We can all relate to the feeling of packing up our bags at the end of the workday, driving home, plopping yourself on the couch and letting out a big relieved sigh. At the end of a shift it can feel great to get home and do your own thing. Whether that means binge watching multiple seasons of “Breaking Bad,” cooking or heck, even just having a nap. But have you ever thought about how your evenings are paying you back?
The greatest thing my entrepreneur dad has taught me is this single fact: what you do before 5 p.m. is for “the man”; everything after 5 is for your future. Now I’m not saying you need to go out and work multiple jobs to get ahead, and I’m really not saying you have to ‘get ahead’ at all. This is about personal betterment. This is about how you can use your evening hours to develop who you are as a person and the skills you have that could potentially earn you more income.
So how can you do this? Start with analyzing yourself. What are your hobbies and talents? How can you use these skills to make money for you, without you really feeling like you’re ‘working’? For me, I have a love of talking. More specifically, I realized over the last few years that I can get paid for it. Working in radio has given me an understanding of all the places I can market my voice to pay me back. So upon lots of networking and email sending and skill developing after work hours, I’ve managed to build a small but ever growing freelance voice-over business for myself. A business where I bring in contractual paydays monthly, for something that is a hobby, that’s easy and that I really just enjoy doing and nerd out over.
So what about you? Any talents come to mind?
Now I’m not going to lie, it takes a lot of work to get things like this running. Maybe you have a family to take care of, maybe you in fact do have a second job. While all of that is wonderful, never lose sight of what you can use your talents for today that will pay you back tomorrow. There is a never-ending list of options about how you can better yourself, and I’ll leave that up to you! But I hope this can get you thinking. Thinking about ways that you can use your hobbies and talents to make YOU a better person. Trust me, future you will thank you.
Melissa Thomas is a producer at 105.3 ROCK and on air Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday evenings on 105.3 FM and http://www.1053rock.ca
