Afford Anything - How to Transition from Hustler to Entrepreneur

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

#6: J. Money says a hustle is "a way to make money on the side, but more of a passion project or something that is fun. You do it for more than just money.” Paula says it’s a “microbusiness". No matter how you slice it, a hustle is a way to make extra money doing activities outside of a normal J.O.B. Paula and J. Money share their stories of working on hustles to become the entrepreneurs they are today. Visit http://TheMoneyShow.co/06 for more information about hustles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm going to put in my headphones. Perfect. Oh, and then one other suggestion is get as close to the mic as you can. Just start making out with the mic. Okay. All right, I guess you can start. Three, two, one. You're listening to the Paula and Jay Money show.

We'd rather be at a bar with you right now, but this is the next best thing. It's Financial Freedom Time with Paula Pant and Jay Money. Hey, Jay. Hello, Ms. Paula Pee. How are you on this fine, beautiful day? It's freaking cold, man Oh, really? Yeah, it's cold out in the

In the middle of the Mojave Desert where I am How is it over on the East Coast? It's nice and warm And it's actually awesome today Do you know why? Why is that? Because you can probably hear my voice crystal clear, right? You could be a phone sex operator

Yes, I can't That was horrible Yes, guys Maybe you couldn't We fixed my mic. I didn't have the stupid thing connected right on all these shows that we recorded. So if you're wondering why it sounds so good now, it's because I freaking hit a switch and, man, it's amazing the quality, the difference of quality.

Oh, it drives me crazy. That's like numbers. So anyone out there that wants to start a podcast, look for the switch that connects it with Skype. That's the best tip in the world. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy. But yes, it's a beautiful day. I'm ready to talk money.

Have fun. You know, I'm glad that we caught that microphone issue now rather than like at episode 100. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? Yeah. Do you want to hear about a stupid thing that I did on my blog? Yeah, I like stupid things. Makes me feel better about myself.

All right. So there's this program that I use. It's called Sumo Me. And it's it's this program that allows readers to subscribe to my email list, right? So when you go to my blog and you see those, you know, those annoying little pop-ups that are like, you know, join the email list. It's free. We'll send you updates. Yes. Behind the scenes that's powered by this piece of software. The way that it's supposed to work is that you link that piece of software to your email distribution program. Because the thing is,

when you have an email list, you can't just, I can't just email 20,000 people from a Gmail account, right? So you use an email distribution program, like in my case, Aweber, but you know, you could use MailChimp or whatever. All of the bunch of companies out there. And what you're supposed to do is link the two. Well, I collected a bunch of email addresses, and by a bunch I mean about 2000 through Sumomi and then didn't link it to Aweber. And so for months, these email addresses just sat in the SumoMe database. And these people, all these people, 2,000 people who's tried to subscribe to my blog, weren't getting emails for some of them for months. So all their money, they were going in debt and everything because you weren't helping.

That's the bad news, Paula. You need to stop being a blogger now. I know, right? Like all these people, they tried to subscribe and they just, and then it was crickets. Like, they never heard from me because I just, I didn't realize that I was supposed to link the two. I, like, I somehow missed that memo. So, yeah. And you know what the kind of really stupid part is?

Is that I was watching my subscriber stats and they were going down. And I had just delivered a speech at FinCon, which is like the industry conference for finance bloggers. I just delivered the speech called How I Tripled my email subscribers. And immediately after that, that's when this thing happened. So instantly, of course, my subscribers start to plummet because they're not being linked to Aweber. And so I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm being punished for hubris, you know. It's a good essay to word. Thank you.

So, yeah, I fortunately I caught it because I, every now and again, I go through and subscribe to my own blog so that I can go through that experience and see what the readers are seeing and, like, tweak it and make improvements. And so I subscribed to my own blog and then I never got the confirmation email saying like, hey, please confirm that you want to be a subscriber. Wow. And that was how I caught it. Is it fixed now? It's fixed.

