The cult of the 5 to 9 'side hustle'

By 2030, half of adults in the UK will have launched a business on top of their day job. Hannah Flint examines the rise of the bit on the side
Illustration by Joe McLaren
Hannah Flint11 July 2019

It’s midnight on a Friday in Soho and I’m surrounded by merry Londoners seeing in the weekend.

My working week, however, isn’t quite over yet. I’ve just hosted a supper club at a designer store on Regent Street and I’m packing away dirty pans, glasses, flowers, induction hobs and a deep-fat fryer. I’ll wake up at 7.30am tomorrow to send out newsletters, post photos on social media and process invoices, all before beginning to plan the next event. And this isn’t even my full-time job.

I work at this magazine 9 to 5, organising celebrity cover shoots and interviews. But 5 to 9 I run Hood Dinners, an event series for women and non-binary people which I started with two friends last summer. Every two months we cook seasonal food for 40 guests and conduct live interviews with inspiring female speakers in between courses. Somehow, we’ve always struck deals with designer brands, which allow us to turn their stores across the capital into pop-up restaurants.

Running an events business on top of my day job can feel full-on (and that’s before I start lugging induction hobs across town) and yet I’m not the only one swapping post-work drinks for post-work work. A study by Henley Business School found that 40 per cent of UK workers now have a business alongside their full-time job, and this is set to rise to 50 per cent by 2030. Among them, 30 per cent work on their ventures during their holidays (guilty), with such businesses now contributing £72 billion to the UK economy. And while men currently lead the way, that’s swiftly changing: more than 62 per cent of women with 5 to 9 ventures started them in the past two years.

“Launching while still in full-time work can be a less risky way of starting up.”

Hannah Flint

In an era of portfolio careers, flexible working and super-slasher celebrities (see actress/wellness guru/entrepreneur, Gwyneth Paltrow, or singer/actress/beauty disruptor, Rihanna) it’s hardly surprising that so many of us are side hustling. And London creatives are at the forefront, with the rise driven by 25- 35-year-olds, many of whom — like me — use nothing more than Instagram and an iPhone to get going.

‘Anybody with £50 can do it,’ says Phanella Mayall Fine, an executive careers coach who turned her own venture-on-the-side, Step Up Club, into a full-time business, which she has recently sold. ‘You can set up a website, create some online branding and you’ve got a business. Ten years ago, that wasn’t an option.’

But why are so many of us giving up our evenings, weekends and every spare moment for work, work and more work? ‘Our careers have evolved to be portfolios and people are looking for authenticity, purpose and meaning in their lives,’ says Mayall Fine. A bit on the side, she says, ‘can be a really nice way to do that’, whether through working on something you’re passionate about or learning new life skills.

The 5 to 9 can also be particularly useful for women, who are statistically less likely to win financial backing than men (according to research, less than one per cent of venture capital funds go to all-female businesses). Launching while still in full-time work can be a less risky way of starting up.

All of which makes the 5 to 9 seem like an attractive proposition. And yet, I’ve often wondered if it’s worth it. It takes a huge amount of energy, time and headspace, not to mention the countless evenings lost to frantic planning and making sure the flowers will arrive on time.

But it just is worth it. I’ve learnt how to run events, master branding and build a business, but more than that, my 5 to 9 has given me confidence — proving to myself I can do whatever I put my mind to. And that’s helped my 9 to 5 enormously. We started our business one night while sipping tea on my sofa. I haven’t sat around chatting on it for a while, but it’s a price I’m only too happy to pay.

Hood dinners can be found here and on Instagram here.

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