Side Hustles: Cute Hobby or HR Problem? | E110 with Liz Maguire

Side hustles used to be the vibe… but are they still “allowed” now? 😅
In this episode of Blame It On Marketing, Emma and Ruta are joined by Liz Maguire (email marketer for SMEs) to unpack the reality of side hustles in 2026 — what’s healthy, what’s risky, and what it actually teaches you as a marketer.

Liz shares her passion project, Flea Market Love Letters — a digital archive of vintage love letters — and we get into the messy middle: monetisation, boundaries, employer perceptions, and why marketers can’t stop marketing… even on their days off.

Marketing confessions included:

•  Liz accidentally wrote “lay of your life” instead of “lady of your life” (auto-scheduled… tragic) 
•  Emma asked a male guest live on-air: “Is there anything else that’s hard right now?” and mentally left her body 

We get into:
 ✅ Are side hustles a distraction — or a sanity saver?
 ✅ The monetisation line: why hobbies feel “fine” until money shows up
 ✅ What’s actually not okay (hint: doing your side hustle on company time)
 ✅ Why side hustles make you a better marketer: experimentation, reps, confidence, ownership
 ✅ The one mindset shift that improves your marketing instantly: stop “I, I, I” and write “you”
 ✅ Side hustles vs business ideas: why it’s easy to dream and hard to run something real
 ✅ Ethics and impact: are you building something meaningful or just more landfill?
 ✅ Marketing gossip: the downfall of ugly AI posters and the return of human design

If you’ve been thinking about starting something on the side — or you’re worried your boss will freak out if they find out — this one’s for you.

Like, subscribe, and comment: what’s your side hustle (or your dream one)?

#Marketing #B2BMarketing #SideHustle #EmailMarketing #CareerAdvice #SmallBusinessMarketing #AIinMarketing

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Blame It On Marketing. We have a long time friend of the podcast, Liz, with us, but we will let her introduce herself in a minute. Today we are talking about side hustles. I don't know if they're like acceptable anymore. You know, like I feel like, COVID, they were the shit, but I don't know if they're acceptable anymore, but they can be amazing. And that is what we're going to talk about today. So Liz, over to you to introduce yourself. Well, uh long time listener, big time fan. So honored to be here. When you guys reached out to chat, I couldn't have been happier. So glad that we got this organized. I love the way that you approach marketing. I think we have a very similar mindset about stuff. Even kind of just the topic we're going to talk about today. uh There's so much that we can go over and I think it's just really worthwhile to think about what makes marketeers, marketeers outside of the nine to five, it doesn't turn off when we leave an office or close a laptop. So I know that from my work working with uh SMEs on developing email marketing and one of my projects that keeps me grounded and keeps me really, really happy is my passion project, Flea Market Love Letters that I do on the side. So I think we're and have a great chat today. Excellent. um So before we can get into any chats about anything, obviously you have to tell us what your marketing confession is. Oh, okay, I wrote this down. Okay, the lay of your life. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Social media caption, jewelry company, meant to be the lady of your life. Left out the D. But put in the day if you know what I mean. I know exactly what you mean. Or the last thing I have. was uh it was auto scheduled. I it was one of those things batch. content, pre-AI, so it was all good old uh brain and fingers over here. Batch content, I remember I went up on a Saturday night, I saw it, and I fully had myself fired by Monday morning because I was like, there's absolutely no way that this hasn't uh bankrupted the company, that I have purely, uh I've probably offended a majority of our demographic. I think the post got like 11 likes and one person commented and was like, think there's the typo. didn't even go viral. Didn't even go viral. But I fully fired myself by Monday morning. And then I went in and had to have the like, I'm really sorry that I made that mistake. won't happen again. My boss was like, okay. He was like, there's a lot of other stuff going on. And I was like, thank you for your dispensation. I appreciate that. But yeah, the lay of your life haunts me and is a point of pride. I love it so much. I love it. my current marketing cringe confession, cause I really want to share this with you because it's along the same theme, is that Rooster and I were doing a live podcast recording not that long ago. And one of the questions that I asked our male guest, is, I'm gonna talk about how hard marketing is right now. And I just turned to him and went, is there anything else that's hard right now? Oh, mama! I haven't recovered! I will never recover! the person that it was because obviously, like, yeah, he was fine. He moved on quickly. But yeah. you know when you're like you say it and you're like It's live! I've recorded it! It's on YouTube if you wanna see me. if you want to. reel, 2026 blooper reel. love it because it's, I like it, it's in the same, sorry to steal that Liz, but I was like, it's in the same thing and I felt the need to confess. All confessions welcome. You can say three terms and conditions and one uh GDPR consent form for absolution of your what else is hard right now. That's my lapsed religious uh absolution for you for your marketing confession. Did he have a good answer for what was hard though? He answered, but I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's called dissociation. Yeah, the- Yeah, just. I was too busy thinking, I can't believe I just fucking said that out loud. