Millions of Brits are boosting income by £6,600 with side hustles

Millions of Brits have a ‘side hustle’ to boost their incomes and pursue their passions, according to research.

A study of adults in full-time employment found that almost one quarter have already turned a hobby into a side business alongside their career, while a further 56 percent aspire to.

Those with a side business top up their income with an average of £6,604.80 per year post-tax, while 15 per cent of side hustlers even make £12,000 annually.

Beauty and wellness was found to be the most popular side business sector, which includes hairdressers, personal trainers and dieticians.

Arts and entertainment such as artists, DJs and designers, and home improvement including self-employed decorators and gardeners are also popular areas.

Generating extra cash was found to be the top reason Brits either have or would like to start a side business.

But 36 percent started a side business to pursue a passion and over one third did so to spend more time doing what they enjoy.

A desire and drive to follow one’s true calling is further supported by the finding that over half of Brits can’t find a full-time job related to their interests.

Simon Braier, Customer Strategy and Insights Director from Vistaprint, who commissioned the research, said: “Britain’s side business economy is booming, as employees increasingly look for financial, professional and personal fulfilment that may not be present in their main job.

“While many side hustles are born out of a personal interest or hobby, they don’t have to stay small.

“Side business owners can test their venture’s long-term viability, growth and marketing opportunities in a safer setting, helping them to ease the transition into full-time entrepreneurship and spend more time doing what they love.”

The study also found that almost two thirds of entrepreneurs treat their enterprise as a ‘5-9’ and work on it in the evenings in order to fit around their career.

A further one third also work on their side job at the weekends, while one quarter do so during the morning.

A typical side business takes up 13 hours a week, while 17 percent of those polled spend 20+ hours a week working on it.

It also emerged that one-third of side business owners hope to grow their venture in the future.

But an average of £2,711 a month post-tax would need to be made to consider turning a side project into a full-time job – a figure well above the average side hustle earnings.

When asked for their advice on growing a side business, successful side hustlers recommended focusing on tasks which generate the most revenue, setting long-term goals and ensuring your side business is something you truly enjoy.

Networking with people who run side businesses and building a strong social media presence rounded off their top five tips.

Vistaprint’s UK Market Lead Charlotte Holmes-Darby said: “To grow your side business, you need to think and act like a full-time entrepreneur.

“That also means you should be prepared to seize any opportunities that come your way and enable you to take your side hustle to the next level.”

What to consider before taking out personal loans

Taking out a personal loan pertains to the process of borrowing money from a financial institution, whether it’s a bank, credit union, or online lender.

You are responsible for paying the amount back in fixed monthly installments, which can range from two to five years.

Typically, personal loans are “unsecured,” which means that they don’t require collateral. It’s also cheaper than using your credit card for payments that require a hefty lump sum, like a down payment for a car or house, and has a higher limit. This setup is also ideal for people who have incurred high credit card balances since taking out a personal loan can consolidate your debts into one payment structure.

If you’re planning to apply for a personal loan, here are some things you should consider:

Determine If You Truly Need the Money

Before you go ahead and fill up forms for a bank or Credit Ninja personal loans, you must take an objective and thorough look at your financial situation. Evaluate whether you genuinely need the money and if you have the capacity to repay the lender.

Consolidating multiple credit card debt is one of the more popular uses of personal loans. These are other instances when borrowing money may be necessary:

• Refinancing Student Loans– Personal loans may be cheaper than paying with the initial provider. However, you must take note that you will no longer be eligible for loan forgiveness programs that are implemented in the future.
• Paying for a Medical Emergency – Another valuable use of personal loans is for medical emergencies. While you can save as much money as you can for these unexpected situations, there’s no telling when you might need more funds.
• Purchasing an Appliance or Gadget– As mentioned above, a personal loan can be used to pay for a car or home. Moreover, you can also utilize the funds for other devices. Calculate first whether taking out a loan ends up cheaper than financing your purchase through the seller.
• Boosting Your Credit Rating – A personal loan can improve your credit score by lowering your credit utilization ratio or the amount of total credit you have in comparison with your limit. Prompt repayment will also be tracked and can help your rating.

