How a side business can help you travel

Ep. #59 How a side business can help (EDITED)

Tue, Apr 30, 2024 1: 16PM • 24:52

Tue, Apr 30, 2024 1: SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Tue, Apr 30, 2024 1: pet, work, paid, business, travel, money, years, pet sitter, love, hustle, side, retreats, live, income, cat, additional income, saved, bought, writing, ways

00: 01

00: Do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell show, a place where we talk about living a life you love.

00: 12

00: I'm your host, Emma Lovell. And my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running a business and traveling the world. And now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure to it's possible and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams to create a life you love until you get now don't wait for a time and or someday in the future. I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonize business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, wins the challenges and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love.

01: 03

01: I would like to acknowledge and recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place now known as Australia. I am grateful for the continuing care of the land waterways and skies where I work live. Listen, learn and play. From here on you can bear country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present.

01: 25

01: Hello, and welcome to today's episode, I am your host, Emma Lovell, as my intro would have said, to me, I'm cleaning my computer, my

01: 36

01: camera, which is so dirty, super fun thing to be doing live on a podcast, but anywho I am going to be talking today about how a side business can help you travel. And now why am I saying side business and not side hustle. Because I really don't like the term side hustle. One because it's got the word hustle in it. And I'm trying my damnedest to run my business with grace and ease. And I've been working on that over the past five years, to do things in an easier way and to do things in a way that suits me. And hustle does not suit me, nor does it pass suit anyone I think the hustle culture and you gotta hustle and grind. And it doesn't really promote good life, work balance, sort of thing. And yes, I'm now saying life work balance, not work life balance, because someone brought to my attention actually just come on in. I know she listens to the podcast, that there was a guy who was trying to change that he was featured in ABC article and I love it and I'm going to start talking about it too. It's why we're saying work life wise work coming. First, we should be thinking about our life first, and then what work we want to do in order to facilitate the life that we want. Now work is a big part of our lives. And it's how we earn money and make money in order to all our work, whether it be our business or our work is how we make money in order to do what we want to do. And to live. But I don't know I I work to live. I don't live to work. So life work balance. I love that. But yeah, why are we why are we saying hustle? Why is it a side hustle? Why? Why do you have to do a job? Or do your? Yeah, so typically, people start side businesses when they have a corporate career, but then some people have them for business. And then they have a side business. This was me for sure.

03: 34

03: In order to do either pursue a passion or an interest or to make additional income, so But why are you doing a job and your business and working and then going and hustling on the side. Like, I understand what a hustle can can mean. But it has tended to have a negative connotation. So I'm trying to change that language. Let's call it a side business. So you can have a side business or a side way of making income or making money that can help you to do what you love. And today we're going to talk about travel because it's what I love. And I'm guessing if you found my podcast you probably like travel to and you're quite keen to learn how to run a business or how to have a side business or how to work as well as to travel. So I do work in my business. So we can say work. But over the years doing things on the side that aren't my core business but are another way to make income is how I've managed to travel quite so much. So my core business has been over the years and my core offering was I'd say consultation consultation in PR marketing, social media, copywriting I also do execution so I did actually deliver on that work. So I would deliver strategy I will deliver

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04: sort of do do the actual work do the writing or you know, coordination social media calling

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05: National Marketing coordination, and actually execute or rollout the plan as well. In more recent years, I've been doing more coaching or consulting, advising people on how they can build their brand and build their business. And then I've stepped really into the space of hosting retreats and teaching retreats. So using my business travel life skills to deliver these incredible luxury, life changing transforming retreats, but still really leaning on that coaching and bringing together all my skills over the years to help people to move forward. So they're sort of that's the core business. And before it was called Lovely communications, I've run that business since 2009. And I don't really still put my title if I have to on like a passport or on a visa application, I write marketing, marketing and promotion, it's kind of the easiest thing to understand how I work with people. That's the category it might fit in for now. But yeah, it's interesting. So but over the years, I've done many things. And there are many other ways. And I'll talk about some of the ones that I've done today, that might help you to think about some of the ways that you could earn an income in other ways as well. So some of the ways that I've made money on the side, and probably my favorite example, or the one that's kind of done the best was my pet sitting business. So

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06: no, you don't have to go and start a business, as well. But the way I started petsitting was