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep, been there. Lay of your life. Fully, fully just, yeah, fully just had myself fired. I walked in and I was like, I understand why you'd let me go. And he was like, there's so much else going on. You're not even like on the list of things to worry about this week, Liz. There was also one time, so working in email marketing it's all about segmenting, and there was one time, this still makes my stomach hurt, where I realized that I accidentally excluded a solid segment from Sense for two years. And I was like, I'm awful at my job. I just, that's one of those ones that really makes my stomach hurt. The life of your life is one where I'm like, ha ha ha, life. but the one that made my stomach hurt was the mess up I made about segmentation. And that was a really big lesson for me in leadership because my boss at the time was a really... interested and invested leader and that he wanted to like do his best job. And so if I had been in that position, I would have absolutely exploded. But he was just like, okay, how do we, you know, make the most out of this now? Can we reengage that segment that we haven't been sending to you? How can we do it this way? But like as a little baby, I was just kind of like, I'm so sorry, I kind of left out a couple thousand people for the last two years. He was like, okay. Okay. mean, I'm gonna just put out there that I think salespeople do way worse shit. So I'm like, I think your lack of segment is fine. I feel like, you know, even if the segment had been in there, someone somewhere would have fucked something up that's not marketing related. It's not your fault Liz. Yeah, my least favorite. every day? This is so nice, thank you. we're totally here to validate any delusional feelings. So let's talk. we are going to start live streaming soon so we can absolutely do a daily confession stand up. yeah. Yes. Yes. yeah. So I can confess all the weird shit that I say to people that we interview publicly. It's just make sure that you you probably clear with someone in like HR before you run your live streams. Just make sure that you're you're like perfect Yeah, the only people who can fire us are ourselves, so it's fine technically. oh So right, let's talk about side hustles, ladies. What do we say? Are they good, are they bad? Obviously, I think everybody on this call has got side hustles, have had maybe previous side hustles. But obviously, previously, they were sort of thought about sometimes, especially if you work in-house, like a bad thing, because it was always sort of... seen that you were distracted by other things so it was something that you used to keep quite secret and like I don't want anyone at work to find out I'm doing this thing because otherwise they'll think that I'm not interested in my job. So yeah I'm just interested in your guys thoughts and then yeah Liz tell us a bit about your your love letters. Have got that right? They're love letters right? So yeah, so my project is called Flea Market Love Letters. It's a digital archive of vintage love letters. And I was someone who for a very long time was like Batman, right? It was Batman and Bruce Wayne. Like this was my hobby project. I talked about it when I had a full-time job. This was the same company I was with when I did Lay of Your Life. um And I was like, just a thing I'm doing. And then I was really lucky because it was during COVID, the project hit some steam. I was asked to go on to Sky News and I literally, maybe it was because we were just operating already weirdly work from home or whatever. But I think we had all just reached weird points with boundaries where I remember like DMing my team on Slack and just being like, so I'm going to be on two hours late tomorrow. I have to go on Sky. and like all this sort of stuff. And it was just regular this thing where it was like, oh, that's just Liz's thing with mail. And I was really lucky in the sense that like, because it isn't necessarily monetized, I think it's not seen as a threat. But I do think if you are working full-time, foring with someone else and you're trying to build something parallel to it that you intend to leave that position for, you have to be careful because One, you're kind of entering the conversation of I'm just here to get a paycheck while I build my dream. And two, you also, you would like to think that that would be more socially acceptable, but weirdly some people really want to show up and focus, which is not my cup of tea. But if they had the