In this episode, I share about:
- my side hustling journey from high school until now
- the thought process behind why I side hustle
- how side hustling has shaped me into the person that I am today
Some of you may know that I play piano, and when I think about it, piano was my original side hustle. And this is all thanks to my mom. Before my brother and I were even born, she was adamant that we would learn piano. She literally asked my dad if he would be okay with having two kids learn piano and if he would financially support that, and he said yes. And so before either of us even took any lessons, she bought a well loved, like 20 year old upright piano from elderly lady. She admitted later that it was a little risky to buy a piano before we committed to it. But she was really determined for us to learn piano.
My mom taught me the importance of side hustles.
When I was about four or five, she enrolled me in private piano lessons. So as a kid, I was pretty small. And when I came home from lessons to practice, my fingers were really tiny and weak. I struggled to reach notes and to make sounds on the piano. Many people, including my dad, and my grandmother begged my mom to not force me to play. But she didn’t listen to them. And I continued my piano lessons.
In the future, whenever guests came over, my parents always wanted me to play something for the guests to show off. But I would usually protest or end up doing it begrudgingly. And so this one time, there was an uncle who was some distant family relative. He came by, and he was just sitting and I was playing. And then he asked my mom why she put me in piano lessons. And he just assumed that it was because she wanted me to eventually impress some rich man in the future. My mom was really offended by his assumption, and she just responded, “The reason she’s learning piano is so that she’ll have a backup skill for her future life in case anything happens. And with piano lessons, she can learn discipline, and work ethic.”
This really surprised my relatives because they thought my mom was just being frivolous. Because they thought piano lessons were a waste of money. And it’s true, it’s unlikely for anyone to become a concert pianist. And even if I became a professional pianist, it could have been difficult for me to make a “stable” income. But my mom thought differently than them, because she saw that there was possibility there, even though she had not taken music lessons before. She wanted to give us an opportunity that she didn’t have. And if we had the skills, we could leverage it in the future to support ourselves. And so now my philosophy also stems from this life lesson that my mom ingrained in me. And the irony is that a bunch of other relatives followed the trend afterwards. And they also put their kids into piano lessons.
I started my first side hustle in high school, as a piano accompanist.
But anyways, I never have thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I’ve always just felt like I followed my interests and just leveraged that to reach my goals. And so that’s how I would define side hustling, which is anything that you do outside of school or work with the goal of either making money, connections or opportunities are just like improving yourself in some way. So for example, in high school, that was the first time I started making money with piano as my side hustle.
I actually didn’t need a side hustle, because I was lucky enough that my parents mostly took care of everything I needed. So you know, they paid for school supplies, clothes, piano lessons. And even if they went through some financial hardship, they didn’t let me or my brother know about that. This is because when they first came to America, they had to work various jobs in the restaurant industry, or in the retail industry throughout high school. And they didn’t want us to have to deal with those experiences as well. So they just encouraged us to focus on school and music.
To give a little context of the story, I also have to share about my orchestra history, which is that in addition to piano, I also picked up violin around the fifth grade and joined the orchestra. And so I was in an orchestra throughout middle and high school. And in orchestra, you have to participate in this annual music competition, where it’s not where you’re competing with other people. You’re just really competing with yourself and you’re evaluated on your own performance, which could be in like a solo or an ensemble. But if you do a solo there, you’re not playing by yourself, there’s usually like a piano playing in the background called an accompanist.
At my high school, there was only one teacher who could accompany students for orchestra, band and choir. That’s a lot of students that they had to cover. As the program’s grew, he got more overwhelmed by the demand of students who needed an accompanist. Since I was also a pianist, I read the piano parts and decided that I was capable of learning it. And I knew that I could be paid $25 per person, even if it was the same piano part. So if the same piece was performed multiple times, that would be more money for the same amount of effort. So I pitched this idea to my orchestra teacher who thought it was a great idea. Because that meant that I could lighten the load for the piano accompanist.
So at this time, I didn’t realize that I was being entrepreneurial, I was honestly just excited that I could make money with my piano skills. I forgot how much I made over those years, it was probably around like 150 to $250 per year, which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But to a high schooler, that’s a lot of money. And I realized now that I probably could have charged a little bit more, because it actually took up a lot more time than I anticipated. And because I also played violin, I was able to coach some of the students in terms of like, maybe their tempo, like the speed they were playing, or maybe there were a couple of notes off. So I could pinpoint those and help them fix that. And like my mom, I also started a trend, because other people, younger students, after me saw what I did, and also decided to make money by accompanying soloists as well.
When I look back on this experience, I just wonder, like, how was I confident enough in my skills at that time to pitch that idea and get paid for it. But I’m really glad I did that, because it was really fun. I learned a lot. And now I know that I could accompany people in the future if I needed to, at least at the middle and high school level.
