In the Douban "Day of Side Business Failure" group, 24,<> young people gathered to exchange with each other about each other's bitterness and happiness in side jobs.
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"With a salary of 4000,4 and a side hustle of <>,<>, you never know how profitable those who do a side hustle are!"
"Tell everyone that 90% of those who tell you that it is easy to earn N million a year as a side business are deceptive!"
In the Douban "Day of Side Business Failure" group, 24,<> young people gathered to exchange with each other about each other's bitterness and happiness in side jobs.
According to the "2022 Employment Relationship Trend Report" jointly released by the National Development Research Institute of Peking University and Zhaopin.com, in recent years, the wave of sideline part-time jobs has risen, and up to 53.9% of workers are engaged in sideline part-time jobs, which is 00.54% of post-5 respondents.
Engaging in a side business seems to have become the choice of many young people in the workplace, so what are young people doing to start a side business? What do they gain from their side hustle? What makes a perfect side hustle?
Bonus: Towards independence and a sense of value
Xu Shun was originally the owner of a homestay shop, but in the first two years of the tourism boom, she rented out her homestay for a long time, working as a landlord and an escort at the same time. In addition to making money, more than a year of experience as a chaperone has allowed her to gain a lot of extra things.
Xu Shun's clients are mainly the elderly, pregnant mothers and single young people. She recalled that once accompanied a mother and her depressed daughter to see a doctor, and in the process of accompanying the doctor, the girl was unwilling to communicate too much with her parents and doctors, but was unexpectedly willing to chat with her, and then Xu Shun took on the role of an intermediary and relayed the girl's situation to the doctor. "I accompany her every time I review it, and I am very happy and fulfilled to see her getting better little by little."
"I have many long-term elderly clients where the kids are not around, and these grandparents will treat me as a temporary family. There was a grandmother who would bring me breakfast every time and I felt very warm. "Now that the tourism industry has picked up and the business of homestays has resumed, I will continue to work as a chaperone." This side hustle has a warmth that no other job has, and the feeling of being needed and trusted is the motivation for me to keep going. ”
Born in 1997, Lin works as an executive in a private company, but she also has a hidden identity: the owner of an offline adult goods store.
"The salary in the county is not high, and you can't save much money all year round. The purpose of my side business is to be independent, the premise of spiritual independence is economic independence, and opening up a money-making side business is a big step towards economic independence. ”
With this idea, after the main business was stable, Lin Yilin began to look for a suitable side business, and after searching a lot of information, she decided to join an adult goods store. "Opening a store is not as easy as I thought, I put a lot of energy into site selection, picking machines, purchasing goods, doing publicity, and spent all my savings before and after."
Lin Yilin said, "Not only is it the consumption of time and energy, some relatives will talk about me behind my back when they hear about my side business, but fortunately, my parents are very supportive." The small shop has been losing money for the first two years, and this year it has finally begun to make a profit, excluding various costs, it can earn about 4000,<> yuan per month. It's not a lot, but it's hard to get started. ”
Seek a sense of control over your life in "manual work"
Mai Ruyun is a designer in the home improvement industry, usually needs to deal with thousands of design work, but also to deal with the various requirements put forward by Party A.
In her free time, Mak Ruyun registered as a pet custodian for a pet platform. In the evenings or weekends, she will take orders to feed pets, shovel poop, feed, and play with kittens and dogs.
Mai Ruyun said that being a pet trustee is a mutual healing and redemption between her and the kittens. "Many kittens have separation anxiety disorder and need human comfort and need to be accompanied by someone. I love kittens very much, and this side hustle allows me to pet different kittens every day, and work without thinking about anything, giving myself a period of free time. It was very healing for me. ”
Wu Yong also tried to "change his brain" through a side hustle. She is a screenwriter who often thinks that she is "uninspired" and "exhausted", and at the suggestion of a friend, Wu Yong found a housekeeping company to learn storage and became a part-time organizer.
On weekends, Wu Yong will follow the housekeeping company to do storage and tidying up in customers' homes. She has met girls with hoarding habits, and there are so many things in the house that there is not even a place to sit; A celebrity who lives in a villa and owns thousands of pairs of shoes ... Before each storage, she has to communicate with customers in advance, understand their storage needs, help them find the reason why their home is not tidy, and try to solve the problem from the source.
