

What everyone has in common is the fear of failure. This is totally normal!

If you’re scared you might have an idea too big and there aren’t enough hours in the day, you’re not alone. In this episode I talk about scaling back you dreams to smaller and more manageable increments, planning for your long-term goals, and celebrating the small victories.

No matter your side hustle goals, I’m here to help. I hope this episode tides you guys over until next week’s 100TH EPISODE! (WHAT?!)

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!

Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey, Risers. Welcome to Episode 99 of Empathy Rising. Can you believe it? Next week is our hundredth episode, and I have some really exciting things to share with you. We are going to be doing a giveaway and we are also going to be having an episode unlike any I've ever done before. It's going to be very different and new, and it's something I'm really jazzed about. And I hope you guys enjoy it as well. 

I'm being a little bit shady and sneaky and not telling you much more because I do want you guys to tune in next week so you can hear this new episode, as well as hear the details of the giveaways. So make sure that you're in back next Monday, so you can participate in all of that fun stuff.

But today we're back with a little bit more of a mindset episode, and I really want to set the intention of focusing on.... intention. That was weird. We're going to just talk about some intention behind your side hustle. We are going to be talking about how to be intentional with your choices early on. Because I really do believe that planting seeds early for the side hustle that you want to grow makes a huge difference down the road.

I'm all about slower marketing, slower business growth, setting those from foundations. That is what sets you up for the big business in the long run. And so we're definitely going to be exploring that today. 

I know that it is hard to be intentional about building your side hustle when you don't feel like you have a lot of time to do that, so I want to remind you that the Side Hustle Schedule mini-course is officially live. You can head over to Marissalawton.com/schedule and grab it. This is the five-step system that will help you make room for something new, without infringing upon or sacrificing the other things that are important to you and that matter most to you. 

So if not having enough time is the thing that is keeping you from moving forward from your Side Hustle, go over and check out that mini-course. It's super-duper affordable. And it really is my exact scheduling system that helps me figure out how many hours do I actually have to dedicate to a new project.

And I think that it's just really business-changing. And I don't want to... I don't want to go so far as saying life-changing, but it's a pretty profound system that helps you really examine some values and really examine where you've been spending your time. And it can unlock the doors to your side hustle, but it can also unlock the doors to just a much more values-based schedule.

So I really believe in this system, and I think it's something that you, everybody, should check out who is thinking about adding on. A new arm to their business. So before we jump in, I'm super, like, excited and sad because my youngest is turning four. You guys. Like, my youngest baby, my last baby, is going to be four years old.

Her birthday is in a week from the day of recording. And we're planning like a tiny little thing with the neighbor across the street because we've been kind of playing with them throughout... since about the fall. Just being really careful. Their lifestyle matches with our lifestyle. They're very careful. We're very careful. And so we feel comfortable getting together with them. 

So it'll just be two other adults and one other kid over here for her little tiny party. But I was thinking about this because she was... what is it? March to August? That's five, five months old, when I came back into the online space with this therapist business.

So a lot of... I was doing coaching for moms, time management, coaching for moms, which is actually where the seeds of Side Hustle Schedule came from. And I was doing that. And then I got pregnant with Logan and I had HG when I was pregnant with her. 

And if you're not familiar, it's just... really sick. And it's on a spectrum. Of course it has varying degrees. Like, some people lose weight and get really sick and need like additional nutrients and additionally they walk around with an IV, even. I did not get that to that point, but I got to the point where I was just so sick. I was, like, losing... I don't have to go into details, but anyway, that is why I stepped back from the mom coaching stuff.

And then when she was probably about three or four months old is when I really started getting the call to come back to business, come back to entrepreneurship. And that's when I made the pivot to working with clinicians. So yeah. I never... I think about her having a birthday. It was her first birthday is the day that I launched Cathartic Marketing, my first program for therapists.

So that was six months into working with clinicians. So her birthday is almost like a business anniversary for me as well. So I've just been thinking about that a lot lately. And how much has changed in three years. It just means the world to me, to be able to share that with you guys, as well as to just open your eyes to just... if you start now, what is three years from now gonna look like for you?

