‘Oh wow, you’re going to rake it in!’ a friend said when I told her our dog, Luna, was expecting puppies this summer. I had always planned to have a litter from our lovely Labrador – but I would be lying if I said earning a bit of money on the side wasn’t part of it.
I’m one of a growing group of women who have reached midlife and tried to cultivate a side hustle alongside my day job. Making some money on the side with a small enterprise is particularly appealing to women of my generation, who might be grappling with everything from teenagers to ageing parents, not to mention being overtaken by younger colleagues at work.
Alongside seeking a little extra income and broadening out our skills, many of us may have also reached the ‘what now?’ stage of life.
A recent report by banking website Finder.com found that around four in 10 British people have at least one side hustle; 37pc are run by women, with 40pc of these business owners in Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980).
We planned to put the money we made from the puppies towards our next family holiday. But I hadn’t factored in just how much it would cost from the outset. I was more than £2,000 down before we even knew Luna was expecting, after shelling out for the obligatory health tests, vets fees and the stud dog fee.
Coming downstairs each morning to find a Jackson Pollock-esque array of puppy poop in the whelping box sometimes makes me regret my decision too. But they have brought us so much fun. We have tried not to get too attached to them but I know it will be a real wrench when they leave us.
It’s just as well we’re keeping one to help soften the blow. And after all the outgoings, we will have made just under £5,000, which will cover the cost of our next holiday.
Here, we meet other women who, comfortable in their careers, are taking on side hustles to follow their passions – and make some money.
‘I wanted to help other women facing divorce realise it’s not the end of their story’
When Amanda Gardiner’s marriage ended her world began to crumble. She had given up her job as an operations director in the City to help him run his new business and look after their three young daughters.
Before her divorce came through in 2021, Amanda, 53, retrained as a leadership coach.
She wanted to put her experience and coaching background to good use to help other women going through something similar. So she did an accredited course in divorce coaching and set up a divorce support hub – a sort of Mumsnet for divorcees – after almost being broken by her own.
Gardiner, who lives with her three teenage daughters and a Tibetan Terrier called Wooster in Kent, now makes just under £10,000 a year from her side hustle as a divorce coach and running her website, The Divorce Hive.
“Having gone through a terrible divorce myself in my late 40s, and felt at the time that life was over, I am genuinely passionate about supporting women going through a similar thing, to rebuild and create incredible post-divorce lives,” she says.
She realised she could use her training and skills as an executive coach to help other midlife women going through something similar.
Alongside her day job and her children, Amanda estimates that The Divorce Hive takes up just under eight hours a week but says that marketing, from Instagram to emails, can often take up much more time. “It started as a need to earn a little extra, but has become a passion as I’ve seen the huge impact coaching can have on women going through divorce,” she says.
“My passion became helping other midlife women facing divorce to realise that it is the end of a chapter and not the end of their story. In fact, it might just be the best thing that ever happened to them.”
‘I’m only sorry I didn’t find it sooner’
After splitting up from her husband and juggling single parenthood with her work as a freelance travel writer, Lisa Francesca Nand started looking for ways to generate more income.
“It dawned on me that I was ‘selling’ travel without actually selling travel. It’s only really since divorcing and becoming a single mum that I found the income I had as a freelancer, around £30,000 to £40,000 a year, just wasn’t enough to cover our needs,” she says.
Nand, 49, quickly realised that she could use the knowledge she had gained travelling the world for the last two decades to book and plan people’s holidays – and earn some extra income in the process. She organises bespoke trips – everything from hotels to tours, cruises and concert tickets. She is in the process of planning a honeymoon in Tahiti which could give her £6,000 in commission.
She looked at starting her own company from scratch but found it would be too time-consuming and expensive to set up. Then she came across a travel franchise company which enabled her to set up as an ABTA protected independent travel agent.
“I only started properly in April and it’s still very much part-time but I’ve already earned over £2,000 worth in commission,” she says.
Nand usually spends between one to two hours a day on her side hustle but as a freelancer her time is varied.
“Having not had a conventional job for years, I’ve become used to being flexible with my time. I have set up my work so I can do it on my phone when, say, picking the kids up from school or working for a couple of hours from a coffee shop,” she says. “I’m only sorry I didn’t find it sooner.”
‘It makes a change after 20 years in the same job’
As she got older, Vanessa Grzywacz, an art director from Surrey, became a keen gardener. She started to make handmade flower pictures for friends, pressing blooms to create art. “I’ve always been what you would call arty and loved gardening so this was a natural progression,” says the 53-year-old.
She later set up a business, Flower Press Studios, selling pictures of pressed flowers. Later she began to get some interest from brides who were looking for a unique way to remember their wedding day. She presses the whole bouquet then selects the best flowers for the final piece and frames them.
The pressing usually takes about six to eight weeks and she charges brides around £225-£275 per piece. She currently makes between £225 and £500 per month.
“I like the fact that I’ve learned a few new skills along the way and it makes a change after over 20 years in the same job,” she says.
“I’ve been freelance for a few years now, but I missed styling and propping shoots and the creativity I had in my previous job as an art director. I also really like being my own boss now so running my own small business really appealed.”
Grzywacz says that rates for design work have dropped or stayed stagnant over the last few years so there was also a financial incentive. “I knew I needed to earn a bit more cash in case the freelance design goes quiet. My flower pressing is something I can pick up easily in those quiet times and run alongside my main work of freelance graphic design. I definitely think it’s good to have a few strings to your bow in midlife, especially these days as the job market is changing so rapidly.”
‘My day job was slowing down so I felt I had nothing to lose’
What started as an idea to stay sane and solvent during lockdown has become a fully-fledged side hustle for Florence Achery, an interior designer from London. “I’ve been going to retreats since the 90s but I would often come away thinking I could do a better job running them myself,” she says.
Life and work, however, inevitably got in the way. But after returning from a yoga retreat in India just before lockdown started in March 2020, she finally found she had the time to make a go of things.
“My interior design business really dried up alongside the freelance work I did styling shoots for photographers so I thought I really had nothing to lose,” says Achery, 49.
She started with two retreats in Cumbria in 2021 and now does nine to ten a year, including one in India this October. She makes between £10,000 and £12,000 a year, and donates a share of the profits (£3,000 so far) to animal rights charities.
“I usually charge around £499 for three nights or around £685 for a Monday to Friday retreat and I could probably charge more but, in my experience, it’s the women who can hardly afford them who need them the most,” she says.
One of the ladies who comes on her retreats, for example, currently works as a full-time carer for her elderly mother, who has dementia, but books in a family member for four days so she can get away.
Achery would eventually like to turn the retreats into a full-time business and says she has become more selective about the interior design work she takes on. “The fact I own my own property and don’t have a big mortgage means I can afford to be more selective,” she says.
“I work on my retreats business in the evenings or at weekends... It’s very time-consuming to try and hold two different jobs but I’m at that stage of life where I felt I had nothing to lose.”
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