chance, that's the thing I often think is that the people who have the biggest issue with people doing this stuff are the ones who just haven't got something going on outside of work for themselves. Like their work is their life. And I'm like, that's your problem, not mine. yeah, yeah, like it's I used to take I used to take radio interviews in our little like showroom that we had. And I would get texts from the researcher for living in Dublin, I would get texts from the researcher that would be like, Hi, this is Squeeville from News Talk, can we call you at 1147? And I'd be like, sure. And then I would just walk around the conference room and be like, when you think about the history of the handwritten letter, and when I think about it now, like I was in a lucky position because I could have been in a placement that would have been like absolutely not okay. Meanwhile, my company was just kind of like, Oh, Liz is using the showroom to go on the radio. Good for Liz. very understanding. Yeah, it's such a funny point that you like, I've never thought about the fact that if it's not monetized, like you go ahead, you have your hobbies, you do your thing. But as soon as like there's monetization, it becomes like a whole other conversation. Cause I'm just thinking about like my whole life is a side hustle, but my actual side hustle is my sourdough business. I'd never leave my job for the sourdough business. Like there's nothing to leave for like it is what it is and it does what it does. Like, you know, like it's Yeah, but like it could be perceived as a weird thing because it is monetized. Mmm. I also think it's about the content, right, that you're doing. So like, I've had many little side hustles throughout the years. Most of them have been to do with writing blogs. Some of the blogs have been spicy. So back in the day when I worked in the charity sector, I had a blog called Too Honest for a Blog. It was like peak, like, naughty, cringe blogging, you know? But it was like, and I used to, and my face was on it and was obviously it was me and I used to blog about subjects, I suppose, that were a bit taboo at the time, like talking about dating, even back then, like talking about dating and all those sorts of things. And... Yeah, like someone in my office was like cottoned on to the fact that this blog exists existed Because you know, we used to get traffic. I used to get traffic to the blog. It was insane. and Even then and uh, and yeah, and I used to have like, you know a twitter account attached to it and all sorts of things and yeah So the content was a bit spicy and people were a bit like Not sure this is appropriate for you to be doing while you work and also a lot of I have lot of places I've worked have had in my employment contract, like you're not allowed to have a secondary thing going on if it's financial. But I do think, yeah, the financial and then the content of what you do. Like think about how many people who have set up an OnlyFans and then someone at work finds out. Do you know what? More power to you, sex workers. You go you. Yeah. Like, who haven't only fans, and then their employer finds out and they get sacked. It is, oh man, it's kind of wild because like. Like it's nothing to do with anything right? Like if you want to sell picks of whatever like it's nothing to do with anything but also because it's seen as a different income stream and if you are contracted only to have one job then it obviously is a breach of contract but it's also nothing to do with anything. Yeah, it's not like a competitor, is it? Hopefully not. It depends on what you're doing. Yeah, but yeah, it's yeah, that's yeah, it's a really interesting juxtaposition. So is this how we're going to frame having side hustles then if you don't want to risk it, just don't monetize it or at least don't monetize it obviously. Don't sell pictures of your toes, because your boss will probably get mad. Yeah. probably find it because they're weird. The, I mean, if you think about it, during, let's go back to COVID, like the number of people who became influencers by making workplace content, and that is a side hustle. Yeah. It's the cleanest model and a lot of them would get in kind of trouble for, you know, were they filming in the office, sort of that sort of stuff as it was. But you have to think about yourself as more than the position that you're in at that moment. um Only fans reference there, just kidding. You have to think of yourself as a full, complete character. And so if you're... in a position where like Emma was saying, kind of you're starting and ending your day and that's all that you have. There's nothing wrong with that, but you also have to make space for people who need a little bit more texture and outlets. And that's, that's what I think side hustles do is they kind of, they give you a space to play. They give you a place to in, in marketing, they've given me a place to experiment. Um, they've also given me a sense of ownership in a time when I wasn't working for myself. And now that I am, own. that space so I made the decisions about what went up when I wrote things, I photographed everything, I still do, but it was a real thing of being like, after work ends I'm the boss here. