WEBVTT

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What you start with is not what you're going to end with but it will give you the stepping

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stones that are necessary to get to the higher leverage opportunity.

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In my opinion, one of the bigger mistakes people make is they try and go to the big leagues

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before they're ready and then they fall flat.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and

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build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with acquisition.com.

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I always wish pesos, musk and buffet had documented their journey so I'm doing it for the rest of

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us. Please share and enjoy. By far, the most frequent question I get asked is when should I start

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my side hustle and when should I quit my job once I have started my side hustle and if you fall

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out of any my content, you might think that I'm against side hustles in general and I'm not but

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there's constraints that I put around that and I want to explain how in my opinion you can tackle

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that the best to maximize your opportunity for income in life. All right, so first things first,

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I'm going to define a side hustle as a main hustle that has not gained enough size to support you

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financially. All right, and this is an important delineation because if you're just trying to make

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side money, then to me, that's the distraction from what your real main hustle is, which is probably

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your career. And so first things first, if you have a career or you have a job, then I'm a big advocate

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of the reason you should have this job is because you're trying to learn and earn and depending on

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where you're at in your life cycle of entrepreneurship or want to be entrepreneurship, it should be probably

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geared more towards learning than earning especially in the first decade. Now, once you have some of

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those learnings, if you don't want to continue down this path of maybe being number 17 at Google,

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you know, to use that kind of analogy and maybe getting into a startup with a deep skill set,

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getting some equity and having a big upside, if you don't want to pursue that path and you want

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to just make your own money, then you take the skills you have and you have to make your side hustle

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really your main hustle. And so what happens is you have to shift your perspectives from I'm going to

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do my job to meet the requirements that I have to continue to be gainfully employed and over

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deliver on what is expected of me in my role. The remaining hours of the day, I am shifting 100%

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of my focus to my new thing. And if you're like, well, what about my marriage? What about my kids?

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Something's got to give and I'm a big believer in seasons, which is sometimes you have to have a

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season of of sacrifice. Sometimes you have to have the season of sewing in order to have a season

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of reaping later. And so maybe that means 12 months or 24 months of sacrificing some time with the

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kids and the wife and probably we're going to hate me for this, but like, you know what? There's only

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so many hours. If you've got to work eight for your job, there's only other hours of the day and they

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got to come from somewhere. All right. But I would say is try and maximize the time you are going to

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have their kids and be present for them so that when you are there, you're not, you know, scrolling

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on your phone and not actually present with them. Now, you have another eight hours a day that you're

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probably awake that you can do full-time side hustle work. And my objective here is to number one,

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first secure your family financially, which means live underneath of your means with just the

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income from your job. Your side hustle will also hopefully start making some income. You can also

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bank that money to or that money goes back into adding more people or whatever you need to do to get

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that thing off the ground. Once I have a certain amount of saving, which for me would be like six months

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of living is what I would feel comfort with before starting my next thing. And it's exactly what I had

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when I started my gym. I'd see $50,000. And for me, I lived on less than that. I was like 20 something

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months of savings for me. Now you might have a family that might be less for you. Just do the math

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on your own. For me, the next step is that I need my side hustle to at least match my income

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from my current role. Now, is there an exception to that? If for some reason you're only able to work

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on your side main hustle four hours a week and you're doing half of your income as you're doing in

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your 40, then I would look at that ratio and be like, well, in four hours, I'm making half of what I

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make in 40. If I had the other 36 hours back to add to my four, would I be able to match that? If

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you can use logic and say yes, then I would say I'd feel comfortable making the jump. But if you want

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to be safe, which many people were trying to make this jump, which is just so you know, the single

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hardest jump in all of entrepreneurship is going from the safest thing, which is a job to being 100%

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eating what you kill. It was the hardest decision I've ever made in my life, entrepreneurily.

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Some people are really easy for it. It was not easy for me. Still the hardest choice I've made.

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So I want to stack as many things in my favor to make that the lowest risk possible. One,

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I have all my savings. I've got breathing room. Two, I've already matched my income from my current

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thing with the new thing. Three, and this is probably something you might not have thought of,

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is that I want to sustain that level of income for six months. This is like orders of risk.

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You have the savings. You've matched your current income. You're living below just one income,

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which means you're banking three quarters, what you're getting paid probably. And then three,

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is that you've shown that it's reliable. Because if you just the first month, you match your income,

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you quit. And then the next month, you drop back down to zero or one quarter because you're doing

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gig work or whatever, that's going to be really stressful. It's going to affect the work you do.

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It's going to affect how you sell. And honestly, it's going to affect every other aspect of your life.

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And so I would want to see consistency. So if I've done this thing, so it took me six months to

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save my stuff and it took me six months to get reliability of my income to match and stay at that

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level. Then for me, I would say it's a reasonable jump for you to go out and do that thing. Now,

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for me, what side hustle do you pick? I want the side hustle to be something that I have a

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high likelihood of success with, which is something that I have some sort of experience with.

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One of the easiest things to do is take whatever you're doing in your current role and start doing

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that as a contractor 1099, et cetera. Do those companies have the most enterprise value? No.

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But you can make some money and learn some basic skills and business that you would have no other

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opportunity to learn. You learn how to hire people. You learn how to fire people. You learn how to

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have heart conversation. Learn how to drive an issue. You learn how to market. You learn how to sell

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to get new business. You learn how to contract an invoice. You learn how to process payments.

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You learn how to set up an LLC. There's lots of things that you have to learn just going zero to

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one. Now, if you have a longer time horizon to do that, you'll figure those out as you go.

