Side Hustle

Before I started my own business, I created my own "side hustle". I wrote books, I developed an audience of a thousand +/- readers on my blog, and I made a small amount of money in the process.

We all know people who have side hustles ... they write fiction, or make quilts that they sell, the referee high school basketball games.

Side hustles work until they don't work. Once they interfere with your main job, you have a choice to make ... keep the main job or figure out how to make the side hustle work as a full time endeavor.

The image here is of a local UPS store ... the pile of "stufff" is their "side hustle" ... better known as Amazon returns.

For +/- $2.00 an item, UPS takes care of the return on behalf of Amazon.

On this late Thursday visit, the line of customers was out the door. Based on my best guess, of the eight customers in line, seven were returning merchandise from Amazon.

In other words, the side hustle was swamping the core business.

If you were a core customer looking to ship an item via UPS, your wait in line for core services probably offended you.

Over time, the brand sees a reduction in File Power from the core customer, further pushing the brand in favor of the side hustle.

This is how businesses are transformed.

Classic catalog brands didn't go down the path of the "side hustle", did they?

Omnichannel retail brands didn't go down the path of the side hustle, did they?

J. Crew did go down the path of the side hustle (Madewell). Turns out that was a good decision.