Anna Brading: Turning Your Time Into Money With Side Hustles

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[00:18] Anna Brading:

There’s a lot of focus on when you’re struggling with money, scrimp and save and cut back. And I learned firsthand having three kids that were small, already having lived quite tight, we couldn’t cut back too far. There’s a limit you can cut back. But when we’re talking side hustles and starting little businesses, even if it’s not Tesla, there’s not really an upper limit to that amount you can create through bringing in extra income. And that’s what fascinated me. Because I thought, huh, I’ve only ever learned to just cut back. There’s other ways of doing this, and that’s to increase your income.

SPEAKER_02: So I am so glad that you said that because I get messages all the time from people that perhaps are on the breadline or just struggling a little bit, and they say, you know, what can I do? Like, what can I do to increase my income? And I say, Have you done a time evaluation? Like, you know, you can start with your Netflix, for example, or your TikTok or your Instagram and your phone screen time. Like, that’s a really good place to start from. Yeah. And then really, as well, like you’re not going to get support from the government, from people outside in. You do need to look at you and how you present yourself to the world.

[01:26] Anna Brading:

Some people will say, you know, I’ve got a very demanding job, I’ve got a very demanding career. I can’t find that time. And there are situations where absolutely, especially if you’ve got young kids or you know, family life is difficult, there are those times. And I think it’s identifying the season you’re in and finding the strategy for the fit for that season. I had young kids, but I did actually have time. I had time when they were napping. I had time. So one thing I did before businesses, I did a side hustle, which was just tutoring. And actually, you put a few hours in and you actually can get paid quite well per hour. Yeah. So service-based side hustle, really good for if you’ve only got a few hours a week. So I could kind of go, okay, well, I can make this much for doing that. I’ve also got these hours here. So if I use that for starting a business, that for side hustling. I did a little bit of like data entry stuff as well. Like, like I was good on Excel. So I did a lot of like number crunching and bits like that for somebody too. And so you can do these little bits and bobs. Um, but I think it’s the right strategy for your season of life. So if you’re somebody who’s got money, haven’t got time, but you’re like, I’m not using my money to the best ability, it might not be a side hustle. It might be, well, we’ll look into investing because that’s the way you can even you could get growth for investing, but you can also get dividend payouts, and that’s not relying on your time. So there’s different strategies for for where you’re at. I always like to think of it as a buffet. So you’re like, these are all the things you can do. Most of them we never got taught about. Have a look. Like, just have a little look around, see what piques your interest. Like, do you want a bit of that? Do you want a bit of that? Try this. There’s not one thing. It’s lots and lots of different routes.

[03:01] Sammie Ellard-King:

You talk about planning a lot in your content. Like a lot of people struggle with planning because they don’t know what the end goal is. So, how would you approach planning and what does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00: So I think if you’re feeling the pinch right now and you’re thinking, oh, I need to sort my finances out. Because I often, when I get members coming to our membership and stuff, one of the first questions I asked them is, Why now? What was it that made you want to start sorting your finances out? Because there’s always a reason. It’s not something you want to just do for fun on the weekend unless you’re really into finance. That was not me. I got to this point because I wanted, because I had to, because I had to sort our finances out. So there’s often there’s a pinch. And I think the trouble with that is you want to get to action straight away because you want to change things. You want things to change tomorrow. You’re like, I just need to sort my finances out, make it better. So you get into the kind of do-do-do, like, I just need to get a budget, I need to do this, I need to do that. When was the last time you asked yourself? When was the last time you asked yourself what you really want? When was the last time you actually sat down and really thought, what do I want my life to look like? What you really want? When was the last time you actually sat down and really thought, what do I want my life to look like? Maybe now, maybe next week, maybe in a year’s time, maybe in five, ten years’ time? Scary question, especially if you are somebody who has been taught there’s only one route to making income, this is your trajectory. So you have this mapped picture kind of mapped out anyway. So you’ve probably already ruled some stuff out. But if you stop and you go, hang on, if there are other routes, if I’m just gonna believe that for a second, what would I really want? What would I want my life to look like? And so um I get people to make it what I call a deep dive board, which is very similar to like a vision board situation, but because I call it a deep dive board because I feel I want to call it something different because I tapped it then afterwards to actual numbers and finance and costings. So it’s it’s kind of a different approach. And also I’m not it’s not to do with manifesting, it’s it’s actually just to make a plan. Put down things that represent where you want to get to. I put everything on there from family life, what do I want my relationship with my kids to look like? So I’ll put things like um reading them books, like a picture of someone reading a kid’s books. I’ll put things like what our garden should look like, like it’s a home life. I’ll put down different stats for my business. I’ve actually also put down things I want people to say about my business. So imaginary quotes of mentor of money is a place where da da da da or something like that. I’m not a vision body person in terms of I don’t, I’m not a manifesting person. That’s not my belief system. So I’m a Christian and believe in God and stuff like that. So I’m that’s my kind of route, my spiritual route. So it’s not something that I’m gonna go, oh, because I put it on there, it’s gonna happen. However, I’m a big believer that you’re always moving. And I think we can either be moving intentionally in the place we want to go in the direction we want to go, or we can just be drifting. And I think in life, you you know, every single day you’re moving forward, you’re going somewhere, there’s money coming in, there’s money going out, things are happening, you’re making decisions, you’re not just static, you you’ve got another day older, so you your your your age has increased. So I think we can either drift to where we we don’t plan and we just drift, or we can start paddling towards where we want to go. And I think what a board like this helps you do is even allow your subconscious to kind of go, that’s where I want to go. Okay, let’s look for ways to get there. So one time I put on um a picture, completely forgot about it. A year later, I was telling my friend about this idea of boards and stuff, and I just said, hang on a second, wait a second, I’m just gonna go get mine because I’ve just had this really weird thought. Went and got it, pulled up the picture, and I was like, oh my gosh, that’s really weird. It was a picture that I had put of. So I went to the Dordogne in France when I was a kid and went canoeing down the river, and it’s one of my core memories, absolutely loved it. And I was like, oh, I’d love to do that with my kids. They’re about the right age now. That summer, we’d done that trip. I’d forgotten I’d put it on my board, and we had almost the exact same photo in our camera roll.

[07:02] Sammie Ellard-King:

That’s really interesting. I don’t actually do that. I actually have a one-year goal, a five-year goal, and an ultimate goal. And what I do is I break them down into five steps that I can manage from there. Love that. And in those goals, like basically I’ll split them up so you can do things in what can you do this month, for example? What can you do in six months? What can you do in a year? And then I work towards those. That could be like, you know, a family holiday in your one-year goal, for example, and then more in your five-year goal. You’re working to bigger goals as you progress. Yeah. So would you say that that’s kind of the phase of the planning stage, that first phase?

SPEAKER_00: Yes. So I think a great next step is to write down anything that’s free. So have you look at your board and say, well, well, well, some of these things don’t cost any money, so I can just do them now. I just need to put an action down. So that would be phase one. Is so things like I want to teach my kids Spanish, okay, book it in your calendar. Phase two would be to then look at the things that are lower cost items you probably could do if you budgeted better, if you had a plan. So you look at those and then it’s like, what do they cost? So, oh, I want to start going to the gym. Okay, what does that actually cost? Write it down. So listing, yeah, listed it, list it down, add those up. So, what’s my monthly cost for all of those? Can I do that yet? Which ones can I do now? So, again, that’s for later on when you start making a budget. It’s like pulling those things in. So you’re designing your budget to fit the thing you really want to do. And then the third phase would be, okay, I can’t cost I can’t afford these things. What do they cost anyway? Because they might actually be less than I think they are. I think we often think things are more expensive or out of reach than they are. So even um, I don’t know if anyone’s said to you, you know, I think I think Tony Robbins does a thing on this of what do you think you need to like have everything you want? And the number people pick pick normally is like a billion pounds or like something really big. And then he does this the whole thing. I think it’s in the book Money Master Game. I’ve forgotten, but I think it is. And he says, like, actually, if you just write it all down, just have a look. You want a jet, okay? Well, what does that actually cost?