"Being a organizer gives me more control over my life, and I don't have to think about why my script can't be written, as long as I do the work at hand." In my work, I met a variety of clients, and their stories provided a lot of inspiration and material for my script. ”
Combined with life planning, a side hustle is a low-cost way to try and make mistakes
Feng Ni, 24, works as a white-collar worker in a luxury office building on weekdays and a bakery in a cake shop on weekends.
Why did you choose to do this side hustle? Because Feng Ni has always wanted to open a cake shop. In order to realize this dream, she once gave up cultural studies in high school, went to work in a cake shop, and went to a professional school to learn pastry baking.
In college, Feng Ni chose to major in business administration to learn about shops and business management and prepare for opening a cake shop. But graduating from college just in time for the pandemic, opening a store is never a wise move.
Feng Ni, whose mood fell to the bottom, decided to find a stable job and wait for the opportunity, and then did a side job to keep herself from "disconnecting" from baking.
Today, after working for two years, Feng Ni works as a part-time baker in different cake shops in her free time, learning and accumulating experience in opening a shop.
"Some cake shops are not large, and you need to make your own flour and washing machines, which is physically demanding, but I also learned a lot and enjoyed it." Feng Ni said, "In two or three years, when the economic situation is better and I have enough accumulation, I will definitely open my own cake shop and turn my side business into my main business." ”
Unlike Feng Ni, Wang Luoyu does a side job to make himself go further in his main business.
"During the career rise, I will try some side hustles related to my main business to open up more possibilities." Wang Luoyu's side business is almost all related to the main business, in the workplace she mainly does Party B work related to incubation operations, and she will try to do Party A in the side business. "This role change can help me understand the ideas of Party A, and it can also allow me to better grasp the operation rules of the industry and think about future development from a more macro perspective." This accumulation of experience will gradually become my competitiveness in the workplace. ”
Wang Luoyu said, "Side business is a low-cost trial and error and experience method, if you really want to develop in the main business, you can use the side business as a means to accumulate energy." If the main business just wants stability, then the side business can be a tool to open up endless possibilities. ”
Gao Yan, associate professor of the School of Education of Beijing Normal University Zhuhai, believes that there are two main reasons why young people are keen to engage in side jobs: first, the current uncertainty of the development of many industries has increased, forcing young people to strive to develop side businesses, changing from T-shaped talents to π-type talents, and "walking on two legs" provides themselves with one more guarantee; Second, young people themselves are a group that pursues novelty, willing to try various emerging formats, and the Internet has greatly reduced the cost of learning.
How to choose the perfect side hustle? Gao Yan believes that like choosing your main business, if something you love and are good at, and at the same time bring you great value returns, then it is worth your efforts. "But in reality, it is difficult for people to find a job that satisfies all three at the same time, and you need to make a trade-off, so reasonable career planning and life planning are very important."
"Everyone usually travels to do strategy, but they neglect to plan for their career." Gao Yan suggested that young people who are not sure whether they should pursue their main business or develop a side business should not be blindly impulsive, follow the clouds, and be wrapped up in the so-called "side hustle anxiety". "You can communicate with career planners or experienced working elders first, and then make judgments based on your actual situation and future planning."
Many people will think that young people engage in a side business simply to make money, but in reality this is not the case, in addition to making money, a side business can provide you with independent dependence, a source of value, spiritual healing, a sense of control over life, and become a means and tool to achieve career planning.
Gao Yan said, "Many people think that having money means having freedom, and money can indeed bring a sense of control to life, and a sense of control is an important foundation for gaining freedom, but I encourage everyone to pursue happiness more than pursuing freedom." The gap between freedom and happiness is reflected in the identification of self-worth. Love and work are important ways to realize the value of life. ”
(At the request of interviewees, Lin Yilin, Xu Shun, Mai Ruyun, Wu Yong, and Wang Luoyu are pseudonyms in the text)
Tan Sijing, trainee reporter of China Youth Daily Source: China Youth Daily