Balancing a full-time job with a side hustle isn’t always easy. In this episode I talk about how I try to keep the balance and the struggles that inevitably come up.
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Keegan 0:38
What’s up everybody. Welcome back to the side hustle to full time web designer podcast. My name is Keegan. Welcome back. First things first, I got to talk about last week. What happened? I’ve been off for 12 weeks. 12 entire weeks, right? Three full months. Have all that time, put together the podcast, do the whole thing. Set it schedule it. completely forget the intro What is wrong with me? Hopefully I had the intro in this week’s episode, we’re going to have the intro. Hopefully you just heard it. But this week, I’m talking all about how I’m balancing everything at the moment.
Keegan 1:15
For those of you who’ve been around for a long time. You know, from the Divi addicts, podcast, all the way through to today. You’ve seen my journey, you’ve seen a bit seen a bit of my journey, you’ve seen me you get vulnerable, you’ve seen me be honest. You’ve seen all the things that have happened over the last four or five years, or maybe longer. But definitely four years in the podcast. Crazy, who we that’s super crazy to think. But anyway, I wanted to talk today about how I’m sort of trying to balance things out. And the first thing I did was that I came up, I came to the realization that I can only do what I can do. I know that sounds cliche. I know it sounds kind of stereotypical, it’s like a non answer answer, which I’m not a fan of. But I can only do what I can do.
Keegan 2:08
And that’s a mindset shift, right? Like, I’m trying to get my mind to a place where the overwhelm, isn’t there anymore. If I if I can eliminate the overwhelm, I can eliminate the burnout. And I’m only going to I’m only going to eliminate the burnout and the overwhelm if I am strategic about what I’m doing. And so the first part, you all know, I mean, it’s in the title, the side hustle a full time web designer podcast, right, I’ve got a full time job. And a full time job is demanding. And it’s awesome. And it’s fun, and it’s challenging. And I travel a lot for it. And you know, that just is what it is, that’s not going to change. And that is a primary commitment. It’s my main source of income. It’s what supports my entire family. And I really enjoy the work, I get a lot of fulfillment out of it,
Keegan 2:56
I get to see and meet and interact with a lot of people, which is always a freaking blast, at least for me. But it is a time commitment, right. And so it’s not the normal 40 hours, my job is not a normal 40 hour a week day job. From you know, eight to five, we’re on our lunch break. That’s not it for me. Sometimes I’m in the office, sometimes I’m in the office at 730 in the morning, and don’t leave until six. You know, when usually I’ll eat as we’re working. Some days, it’s nine to four. Some days I am on the road, you know, the later this week I’m traveling to Florida, kind of get to go do one of my hobbies. If any of y’all know me, well see me and follow me elsewhere. You know, I’m a roller coaster fanatic.
Keegan 3:37
This weekend, I’m hanging out with a buddy of mine going to Busch Gardens in Tampa, I’m gonna get to ride on gwazi again for the fourth time and get a few more rides, and have some great roller coasters there. But the full time job has me all over the place. And it can be a little overwhelming at times, if not managed correctly. So you know what I’m doing to balance everything is that I’ve put a task management system in place, I have an email address that I can forward things to that drops things into my to do list, which I use Tick Tick if you’re not familiar with it. Actually, if you’re here and you’re listening to this, and you’re somewhat tech savvy person, you probably watch MKBHD or Marquez Bradley’s channel. He talks about tick tick. Often it’s one of those apps that lives on his phone.
Keegan 4:21
And so you know, that’s what I use afford everything I need to keep up with they’re set things up on my phone to go directly into my inbox, which I did manage and tag or move around wherever I needed it and set due dates. That’s a big part of keeping really all the sections of my life under control, but the full time job for sure. The other thing is a side hustle. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we’re talking about, right? This is as a solo freelancer. You wear all the hats.
Keegan 4:52
So one day I’m designing the next day I’m working strategy. A couple minutes later, I’m in my account. In software, I’m trying to see if everybody’s paid up their bills, if anybody’s behind, then I’ve got to reach out to them, you know, is it automated? Sure, there’s some reminders, but they need something from me, they need a phone call, they need a conversation to make sure that people are on time paid up, and I’m not doing the work in a little bit of time I have for nothing, I need to be paid for that work, right. And you do too. So don’t do work that you’re not paid for. Unless it’s strategic. That may be a whole nother topic. But I’ve done work in the past for free, that has definitely paid off.
Keegan 5:30
Those so those there are those accounting challenges where sometimes people are behind, and you’ve got to go chase them down. And that’s time that you’re not doing the other work and or just relaxing on the couch. So that’s part of the process, right. But what I’ve done is that I’ve started outsourcing, I’ve got an incredible virtual assistant, she’s way more than that VA is not even a great title for Kam Kam is just incredible. Kam is a superstar. And she helps keep me in line when I don’t know what I’m trying to do. Excuse me.
Keegan 6:02
So Kam shout out to you, I know you’re going to be transcoding this or transcribing this or whatever that word is where we get the subtitles transcription, she’s going to take care of this episode, she’s going to make sure that everything gets done moves over to the website, it’s posted, wherever, where y’all can go to and lynda.com links will be in the show notes, she does all that as well makes it so that it’s seamless, I can just come here, turn on the camera, and make sure the mics in front of me and do that work. So that makes my life a little bit easier.