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Liz, because I think a lot what maybe a lot of people don't want to hear, but is probably the truth. And I think we can say this because we work for ourselves and we've been on both sides, right? We've been in-house and now we're, you know, working for ourselves is I don't think you can expect your day job to give you everything you need as like development. And I also don't think employers... should expect somebody to dedicate their entire life and their time to you because you work for a living. Mm-hmm. let's be real, you probably are not providing the development opportunities that the person needs, which is why they're doing this thing maybe in the first place, right? Like... Yeah. Yeah. it's like I think and I hope that the conversation around side hustles as a distraction is changing for the positive. uh But also let's not paint at all with rose colored glasses here. But I think if we don't... paint with those rose colored glasses of everybody who does the side hustle has the best possible intentions and they're so amazing. Like people who are working full time and phoning it in and using the work time to work on the side hustle, that's a no-no for me. Like you need to differentiate that time and that space and you can't really ruin the pool party for everybody just because you know you have the opportunity. Nobody's really noticing what you're doing at the office. You're gonna sneak in a couple hours of your own thing. No, what we're talking about is the differentiation between having something that you are doing quote-unquote professionally or that is satisfying that aspect of your life and this is another project whether it be monetized or a hobby project or something on the side that is for you or for a community. I just have feelings about that because I think that everyone ruined the work from home thing because everyone when work from home, everyone was like, I don't even get up until five minutes before my next meeting. And then I'm surprised they're surprised when offices were like, come back in. Mm-hmm. Agreed. don't know, I don't know, this is where I like, I feel like I may be too old fashioned sometimes, because I do do this thing where I'm like, no, no, no, there is professional Emma, and then there is personal Emma, and nobody who has ever employed me needs to know that I do that shit. That's something that you keep to yourself. Yes! You as friends can know it! Your boss doesn't need to! No. did show up to my morning call with a them this morning in my bathrobe, on my bed, on my phone. It was a work call, so unprofessional. Well, a blurred background can go a long way. A blurred background can go a long way. my face and me? I think that's what was needed. So what about the good side of this? Obviously we've talked a bit about, you know, the perception, the negative stuff that people think about this stuff. But what about like, as a marketer, what are the good things that you have learnt by having a side hustle? So I was studying my master's in marketing when I really started to put everything I was learning into practice on flea market. So I went to a really theory heavy program. was sort of like just a lot of information in three hour spells. And then we were released out into the world and we were years off from internships. Like there was there was no application. So what I was doing was I would go to a class and it would be about a subject and then I would turn that on to flea market. So I would, you know, look at my website, I would look at blogging, I would look at writing social media captions. And it did two things for me. One, in that it taught me uh consistency and dedication, because I was really interested in the subject matter, but I was also applying what I would use as a marketeer down the line. And two, it also just gave me somewhere to put all of this perspective energy that when you're in between positions, or you're upscaling about something, it gave me somewhere to go, okay, here's a task, I can finish it. Absolutely. your side hustle might be very different than what you do for a job, but... I feel like when it's marketing, there's always something to apply and learn not to be the person on LinkedIn to be like, what did I learn about me to be from my wedding? But like, there's always stuff that you will, you will learn and you will enrich your life with, and then it will somehow come out in your professional life, right? Let's say your side hustle was like, I don't know, getting therapy. That's not a side hustle, but you're really interested in therapy and like, you started learning about therapy techniques. Like that shit will come out in real life and you in- you deal with other people like you know that kind of thing so yeah I think even if it's not something like that involves having like a website and doing all those things I feel like it's always like connected somehow right yeah be trapped because everything requires marketing. So anything that we come up with, we're gonna end up being the CMO of. Anything. Yeah, true that, true that, true that. um the CMO of my husband's comic