Indu and her husband Rajan built up successful careers in accountancy and IT before deciding to set up a side hustle with Amway. Their commitment and drive, not to mention impressive hard work, has resulted in them creating a successful business that provides them with an additional income of around £1,500 – £2,000 a month.
“I think it is fair to say that my husband and I are both very driven people. We have a real desire to do well and be successful in our careers; I work as a Cashier within an accountancy practice, and Rajan works as an IT Manager.
I suppose developing our ‘side hustle’ business with Amway is a natural extension of our approach to life.
We first came across Amway through some friends our who had a business selling Amway products. I tried some of the company’s skincare range and loved it.
Through using the products, we became more and more interested in the business side of things – we could see from our friends that it had real potential if you were prepared to put in the time and effort.
We eventually decided to join Amway ourselves in 2012.
Commitment to the Side Hustle
It was a quite a juggle initially to find time to work on our side hustle alongside our careers, and it wasn’t really until a couple of years later, in 2014, that we took the decision to really focus properly on driving things forward. We sell products at skincare demonstrations and pampering evenings that we organise as well as community coffee mornings and so on – we have quite a varied customer base.
Over the years, we’ve also developed our own team of salespeople who we mentor / coach – around 60 people in total. In doing this, we have been able to apply our skills from our corporate careers to our side hustle, but in many other ways it is completely different. There is a real sense of mutual collaboration, helping each other in achieving our own respective goals and learning from one another. The relationships we have with our team are very important to us – we have developed genuine friendships with many of those we work with.
Typically, I would say I spend a couple of hours each evening and perhaps around eight hours at the weekend focused on our business. We like relaxing as much as the next person, but we’re not really the type to sit down and watch hours of TV, we prefer to do something more productive with our evenings!
Reaping the Rewards
Our hard work is now really paying off. On top of our income from our ‘traditional’ careers, in an average month we earn anywhere between about £1,500 – £2,000 from our Amway work, and one month we made £3,000. Our earnings are a combination of commission earned through our own product sales (20% of each product sale), and an additional commission which is paid based on the product sales of our team members.
The impact that our side hustle has had on our lives is considerable. Perhaps most significantly, financially it has meant that I have been able to go part-time in my day job, giving me more time to spend with our daughter – I can drop her off and collect her from school most days, which I love.
But it’s not just about the money. We never used to be very sociable, but we’ve met so many people through the business, and have learnt so much from those we work alongside.
It’s also been great to build a business with my husband. We spend a lot of time working together on it, and it’s so nice to have a joint sense of direction and joint goals to work towards. We were awarded Amway’s Star of the Year at the Direct Selling Association’s industry awards recently, and there was a real sense of pride knowing we had achieved that together.
We do switch off sometimes too – we like reading and we enjoy travel, and we have been on some fantastic sales incentive trips, for example we went on a cruise to Greece last October after our group sales qualified us for the trip. It was amazing!
Generally, though, I would say we’re pretty focussed in using our spare time to make a better life for our family, and it’s very satisfying to see that paying off.”