Caring as a side hustle: crazy?

You care. Of course you care.

But what if you could get paid to care?

What if instead of passive caring, bemoaning the loneliness and struggle in the world, or caring within your own network, you could harness your heart to effect change in the lives of strangers...strangers who are then empowered to go on to achieve their own dreams?

We will talk in this piece about simple, straighforward side hustles like dog walking or childcare. But I'm also ecouraging you to think much bigger.

What if your caring nature and your business skills could build new projects urgently needed by our elders, our teenagers, young parents, those who feel lost?

What if your knowledge of data and app building could create new ecosystems of support: flexible, accessible, fairly priced care that the public sector might even pay you to deliver?

What if you could create income by doing something that actually matters?

Have you got it in you to recognise unmet human needs and step in with vision and purpose? You don’t need angel investors or a viral campaign. We'll discuss sources of funding below: there's lots.

This is a call for those who are done with empty productivity, who want their work to hold meaning, not just money.

Caring as a side hustle isn't half as crazy as it sounds.

Entry Points to a Care-Based Economy

What do you think of when I say care?

Menial work and drudgery? The bureaucratisation of compassion?

Forget it.

In broken societies, care is political, economically disruptive and a high-need service. Forget demand generation: there's an endless, self-renewing pool of people who need not half-hearted, impersonal 'services' but care 2.0, or, to use a crass and overused phrase beloved of B2B marketers, "the uber of care."

Care needs visionaries not angels; revolutionaries not saints.

It’s entering someone’s life where the systems have stopped showing up.

Care isn’t cushy. But neither does it need to mean minimum wage servitude for profit-driven corporates or volunteering. It’s radical. It demands presence, flexibility, nerve. Imagination, and a understanding of the opportunities presented by wearables and other technologies, will be rewarded.

And yes: there’s money in it.