So that leads me to what I want to talk about today, which is: I want to talk about roles. R-O-L-E-S. Not bread rolls, even though I really want one right now. We focus a lot on the different roles that we play we are a partner. We are a parent. Sometimes we are a therapist. We are friends, we are siblings, we are daughters or sons. We are whatever roles that we play in other people's lives, but what about the roles that things play for us? And really, more specifically, what about the role that our side hustle plays in our current, personal and professional lives in our current situation?

What is the role of the side hustle? Is it a big role? Is it something that is of utmost importance to you right now, for whatever reason that may be? Is it a small role? Is it something that is a desired role that you want badly, but it isn't yet showing up that way for you? Is it a non-existent role? Is it just, like, my side hustle is nowhere right now? What is this for you? 

And getting clear on the present moment, because I think a lot of us can vision can envision a bigger picture. And the... I think the vision is a double-edged sword. I think the vision is great because it can be a guiding light. It can be a beacon to where we want to go, but the vision can also sometimes overshadow what the role that the side hustle plays for you right now. And if you get stuck in the vision or caught up in the vision, it can keep you from moving forward because you don't even know where you're starting. 

Does it have the role that you want it to have for you? And that's really what we're going to dive into on this episode, because what I love so much about side hustles is that they can be whatever you want it to be. You can literally make it as big or as little as, as important or non-important as you want it to be.

It can be the thing that brings in a few hundred extra bucks. I work with a lot of therapists whose main goal is to just pay their student loans off. They've got debt from their masters. Some of them have debt from their doctoral programs. They've got as much debt as other people have in mortgages.

And so sometimes that is the number one thing that they want their side hustle just to pay off their student loans. But a side hustle can also be a stepping stone to your next phase, like, the next phase of your career, your next phase of entrepreneurship. And so it can really be something that's a catalyst for change.

It can be something that's just a fun, fun element that you play around with in your life that happens to bring you a little bit of extra money, and the important part is, being aware of the role that you want it to play and how it shows up in your life. I think that's the important part.

Now I want to point out that this is something that can change and evolve over time. For sure, I used to just work for vacation money. I used to, like, when I launched Cathartic Marketing, the first time, my goal was to just be able to take two or three vacations a year and not have to charge them and pay them back later.

I just wanted... that's really all I wanted. And then I shared a few episodes ago that first time that I made, like, a full-time salary and then some from this business. And it was, like, life-changing, it was eye-opening. It was life-changing of, If this is possible, what else can be possible? If I can reach this level of income, what level of income can I reach to?

And I want us to think about the role that the side hustle plays for us right now, but don't shut yourself off from it. Growing and evolving and expanding or shrinking, right? It doesn't... it can be a bigger role right now. And then it can be a smaller role later. I guess my whole point in saying this is that you get to decide what it is for you. And what it looks like for you might not be what everybody's telling you. It should look like or what it looks like for other people really tuning into what it looks like for you is, the most important part. 

One of the first conversations that we have inside of Side Hustle, my side hustle support group program, is about business models. I think one of the things that's really common for my students is that they come into Side Hustle with wanting something that is known in the industry as an umbrella brand or an umbrella business. So my best example for this is... I use Nike all the time, right? So we know of Nike, and Nike has a tagline called "just do it," right?

They are a bigger brand. Now under the umbrella of Nike, Nike has shoes. Nike has clothes. Nike has accessories, like sweatbands. Nike has technology, like apps and things that it sells or that it monetizes through sponsorships. Nike has sponsorships where they are, like, placing their brand or their logo on other people or products. They have endorsement deals with athletes, right? So there are a lot of ways that Nike makes money. So while it's all under the brand of Nike's "just do it," there are so many products and so many offerings.

So an example of this is, for a clinician, might be that they want to be like the go-to person for relationships. This is very common. "I want to help people with relationship." And the first question I ask is, "Is this romantic relationship?" And they're like, "No. Relationship with everybody, with, like, friendships, and relating to their family of origin, and just relationships."

So if you want to be known as a relationship person, you may have an arm of that umbrella that is for romantic relationships. You might have an arm of that umbrella that is for friendships. You might have an arm of that umbrella that is for mother-daughter relationships or father, son relationships, right?