Keegan 6:31
I’ve also been outsourcing some design work, right. So I’ve got some people that I’m working with, who are starting to take on more, I’ve just finished a project that’s getting ready to go to launch that I had to do very little for other than other than lay out the strategy and do some of the global styles, I really kind of set the style design. And then I let Dan go in and do his thing, put all the content, the images, lay it out, connect the dots between pages. And we were really, really good to go.
Keegan 7:01
Well, I just decided that’s not enough, I had to throw a whole nother set of complications on top of that, and I’m buying a house. So that whole process has really kicked off. We’ve got inspections this Thursday, we’re under contract, and I’ll have to move. Right. So as I’m kicking this podcast back off, after 12 weeks off, I’m gonna buy a house, which I’m excited about. It’s really awesome. You can see if you’re watching on YouTube and not listening on the podcast, you see all the stuff behind me was stuck behind me as I’m going through things to make sure that everything is organized, streamlined and ready to move whenever I get the truck and we get ready to move.
Keegan 7:36
So all of that all of that is a lot, right. Thankfully, not having kids not pregnant, nothing like that. So we’re good there. But there’s still a lot of things a full time job that takes up probably 50 hours a week, not counting all the other calls and things like that, you know, chasing people down chasing clients down that I need to get paid on buying a house, just the normal struggles of everyday life as well. Well, those things all create chaos, and you have to have some sort of organization to keep that chaos together.
Keegan 8:10
I talked about it a second ago. For me, it was ditching all of the notebooks, no more notebooks, no more pen and paper. Everything was digital, everything was searchable. And that’s why I bought an iPad Pro. I have good notes of what’s the other one was good notes. And then not remembering the other name of the other note taking app I’ve tried to vote though Notability. That’s the one. I’ve tried both of them. Notability is really solid, I really like it a lot. And that’s the one that I do all of my handwritten notes in. I love writing, I love writing because it helps it register.
Keegan 8:45
So I’ve done that. Keep everything digital, everything’s structured. That way, I’m not trying to find a notebook, hopefully I didn’t lose it, whatever. You know how that goes. You can lose those things, you can grab another notepad write other things don’t know where it’s at. This way, it’s in the iPad, I’ve just got to make sure it’s charged every night. And we’re good to go. So that’s one.
Keegan 9:04
The other one has been having that that inbox, that data dump where I can get things that come into my head out of my head, or also it’s cluttered. And I forget. So I keep things simple. I want to keep it simple. I don’t need a complicated productivity system. I have Tick Tick where I can add things that goes directly into the inbox. And I’ve got just a few different categories where I can move things around personal life, day job, web design, those kinds of things. And I just dropped them from the inbox once a day, everywhere. They need to be set time timeframes on them that way, there’s some sort of deadlines.
Keegan 9:39
And that really has completely changed the way that I work because it makes things organized. And organization helps me control all the chaos that’s happening inside of his head. And so I hope that that really helps. If you’re not doing any of those things if you don’t have a centralized place that you write things down. And it could be a paper notebook. It just needs to be a singular book, I would say invest in getting a nice book, carry it with you everywhere you go. Write all your notes in it date those things. Organize that however you however you see fit, but be able to get everything down out of your head.
Keegan 10:18
For me, I prefer digital, because there’s a lot of digital noise. But I get it. Some people love the old analog systems. And that can work as well. But you need a centralized place where you can get those things out to where you can not think about them anymore, be able to reference them because we’re limited in how much capacity we have. And we all get bombarded with so many things every day.
Keegan 10:39
And so I just think those are important. And having that in that one inbox, not just the notes, but the inbox, right, you can dump everything, everything that you get digitally can go into this inbox. You can follow up as you need. You can tag it as far as and when you want to do it. I love the get things done method where you can tag where you’re going to be doing things. And there’s a whole lot of information out there about GTD, it’s awesome. It’s really helpful. And it can, if you don’t overcomplicate things, it can revolutionize the way you operate the way you think and the way your mind stays free. That’s what it’s all about.
Keegan 11:15
So that’s a little bit about how me personally, at this stage of the game, I’m balancing everything. Is it always easy? Absolutely not. Hell no. It’s not always easy. Is it worth it to do the work to set things up to where it is a little bit easier? You bet. It’s always worth the setup work. I’m a person who loves to do things on the front end to set myself up to be good. Later on down the road.
Keegan 11:40
So that’s 11 minutes. That’s probably enough time for this week. I appreciate you being here. I really appreciate you all coming back. I posted another episode this morning. Last week’s episode just posted this morning. And I was looking through it. And after 12 weeks, you know our normal viewership about 80, 85 people a week. I’ve already got 30 People who listened to last week’s episode or last week’s episode, I can speak correctly. I just want to say thank you didn’t know how many people were going to come back people had lost faith on subscribed, whatever that was, but I do appreciate it.
Keegan 12:12
And if you know somebody who’s trying to go along something, or a journey similar to this, I would appreciate it very much. If you just do one thing for me just share this podcast with somebody who’s interested in maybe doing web design and or really just starting a business. This is my journey from full time employee from a full time job over into full time web design. So from side hustle, as the name implies, over to full time web designer, and I don’t know when that’s going to happen, it’s probably going to be a few years, which is going to make this really cool. When we look back on this in a handful of years, I will documented the whole journey, the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, and everything in between.
Keegan 12:53
But I appreciate you coming along. I appreciate you listening. And again, if there’s anybody out there who you know, might get some value from this, I would love it. It would mean the absolute world to me, if you would share that with them as well. Maybe it’ll help them along the way. So have an awesome day. Have an awesome week. Treat people out there with kindness. And don’t forget about empathy, empathy. We need more of it in the world. Have a great day.