Yahoo Finance The side hustle that doubled this Aussie’s income
Rachel decided to quit her job as a traffic controller and embrace her side hustle full-time.
Feeling uninspired by her 9-to-5 job, Rachel Breznikar decided to pick up a side hustle doing eyelash extensions and has now more than doubled her income.
The 23-year-old was earning $35,000 a year as a traffic controller, working five days a week as a casual.
“There’s so many TikToks about traffic controllers making a tonne of money but you really don’t. It’s about $30 an hour, which is pretty average,” Rachel told Yahoo Finance.
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Rachel said she wanted to find a job that was more mentally stimulating and got the idea to get into the beauty industry through her own lash technician.
“I was getting my lashes done religiously every two weeks. My last tech said, ‘Why don’t you do what I do?’ It wasn’t really big back [in 2020] and I thought I’d try it out,” Rachel said.
After completing a course, Rachel started doing lashes and eyebrows on the weekends and initially found clients through word of mouth and social media.
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“At the start, it was hard because I was still doing my casual job,” Rachel said.
But, after building up more of a customer base, Rachel decided to take the risk and quit her job to become a full-time beauty therapist.
“I went full-time eight months after I started. It was purely because I hated my job and I just wanted to risk it. I also thought to myself, ‘I’m only doing it two days a week and I can’t really grow or get any further’,” she said.
Two years on, the Central Coast resident is now earning $7,000 a month as a sole trader in the beauty industry. That works out to roughly $84,000 a year - more than double what she was earning in her previous work.
Growing industry
Rachel isn’t the only Aussie cashing in on the beauty industry. There are currently 33,400 employed beauty therapists in Australia, according to government data. This is expected to grow to 42,600 jobs by 2026.
Hnry, a digital accountant and tax-automation service for sole traders, said it has noticed a spike in beauty-therapist workers, with sign-ups skyrocketing by 236 per cent over the past 12 months.
But it isn’t necessarily the most lucrative industry overall, with median full-time earnings sitting at $1,196 per week on average - or $30 an hour.
Upsides and downsides
For Rachel, the upsides of having her own business outweigh any of the downsides.
“I don’t have a boss and that’s just amazing. It’s hard because I couldn’t imagine working for someone ever again,” Rachel said.
Her beauty salon is also based out of her home and she likes having the freedom to set her own hours of work.
“It sucks that, if I’m sick, I don’t work and I don’t get sick pay. But just being able to know that if I don’t want to work, I don’t have to work and I don’t have to ask my boss,” she said.
For other Aussies considering a side hustle, Rachel recommended they “just do it” but said it was important to keep up your day job at the beginning.
“It’s not going to be easy at the start but it’s like anything, you’ve got to put in the work and the effort.”
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