How to go ALL IN on your side hustle…

Video

Summary

• Define a side hustle as a project that doesn't yet financially support you; it's a distraction if it doesn't complement your main career goals.
• Advise working a job primarily for learning in the early stages of your career, not just earning.
• Suggest securing your family financially by living beneath your means with just the income from your job before focusing on a side hustle.
• Recommend having six months of living expenses saved before starting a new venture; I personally saved $50,000 from a consulting job by living frugally.
• Advise that your side hustle should match your job income before considering it as a main hustle. If the side hustle earns half the income in a fraction of the time, project the potential full-time earnings before transitioning.
• Share personal experience of starting an online business and a charity project, eventually transitioning $4,000/month from charity to personal income which helped transition from a job to the main hustle.
• Highlight the importance of sustaining side hustle income for six months to ensure reliability before quitting your job; maintain aggressive savings to lower risk.
• Choose a side hustle in a familiar field to increase the likelihood of success; contracting in your current industry is a practical start.
• Caution against striving for perfection in your first entrepreneurial endeavor – "directionally correct" is enough.
• Emphasize that most entrepreneurs do not end up with their first business as their last; adapt and expect your career to evolve.
• Warn against aiming for "big leagues" too soon; accept starting with smaller, more manageable projects to build experience.
• Recognize that not everyone is a Bezos or Zuckerberg; take calculated risks according to your safety net and ability to return to a well-paying job if needed.
• Suggest cutting living expenses to maximize the time and energy you can devote to your entrepreneurial pursuits, like by living with roommates or keeping part-time work to a minimum.

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting by defining what your side hustle is and making sure it aligns with your main career goals. Focus on a project that can grow to financially support you, not just something that makes a little money on the side.

It's smart to work a job more for learning than earning, especially early on. Use the skills you gain there for your side hustle.

Before diving into your side hustle, secure your family with money from your main job. Live under your means. Save up six months of expenses first—I managed to save $50,000, but your number might be different.

Your side hustle should bring in income that matches or has the potential to match your job income. If your side hustle earns half what your job does in far less time, think about the money you could make if you switched full-time.

Make sure your side hustle income is steady for six months. This shows it's reliable. Then, you can think about quitting your job.

Pick a side hustle in an area you know well. This increases your chance of success. Sometimes, starting as a contractor in your current industry is the best route.

Don't worry if your first business isn't perfect. Just start. Remember, most entrepreneurs don't stick with their first gig.

Be cautious about trying to hit it big right away. Start with smaller, manageable projects to gain experience first. This is your practice ground.

Finally, cut your living costs to put more time and energy into your entrepreneurial dreams. Get roommates, or keep part-time work to a minimum to cover basic living expenses, so you can spend most of your time on your hustle.

This is a pathway from side hustle to main hustle. Remember, take calculated risks and give your entrepreneurial dreams the focus they deserve.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"I'm a big advocate of the reason you should have this job is because you're trying to learn and earn"

– Alex Hormozi

"Live underneath of your means with just the income from your job"

– Alex Hormozi

"the single hardest jump in all of Entrepreneurship is going from the safest thing which is a job to being 100 eating what you kill"

– Alex Hormozi

"if you make the first jump you've already taken the biggest jump in the right direction of what you ultimately want to do"

– Alex Hormozi

"Massively cut your overhead so that you get as much of your time back to invest in the thing that you want to do most"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