[09:00] Sammie Ellard-King:

So, step one is visualization, step two is writing down how to actually make it happen.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: Step three is budgeting out the next stage, and then step four is working out how much your actual dream life is gonna cost.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly. That was a very good summary. And how long does that take? That doesn’t take long because actually at the moment you’re just putting down numbers, it’s just a sketch and it’s to come back to. So in the book, what I do is I do um mindset money multiply is the is the format of the book. It’s 10 steps that I think everyone should know. These are the 10 big things I learned that I’m like, we should all know this stuff. So just 10 things overall, and then three sections. So we start with mindset, and that’s where the planning, the stuff we just talked about would sit is in there. Then what we do is once you’ve got your numbers, you can pull that into the next section, which is the which is the managed section, which is where you’re really getting your finances in order and you’re getting things organised month to month, you’ve got systems in place, you’ve got automations happening, but you’re using the numbers you’ve just come up with um to again push you in that direction. Yeah.

[10:02] Sammie Ellard-King:

Yeah, one in three people at the moment have less than a hundred pounds, which actually blows my mind if you think about it. Like, honestly though, why do you actually feel like that’s the case?

SPEAKER_00: It’s a real indicator of how we’re handling our money that we’ve got. Basics like an emergency fund. A lot of people don’t know what an emergency fund is, they don’t know what it should be, they don’t know where to keep one. Another angle in it is buy now, pay later, and all the stuff that’s so available to us now that we’re putting on the credit card. We are then having we can buy stuff, we can get things, but then we have to pay for it later. And that’s eating up our savings as well. Saving isn’t glamorous, saving isn’t sexy and fun. It’s this kind of quiet discipline that gets you something else. And one of the other things that people don’t talk enough about when it comes to saving is the well-being component. There’s another study I did a video on recently about how saving, it’s come out now that saving can improve your sleep. So even to go from zero savings to just £100 a bit more saved, even even a little bit, can improve your sleep. So you could get a better sense of well-being and life satisfaction by being on a lower income but having savings, you can have a better life satisfaction and well-being than a higher earner without savings.

[11:18] Sammie Ellard-King:

That makes sense. Four in five stress-related illnesses are money related.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but savings give you that well-being. They give you that sense of, oh, okay, we’re gonna be alright.

SPEAKER_02: We say just try and get to your first 10 grand saved. And the thing is with that, is that we hop back on a call with these people and they say, you know, I’ve done it. And I say to them, how do you feel? And they go, Yeah, like it’s completely liberating. Yeah. I’m honestly completely agree. I think it’s so important for people. Like, you don’t have to then answer to, you know, an asshole boss if he turns up and he’s mean to you at work or, you know, you’re in a toxic work relationship or something like that. Um, you’ve got options, you know, you’ve got freedom and you have something to fall back on if something goes wrong. Yeah. And I just think that has such a profound effect on your mental health.

[12:07] Anna Brading:

And we don’t talk enough as well about risk and how actually to make things happen with your finances, there are risks involved. If you want to grow your money, if you want to move things forward, like starting a business, there’s risks. Having an emergency fund basically allows you to take bigger risks safely. Okay, so I can go from trying to like a snail pace of trying to move things forward in my finances to like, okay, now I can take bigger steps and I can move this along. And we definitely experienced that too. When we got our emergency fund on, we were like, oh, we’ve got options.

SPEAKER_02: It’s a tough one for me with emergency funds because a lot of people say six months, and I just have to disagree with that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it’s just so much money for a lot of people. And often, if you just cut out the coffees and the Ubers and actually got a number that, you know, realistically you could live off. You know, you’re not on noodles or anything, you can just live off it, it would make a big difference to you. Like that could be like 1.5k, and if you times that by say three, and that’s three months, that’s you know, four and a half grand. That’s a big, big difference.

[13:09] Anna Brading:

You know, a lot of people are um are really familiar with the debt snowball. And I was thinking recently, I made a video about this about you should see it as a saving snowball as well.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00: So do the same thing, you know, start with 100 pounds. If you’ve not got any savings, start with 100 pounds, build your confidence, see how good it feels. And the whole thing, the whole point of the debt set snowball is is it’s a psychological thing. It’s like pay off the smallest debt, see how you feel, see how good it is, pay off the next biggest debt, see how good it is. And it’s the same with saving. Get the 100 quid, snowball into a thousand, and now into, you know, and then you can just like keep going. Then you’re like, oh, this is really worth it. But you’ve got to prove it to yourself and realise how good it is, and then you’re like, oh yeah, okay. Actually, it’s legit. This is fine.

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