Know If You’re Eligible

While you can still borrow money with bad credit, you should still determine your credit score before you try to apply for a personal loan. Your rating can influence the affordability of your loan through interest rates and the repayment schedule.

You have to note that lenders are also looking at the profitability of their service. Having a bad credit score highlights the risks that come with letting you borrow money so they have to put up more rigid security measures in place to ensure that you can pay them back.

Identify the Type of Personal Loan You Need

There are different types of personal loans available with various lenders. You should know which one is best suited to your needs and financial situation. This includes being aware of automatic withdrawals and origination fees that may entail your loan.

Here are the types of personal loans:

• Unsecured– As mentioned above, this type of personal loan is the most common but also riskier for lenders. You don’t need to provide collateral, which is why it has higher interest rates than secured ones.
• Secured– With secured personal loans, you will need to give the lending company the rights to seize your collateral if you default or miss paying the loan.
• Fixed-Rate– This loan gives you the same rate for your monthly payments for the entire duration of the loan. The consistent setup allows you to include the repayment in your budget each month. Plus, it’s an excellent way to erase concerns over rising rates on long-term loans.
• Variable – The interest rates on this type of loan are influenced by a benchmark rate appointed by banks. The rise and fall of the market rate have a bearing on the fluctuation of your monthly payments and total interest costs. A significant advantage of variable-rate loans is that it has a lower annual percentage rates than fixed-rate loans.

Conclusion

Personal loans are valuable tools if you find yourself in need of cash for medical emergencies, repaying credit card debt, purchasing goods, or refinancing your student loans. You should determine your credit rating first since this can influence the affordability of your loan. Read up on the different types of loans, as well and identify which setup works best for your financial situation

Bankruptcies at highest level in over five years

Official figures show that the number of people going bankrupt across England Wales are at their highest levels since 2014 in the second quarter of 2019.

Between April and June some 4,228 bankruptcies were recorded the highest number of any quarter since 2014.

The Insolvency Service who published the findings on Tuesday the number of people using individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) and debt relief orders (DROs) dropped in the second quarter of 2019.

Published today – personal insolvency statistics for April to June 2019: total individual insolvencies decreased in Q2 for the 2nd consecutive quarter https://t.co/V28dgff7J9 pic.twitter.com/vXrz5Bx21l

— Insolvency Service (@insolvencygovuk) July 30, 2019

Duncan Swift, president of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3, said bankruptcies “tend to be a reasonably good indicator of serious, unsustainable indebtedness.”

“The situation is still serious for the UK’s personal finances.”

Alec Pillmoor, personal insolvency partner at RSM, said the Insolvency Service figures are suggesting “many people continue to be over-optimistic when it comes to estimating their ability to meet repayment demands as they fall due”.

He said, “Furthermore, debt charities have also raised concerns about the rise in sub-prime credit cards being targeted at those with low credit scores.

“These can have relatively high APRs (annual percentage rates) when compared to other short-term credit alternatives and serve to further the plight of those with limited understanding of how easy it is to rack up unsustainable debt.”

Providing a note of caution to households he said, “Given the current weakness of the pound and Brexit-related economic uncertainty, many consumers may wish to give closer consideration to their holiday spending this summer to avoid getting into trouble further down the line.”

AI: The next evolution of the personal touch

Artificial intelligence has gone from being a mystical concept on the periphery of technology to playing a pivotal role in the day to day, from big data processing to self-driving cars.

AI has also developed significantly since Alan Turing’s “Turing Test” evaluated a machine’s ability to behave like a human.