the three-step process of going from side hustle to main hustle so first things first I'm going to define a side hustle as a main hustle that has not gained enough size to support you financially and this is an important delineation because if you're just trying to make side money then to me that's a distraction from what your real main hustle is which is probably your career if you have a career or you have a job then I'm a big advocate of the reason you should have this job is because you're trying to learn and earn and it should be probably geared more towards learning than earning especially in the first decade once you have some of those learnings if you want to just make your own money then you take the skills you have and you have to make your side hustle really your main hustle and my objective here is the number one first secure your family financially which means live underneath of your means with just the income from your job your side hustle will also hopefully start making some income once I have a certain amount of savings which for me would be like six months of living is what I would feel comfort with before starting my next thing and it's exactly what I had when I started my gym I see 50 grand for my consulting job over two years living far under my means only making 50 000 a year in order to have a safety nut to make the next step I'd say fifty thousand dollars and for me I lived on less than that just do the math on your own the next step is that I need my side hustle to at least match my income from my current role now is there an exception to that if for some reason you're only able to work on your side main hustle four hours a week and you're doing half of your income as you're doing in your 40. then I would look at that rate should be like well in four hours I'm making half of what I'm making 40. if I had the other 36 hours back to add to my four would I be able to match that if you can use logic and say yes then I would say I'd feel comfortable making the jump but if you want to be safe which many people were trying to make this jump which is just so you know the single hardest jump in all of Entrepreneurship is going from the safest thing which is a job to being 100 eating what you kill some people are really easy for it it was not easy for me so I want to Stack as many things in my favor to make that at the lowest risk possible that's when I started an online business and I got 20 of my friends to pay me 200 bucks a month each when I started my side hustle I actually started a charity project where I got all my friends to pay me 200 bucks a month to do their Fitness and Nutrition programming from home and I donated all the money they gave me it was about four thousand dollars a month at one point when I decided to transition to my main hustle which is just going to be Fitness I didn't even start my gym yet but it was enough that I could live I just said hey would you guys mind paying me instead of the charity all of them said it was fine and I transformed four thousand dollars a month to charity to four thousand dollars a month of income and that's how I was able to quit my fifty thousand dollar your job for a fifty thousand dollar a year online business and that's what actually gave me my living expenses when I started at my gym while I was reinvesting stuff into hiring more people buying more equipment things like that that I couldn't afford in the beginning the phase three there was that I had seen that they had sustained the level of donations for a six-month period and then when I asked them to go to four payment that was my big risk and they said yes and so then I felt confident that I had sustained this level of income from my side hustle for an extended period of time and that ultimate really gave me the confidence to jump into the new thing and to be fair I actually moved locations during that period of time and dramatically cut my overhead so like I was saving really aggressively but when I wasn't sure the money was going to come in my rent was first zero because it was just the gym but before that just when I got to California I just rented a bedroom from a guy that I met at the gym for 400 bucks a month and he wanted me to live there because he wanted to get fit he gave me that discount and that's I mean use what you got right and so I would meal prep every Sunday with him and so he got a little bit of value from that which I got to have a discounted payment and sometimes he'd chip in on groceries for my food like I've maintained my relationship with that guy for a decade now some of those early people who help you out I think it's always worth remembering them and so for my first phase of saving up I saved fifty thousand dollars making fifty thousand dollars a year over two years which means I was living on like a third of what I could possibly live on at that time because I wanted to save up this nut to go all in on the thing I wanted to do now I didn't know how sustainable that was and this is probably something you might not have thought of is that I want to sustain that level of income for six months all right this is like orders of risk you have the savings you've matched your current income you're living below just one income which means you're banking three quarters what you're getting paid probably and then three is that you've shown that it's reliable because if you just the first month you match your income you quit and then the next month you drop back down to zero or one quarter because you're doing gig work or whatever that's gonna be really stressful it's going to affect the work you do it's gonna affect how you sell and honestly it's gonna affect every other aspect of your life and so I would want to see consistency what side hustle do you pick I want the side hustle to be something that I have a high likelihood of success with which is something that I have some sort of experience with one of the easiest things to do is take whatever you're doing in your current role is start doing that as a contractor 1099 Etc do those companies have the most Enterprise Value no but you can make some money and learn some basic skills in business that you would have no other opportunity to learn you'll learn how to hire people you learn how to fire people learn how to have hard conversations learn how to drive initiatives you learn how to Market you learn how to sell to get new business you learn how to contracted invoice you learn how to process payments learn how to set up an LLC there's lots of things that you have to learn just going zero to one now if you have a longer time rise and do that you'll figure those out as you go but I would say that you don't need to be perfect on the first pick you just need to be directionally correct and the first direction is I'm going to be an entrepreneur so if you make the first jump you've already taken the biggest jump in the right direction of what you ultimately want to do it is very very very rare that long-term entrepreneurs first business is their last business look at every single person that you look aspire to and look up to in the business world with the exception of Zuck and basis the thing that they started is not the thing that was their biggest thing Andy frisella had some direct response brick and mortar store thing and he was like painting Lanes in parking lots I think Ed my lap was like selling Insurance stuff I was doing personal training online what you start with is not what you're going to end with but it will give you the stepping stones that are necessary to get to the higher leverage opportunity in my opinion one of the bigger mistakes people make is they try and go to the big leagues before they're ready and then they fall flat be willing to do the basics because realistically I'm probably not besos I probably not Zuckerberg and you might not be either and that's okay and so you don't necessarily need to model their path you can model one that decreases the risk because besos had a Wall Street Finance job at a hedge fund he didn't need to worry about money and if he quit he could go right back to the hedge fund and make probably a million dollars a year Zuck was a Harvard grad Dropout whatever he could get a job if it failed at any top tech company immediately and if you don't have those prospects you need to be in my opinion a little bit more respectful of the risk that you're taking on and if you're a kid and you can live at home or you can live with four buddies do that if you can get your living expenses to be so little that you can cover it with part-time work like if you can bounce at a club on the weekends for two days and you get the other five days back I think that's a net win but the biggest part of this is like how much overhead do I have to cover in my life 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 long term massively cut your overhead so that you get as much of your time back to invest in the thing that you want to do most