Thoughts and reflections from the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Side hustle idea?

I spoke at an industry conference this week, with an audience of around 150 people.

That number isn’t a big deal for me. I’ve been speaking in front of audiences for a long time. One of the side effects of being a former military person is that you’ve had a lot of opportunity to do things like brief audiences, give orders and act as an instructor.

So I guess I hit my 10,000 hours of experience in public speaking a long time ago!

After the short presentation, a few people kindly approached me and asked if I spoke professionally, or if I would be interested in that kind of thing.

Obviously I said “yes!”.

That got me thinking: I’ve got instructional and coaching qualifications already from my past career. Could I run a course on public speaking?

So, to test it, I got in touch with one of the speakers at the event who was a little under confident, and asked if they would be interested in attending a free pilot course – if I get this off the ground – in exchange for a testimonial if they got value from it.

Well, turns out that’s a great offer.

Next steps

It’s not as easy as “cool, that’s that then!”.

Like most lawyers, I’m caught between restrictive covenants in my employment contract about earning money elsewhere without permission.

That’s the main reason why you haven’t seen any side hustle activity from me lately. I can’t exactly ask for permission to publish erotic fiction on Kindle Store, that’s the kind of reputation killer that would jeopardise my main source of income.

However, public speaking coaching isn’t likely to be a threat to my firm. Hell, it’s not even likely to replace half of my income, so it’s not even likely that I would quit my job just to pursue it.

So the next step is to request consent to set up as a public speaking coach on the side. I’m fairly comfortable that I can get that through our Compliance Team.

It’s probably not life-changing money

But it could be an extra source of money for something I quite like doing, and the overheads are low. I can rent a decent training room for £50 an hour here. I’m thinking a four-session course, one hour a week, so around £200 total overheads if I use the kit I already own.

If I can get 10 people per course as a minimum, at £40 per session – so £160 for the four sessions – that’s £1,600 in turnover and £1,400 in profit for a month’s work.

Obviously if I can replicate that monthly it is a lot of extra cash, but this is a small island and I’d be surprised if I managed to get more than one or two courses filled per year. Probably just the one.

This isn’t the business idea I was talking about previously

This is an additional idea. However, because the actual time commitment is quite low, I am fairly confident I can manage this even with my current commitments.

It would also de-risk starting up the other business if I got for that, as I would have two potential avenues of earnings.

Finally, if the other business can’t get off the ground, at least I’ll have some way to influence my earnings over and above my legal career. I won’t be entirely at the mercy of my employer for income, which is a big thing for me.

Distractions and detours

Nintendo Time

I’ve been a video gamer since I was eight. My mum had bought a Nintendo Entertainment System second-hand from someone because the Super Nintendo had risen to be the dominant console at the time.

We later managed to get a Super Nintendo. Sadly, my mum pressured me into selling it not long after we upgraded to a PlayStation in the early-2000s. We were still playing it but I guess the theory was that if my parents had scraped together to buy the newer console then we should be making more use of that one.

The Super Nintendo was awesome.

Anyway, years later (and with my own money) I’ve bought a Nintendo 64. There’s something cool about the lack of loading times, the fact that the games aren’t deliberately designed to be addictive (video games in the ‘90s pulled no punches to the player) and the amount of creativity that had to go into games design with such limited software.

For example: Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are both 3D-platform/adventure games, but they don’t feel similar at all. Meanwhile, the Call of Duty and Battlefield series games just feel like generic first person shooting games with a variety of settings.

This week I managed to carve out some weekend time and put my feet up playing Nintendo 64.

Productive? Not even slightly – but I regret nothing!

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We covered Pinball Wizard by The Who this week. It’s a simplified version, but the idea was to build in some strumming practice.

The acoustic guitar rhythm in the background has an interesting strumming pattern that sounds even due to the accenting when played at full speed, but when you slow it down is almost played as triplets.

Weird.

That’s a thing I know. And now, so do you.

Fitness

I managed to get a swimming session in, a bunch of dog walks and a decent run of a little over 5 miles with a big hill climb in.

It’s OK. Nothing to shout about, but at least it’s exercise.

Work has been a mad thrash and the windows of opportunity I would normally have to exercise in were brutally snatched from me.

Posture problems

Wasn’t going to report this, but I’m actually giving myself a de-merit for my poor posture.

I’ve had horrendous knots and pain in the muscles of my back, just behind my left shoulder blade.

The kind of pain you get from slouching at a desk for 12+ hours per day without exercise.

This is entirely on me.

So I reckon that’s a setback (heh!). The pain goes away if I go for a run, but it returns with a vengeance when I get sedentary for any time.

Not sure what to do about it, but it’s definitely the desk life punishing me. The answer is probably spend less time at the desk! I’m working on that…

Final thoughts

An opportunity to be explored is always a good thing!

We’ll see how this side hustle idea goes. I’m pretty excited about it, I enjoy teaching and I can definitely design a meaningful training product.

It was cool to get some down time this week. In case you’re curious and wondering about how I reconcile that with my reduced fitness, the Nintendo time was on the same day I got the run into – Saturday.

Overall, another good week! Now to explore this side hustle further.

My financial independence campaign continues!