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06: my cousin actually pointed out that there was this app called pet cloud. And she said, You know, I know you love animals, and you love pets, but because I travel, I couldn't have one, I was also living with my dad in Sydney at the time. And he said, Are you, you know, she said, You love animals you love. But maybe you can just go and see them, and you actually get paid for it. And I thought, Oh, that's cool. And so I joined the app and actually got a pet sitting gig over Christmas visiting this 12 year old cat named Oscar, he was adorable, actually really sold me on these people had adopted this cat at 12 years old, because I thought this will be the last life he gets. And we don't want him to just, you know, in his years in, in a pound, or in an you know, animal shelter. So they took him but you know, cats can live to 20. So they might have been for another eight years. And he was most hilarious, lovely cat. And it really encouraged me to look at older cats or to adopt a cat. And when we did adopt a cat, we're only getting a young cat. There weren't many old cats when we went Anywho. And I got paid for paid $30 a day to go and hang out with this cat and just, you know, go in the house and hang out with him for a few hours. And I loved it. I wanted to do more of it. So I spoke to a friend who had been doing this inside thing for years. But she didn't charge. She didn't charge money. She did it in exchange for accommodation and had actually bought an investment property living this way. So she basically was permanently petsitting and just exchange her services for accommodation. But I sort of said, I think you really are offering a service. And when you do that as well, when you're doing a value exchange, there's different expectations. And so she said, Look, I'm happy to start charging as well. And why don't you start using my page and we can sort of do it together. So I got a pet sitting gig through her in Melbourne. And then we started working together. And Sydney really took off and I started getting bookings. Unfortunately, she had a lot of things pre booked. So she had to keep doing the free ones that she'd committed to. So she wasn't making the income the way I was. And we were sharing the Commission's or sharing the profit.

08: 41

08: But it sort of got to a point where I was like, This is going well and it's growing. And we were doing it under her page. And I said it kind of got to a point where it's like this needs to be proper. We need to set up accounts and things like that. And I just realized we had different ways of operating. And I went you know what, I think it's better off. She does her thing and I do my thing. We go our separate ways. I bought her out at the time. I think there's a couple $100 in the account. So I just went let's 5050 that and we'll just go our separate ways and you run your thing and I'll run my thing and I left the the Facebook, the Instagram, all the socials that I'd created. I didn't care I just was like you have it that was yours originally.

09: 24

09: And I'll just start my own. So I started lovely pet sitters in a day. I set up a website a bank account, audit business, oh, I got one of my clients who did a contract did some petsitting swap so he would make my logo and set up that business so

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09: and yeah, I already had clients so for started doing it and I was really good at the percentages. So working out administration pay owners pay how much I got paid, putting aside some for tax and then

09: 56

09: yeah, what the pet sitter would get paid and my

10: 00

10: I was to scale it. So already with the other business, I had scaled it to not just me, I had sitters. So even had my father in law doing pet setting. I had my husband doing petsitting sometimes in those early days I was doing for pets in a day. So

10: 13

10: two, we were doing like two visits. My husband was doing one Pitsea, I was doing another pet sale, we were boyfriend, girlfriend, then there was a chance to get to live together too. And anyway, that's what I did. I ended up having sitters in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Gold Coast, I even had someone do some pet sets in LA. So we were international. And I ran that business for four years. Just shy for three, three or years. It was definitely always in the black eye. I reinvested money to get like legals done and to get some branding done and things like that. I just got to a point where it was like either go all in on this, and I scale it and I get some administration support, because I can't keep doing that. And I really became an agent at the end and the customer service rep not actually doing the pet sitting and where I was most profitable was when I did the pet sitting. But by that time we bought our apartment and we got a cat ourselves and I wanted to be home more than going in staying in other people's homes and pet sitting. So in my role, my model was more that we went to the pet seats, we didn't have the pets come to us. I think it's better. I do believe it's better for an animal to stay in its own home.

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11: I actually fun fact worked in in kennels, when I was a teenager and in my university years, a dog kennels and cattery. So I do understand pet care, and sort of knew some of the industry but I think pets are best in their home and in their environment. And it's better for the pet sitter to go to them if possible. So yeah, I ran that for three and a half years, four years, and it was profitable. And a paid 100% paid for trip to Fiji, I went to Fiji with my dad for five days. And that pet sitting business paid for that entirely. I know there was a number of other pets that things that are paid for. The other thing that that business helped me to do was at the time, I was basically doing it full time. I was living with my dad. So I paid board when I was there and not when I wasn't which was a great arrangement. So thanks, dad. But basically all of my income, then I was still working, I was doing a contract because when your pets needed to be with the animal all day, I was because I could work from home, but I would be in the house. Just living in someone else's house getting paid to live in the house, electricity, water, food are all covered, but have very little outgoings all my money that I earned from the business and from my main contract in business would come into my account that was for savings. So I actually managed to save the deposit for my investment property.

