I only work 3.5 days a week

In the year After graduating from college in 2017, I started working as an engineer in an oil company. I was 23 years old and making $98,500 a year.

At first I thought I had a dream job. But after watching senior leaders work 60-hour commutes a day, I realized it wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted. My father died when I was three years old. So spending family time has always been very important to me.

In the year In 2018, I started experimenting with side forks. I set a goal of earning $3,450 per month (after taxes) to support my lifestyle. Once I achieved this, I decided to quit my full-time job.

Today, I have achieved my goal of being my own boss, and more. I quit my engineering job in February 2021 to work full time on the side.

Last year I earned a little over $189,000 from seven income streams:

1. YouTube (Google Adsense): 82,349 dollars
2. Powered by Amazon: 13,886 dollars
3. Patreon (Training): 33,114 dollars
4. Fiverr (Product Research) 29,014 dollars
5. Affiliate Marketing: 29,496 dollars
6. Rental Property: 1,272 dollars
7. Profit payable 639 dollars

Now I only work 22 hours a week. I pick up Thursdays, Friday afternoons and weekends. Whether it’s golfing with Grandma, cooking family dinners, or starting new business projects in my community, I have more time to invest in the people and things that matter most.

Here’s my top tip for turning your side hustle into a full-time gig while still working a few hours:

As an early side hustle, I tried finding rentals, then started posting ads on the backseat of Ubers and renting out my three-wheeled Polaris Slingshot motorcycle through the online car-sharing platform Turo.

But none of these businesses were successful. It wasn’t until I started selling products on Amazon using the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service that I started making real passive income.

All I had to do was find a generic product that I wanted and send it to Amazon. My first product was a $1,000 pair of headphones, then I moved into iPhone cases and sports gear.

I earned over $25,000 in Amazon Store in 2019. I wanted to share what I learned through my trial and error, so I started a new project, which would later turn into my biggest income stream: opening my own YouTube channel.

In February 2020 I opened my YouTube channel Debt to Dollars. I originally committed to posting at least two videos a week. In the next eight months, I gained 14,000 subscribers and 871,000 channel views.

As I grew my audience, I realized I wanted to connect more with my subscribers and build a real community. So in October 2020, I started teaching students one-on-one for $50 how to make money selling products on Amazon.

I currently use Patreon, which provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service, to host coaching sessions.

In the year

These community based businesses have helped me reach my long awaited income goal. $3,450 per month.

I was able to quit my full-time job while earning less than $4,000 a month because I paid off all of my debt except for my house and car.

There are many methods you can use to pay down debt, but I personally like the “debt snowball” method because it helps you see your progress.

Here’s how it works:

1. List all your debts from smallest to largest.
2. Make the largest payment on your smaller debt and the smallest payment on the rest.
3. Repeat until you pay off the smallest debt, then move on to your next smaller debt.

Incorporating your business with your estate is important for practical reasons such as asset protection and tax benefits. But I believe there is a psychological benefit as well.

I attribute some of my past failures to treating my side hustles as a hobby rather than a business. After forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in Texas in 2019, I took everything seriously and professionally. It was no accident that all my businesses failed until then.

An LLC has some of the best features of a corporation or partnership, two other business structures used by companies in the US LLCs protect their owners as a corporation from being personally liable for business debts or liabilities.

But like a partnership, LLCs’ income is “passed through” by the business and taxed on the owner’s personal income, making it easier to file taxes.

You can form your own LLC by filing a certificate of incorporation in your state, which typically costs $50 to $300. Many states list filing information on their Department of State websites.

I had no interest in doing a side hustle while working my full-time job.

But once I put pen to paper and committed to a program, doing my work became part of my weekly routine. I chose to focus on side hustles every weekday night after work and every Saturday morning.

I’m still stuck with weekly schedules. I work half days Monday through Wednesday and Friday. I work four to six hours every day, each hour blocked by a specific task.

If you don’t set aside specific times to work on your side hustles, your business can get lost in your day-to-day priorities.

I invest in business models that require as little of my time as possible. It’s the only way I can work 22 hours a week and still grow multiple sources of income. But keep in mind that automating things and creating highly effective systems can take time at first.

Each month I find where I spend most of my work time and ways to make those processes more efficient. For example, I spent four to eight hours a week editing videos.

I decided to outsource my video editing, but it took some time up front to see the numbers fit my budget and find a good editor to do the job. But now that I’ve made the time to do that, I spend those hours growing my business in other ways or working less.

Marketing is more than promoting your product or service; It’s about differentiating yourself from your competition by making your customer feel something. They will come back or better yet tell their friends about you.

When I started selling on Amazon in 2018, I used stock photos that my supplier gave me for my product listings. Surprisingly, they are mixed with other products. And if someone bought it, they got their product in a boring plain bag. There was nothing that made the customer experience exceptional.

After realizing the importance of offering something unique, I started taking my own product photos and creating custom packaging. My sales increased.

Whatever makes your business memorable, decide what makes it memorable and invest in it.

Josh Ellwood He is the founder. Debt to the dollar. Follow him. Instagram And YouTube.

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