Ep. 012 - Relationships and Your Side Hustle - a podcast by Shannon Mattern

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Today we’re talking about the impact of your side hustle on your relationships.

When I first started my side hustle, as I’ve mentioned in earlier pep talks, I was doing freelance web design outside of work. It was summer time, and I would come home from work and open up my laptop and start working on client projects, and at first my husband was totally fine with it. He was doing his thing – golf league, outdoor projects, whatever.

Before long, my work started to take over. We would go out with friends every Wednesday night, and instead of going with him at the same time, I would work for a couple of hours and then show up later. Before long, every weekend I was stressing out about what plans we had because I needed to make sure I had enough time to get client projects done.

If we were visiting family, I’d be on my laptop all morning long while everyone was lazing around in the mornings… and even though it wasn’t interfering with anyone’s schedule, people could tell I was far from focused on spending time with them.

My husband was getting irritated – because if you’ve ever heard of the 5 love languages, his love language is spending time.

So when I shifted from doing 1:1 client work to creating a scalable, online side hustle, you would think that since I wasn’t tied up with client work that I would have started spending more time with him… But I didn’t, because my love language is words of affirmation, also know as validation – and I was getting a lot of validation from my work helping entrepreneurs build their own websites.

Not to mention that I started a “online business”. Doing freelance web design work is easy to explain to someone. Telling people that you make money by teaching something online and earning commissions from products you promote – that doesn’t sound as legit to people who have never heard of it before.

So my husband, friends and family didn’t really understand what I was spending all my time doing, they were annoyed that I was constantly working and that I seemed to care more about my work that I did about them, and that made me annoyed that they weren’t validating me with words of affirmation for the great job that I was doing building this online business. Because if I take a really deep hard look at why I do what I do, yes, it’s because I love helping people, but it’s also because I like the validation, if I’m being totally honest.

So, I had a choice. I could keep trying to make them understand what I was doing and see it my way, OR, I could decide that friends and family are the most important thing and it was more important for me to make time for them than to get validation from strangers on the internet, and that eventually, even if they never really understood what my side hustle was all about, that they’d support me anyway because they love me.

So that’s what I did. And I still do. I make sure to limit scheduling things in the evenings, my husband and I go out just us at least once a week, and with friends at least once a week. We schedule family camping trips, and weekends away with friends. And yes, I still get up and work before everyone gets up, but since I quit my day job my friends “get it”, they kind of understand what I do.

So I think when it comes to relationships and people you love and respect giving you crap because you’re spending too much time building this thing on the side, whether they believe in you or understand what you’re doing or not, it’s important to acknowledge their feelings and make time for them, because if not for them, what is it all for, anyway?

Further episodes of Pep Talks for Side Hustlers

Further podcasts by Shannon Mattern

Website of Shannon Mattern