book business. And it is genuinely, like, he can sell a comic book. We do a lot of markets. We did one at the weekend. And he can sell a comic book. Like, you can go up and be like, I really like to read Batman. And he'll be like, this guy drew Batman, but this is a book about, I don't know, this other character. And I sit there and I'm like, I don't know how any of this works. But then in my situation, I'm like, have you posted that we're here? Have you taken a picture of the table? Have you tagged the people who have organized this market? Have you commented? Like, have you done a poll? Like, I'll do all these things. And we've fallen into the patterns of like, yes, it's a Sunday day out. he gets to sell comics, but I'm still marketing. I'm sitting there and I'm like running through the steps for him about what he needs to do. And that's weirdly a good place for my energy to go. yeah yeah you can't help it we can't leave it alone when we see something we're like must market thing whatever thing is yeah let me i i don't know about you but like whenever i go to like family occasions i'm always like the designated photographer or the videographer or whatever it is i'm like all right fine yeah sure i'm here i'll do it this is my job. if you don't mind that I cut off most of the heads and that half of the photos are blurry. I also have tangentially on family photos. I, a long time ago, tried to operate on uh like... taking pictures and getting pictures. don't delete them immediately if I don't like them. So I am a really bad person for taking photos because I will think that you look beautiful because you're in the middle of the deepest laugh and you're having such a happy memory in a moment. But if you're someone who's self-conscious about that, you will loathe me because I'll be like, no, this is the nicest one. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, I do know that about myself. the other thing I think about like what having a side hustle teaches you is like if you do set it up and there is like an element of some sort of businessy element to it, like you don't have to be making money for it to be have a business element to it. That is the stuff that especially when you're like early on in your career that you struggle to get access to in your day job, right? the nuts and bolts of like setting everything up and like becoming a registered company, all that stuff that you try and do, like whether it's like router sourdough business or like my AI thing, like we've gone through a process, I guess, of like knowing exactly what it's like to be in the founder or the CEO's shoes as well as the marketer's. So as much as I think it's like good from. point of view is like I've learned loads of stuff about marketing that I wouldn't have maybe got to practice like depending on what your job day job is because like I've got free reign um I also learn everything I know about business from running a business myself because no one teaches you that shit No, no, it's really easy to have a business idea. It is incredibly hard to run a business. It is so easy to go, I'm going to have, and like, this is the thing about side hustles. And I would also include kind of like volunteer stuff that you're doing on the side too, because oftentimes, again, maybe generalizing for marketeers. we might go into a volunteer position of being like, it would be really great if we were doing this, this, and this. And then maybe you're a little bit like, maybe like, so I'll just do that at the weekend and then we'll just have that to roll out. And then you're kind of, you've got a third side hustle then of a volunteer thing that you're doing as well. But it is just this practical thing of like, it's really good to have, it's really easy to have an idea, but in application, you need runway to practice. Yep, absolutely. I am really obsessed with the connection between flea market love letters and the fact that you now do email because like coincidence maybe? the way back to the fact that I'm obsessed uh openly with Ryan Gosling and my favorite movie was The Notebook. And it took me a solid, like until last year before I was like, that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. into your job. reality. Well, it's just communication. It's human stories. That's what I love. What is something that you've learned from flea market letters that you use in your daily marketing life that you wouldn't have been able to learn without it? okay. So I'll reverse engineer what is a very good question in that email marketing now is very eye focused in that it is very, here is my story as a founder. Here is my product. Here is my workshop. Here is me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, Um, the letters because you are writing to someone, you're saying, dear Emma, dear Ruta, dear Liz, dear Hoo Hoo, how are you doing? What are you doing today? How is that da da da da? Here's something that happened to me. Do you remember when we shared that memory together? That's missing in digital comms right now. um And I would say that's something that I've tried to bring into my version of digital comms, which is like, nobody actually wants to read what