And so this would be an umbrella brand where you are, Sallytherelationshipexpert.com. And Sally offers, on her website, it's, like, homepage About page for couples. And then there's a dropdown of, like, programs for couples or for women. And then there's a drop-down for, like, friendship and sister and whatever.

So that would be something like an umbrella brand. This is often what a lot of people envision when they start thinking about their side hustle is this big picture, but what they don't always recognize is that, that big picture. They're dreaming of a big business. I brought up Nike as an example of this, because this is the way that big corporations are structured.

Big corporations have divisions, right? So an umbrella brand is it's not hard to create, but it's hard to run by yourself. It's something that needs a lot of employees to manage. And it's something that needs a lot of investment and sometimes capital investment, not just time investment to build a business like that.

So often, when I point this out, when I reconcile their vision with the type of business model that they're talking about, that's not necessarily what they're looking for. They're not looking for that type of work. They're not looking for that type of setup. They're not looking to build a company with employees.

So putting things in perspective helps get them get clearer on what role their side hustle plays in their life. Now if you really want an umbrella brand and you want a bigger business, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's awesome. We just need to be aware of what we are working toward and what we are building.

Because what it brings up for me is this idea of balance, right? How do you balance this bigger-picture vision that you have for your lifestyle and for your work in the world? And how do you reconcile or balance that with the smaller steps that it takes to get there? 

I think sometimes... I talked about delayed gratification a couple of weeks ago, and sometimes it's, like, when you have this big picture vision, but you realize like that's the ten-year goal. It's not even the five-year goal. That's the ten-year goal. A lot of times that can be discouraging. And really focusing on the present moment. 

And what role does the Side Hustle play for you right now? What's the 30- day role that it plays for you, because if you accomplish that 30 days and then you add on another 30 days and another 30 days, that's how you chip away at the ten-year goal, the ten-year vision. But if you are only looking at the ten-year vision, then the 30-day vision feels like a letdown, right? 

It's amazing if you truly want a big professional shift, but a couple hundred extra bucks is amazing too. So I really want and challenge you guys or encourage you guys to think about that. Yes, there may be a big picture vision here, guys. There might be a ten-year year goal or a five-year goal, but what is the 30-day goal? We need to have a space for both of those things to exist. 

And we need to know what both of those things are, because when you aren't exactly sure what you're looking for from your side hustle, like in the present moment, I think the big picture vision can distract you. It's the "can't see the forest for the trees" kind of situation. You just end up, everything ends up looking the same. Everything looks washed out and fuzzy. You have no idea where to start because it's wrapped up in this vision that it feels exciting and it feels enlivening, but it also feels impossible. It feels like there's no way that I can actually do that. There's no way I can make that happen. Wouldn't it be nice?

If so, I think the big picture can distract you. I think also, if you're not clear on the present moment of your side hustle, the present role of your side hustle, you can like feel dissatisfied with the results, right? A thousand dollars of sales can be a total letdown or it can be like an amazing win, depending on your perspective. If you're focused on the ten-year goal of a big umbrella brand, a thousand dollars is going to be such a letdown. But if you're able to be present and say, Holy crap, I just made my first thousand dollars. Oh my gosh. That is what is going to snowball. That's what's going to build to the next level of your side hustle and then to the next level. 

So just first of all, defining what it is you want from it. And then secondly, being able to be present with where it is right now. I think knowing what you want, what role you want your side hustle to play, like, what it is doing for you right now, this makes it easier to take action, right?

Instead of seeing a sea of trees or a forest of trees, you see each tree, you see each step, you know where you're going and you also know you're on the right track, those thousand dollars as they come in. It's like validation that, yes, this is the right step. Validation again? Yes, it's the right step versus, Oh, that's just a drop in the bucket. It's not really what I was looking for.

It's encouragement. It's designed to keep going. So I think you're able to recognize your progress that much better when you're aware of what your side hustle is doing for you and how you want it to function in your life in this moment. 

Okay. So let's talk about three different roles that your side hustle can play. And that way you can end up deciding, and you can, it can help you decide or see or sense or feel into fill in whatever verb you want, which is right for you. And the first role that your side hustle might feel for you is actually the role of a hobby.

I'm going to sound, like, contradictory to myself, probably here, but not everything has to be monetized, right? Not everything has to be a moneymaker. Granted, if you're an entrepreneur at the core, right, it's hard not to monetize everything. It's hard not to see the potential to make money from all kinds of things.

