Welcome

to the strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez. Hello. I've been a travel advisor for over 10 years, and I'm navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But alas, the important thing is I'm aware of them now, and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show? Let's jump in. Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here for another week. This is going to be a little bit of a different conversation and I'm really excited for it because I know there's so many of you travel entrepreneurs who need to know that it's not about all about like, make this a full time thing. So without further ado, Chris McPeek is an author, educator, podcaster, and a 9 to 5 side hustler. Her show, Got Side Hustle, helps career professionals in higher education create time for their side hustles and thus not waste any of their potential. Her latest book, the 9 to 5 side hustler, a guide to managing your day job with your small business is an Amazon best seller. In her 25 plus years working in higher education, Chris always felt a side hustle was all about money and not about passion. It wasn't until she landed her dream job working for a community college foundation that Chris found the drive to start a business or productivity and prioritization came together and helped her balance all of the work that she loves.

And now she's here to bring that knowledge to you. In her downtime, Chris runs a nonprofit US Masters swim team with her hubby, manages her podcast and enjoys knitting, swimming and binge watching dark TV shows. Welcome, Chris.

Thank you for having me, Rita. You know, as you were reading that out, there was so much passion and excitement behind it. I'm like looking around the room. So who is she talking about?

Then, yeah, the the bios are always I I try and make it, like, fun and inviting because, I mean, you you've done a lot of awesome things in your career. Like not only that's that I just read out loud, but but even prior to that and that I wanna jump off with the side hustle part because that is I I started and I still have, unfortunately for me, a full time job. And I really want to make my travel business the full time thing. But right now it's the part time thing. Yes. So for you as a person who found her dream job and doesn't want to let it go, obviously,

how do

you balance having the side hustle or and why did you keep it?

In the beginning, like like my bio suggests, I thought the side hustle's all about making extra money. And I soon found that you can't really do that if you're not doing something that's fun for you and that you potentially have a passion for. So, for example, I tried my hat in, you know, the Mary Kay thing and the body shop thing. And while it was fun for a little while, I realized suddenly it was like, God, booking these skincare classes is kind of a tedious thing. And I'm not how do I have to give up another Saturday to do this? And I started not enjoying it as much. So I thought, you know, if if I'm gonna pursue something, I wanna pursue something that I enjoy. Mhmm. So I let that go for a while because I thought, alright, well, I'm, you know, I'm making decent money.

We're we're, you know, getting through the debt like we'd wanted to. And then my my husband decided he wanted to start a United States master swim team. He was a swimmer in high school. He qualified for the Olympic trials. He was a very, very strong athlete in those days, And then he got sick, he's HIV positive, and he got sick. And so getting back to health included him getting back in the water, and it just sort of really charged his excitement. So he's like, Chris, I don't want to bartend anymore. I don't want to work in factories anymore.

I want to start a swim team. And I said, all right, let's do it. So everything for me originally started because he had this idea. And after we built that and started going, I thought, okay, well, this is kind of fun, but I think I kind of want to do something else in addition and kind of and have my own thing. And I'd always been really passionate about work life balance and, self care. And I thought, okay, well, I'll I'll do something related to that. I wrote one book and then I started getting involved in some online, mastermind and online courses. And I started connecting with people.