I have to say. They want to read how it applies to them. So switching the eye to you has been a big piece of and continues to be a big piece of what I talk to clients about, which is like, I would love to tell you that somebody cares about your really long blog about glass blowing. But the reality is that instead they want to know, hey, could I do glass blowing? is like, how practical is this? What are the steps to how to do this? uh And that's the narrative that you take rather than here's my big long piece, you say, and here are three ways you can learn and you can put yourself into that situation. Okay, that is... that is genius, is great. I will be thinking about that a lot. I will be thinking about that a lot. I've noticed that trend a lot, Liz, because obviously more and more when you are proofreading work from people, a lot of it is generated by chat GPT, which I'm not going to shit on. It happens. It's fine. Sometimes it's a needs must, right? But then obviously if it comes from our AI overlords, it is very, I, this is me. This is what the company wants to say. This is what we're doing. I focus, isn't it? And it's, I keep having the same conversation with people where I'm like, the person who's gonna read this, I mean, they're probably not gonna read this, but if they did read it, they already know some of this shit. So why would you keep saying the same shit? And why would you not try and like actually have a conversation with them or show that you get what the problem is or like, why are you? I don't know why it happens but it's it's relentless in the comms that I've read recently, it's It has a lot to do with two things. One, vulnerability. People don't want to be perceived as vulnerable, so they project. And two, I try and live with as much of a gratitude first mindset as possible because if I did not have people who cared about 3,000 pieces, 700 published pieces of other people's mail, I would just be a lady with 3,000 pieces of other people's mail in my house, which I'm happy with. That's an identity I can wear with pride. But I regularly, like if you look at flea market social media, it is not me going, I've got 3000 pieces of mail and here's all this wonderful stuff. It's me being like, thank you for being here. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for being a part of this. Thank you for opening the emails. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you. Because I'm comfortable in the fact that this exists with me, whether you check it out or not, but I know that it has a life with you and I thank you for that space. And that has a lot to do. oh with I think just my own self-confidence, my own situating in it. And I think what I'm seeing and what I'm back to a lot of that I language is what we would have seen, Emma, when you were talking about blogs, like we would have seen a lot of people who wrote blogs and just expected them to be read. And we're seeing that happening again in digital comms, I think. Yeah, it's really weird because it feels so... I got in trouble because of posting something on LinkedIn recently where I was like, it's getting really strange out here. Like I'm seeing some really strange, strange stuff. But, yes. Yeah. But I think that the reason we're seeing so much of that stuff that I do feel is very 2008 is because people are... struggling with the lack of human, real human connection and real conversations with people because, and that is a backlash, that's backlash from AI, that's backlash from the new, it's backlash from everything that's going on in the whole world. But I think that's why we're seeing it. So I don't, you know what I mean? As much as I was like, it's fucking weird. What's all this weird shit I keep seeing? I'm also like, I completely understand why people are doing it. because they're like struggling to understand a world that we now live in that is very like me, me, me, me, me. couldn't agree more. The authenticity piece is falling apart because the authenticity piece is not here's me, it's here's how we're alike. Here's how your story can influence my story. Here's how we can move this in the same direction, not here's how I got here. And I think when we're encouraging people to be more authentic on social media, and I talk to, I train entrepreneurs, had a session this morning, I think as marketeers, we are in this world a lot of the time, so we throw around words like authentic and narrative and all this sort of stuff. But like, if it's not someone's comfort zone, they're not gonna know how to turn a post about what I learned about my wedding into something that's relatable. To them, they just kind of wanna share themselves, but they don't know how to make that bridge. and that's what's missing. As we've been speaking, I finally realized why an email that Emma and I wrote about six years ago did so well. was subject lined, did we hot tub together last week? And like, it just... the open rate and the response rate was insane and it was because there was a HR event that was like an overnight thing where our sales guys went to sauna with some of the prospects there and that was the follow-up and it was stunning but it's because it was