But sometimes that's not what you need. So I want you to ask yourself, "Do I just need a release? Do I just need a relief? Do I need something productive to occupy my time, that gives me a sense of satisfaction that does not have to come from money?" So a lot of times this is knitting or crafting or DIY.

I use the example of rose gardening on this show a lot, right? Like, gardening can actually just be a hobby. Now, you can absolutely monetize your hobbies. You can sell your knitting. You can sell knitting patterns. You can teach others how to knit. So there's lots of things you can do with these hobbies, but sometimes the point or what you need in your life or what your, what role this plays is not always to be monetized, is not always to be a moneymaker. 

Now the issue of this comes when your intention is to be making money, but you're not, right? If you are stuck putting in effort and energy and money is not coming out, then you have inadvertently built a hobby. And sometimes it's an expensive hobby. Whether that cost is the cost of your time, or maybe you're paying for software, maybe you're paying for things to make this side hustle happen. 

So if you are investing a ton of time and maybe money and not getting a monetary return, you're stuck in a hobby. You're stuck in the place of a hobby. So there's a distinction there. Should this intentionally be a hobby or are you intending it for it to be something different and it's not, and it is, has, become a hobby to you and not what you want.

If you're stuck in a hobby place, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It's often just a tiny tweak. Now, this tweak could come in the form of your offer. Maybe your offer just is not defined enough. Maybe we're not clear enough on your problem, your promise. You're not able to articulate what it does and who it helps.

And so the people who are out there looking to buy it. They don't buy it because they aren't able to tell if it's for them or not. So often it's just maybe a little tweak in the offer. The offer might be great. The offer might be clear, concise. You might know who you help, how you help them, why you help them.

All of those things, you can easily talk about it. But maybe your marketing plan needs a tweak. Maybe you're not in front of the right people, or maybe your frequency is off or your days and times are off, or whatever. There are lots of little tiny things that can be happening in your marketing plan.

We can absolutely take a look at that and see, maybe we just need to be getting in front of people more or differently. If your offer and your marketing plan are great, it may need to be tweaking your sales. The first thing we need to think is, Are you actually asking for the sale? This is something I see over and over again.

It's a great offer. People are talking about it, but they're not actually asking customers to buy it. They assume that's just going to happen when we have to ask for the sale. So you might just need to ask for the sale, actually do it. You might need to ask for the sale more frequently. You might need to be asking for the sale in a different way.

If you are stuck in hobby, there might just be a few small tweaks that when we make those, the floodgates will open. So think about that. Is that a hobby intentionally? Do you feel stuck in hobby? If you're stuck in hobby, where do you think you might need to make some tweaks?

Yeah. Now the next role that your side hustle might play for you is something that we can call a jobby. Now, I understand that if you are in the UK, this word means something very different for you. And if you are familiar with UK slang, this word maybe mean something very different from you. And that is not what I mean by this word.

Okay. What I mean by the word jobby is your side hustle is making money, but you're functioning more as an employee, right? You are, like, your side hustle is running you rather than you running your side hustle. Sometimes this is on purpose where we see jobbies more, most often is in "done for you" services.

This is actually how I started this therapist's business. We see it with, like, freelance writing or copywriters or graphic designers, when you are coming into someone else's business and you are fulfilling a role for them. You're basically freelancing other jobs that do this as, like, VA's. You might have a VA in your practice or something like that.

And they come into your established business and they do the roles that you assign to them. You could absolutely start your side hustle doing this. A good friend of mine, Jessica, who runs simplified SEO, this is exactly how she started. She started doing SEO for other clinicians. She then created an agency model where she brought in other people to do the SEO work for her, and she stepped more into a managerial role.

So this is absolutely a legitimate way of starting a side hustle. It's bringing in money for you, but you're being told what to do and how to do it by someone else. 

Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? This can be a great side hustle where you're not carrying the weight and you're not holding the space for other people. You're just doing a task and it's being assigned to you and it's nice to not have the weight of others on your shoulders all the time. You can use your brain in new ways. 