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But I would say that you don't need to be perfect on the first pick. You just need to be

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directionally correct. And the first direction is I'm going to be an entrepreneur. So if you make

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the first jump, you've already taken the biggest jump in the right direction of what you ultimately

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want to do. It is very, very, very rare that long-term entrepreneurs first business is their

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last business. Look at every single person that you aspire to and look up to in the business world

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with the exception of Zuck and Bezos. And the thing that they started is not the thing that

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was their biggest thing, right? Andy Fersalla had some direct response, like brick-and-mortar store

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thing. And he was like painting, painting lanes and parking lots, right? I think Edmila was like

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selling insurance stuff. Like I was doing personal training online. Like there's what you start with

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is not what you're going to end with, but it will give you the stepping stones that are necessary

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to get to the higher leverage opportunity. In my opinion, one of the bigger mistakes people make

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is they try and go to the big leagues before they're ready and then they fall flat.

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Be willing to do the basics because realistically, I'm probably not Bezos. I'm probably not Zuckerberg.

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And you might not be either. And that's okay. And so you don't necessarily need to model their path.

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You can model one that decreases the risk because Bezos had a Wall Street finance job at a hedge fund.

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He didn't need to worry about money. And if he quit, he could go right back to the hedge fund and

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make probably a million dollars a year. Zucker was a Harvard grad dropout, whatever. He could get a job

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if it failed at any top tech company immediately. And if you don't have those prospects,

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then you need to be a little in my opinion, a little bit more respectful of the risk that you're

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taking on. And so if I were going to walk through the transition of being in a job and then deciding

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to go out on my side hustle, that would be my three-step process. Save six months of living expenses

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by living under my means while I had my job. I would start making money on my side hustle

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and I would make it until I matched my current level of income on my job. And then step three is

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that I would sustain that level of income for six months before being willing to quit my job.

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And during that process, could be continuing to stack, saving so that if something happened,

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I could weather the storm.

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Aimos in Asian quick break just to let you know that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn

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and want to connect with you. All right, so send me a connection request and note letting me know

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that you listen to the show and I will accept it. There's anyone you think that we should be

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connected with, tag them in one of my or layless posts and I will give you all the love of the world.

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All right, so let's get back to the show.

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And if you're a kid and you can live at home or you can live with four bodies, do that. And if

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it means that your living expenses are a minuscule, cool. And if it means that if you can get your

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living expenses to be so little that you can cover it with part-time work, like if you can

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bounce at a club on the weekends for two days and you get the other five days back, I think that's

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a net win. But the biggest part of this is like how much overhead do I have to cover in my life

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that I'm burning hours on the thing I don't want to do long-term to do the thing I do want to do

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long-term. So it's like massively cut your overhead so that you get as much of your time back

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to invest in the thing that you want to do most, which I categorize entrepreneurship rather than

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the side hustle because that'll change, but the directional decision go out on your own won.

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And so for each of these phases, phase one, I say 50 grand from my consulting job over two years

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living far under my means only making 50,000 a year during that period of time in order to have

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a safety nut to make the next step. The second thing is that when I started my side hustle,

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I actually started a charity project where I got all my friends to pay me 200 bucks a month to do

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their fitness and nutrition programming from home. And I donated all the money they gave me. It was

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about $4,000 a month. At one point when I decided to transition to my main hustle, which is just

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going to be fitness, I didn't even start my gym yet, but it was enough that I could live. I just

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said, hey, would you guys mind paying me instead of the charity? All of them said it was fine. And I

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transformed $4,000 a month of charity to $4,000 a month of income. And that's how I was able to

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equip my $50,000 your job for a $50,000 your online business. And this was like 2013. So before

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online businesses were cool. And that's what actually gave me my living expenses when I started

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at my gym because I was like, well, I didn't even think online businesses were legit. I was like,

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I'm just getting paypal and texting people programs, but maybe I should have done more of that.

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But then when I started my gym, that's actually what I used to eat off of while I was reinvesting

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stuff into hiring more people, buying more equipment, things like that that I couldn't afford in the

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beginning. And so the phase three there was that I'd seen that they'd sustain the level of donations

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for a six month period. And then when I asked them to go to for payment, that was my big risk. And

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they said, yes. And so then I felt confident that I'd stain this level of income from my side hustle

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for an extended period of time. And that ultimately gave me the confidence to jump into the new thing.

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And to be fair, I actually moved locations during that period of time and dramatically cut my

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rent. So like I was saving really aggressively. But when I wasn't sure the money was going to come in,

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my rent was first zero because it was just the gym. But before that, just when I got to California,

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I just rented a bedroom from a guy that I met at the gym for 400 bucks a month. And so like,

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you can live super cheap. And he wanted me to live there because he wanted to get fit. And so he

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gave me that discount. And that's, I mean, use what you got, right? And so I would meal prep every

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Sunday with him. And so he got a little bit of value from that, which I got to have a discounted

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payment. And sometimes he chipping on groceries for my food, like, I've maintained my relation with

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that guy for a decade now. And so like, you can't, some of those early people will help you out.

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Like, I think it's always worth remembering them. And so for my first phase of saving up,

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I say $50,000, making $50,000 a year over two years, which means I was living on like a third of

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what I could possibly live on at that time because I wanted to save up this nut to go all in on the

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thing I wanted to do. The second phase was when I wanted to match my current income. That's when I

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started an online business. And I got 20 of my friends to pay me $200 a month each. So that

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could make $4,000 a month. And that took a long time to get there. But as soon as I did that,

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I had a new level of income that matched my current level of income. Now I didn't know how sustainable

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that was. And so it took me six months before I said, Hey, would you guys mind paying me instead of

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this charity, which is phase three, which is that I had sustained that level of income that matched my

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income and my job to make the transition to fully go into fitness as my main hustle. So that was

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step one, two and three for me personally.