about did we do this last week or not? Like were you there? Like did we do this? Did it happen? So yeah. talk in the sauna? Yeah. Did we do a thing together? I think also probably some of them were like, fuck, but. I think there's a lot... that that's landing in HR inboxes because like you know like the reaction's like is this gonna be a problem? That's the style of email that I think like, I have a newsletter going out to uh my guys tomorrow, yeah, tomorrow about how right now it's really, really hard to close a deal. Leads are down, direct sales are down, everybody's feeling the pinch, and we need to be connecting outside of sales. Mm. need to be like, particularly I would talk to lot of DTC brands, product-based brands, of founder, maybe working with a partner, but generally one person. And the thing that I kind of want to say about it is that when you start to think that someone should be buying from you or should be booking you, you've switched into the wrong language model. Someone could buy this. Someone could book this with you. But when you start to assign the client or customer should, it turns that whole conversation sour. So one of the things I'm trying to talk about this week and talk about more with people is just the idea that like you don't have to stop communicating, but you can pull back the sales of it and you can connect authentically. And yeah, the reward is that people come to you because they remember that you've sent a picture or you posted a picture of your cat. Yeah, that works. But the reality of it is, is that you're still showing up consistently, but you're not saying the same messaging over and over somebody who might not have the budget feels awkward constantly receiving. So, we tiptoe our way back into side hustles, because we've had a lovely conversation about communication and email, and yeah, again, I will be thinking about this a lot, because just... um If you are somebody that is currently in a marketing job or maybe someone who wants to get a marketing job and works in a different department, how do you kind of start a side hustle? Like how do you balance work and life and how do you not make it weird and awkward and how do you enjoy it? Mm-hmm. Well, Emma, you've done several, so what's your starter advice? I think you start with stuff you like. think generally, right, I get it if you've got a business idea and you want to start a business idea and you hope for that to make money, that's a separate conversation. But if it's something that's a side hustle, that's something you purely love, like I love it when I meet people who are like, I make crochet pickles and sell them on Etsy. They're like my favorite fucking people. I'm like, are so infinitely more interesting than anyone I've ever met before. I did meet someone who does that, that's why I bought that, used that experience. Fantastic. oh Yes, I was like, we need to get crochet pickles off from them. m But yeah, like you start with something you love. So whatever that is, even if it feels silly, like you start with that and then you just tinker around the edges and you see, yeah, you see what it is. But equally, not everything that you love has to be a side hustle as well. So I think it's that balance of like, if you think there's something in this, as in ah like what you're doing is, you're fostering connection between people. So it involves other people. I feel like that's your perfect side hustle. Whereas like, I don't know, some of the random shit that I've got up to in the past might not have been the right thing. And that might be why they haven't lasted, because it's not been about ah like a human to human thing. It's been more about like, this is me shouting into the void. We love doing that, that's our favourite. the number of times that people will be like, I'm starting a side hustle of drop shipping mugs or things like that. And I'm like, okay, why? And they're like, because I saw this Instagram reel that, you know, I could make 30,000 euro in a month if I do this, da da da da da. And that's back to the point of like, it's really easy to have a business idea. It's hard to run a business. Mm-hmm. Because the ethics of it for me comes into what am I creating? This is to Emma's point of am I passionate about what I'm creating? But what am I creating and am I making a positive impact? So if I'm just creating more... ceramic mugs to end up in charity shops? Am I really leaving something here for the better? Or am I doing something like with my hands, with craft, with something like that, like that's making someone happy in a way um that's less consumptive and pollutant, I think. It's freaky. Sorry Liz. I relentlessly ask myself, and this is generally in relation to Thesmia, which is my little AI tool, is I relentlessly go to myself, do I still think this is a good idea? And do I still think this has a purpose? And they are the things that make me carry on. Like, ultimately, have I made any money? No. But do I think it's a good idea? Yes. Does it have a purpose? Yes. I didn't, I didn't start creating. The Write More Letters, I wish I had something around if I thought better about this, I would, they're behind me. I, Sweet