You might be getting to be creative or like trying something out. This is a great way to bring in a few hundred extra dollars. This is a great way to chip away at a loan or a mortgage or a debt or something. An unexpected expense or something like that. But there's also can be the negative side of a job. You just... there was the negative side of a hobby. Sometimes you're not necessarily functioning in a done-for-you role.

Like, you're actually trying to be the business owner. However, you are feeling like an employee or like a servant to your side hustle, right? Like you are just at its beck and call, right? It's running you. You are not running it. This is something that happens to the best of us, right? It's something that you feel like you're working always in your business, and you're not being able to work on your business.

This is a sign that you need to redefine your role. This can mean a couple of things. It might mean hiring on help. It might mean that you need an employee. You need a VA, you need somebody to be in the employee position so that you can step back into the business owner position. Or if hiring on help him paying isn't necessarily in the cards right now, the other thing that you can do is just getting simply getting clear on what's working and what's not right. We talked a little bit about tweaking your marketing plan. Are you on five different social media is trying to do 15 different things a week? And it's just... that's why you feel, like, a servant to your job?

Then maybe we need to evaluate which one social media is actually working and cut the other four. So sometimes you need to bring on help and sometimes you just need to cut some things out that way. You're getting back to the stuff that you enjoy. You're getting your time, freedom back. And you don't feel burdened by by this new endeavor. You don't feel burdened by your side hustle and you want to be able to step more fully into the things that light you up and let the things that don't light you up kind of fall by the wayside.

So then the final role that we're going to cover today, that your business or that your side hustle can play is that of a business. Now running your side hustle as a business means that you intend this to make substantial money, right? This is going to be a full-on business for you. And so a lot of times when I talk with people who want this to be a business, they have goals like cutting their caseload in half, or having a scalable income that not only replaces their clientele, like if they want to cut five clients, they want to not only make the money from those same five clients, but exceed that exceed what they're making from therapy. 

So people who may not want to cut their caseload, but they want to double their income. Or I also have people who plan to either leave the field or really reduce. Like, they want three clients, five clients at the max. And so this is when you really want to think about your side hustle being a business for you. Like, you are starting a second business. Now, some people are aware from the get-go that this is their goal, right?

"Within two years, I want to shrink my caseload in half" or something like that. 

So I work with a lot of clinicians who intentionally want this, but also what happened to me is it might be something that you're doing for extra money and then it just grows. And it grows and, holy crap, all of a sudden, it's your main hustle and not your side hustle.

So that can be intentional, or it can be something that just evolves. So I want you to still be open to changes. And like I said, this could go the other way. You might intend to start out building a full business and then you realize, I'm okay with just a couple hundred extra bucks a month, then I don't need it to be a full-on business.

So whether or not building a business out of your side hustle is your goal, or if it's the role you want it to play in your life right now? I think it's wise to start planning for this from the beginning, because like I said, you never know where this is going to go. You might find that you thought you wanted just a couple hundred extra bucks and then you really enjoyed it.

You loved it. Or maybe it just took off like wildfire and it just grew and you're trying to play catch up, which is exactly what happened to my business, where I was trying to catch up to it as it was growing. 

So having these systems in place and planning for a business from the get-go things to think about, especially with our licenses are the ethics of it all and having it set up as an ethical and separate business entity. These are things you want to be thinking about. Because starting with that end in mind will make this growth so much easier. And if it does become something you want to lean into, and if you want it to eventually take a bigger role in your life, then you are already ready for that.

You are already set up for that. And it becomes a natural extension rather than a huge interruption. 

So if you want to take a look at, your current lifestyle, your current professional state, and think about what role you want this side hustle to play for you, I suggest heading over to my Transcend in the Therapy Room Masterclass. This is the masterclass that's going to help you look at things like how much how.

This training is the thing that's going to help you look at things like how high-touch you want to be in your side hustle, what role it feels for you, and in terms of the container and the space that you hold for other people, also how much marketing you want to be doing, and how much effort and energy you want to be putting into that side of things.

So taking a look at all of this can really help you get it. Get clear on whether this is a hobby, whether it's a job, ER, or whether it's a full business. So you can head on over to that training at marissalawton.com/masterclass. 

All right, guys. Next week is Episode 100. I can't freaking believe it. Until then, you guys keep on rising.
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