I started as an Assistant Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble in India, moved up quickly, then shifted to the Boston Consulting Group and later became a Senior Director at Kraft and then the Chief Marketing Officer for one of New York’s fastest growing start-ups.

2. The incredible power of a
creative side hustle – and why
you need one today

3. (Bear with me. This first part may sound like
boasting but it’s the opposite—I’m using myself as
an example precisely because of how average I
am.)

4. I graduated from B-School in 2002 with middling
grades. No one would’ve cast a vote for me as
“most likely to succeed” in the yearbook. Yet since
graduation, I’ve done pretty well at my corporate
gig. I started as an Assistant Brand Manager at
Procter &

5. Gamble in India, moved up quickly, then shifted to
the Boston Consulting Group and later became a
Senior Director at Kraft and then the Chief
Marketing Officer for one of New York’s fastest
growing start-ups.

6. During this time, I’ve also taken three full years off
to write my novels, backpack, and learn yoga and
meditation. Basically, pursuits of the spirit that
have nothing to do with work. Or don’t they?

7. I’m convinced that I’ve done well at my career
because of my writing and the related, time off,
not inspite of it. As I explain below, writing has
helped me grow in ways that’s transformed my
approach to work. That’s why I think everyone
should have a creative side hustle. All self-help
books talk about “following your dreams” and
“pursuing your passions” and tend to belittle
corporate careers.

8. I disagree. It’s not about the nature of your work.
It’s about who you can become through your
work. If you can fully express your spirit in Procter
& Gamble, for example, then why should you feel
compelled to make yet another unnecessary app
in your garage unless

9. you really want to, of course? Instead, fill the
vacuum with a creative side hustle that expands
your spirit so you bring your full self to your
work—and every part of your life.

10. First off though, a creative side hustle is not a hobby. It
is a creative project with a measurable, tangible,
high-stakes outcome. If writing is your hustle, for
instance, you should strive to get a top publishing deal
and become a #1 bestseller. Or be a musician trying to
cut their own album, an artist aiming to get their own
gallery showing, set a lofty, almost unattainable goal for
the side hustle

11. because if you don’t have that goal, you won’t
push yourself to that spiritual breaking point where
the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. And since this
is your side hustle and not your main hustle,
you’re not striving for money or security but an
emotional transcendence

12. where there’s no “man”, no system to appease,
just you stretching the boundaries of what you
thought you were capable of—and then stretching
it some more. Why is this so incredibly effective?
Here are a few things my creative side hustle has
taught me that’s impacted my corporate gigs
positively

13. You learn how to operate in extreme
ambiguity
Try selling good ideas to people—a book that
means something, a breakout music album, a
personal development package that truly works—
and watch them run away from you.

14. People would rather buy Lays chips and Oreo
cookies and numb themselves in front of a screen
watching football or playing World of Warcraft than
be shaken out of their comfort zone with a new
thought. That’s why as a creative side hustler, you
learn to adapt. Constantly. I was very sure about
Johnny Gone Down’s success, for instance

15. I’d written the book during one of the darkest
phases of my life when my mother was dying from
cancer and I was making one rash decision after
another in my personal life. Johnny was written
straight from the heart and helped me make sense
of my own seemingly self-destructive choices.
HarperCollins loved the book

16. HarperCollins loved the book. They priced it at the
magical Rs. 99 price point in India and distributed
it everywhere from Tier 3 cities to Reliance Fresh.
I hired a PR agency. A movie star launched the
book. We were all riding high after Keep off the
Grass’s success. And we sat back and waited for
the sales to explode. Except they didn’t

17. The book barely sold out its first print run of
50,000 copies. Years later, Johnny’s cult-like
following has never translated into huge sales.
Because no one knows what it truly takes to sell
an idea. So you try a new approach each time,
constantly course-correcting and tweaking, until
one day you get it right. Maybe

18. ow, I’m trying a completely different model to
launch The Yoga of Max’s Discontent in the US in
Spring 2016, focusing heavily on a bottom-up
grassroots drive. And I’ll fail again and try a new
thing again. Everything about the creative hustle is
ambiguous. From staring at a blank page to
selling your art, it makes the relative ambiguity of
work a cakewalk in comparison

19. The same year I was trying to sell Johnny, I was
turning around a declining beverage brand for
Kraft in the US. Everything about the latter was
rational, almost easy in comparison to the
helplessness I felt when I just couldn’t get Johnny
Gone Down to rise.

20. You’re always a beginner
Have you ever been rejected sixty times on just
one project? Your heart contracts, your stomach
tightens, your wife’s face falls, you feel like a
failure in front of your kids, your world crashes
around you with each rejection, yet you keep
improving, keep giving it the best you have—and
you get rejected once again.