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12: For my first house that I bought, which became my investment property I saved that I saved $42,000 In just seven months, I think was even less maybe six months. So from June till December when I purchased, I saved $42,000. So huge part of that not only did the end, you know that year I decided to buy the house. It didn't I didn't stop traveling, I didn't stop doing things. When I was still traveling through the penciling business, we actually moved to the Gold Coast. We moved to Queensland during that time. And my husband and I went to LA and Mexico for a trip that year while I was saving for a house, we were able to do that because I wasn't willing to give up the travel and to give up everything in order to get the house I would resent that. So I needed to be able to still live

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13: as well as to save money. So I think in 2016, I did also one of my tours to manage it as well, maybe that year, the next year. So I did get to travel during that time as well. I didn't have to give it up. I just I just found another way to make income. And I found a way to massively reduce my cost. Hi, I'm Alicia major. I love working with them as so much I've done. Everything that she has offered me is how to live in Love Your Brain course opened my eyes to the power of personal branding. Then I moved on to one on one coaching attended multiple of her fabulous photo shoots, and her rest and retreat retreats have all been the best time out to rest. Think about all those juicy possibilities and then wait for you to receive that post retreat. Goodness.

14: 21

14: So that's one type of side business. And now you might not want to set up an entire business. But there are wonderful apps, the petsitting if you like pets and you don't mind spending some time with pets and you willing to give up a few days or a week or it might be the way that you have a holiday you go and do a pet sit in Tasmania, your pet sit in them, you know in Melbourne, so I was working at a comedy festival and I did a pet sit in Melbourne for the comedy festival. So then I was not having to pay accommodation. I was getting paid and I was getting to attend the company festival as well. So it's just a different way of doing things. There's some free sites where you do it for free like how singing.com they do have

15: 00

15: paid opportunities to this trusted pet sitters.com. As pet cloud, one of the most famous now is pet mad paws. So you can just join those apps as a pet sitter, and you'd be paying be paid 40 $45 a day to hang in someone's house. It's such a great way to travel. And it's a great way to earn additional income, especially if you like me love animals. And even in the last few years, I was thinking, it'd be really cool, sorry, not the last few years, the last six months, I've been thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we could do it as a family and like Airbnb out our place or sublet our place, if somebody wants to come stay and happy to take care of the cat, excuse me, next call coming up. And also to,

15: 45

15: you know, then we could go stay somewhere else and get paid, it just been three of us. So as long as someone's willing to have a toddler in their home, we could do that. Or maybe we've sort of the house swap or something like that, like, it's still a way to travel. But it's, you're keeping more of your money, because I think when you're trying to increase your income, it's not just about getting more money, it's sometimes about keeping more money. And that's what the petsitting was doing. For me, I was able to keep more of my money because I wasn't spending money on my rent on my electricity on my water. Now, obviously, I was in a position where I could go to dads in between. But I know a lot of people could do this, they stay with other people in between, we actually have a girl who's coming to our house on Friday, who's kind of staying at people's houses doing pet sitting while she's building out her van so that she can do a van living around the year. So It suits her to come and take care of our cat for five days whilst before she goes and does the next one or stays with another friend.

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16: You know, and if you really push comes to shove, maybe you do go and stay with relatives or, or you have to get an Airbnb or pay some rent for a little while. But if you can kind of a commit to that lifestyle for a while, you could actually keep a lot of your money and save a lot of your money to put towards the thing that you want to do. So it might not be petsitting for you. One of the other things I've done is mystery shopping, and it doesn't pay hugely well, but it's pretty fun.

17: 13

17: So you sign up to a website like human experience is run by my friend Nick McClanahan, and you go and do things like I went into Pilates classes, so had to buy the Pilates pack, I get reimbursed for the pack, and I also get paid an amount. So I got to do Pilates for free. I got paid for being there. And I just had to do a report about what was the customer service experience for the whole time. I've done one for this one that keeps coming up. And I just haven't made it work. But like there's one for those float tanks. So you buy the float tank experience, you go and do it, you report on it, you get reimbursed as well as to get paid, and it's $30. But it's like hello, I get to have a relaxation treatment and be paid for it in exchange for doing a report about it.

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17: Another thing that I haven't done this, but I know that people do is like online surveys, you can actually be paid and sometimes it's $10 apart. But like you're sitting there watching Netflix, why don't you do some surveys while you're doing it. Couple $10 here $20 There $50 There $50. A week extra, you did five surveys a week. That adds up a lot. Even if you just put that into your travel holiday account. What incredible way to make money.

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18: I have worked at Kohl's, I did that during COVID. And just because everything was a bit crazy. And my friend works for HR company and said they needed people to stack the shelves because everything was so wild. So I did that on the side.

