My top tip for starting a side hustle [Video]

Nobody expected Bernadette Joy to shut down her successful business. Not even Joy herself.

Joy ran Charlotte, North Carolina-based Dressed, which started as a side hustle connecting people who owned bridesmaid dresses with people who wanted to rent them. It helped her pay off her student loans, quit her full-time job, hire employees and open a storefront.

But the more momentum Dressed gained, the more time-intensive and less fulfilling it became. In 2019, after three years, she closed up shop. She’d also gotten a taste of being her own boss, and she didn’t want to go back — prompting an “existential midlife crisis,” she says.

“I spent [three months] wrapped up in my blanket on my couch thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’ because I didn’t have a business anymore,” says Joy, 39.

On that couch, she learned an important lesson, which she says is her No. 1 tip for starting a side …