I had two side hustles in college as a resident assistant and undergraduate research assistant.
So the next part of this story is about my college years. And in college, I side hustled in two different ways. First, as a resident assistant in the residence halls or the dorms, and second as an undergrad research assistant. And to be honest, I did these out of financial reasons at first, and I experienced all the benefits after.
As a first gen college student, I didn’t know much about college, other than going to class and graduating and getting a stable nine to five. Thanks to a generous gift from a relative, I was able to live on campus during my freshman year. And this was really convenient, because I went to the University of Houston and I lived on the southwest side of town. And so to get to the University of Houston, or UH, it’s at least like a 45 minute drive across town, and then that’s not counting like the tolls or the traffic. Living on campus, I really loved it. And I just loved how convenient everything was. I loved how the library was across the street from my dorm and like the dining hall was like right there. And I could, you know, stay late to work with my friends. I really wanted this experience to continue. I really dreaded the idea of having to commute in the following years because this was like a one time gift from my relative. But living on campus is expensive. I had to find a way to pay for it.
I forgot who told me or how I found out. But eventually I learned that resident assistants or RAs got their room and meal plan covered. And so one thing about me is that I’ve always been calculating or thinking ahead. I tried to figure out the best way to set myself up in order to get an RA position. So once I got into the residence hall, I decided to join their student council and just do a good job, contribute, show what I could do, network with current RAs and the building directors, and then leverage all that experience so that I could secure an RA position for the next year. And it worked because then I was an RA for three and a half years after that.
So of course the other big issue when it comes to college is tuition as it is for many college students. And so when I applied to UH, they gave me a scholarship that covered about 75% of my tuition, which was the best offer that I got. Even though I didn’t know a lot about personal finances. I knew that because of my parents and their values and also my own values. We did not want to owe anyone anything. And so my family and I decided that we would pay the difference out of pocket if needed.
During the first year, my parents helped me with tuition. But at the time, my family was also going through another financial hardship, and I didn’t want to be a burden on them. I tried to find other ways to make money in my field. Because honestly, I did not think that I could survive a customer service or retail type of position. And also, I really wanted to learn some type of transferable skills or also make new connections.
The first summer I worked as a STEM camp counselor, and it paid maybe about 2 to 3K for the entire summer, which isn’t a lot. But it’s also not so bad for a first job because I attended this camp when I was younger, so I was really familiar with it. And then during the school year, I kept hustling to find more money for tuition, I applied to any local or university wide scholarship that I was eligible for. And I got small amounts here and there, which added to about $500 to $1,000 per semester. But of course, this wasn’t enough to cover everything.
Fortunately, this coincided with my interest to get involved with undergrad research. And this was when I also found out that I could be paid to do research during the school year in the summer. So after that, I applied and then eventually received two university level research scholarships and worked in two different labs over three and a half years. It was just a bonus that I really enjoyed the labs that I was in, and that it has such a huge influence in my career path.
Now as you can see my side hustling days in college started because I wanted a specific lifestyle while also achieving some financial peace of mind. Like I didn’t want to drive to campus. So I found a way to live on campus without having to pay for it. I didn’t want to stress my parents out with paying for my tuition. So I searched for positions that would pay me while also benefiting my personal or professional development in some way. Finally, because I chose to do these things, I avoided student loan debt, which was very important to me. As I mentioned earlier, my family and I did not want to owe anyone anything.
Side hustling was possible for me because of my support system.
Although I am proud of my side hustling and college because I do feel that I worked hard in all those different positions. I also want to acknowledge that I was really fortunate to have the opportunities to make these decisions for myself. For example, I never could have become an RA if my relative did not give that on campus living experience for my freshman year. Because in order to be an RA, you needed at least one year of living on campus to qualify. I never could have received the level of scholarships I got if my parents were not emotionally and financially supportive. For example, they made the time in their schedule to drive me an hour across the city to you, ah, multiple times during the week, night, or weekends for scholarship events and interviews.
And then because of those two opportunities, I was able to live on campus and then having the majority of my tuition covered by scholarships, I could be picky about the types of jobs that I wanted to work in. As I learned through my college years, other people like my co workers or my classmates were side hustling more and harder than me for all their own different reasons. But the one thing we had in common was that we truly believed in our reason, because it pushed us to keep on going even when there were rough patches. And I think many of us can relate to this on some level because most likely you have been side hustling in some shape or form. Like I mentioned earlier, writing scholarships or working on campus jobs and whatnot, or in other capacities to get to where you are right now, even if you didn’t realize that was side hustling.