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18: What didn't do it the status Tosh kind of stopped working for a few weeks, I couldn't deal with the business. And I loved it. And I said to my husband, I might try and get like on the casual roster at the local colts because it was really therapeutic to stacking boxes and moving apples from here to there. I really enjoyed not just doing a physical job and getting paid the hour. And just having another way to make income. So getting a casual job could be another way. Now to have a side business, you can do things like writing. So I'm a travel writer, I have a skill of writing. I'm a writer, writer. So I've written many things. I'm writing a book at the moment, but I can write, I can always turn back to the writing. And there are many websites where they have people they need to write or contribute. sometimes have to pitch but sometimes people come to me and I've been paid anywhere from $75 for an article to $1,300 for an article. Now obviously that takes a skill set and it takes time. But I can always turn on my my writing skill. And I'm actually getting really excited writing my book and getting back into that travel space and I get paid $400 An article. The other thing I can get

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19: is, you know free or value exchange things. So I wrote about

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19: Chicago weekend and so we went to Chicago

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20: Got to us. And I reached out to a hotel and said, Look, we're coming. They're in charge of a media rate, or you know, I'm going to pitch you in my article on this publication. And they said, We can't give you a free room, but we can give you 50% off. So I've got to stay in the heart of Chicago for 50% Less, which was a really nice hotel, Writing Center in Chicago. And it really enhanced our experience, and it reduced our cost. So there's other ways you can, you know, exchange, I'll write about you in exchange for saving money or for making money.

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20: It also means that when I'm writing about that trip, there's tax deductions, because I'm earning income, as I'm traveling, saying, where the city is earning income as I'm traveling. So this way, there's multiple, multiple ways that you can do it. And I just wanted to really use the side business, the petsitting business as the example. I did that around running my business, I did that around a full time contract, I was doing full time contract with Worldvision, 40 hours a week, last week, doing some social media work for my clients, plus doing some travel writing, plus, doing the petsitting. And the petsitting really was just a few emails back and forth. Even easier. If you're not the one running the business, I was doing invoicing, managing clients, if you're just on one of those apps, you're literally just looking at the app and going Yeah, I can go and stay at that house for a week, I'll get paid $40 A day $280 Extra my account, sweep. And I'll just work from there. Like there's no other change to your lifestyle apart from packing your bag and going to and from, but if you're not going to a job, it doesn't matter where the pets it is. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I've had multiple other ways of making income. And I'll share that over the time. But I wanted to keep today short, just to get you thinking about what are some other ways that you can bring in income, or keep more of your income so that you can put it towards things that you love, like travel like a holiday. I've also in the UK when I lived there when I was 18. I worked in a bar for six weeks, so that I could afford two nights a week. I was like, What am I doing on a Tuesday anyway, so Tuesday and Thursday, sometimes I did a couple of Saturday shifts. So that for six weeks, I've saved up that money, I think I saved up about 400 pounds, which paid for me to go to Denmark for five days. For me, that was an easy thing to do. So I was working in full time recruitment recruited role in the country offices at eBay, whilst I was there, my gap year and then I just worked a couple of nights in a bar a week, so that I could do a trip that I wanted to do.

22: 33

22: I hope this is food for thought of ways that you can bring in additional income. Maybe it's setting up a side business, maybe it's freelancing, maybe it's contracting, I'm sure you have skills or ways that you can do things. My husband during COVID Did some.

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22: He now does he actually does a side thing of driving boats. So he drives, he has a license and has done that training. So he drives a charter or occasionally for a local Boat Company. But during COVID he was painting fences and doing some laboring work for a friend who has laboring business. He has a forklift license. So you do extra forklifting we're both I said to him, we are both diligent workers, we are always going to be able to make money are willing to do the work in order to make money. We're just finding smarter and more creative and fun ways to do that. So that will for me anyway, maybe not for him. He would like to just keep the money. I would like to keep more money so that we can spend it on travel. That's my always always My thing is how can I get more travel? What do I have to do in order to get more travel, and it guides me It drives me and motivates me and encourages me. I hope this has been helpful and I'd love to hear the ways that you running a side business and other side hustle. What is your side business? Or what are additional ways that you're managing to bring in income? Love to hear from you reach me at Emma at Emma lovell.au get to me on all the socials. Please don't forget to be me at true but please don't forget to rate review and subscribe. It really helps me here on the podcast. And I'd love to hear about the topics that you want me to cover. All right, talk soon. Lovely. Thanks for listening.

24: 08

24: Thank you for listening lovely one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big and start creating a life you love today. If you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected. Come and join the live a life you love group on Facebook or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au The same as my website that all the details are in the show notes lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking Now go out there and live a life you love