Steph's Side Hustles

By Lin Nguyen

Stephanie Xenos has gone through a number of different side hustles. Some of her favorites are petsitter, online dating profile writer, barre instructor, sous chef, and jewelry business owner. 

As a pet sitter, she set up a profile on Rover. The easy set-up allowed her to start generating profits of about $200/weekend within only a few weeks. For Stephanie, she was able to spend time with dogs, get exercise, and explore her city with very few hassles. While there were the occasional helicopter dog moms and app glitches, pet-sitting was a low-stress and fairly lucrative side hustle.

Sometimes you find a side hustle and sometimes your side hustle finds you. When Stephanie helped her coworker at SpaceX with his dating profile, he told her how much better things were going in his dating life. She began making dating profiles for coworkers, friends, and friends of friends. She charged anywhere from $150-$1000 to interview them, choose their photos, and write their profile. This allowed her to have fun getting to know her coworkers better, but the money was more sporadic.

After she left SpaceX, Stephanie adopted a new side hustle as a barre instructor. The set-up was more intensive -- teacher training, auditioning, and finding a place to hire her. The lack of flexibility of having to be in the same place multiple times a week was restrictive, but she had fun being with her community, picking songs, making exercises, and saying fit. It helped her physically, mentally, and socially. With two classes a week, she’d make about $400 a month with the option of picking up more classes.

She also spent some time working as a sous chef. She had the flexibility to sign up for different classes. It gave her the opportunity to get better at cooking, get free food, and get to know people.

Last but not least, she started a jewelry business around 23. She travelled to Chile for work and saw some beautiful jewelry. She started a jewelry business where she would travel the world, buy jewelry, and sell it to friends and family. She made a website, emailed people, hosted parties, and went to farmers markets. It wasn’t hard to set-up, and it gave her the opportunity to travel while learning about starting a business.

To get some of her lessons learned, we sat down with Stephanie and asked a few questions about her experience with side hustles.

What was your favorite side hustle and why?

Between being a barre instructor and a jewelry business owner, the barre instructor one touched on so many different parts of my life, from my mental health, physical health, community, friends, music, fun. It was really awesome. 

The jewelry business one was amazing because I got to travel for free. Who doesn’t love that? It was also my first business that was mine.

What are some factors to consider when choosing a side hustle and getting started?

The top ones are how much time you want to spend on it, and the second thing is what is the bonus thing you really want to get out of it? If you can think of something else in your life that you want to explore or focus on, and somehow work that into your side hustle, I would say that’s probably the most important thing.

Did you face any unexpected challenges while working a side hustle? How did you overcome those challenges?

For me, because I was financially independent during the barre instructor side hustle, it was really annoying for me to do it twice a week. It was only twice a week, but it prevented me from going on long trips or I had to sub. If someone has a full-time job and a full-life, and your side hustle is a regularly scheduled thing, that can be frustrating. 

Compared to dog sitting, you can just not dog sit for a few weeks because you’re the one to schedule. I think the scheduling thing is the biggest challenge when it comes to side hustles. With the sous chef, I could sign up for the classes I wanted to do. 

Did any of your side hustles require you to market yourself? If so, please describe some strategies you used to market yourself successfully.

For the jewelry business, I was sending email marketing to people. For the barre instructor, I was promoting on Instagram. I would announce things like, “We have class Sunday at noon. Make sure you sign up! I’m going to have an awesome playlist!” That was a little bit of marketing. Between those two, those are the most common marketing tactics: email marketing and social media marketing.

What I’ve learned from doing this for two years is just benign really regular with how often you email. If you can do it once a week or once every two weeks, just be really regimented so that people can expect to hear from you. The same goes for social media. Have a continuous presence so people know that you’re there and remember who you are.

The best marketing really depends on the side hustle. For something like jewelry, I don’t know if social media would be as effective because I may not buy something as expensive off of Instagram than I would on consistent email marketing. For a personalized service like pet sitting, or a one on one service like making dating profiles, word of mouth is probably better.

Are there any aspects of working a side hustle that people don’t typically consider?

I think a lot of times, people don’t take into consideration the time it takes to get going. Even with Rover, you can set up your profile, it doesn’t take very long, and you can start reaching out to people or people can start reaching out to you, but you need reviews for people to feel comfortable to book you. There’s some time to launch if you’re offering something to people that you don’t already know. 

Considering how quickly you want to make money from your side hustle, you may want to do something quickly and reach out to those around you, or you may want to build something that’s more of a business through marketing and reviews. 

The more you reach out to people you know directly, I think the faster you’ll start to make money with whatever the side hustle is. Try to have to tap your own network first.

Do you have any additional advice to give someone thinking of starting a side hustle?

Just start one. Because there’s a low barrier to entry, you can just jump into it and see if you like. You’re going to find out things as you come up, like making more or less money than you thought. Don’t put too much planning into it because it’s a side hustle, not your full time job. Just do it!

Learn how to manage the money you rake in with your side hustles by listening to Stephanie's workshops!