Sandra Schroeter, International Head, Customer Engagement Technologies, LogMeIn explains that with the popularity of AI on the rise, many organisations are evaluating how they can use it to drive the business forward. This can seem like an overwhelming task, but customer engagement could be the perfect door into the AI world. It enables the personal touch to extend across all technology platforms to enhance the brand experience and raise customer satisfaction. There are, however, some prominent misconceptions about AI that need to be discussed.

“Chatbots are best suited for simple customer support experiences”

This is a myth that stems from our past experiences as consumers. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) could be seen as the first generation of bots, specifically voice bots. IVR would collect information via phone and introduce a simple decision tree to help customers find the correct answers and put them through to the appropriate agent. This technology served a purpose, but it can’t be said it was pleasant to use.

The AI of today is far more dynamic and nimbler than the archaic technology it replaced. It can go much further than just sending a customer in the right direction. Consumers can now ask questions, get advice and understand options before making a purchase and hopefully avoid having to make any unwanted calls or visits to a store.

In the age of online shopping and ease of purchase and return, AI-powered chat solutions keep consumers digital, while delivering a personalised experience at scale.

“It’s better to focus on prospects than current customers”

A common but flawed assumption for a few key reasons. First, cost. Acquiring new customers costs, at minimum, five times more than the cost of retaining one, according to Forrester. Also, existing customers tend to spend more the next time they buy and become brand advocates. Therefore, keeping customers happy generates revenue.

Part of prioritising customers over prospects helps to create a more cohesive customer journey, ensuring that they experience the value of what they’ve paid for. A big part of the journey for current customers revolves around customer service and support throughout their customer lifetime. Luckily, there are many ways that AI can help to foster valuable customer relationships.

AI-powered engagement ensures each customer receives VIP treatment, is helped in the right way, and pointed to products,services and solutions that best match their needs. This encourages them to spend more, prompt them to share the brand with others and, ultimately, drive business success.

To become customers, however, they have to purchase something. Browsing and not buying is becoming more common and can become frustrating to organisations. While there is absolutely a time and place for follow-up emails and re-targeting ads, it can be beneficial to strike while the iron is hot.  AI enables personalised outreach to each customer on a site through data gathered about the customer’s journey and knowledge about past interactions that have converted to purchases. This proactive engagement will track back directly to the organisation’s bottom line and add more potential customer advocates to your ranks.

“Technology will completely replace humans”

Yes, technology is important. Contact centres, order management, and other customer-facing teams need to be armed with tools to optimise workflows, drive KPIs and ultimately make the organisation more successful, but technology has to be combined with human expertise. Tech helps to make employees more efficient and effective, but shouldn’t be used to completely replace them.

Just as on the consumer side, the expectation for technology to help make life better is rising among the next generation of customer-facing employees. Customer service and support are key areas where AI makes a real difference. AI-powered search and chatbots help to quickly scale by taking frequently asked questions off an agent’s plate. Modern chatbots deftly handle customer queries in a natural, conversational way, and free up the agent’s time to focus on resolving more complex, high-value customer issues.

AI is a game changer in this area if provided to employees at the right time and through the right platform. It enables employees to become much more strategic in nature and not only solve problems, but also drive revenue and loyalty.

“You only get one shot at the perfect AI implementation”

The possibilities of integrating AI with backend systems is nearly endless. A good AI chatbot solution can integrate data from any source that is accessible through an API, and it can have automated backend processes. However, while these use cases can deliver immense value to an organisation, it doesn’t all have to happen at once. Starting with a simple use case that shows ROI quickly and adding capabilities over time is a great way to get buy-in for bigger projects.

There are many benefits to starting small and growing an AI implementation with a single software solution. Siloed and disjointed experiences make customers feel as if they were working with a different company or brand with each interaction.

Coordinating efforts and insights across the organisation provides a more cohesive experience as users move through the customer journey.

Ultimately, the goal of using a single AI-powered engagement solution across the organisation ensures businesses deliver timely and relevant information to prospects and customers at the moments when they really need it. AI can also provide proactive guidance for agents of all capabilities, drive centralised approaches to knowledge management, and collect insights to help drive additional, ongoing training.