21. Sixty times in a row. That’s what happened with
The Yoga of Max’s Discontent before Random
House eventually bought the worldwide rights.
Imagine how quickly your pride and your sense of
certainty dissolves when that happens. And isn’t
that a truly wonderful thing? Because you’ll never
be the guy at work who struts around with pride
because he knows everything about financial
derivatives in

22. the petroleum industry or marketing detergents to
low tier consumers or whatever. You turn into
someone who knows nothing, who’s always
learning, who’s obsessed with improving, who’s a
mentor to people who are struggling, because you
know that every time you are 100% confident
about your stuff, you’ll be rejected again

23. You become more grateful for your job
I’ve gotten three book advances and two movie
deals in my seven-year-old writing career. On
paper, this is impressive. But here’s how the
money bleeds in:
A book advance is paid 1/3rd at the time of signing
a deal, 1/3rd when final manuscript is approved,
and 1/3rd on final publication. Nothing in this
timeline is under your control.

24. Getting a top book deal is hard enough but it may
take months from getting an offer to actually
signing a book contract as there’s back-and-forth
on every contract term between your agent and
the publisher’s lawyer. At some point, you’ll be
screaming silently: who cares about 0.75% points

25. on the audio rights of the hypothetical audio book
when at this rate, your paper book itself is never
going to see the light of the day? But it’s outside
your control like everything else. Once you sign
the deal, it may take more than a year of editing
and re-editing for the manuscript to be approved
and then, the release date is heavily dependent
on other books.

26. The whole cycle took two years for The Yoga of
Max’s Discontent after getting a book deal. Your
timing could be quicker. Or slower. The point is it’s
heavily unpredictable.

27. If book money is unpredictable, don’t even get me
started on movie deals. I got $15k for Keep off the
Grass and $150k for Johnny Gone Down. It could
have been the reverse. Or more. Or less. No one
has a clue about the intrinsic value of “the
property”, contracts are all structured differently,
and <10% of books that are optioned ever get
green-lit for production. Try planning your kids’
organic whole milk boxes around the payout. -

28. Now, compare this to a job. You work, sometimes
a lot, sometimes a little, sometimes well,
sometimes not, but you always get a salary at the
end of two weeks. Not 1/3rd of it after someone
approves your work after one hundred iterations.
Will you really sit about complaining about how
your boss doesn’t understand you then in the
Friday happy hour paid for by the

29. company? Or how you had to work one weekend
when your brother’s friend’s cousin was getting
married? Your perspective shifts. You become the
rare, happy employee who understands the value
of a steady paycheck because you’ve seen the
other side

30. You’re the only rat in your race
I’ve seen happy, healthy careers destroyed over
the obsession of who got promoted when in
whose class—“I’m the fastest to become manager
in my class so I’m going to stay”, “He became
partner before me so I’m going to leave” etc. All
these concepts dissolve when you have a creative
side hustle. I’ve taken three full years off from my
career, for instance, so I don’t

31. even know which class I belong to, how young or
old I am versus my peers, who reached where
from school etc. All I know is that I have to do a
hell of a job each day when I work because a
couple of years later, I’ll be either begging for a
sabbatical to write a book or quitting and having to
find another job after I’m done with my book

32. So I’ve to be exceptional at my work. Truly
excellent. That’s the only way people will look past
my unconventional, zig-zag resume. It’s massively
simplifying. There’s no past, no future planning, no
competition, no looking left or right, you’re running
your own race. Your sense of accomplishment
comes from doing great work versus any external
marker of success and that makes for a pretty
good employee

33. Your potential increases boundlessly
This is by far the biggest one. When you set
yourself on fire in the pursuit of creative
excellence, your spirit expands. In leaps. The
creative well is unquenchable. You keep filling it
constantly to draw from it—with new experiences,
new travel, new people, with life in all its glory and
wretchedness.

34. Sometimes I can’t believe how much I’m
changing. Three years ago when we embarked on
our sabbatical, I couldn’t wait to backpack through
Eastern Europe. Now, my stomach knots at the
thought of seeing another cathedral or going on a
vacation. I want to meditate. I want to become
silent

35. I want to dissolve myself and become nothing.
And tomorrow, I’ll change again. I can see that
effect at work. I want to learn. I want to do new
things. I want to destroy every sense that I know
anything at all. I want to challenge myself until I
break, all of it for no material return, just because
my spirit demands that of me now.

36. We need every kind in the world but something
tells me that you can’t create the future of
corporations by watching football and playing the
World of Warcraft. The world is changing too fast
for that. You, the creative side hustler, have a
chance to change the world though. Just start
your hustle now. And if writing is your chosen side
hustle, don’t forget to sign up for my writing course
and publishing course here.

37. I cover everything from idea to outline to writing
structures to writing psychology and discipline and
querying techniques to getting a top literary agent
in the material. This is the first time I’ve offered a
video course and the response has been
delightful. Signing up is free!

38. For more details
Visit us @
http://www.karanbajaj.com/