I also want to clarify that I’m not saying that you should make all your hobbies into a side hustle. Some things are meant for pure enjoyment. For example, I would not want to seriously take on a piano component as a side hustle now, because right now with piano, I really just want to focus on learning more pieces and developing my own musical expression and challenges relaxing when I play. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t go for it again in the future if the opportunity presented itself is just a bonus when you can turn your hobby into something that makes money but of course not at the expense of your own enjoyment.
My web design side hustle is another stepping stone in my journey.
Now we are onto the final part of the story, which is why I started a side hustle for web design while I was working in industry and how I’m continuing this as a grad student. I started working in the chemical industry starting January 2019. Although the work was scientifically fulfilling, I wanted to do something more creative and social.
I decided to brush up on my web design skills. So in high school, I had a Tumblr which is a blogging platform, and with Tumblr, you could easily design your team which is like the look of your website with CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. I spent a lot of time, probably more than I should have, learning how to code and design these Tumblr themes with CSS and HTML. And I’ve always been interested in typography and design, like casually as an observer. And so kind of combining all those interests together was how I became interested in web design.
Around April 2019, or four months into my job, I found a volunteer opportunity to redesign a website and brand for a woman in STEM podcast. And so I just asked about it and made the connection. And so after that project, the podcast host loved my work so much, she encouraged me to turn it into a side hustle. I was really flattered, but I was not ready at that time for a side hustle. So
I thought about this for another five months or so until September 2019. When I finally took the leap, I consider that my business birthday, and bought my website and started advertising my services and things like that. I decided to start my web design side hustle, because I wanted to not only make extra income, but I also thought it would be a good opportunity to connect with other STEM people online, since I did have the goal of going to grad school eventually. And I also thought that learning how to run an online business might be helpful and learning how to run projects on my own and communicate with others once I did go into my PhD. Additionally, I also wanted to have a source of additional income, or have some type of foundation set in that business in case something happened in grad school, where my stipend could not cover it.
And actually, the grad school stipend is one of the main reasons that I delayed going to grad school because I really fear the financial uncertainty. And I really just did not feel financially responsible yet coming out of undergrad, even though I came out without any student loan debt, which is a really a great place to be. I was also very fearful of the fact that I had very little emergency savings. I also had to consider the financial costs of going to grad school. Going to grad school instead of continuing to work meant that I would postpone any possible contributions to retirement funds. I also didn’t want to be in a position where I didn’t know how to create extra income for myself.
So even though my business is not as active right now, I know that I could lean on it if I needed to. However, the reason for having my side hustle now has changed. And after working and being in grad school, and reflecting on those experiences, as well as my observations of the current economy, I’ve realized that my side hustle as a web designer could be an alternative career choice if I needed it to be or if I wanted it to be.
My beliefs about careers have changed over time, and my side hustle provides an alternative.
I used to believe that the nine to five would provide me with financial security and stability. But now I’m not sure if I believe in that anymore, given how cyclical the chemical industry is, and how companies can just be really heartless and just let their employees go despite their performance. As I was growing up, I saw this happen to my dad multiple times, you work so hard, and so many hours over time, helping his company produce high quality instruments or products. And time after time, they would just sell the company or merge with another company, and then just let him go along with a bunch of other people. And he stayed with all these companies for so long until that point, and there was just no loyalty from the company.
For the longest time, I also thought that I wanted an elite career in the chemical industry, I thought I wanted to work really hard to climb the career ladder, become a senior scientist and r&d. But after being in grad school and reflecting on what I want for myself in my life and my own abilities, you know, I’m not really sure if that’s what I still want. Now, I’m thinking that maybe I want to focus my future towards my future family, or also like being there for my parents, maybe even finding other types of work that I might enjoy, like becoming a full time entrepreneur, in web design, or maybe even running a music studio. Having that intense career doesn’t appeal to me as much anymore, because it wouldn’t provide the flexibility that I would want.
Final Thoughts
Basically, I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, which is something that my mom always reminds me of. She also has this other saying which is like, you know, if one hand is broken, at least you have another hand to work with. So this is kind of the same mentality that I’m operating from. And this is how I see my side business now with respect to my career. Maybe this web design business is just another stepping stone in my very long career of whatever it is that I do. You know, regardless, there’s always something valuable that I can get from this experience, or it will help me in some way in the future, but I just don’t know it yet. So that’s my whole story.
I really hope that within this episode, my story has kind of given you some things to explore for yourself, you know, and to also consider how side hustling could also benefit your current or future life. I know that all of us here really care about science and research, but you probably also care about exploring opportunities beyond your science. To wrap up this episode, I would just like to encourage all of us to think bigger about what’s possible for us within and beyond our science.