AI and bots can bring many benefits to an organisation, but there are ways to implement them in a methodical way. By defining specific use cases, outlining expectations, starting with a specific project and scaling, it will ensure that AI is an aid to customers and employees where and when they need it. Having the AI touch will be a game changer to the future of business.

The ICO fines British Airways & Marriott should businesses be worried?

Earlier this month the UK’s data protection regulator – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – hit the headlines by announcing its intention to impose £283m in total in fines in quick succession.

First, British Airways (£183.39m) then Marriott International (£99.2m) – both due to cyber/IT security incidents where customer personal data was compromised.

Since 25 May 2018 when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect data protection experts have been anxiously waiting to see what fines the ICO would levy under the GDPR . The ICO now has the power to potentially levy fines of the greater of Euro 20m or 4% of group worldwide turnover – far above the previous cap of £500,000.  And now we have two whopping intended fines.  Yet a sense of perspective is needed.

Firstly, such fines are only “intended” fines at this stage – the ICO may reduce them after hearing representations from the companies concerned.

Secondly, whilst we don’t yet have the full rationale for the fines it seems reasonable to assume that the fines will be higher than the fines the ICO itself would impose just in the UK.  This is because in these two cases the ICO is acting as the “lead supervisory authority” under the GDPR and so is representing the interests of other EU/EEA data protection authorities as well.

Thirdly, these appear to be very serious incidents at large corporates involving significant numbers of customers and taking place over an extended period of time with the risk of serious prejudice to those affected – so the fines were always going to be significant.

In Marriott International’s case the problem arose due to IT systems that were originally part of the Starwood hotels group acquired by Marriott in 2016.  It took Marriott until 2018 to discover the incident (which had its origins in a 2014 compromise of Starwood’s systems) and the ICO found that Marriott failed to undertake sufficient due diligence when it bought Starwood and should also have done more to secure its systems.

In BA’s case the cyber incident was notified to the ICO by BA in September 2018. Personal data of approximately 500,000 customers were compromised in this incident, which is believed to have begun in June 2018.  The ICO’s investigation found that a variety of information was compromised by poor security arrangements at the company, including log in, payment card, and travel booking details as well as name and address information.

Nevertheless, the days of a £500,000 cap on data protection fines are now well and truly over.  Also it’s not just fines that should concentrate the mind – there’s the reputational damage, the legal and administrative costs in dealing with the matter and perhaps most ominously the threat of class action data breach lawsuits on behalf of affected data subjects.  If significant numbers of data subjects are affected the claims here can easily outstrip the level of any fines.

Implications for business

As we await to see how these two cases proceed some initial conclusions can be drawn.

Don’t assume you can pass the blame onto others: the fact you’ve suffered a cyber/IT security incident caused by the criminal behaviour of others (as it appears Marriott and BA did) doesn’t necessarily get you off the hook – did you put in place appropriate procedures to help prevent, detect and then swiftly respond to and contain such an attack? – if you failed in your duty of care you will have to face the consequences.  Businesses need to take IT security very seriously and to embed this into how employees behave as well – frequently human error or worse will be responsible, not necessarily just a technical failure.

Respond immediately: If you are affected by a cyber or other “personal data breach” contact the ICO immediately where the law requires this (any breach of any substance will inevitably require this). Ensure you promptly assess the risk to those individuals affected and notify them as well where the law requires this or where it is sensible to do so (e.g. to mitigate damage to those involved) and provide full cooperation to the ICO throughout. Take immediate steps to contain and then stop the incident.  This will also help in mitigation of any fine.

Buyer beware: If you acquire another business you need to carry out robust GDPR and IT security due diligence to ensure you do not inherit a problem.

Don’t neglect compliance: take GDPR compliance seriously, be prepared for the worst and ensure you have appropriate technical and organisational security measures in place to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk, and regularly test the measures in place.

