Side hustles to make money: The Employed Entrepreneur.

That is a fact about paperwork, and paperwork is all it is. Here is what I think it means, and hold this more loosely than you hold the number. The form rarely changes because the business rarely does. Sit that against the plan currently in your head, the one where you start small and simple and make it a proper company later, once money is coming in and things have settled.

From chapter 1: Only one kind of self-employment pays

You pick a number that isn't money. Sign-ups, followers, a mailing list, encouraging conversations. All of it moves without anybody deciding to pay you, which means every one can rise steadily for twelve weeks while the real answer underneath is still no, and you will feel busy the entire time. Here's the test. If your number can go up in a week when nobody spent anything, it's the wrong number.

From chapter 9: Do not leap. overlap.

That is how the book looks at “side hustles to make money”: one idea at a time, with a step you can take right away. Of course, this is only one idea from the book. So, if this passage speaks to you, the full chapter goes further, and it ends with an exercise you can do the same evening.

In short, the book has 14 chapters, and each one ends with a practical exercise. Therefore, you can read it in order, or you can go straight to the part about “side hustles to make money”.

1. Only one kind of self-employment pays
2. The forty-five-year-old founder
3. The salary is not a number
4. What you are actually buying
5. Stuck is not the same as ready
6. You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong
7. Why you have not decided already
8. The job might be the problem, and a business might not be the answer
9. Do not leap. overlap.
10. What the double life costs
11. Buy the business instead of building it
12. One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job
13. Staying is allowed, and it can be the win
14. A decision you can defend later

Finally, you can get The Employed Entrepreneur: How to Test a Business Without Losing Your Job in the stores below. Because every title of this book shares the same text, you can simply pick the one you like best. Also, the book is available in 19 languages.

In addition, each title below highlights a different idea from the same book. So, pick the one that speaks to you.

• Don't Hand In Your Notice Yet: The Employed Person's Startup Test
• The Two-Year Wall: Why Side-Builders Survive and Salary-Jumpers Don't
• The Side-Business Validation Plan: Keep the Wage, Test the Dream, Then Jump
• I Want to Be My Own Boss, but I Need My Salary: Test First, Quit Later
• Your Paycheck Is Not the Obstacle: How to Build a Business While Employed
• The 96-Hour Business Test: Validate Your Idea Before You Quit Your Job
• Before You Hand In Your Notice: How to Test a Business While You Still Have a Job
• The Job You Can't Quit Is Your Cheapest Startup Lab: 14 One-Evening Tests Before You Risk Your Paycheck
• Keep Your Salary, Build Your Business: The Employed Person's Guide to Testing a Startup Before You Quit
• Don't Quit Your Job to Start a Business: Build It on the Side, Test It, Then Decide

See all 19 titles. Go to the book page.