Half of all American side hustlers earn less than $200 (£157) a month, according to a 2025Bankratesurvey. But Rachel Minion's marketing agency challenged the norm, pulling in $560,000 (£441,000) last year. The gap between those two figures says a lot about what happens when a side project stops being optional.
Minion was on a company-wide Zoom call whenTicketmaster cut 80 per cent of its staff during the pandemic. No warning. No transition period. She had spent six years as director of marketing for one of the company's divisions. Her husband had been laid off the week before. Their house was already under contract to be sold.
Two incomes gone in the space of days. No formal employment between them. Nowhere to move.
Minion told the Side Hustle Hero podcast she called every one of her six side hustle clients that same day. 'Hey, we're full-time. Here we go,' she said, before laying out her new schedule and telling them she was taking on every delayed project. 'Let's take all these projects I've been putting off. Going to fix your website. Going to do this. Going to make these updates, email campaigns, all this. Let's do it.'
Every single client stayed. Her agency, Rockstarr & Moon, billed $30,000 (£23,600) between April and December of that first year. Not a full 12 months. No ramp-up. No business plan.
Financial collapse was not new to Minion. Her parents ran a printing business she helped operate for a decade, processing roughly 400 estimates and turning around 100 jobs a day. The 2010 recession forced the business to close.
'Being a woman in printing who worked for her parents, no one believed I had a skill set,' she said.
She started the marketing side hustle to prove otherwise, teaching herself website design, campaign management and digital strategy while working corporate jobs at a testing company, a software firm and eventually Ticketmaster. While employed, she deliberately capped side hustle earnings at $5,000 (£3,940) to $10,000 (£7,870) a year to limit the additional tax liability on their combined household income. Six clients. Lunch-break strategy calls. Weekend execution.
Minion said the fear of leaving corporate work had held her back for years. 'I had that blocker like you need to have a job so you can have insurance and a 401k and the stability and security. Don't forget the security. That's what we were raised with,' she said.
Once the furlough removed the choice, she said she put her head down and realised she had never let herself down.
Source: International Business Times UK