Review or take out appropriate insurance cover: this is not a panacea but there are an increasing number of products available.

Learn from your mistakes:it is likely most businesses will suffer some sort of personal data breach or cyber/IT security incident at some point – not necessarily major. It is imperative to learn from the experience and prevent a repeat.

Best jobs for people who love celebrities

We’ve all have a celebrity crush, someone we’ve always fancied meeting and have wanted to get closer to.

If you’re not a producer, photographer, publicist, or fashion designer, it may be difficult to get close to a celebrity.

However, there are other cool jobs you can look into if you want to meet celebrities on a personal level. If you feel like you absolutely have to meet Keanu Reeves or shake Beyonce’s hand, then we’ve got a few job ideas that could possibly make that happen.

Is it Worth it?

Getting a celebrity-adjacent job is not a walk in the park. Some spend years practicing guitar or toning their voices and never actually get to it. Others try to enter the celebrity world from the back door by becoming managers or PR personnel, but the market is oversaturated with these professions.

Nevertheless, working for a star is an appealing possibility for lots of people. The perks are awesome; six-figure salaries, international travel as well as the chance to go to award shows and access exclusive venues. Ready to get closer to the red carpet? Here are a few jobs to consider if you want to get access to celebrities.

A Member of The Staff

These jobs aren’t easy to get; however, if you use a reputable household staff agency in your job search, you may find your way into the A-List world.

Personal Assistant

Becoming a personal assistant can you give insider access to a celebrity’s life. They don’t pick up their own laundry or remember their grandparents’ anniversary. They often don’t have time to research what to pack, remember who they planned to have coffee with, or even to break up with their partners.

Some even went as far as saying being a celebrity’s personal assistant is like being a paid best friend. You’d answer phones, walk dogs, write down appointments but also go to the coolest events and get access to the most exclusive venues.

House Manager

Cleaning kitchens and scrubbing bathrooms isn’t fun. When you are a celebrity’s house manager, you travel with them and sort of help them keep their life together. From running shopping errands to managing household expenses, you get an insider-look into their lives and experience their troubles and tribulations first hand.

The job requires a lot of stamina, as we imagine these people to be very short on time and somewhat impatient, but a little bit of resourcefulness should get the work done.

Chef

It’s true; the fastest way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Getting a job as a chef in an A-lister’s kitchen will make you one of their favorite people. You will be in charge of their banquets, their events, and their personal nutrition.

If you love cooking or are a certified chef, this is an easy and surely a fun way to get your foot into literallytheir house door. Everyone loves to eat, and the food industry is one that will never die. If you love cooking, are good at it, and are looking for a job that’ll get you close to the celebrities you love, this is the one.

Massage or Spa Expert

With a massage or spa expert certification, and a quick job search with an upscale company, you can get very up-close and personal with your celebrity faves. You could get a call one Saturday night from Lindsay Lohan to do her make-up or a booking to take care of Shakira’s hair.

Even better, you could get a call from Hugh Jackman to give him a deep tissue massage. We don’t think it gets any more personal than this.

People also tend to talk a lot with their make-up artists or hairdressers. Taking on this job won’t just give you physical contact, but also a much deeper understanding of their personal lives.

Publicist

Who does damage control when celebrities lose it? It’s their publicist. Being a publicist means you’re the glue that keeps a celebrity’s life together. You coordinate interviews, write press releases, save their image when they make a faux-pas, and communicate on their behalf. You sometimes even go as far as telling them to get it together.

PR Daily says being a celebrity’s PR manager includes taking red-eye flights, never getting drunk, or being a guest at parties, as well as always doing damage control. It’s a very hectic job but really pays off if you do it well.

Make it Happen!

Why wait? Roll up your sleeves, get the certifications you need to get and start searching for a household job, a personal assistant job, or get a spa expert. If you are dead set on working with A-listers, then it may be time to pivot your career goals. Who knows? You may even be able to get closer to your celebrity crush.