Market Love Letters has a thing called Write More Letters, my husband did the logo of it. I didn't do that until 2021. We started in 2017. That is monetized to the point where when I make enough 50 bucks a year, I donated to a charity for selling the stickers and the t-shirts. It's really, it's as a marketeer, it's my point of shame where I'm like, if I really just spent time on this, I could run the world. But it's not that for me. It's something that I just have always said, write more letters. It's how I close my handwritten letters. It's what I do. But the piece as well about kind of, um do I think it's a good idea? There are some weeks and months where I don't touch flea market. Where I don't, I'll check in on the Instagram every couple days, cause I know that's what the beast wants. I'll, you know, I'll occasionally kind of, I know I send out a newsletter every month. I have made myself do that, but. I can tell that I'm happiest when I'm doing it consistently. much like anything in my daily habits, if I read every day, if I don't read for a couple days, I get grumpy. If I don't go for a walk, even today I didn't go for a walk, I feel stiff. If I don't, you know, it sounds really weird, but if I don't m Instagram pictures of stamps, I'm not content. Yeah. What about you, Ruta? problem where like I get really obsessed with things for like three months and then I never touch them again. So like I go hard like financially time wise it's the only thing I think about it's probably the tism in some sort so I think it's in a way if there is a side hustle that does have an audience or some sort of a response or monetization it actually makes me want to do it more because I feel like someone is out there interested in it if it's just me myself and I and it's that's it I'll lose interest. ah well put. I'm the same way. That's why I have to thank the community. That's why I have to thank people who make it acceptable for me to do what I'm doing because otherwise I would do the girl boss thing where I just be like, well, this has no KPI, no ROI. It doesn't have a point, but it does. It makes people happy. It makes me happy. And that's enough. That's the purpose of the thing, isn't it? It's like, back to those two questions that I'm like constantly asking myself about everything, is like, does the thing have a purpose and is it a good idea? And yeah, and it's like, well yeah, the purpose of the thing isn't to fulfill me as a human. Like, if I wanna do that, like, I'll sit and watch Drag Race and eat a big bag of crisps. That fulfills me, Emma, as a human being. But like, I'm a very simple person. Yeah, I feel this exactly the same way about blame on marketing. If it was just me and Ruta talking to ourselves, each other, I love you, but it would be fucking boring. Do know what I mean? Like after a while, be like, we should like the people who just have podcasts, which just them, I'm like, you're not that interesting. Before we let you go Liz, we've got time for some very quick marketing gossip. So anything that you either love or hate that's happening in marketing right now. I don't think so, honey. ah Um, I am very on board with the downfall of the AI generated poster. I am on Bored with it! Like the number of times that I'm seeing comments on Instagram of being like, I would have loved to go to this if you had paid an artist to create this poster. And I'm like, yay! I'm not at the place yet where I can like get on board with doing the comments myself, but I'm hearting them. I'm hearting them and I'm like, yes sister. Because I think that there's a time and a place for it. I think particularly for small businesses, if you're strapped, I get it. But um I mean, there's definitely, I'm married to a graphic designer. I'm, I think there's there needs to be some conversations had about how ugly the AI posters are um and how maybe we're cresting on the bubble of of uninformative and useless designs and maybe we're going back to what I hope will be human design. that. Excellent gossip. Also, I just love that there is this massive disconnect between what these fucking people are talking about on LinkedIn and sharing and then what happens in the Instagram TikTok comments. I'm like, you guys have no idea what is going on in the world. You people on LinkedIn, fucking delusional. Anyway. I have one that I'll tell you uh off record, next time we meet, that I literally yesterday it happened. It was an AI generated post, which was negative about AI and I engaged with it. And then the person was like, that's not what I meant. And I was like. Okay, but here's the points about why the context-less, like, just the scroller would think this about it. And that's why I know that I'm getting more comfortable with my own skin, because People Pleaser Lizzie would have been like, I misunderstood that. But I was like, no, no, I need you to understand that this is what it presented as. Yes, please learn. Absolutely. Well Liz, thank you so much, it's been a wonderful conversation. We meandered a little bit but great stuff, as we knew we would exactly. um I hope if you are listening to this you enjoyed this and we are very excited to see you on the next episode.