Yeah. But I had to send an email to 2,000 people being like, I'm so sorry. Please love me. Oh, man. See, so that goes to show. Even if you do this stuff full time for a living. Yeah. You still make big, big asses.

ass mistakes. Oh my lord. We suck today. Actually, we're good today because we fixed two big problems. We did. Yes. Yes. Jay's voice sounds great. And you can actually subscribe to afford anything.com now. I love it. What are we going to cover today, Jay? How you go from nothing or side income to full time. Let me take the bow. I want to go how you quit your job to pursue a career that you actually care about. how to transition from some small side hustle that you're doing on the side to something that is full-time. Yeah, because I think a lot of people either think that they have to keep the job or keep improving their job, you know, like moving up the corporate ladder. But there's a lot of ways that you can still, like there's a lot of jobs out there, for example, blogging or podcasting that you could do, that you could sustain a living off of that's kind of outside the norm, you know. And you and me both, like you with your real estate.

with all your other hustling on the side, you know, me mainly with blogging and consulting. We've been able to figure out how to make enough to survive and then, you know, save some too. Right. So just to backtrack too, like I was, I've never considered myself an entrepreneur. I guess my whole life I kind of just job hopped and just did what I thought I was supposed to do and prayed I got lucky, I guess. And I did get lucky when I stumbled across the blogging scene and that took off. but I never knew that there were other ways to live besides working a nine to five.

Right. And I did crazy things on the side. Like I worked at like a stamp factory and I washed car, like wrecked cars. Like I did a lot of side stuff. But I never thought that you can actually have a full-time job doing that. Right. For you, that was literally just stuff that you were doing on the side for beer money. Yes.

Yes. By the way, for the sake of the listeners who are not acquainted with the word hustle and get this idea that like hustling, means that you're selling drugs on the street corner. What is a hustle? Are you asking me? Yeah. So I like to ask questions where I already know the answer.

Yeah. And I'm going to ramble off something and you're going to like say it in like five perfect words. Oh God, the pressure's on. Yeah. I mean, to me in a nutshell, a hustle is a way to make money on the side. Except I would add that it's more like I guess for me like it just being like a side hustle and a side job is that a hustle is usually something more you're passionate about or more fun or more creative maybe than just like doing it purely for the money. Even though I bet you

if you looked it up online, like it would say like a hustle is a side job. Why? What's your take? I've always thought of a hustle as a micro business. What? Yeah, we were way different. No, I've thought, I think of a hustle as like a micro business. So, and I say micro business. And I say micro business in that it's not, you're not trying to start the next Airbnb, at least not initially. You know, you're not going out and getting venture capital for it and bringing on co-founders and talking to angel investors. It could be something as simple as walking dogs. Yeah, walking dogs, having a lemonade stand, you know, freelance write, the adult equivalent of a lemonade stand, which is freelance writing, or freelance graphic design, or freelance helping people with their

websites or cutting hair or any kind of like small little business that you that you create on the side. And eventually over time, if you want to, that hustle could become your full-time job. And then eventually over time, if you really wanted to scale up, a hustle can be scalable. It can be the next Airbnb. But in its infancy, it's a microbusiness. It's a hustle. Interesting. So what if you worked like at a movie theater, for example? Like, all right, like you have a full-time job, right? And you're like, oh, I need extra money for beer or to pay down my debt, right? I have student loans, and I'm going to go get a side job. Oh, the movie theater is hiring. I love watching movies for free. I'm going to go work there. In your case, that's not a microbusiness. Well, actually, so that's interesting. So I guess there's hustle the noun and hustle the verb, right? So I would say that if you were paying down debt, let's say, and you got a job at a movie theater, I would say that you are, hustling, like you are hustle the verb, you are performing the act of hustling in order to make that extra money. That sounds dirty. I know, right? Aggravated counts of hustling.

So, yeah, you're hustling in order to make some extra money so that you can pay off that debt. Like, I totally admire and appreciate that. And I think that's an awesome way to pay down debt. And watch movies. Yeah, and watch movies. I assume. I don't know. Do you, movie theater? I've never worked at a movie theater and they'd do it and they used to give us free movies and they'd watch free movies. Oh, nice. That's why they did it. You know, when I was a kid, my dream, my dream, you know, like little kids, they give them these like little booklets where you write down every year you write down like your height and your weight and what you want to be when you grow up. Yes. And it like starts in like maybe kindergarten or first grade and it goes up until sixth grade or eighth grade. Okay. At which point.

want you're too old for that to be cute anymore. Okay. I was looking back through mine and I actually, my childhood dream was to work at Taco Bell. Wow, that is awesome. It's actually, I even wrote I wanted to work part time at Taco Bell. Well, because you were going to be financially free. You could do whatever you want. And that was your, that was your dream.

My dream really was just to get free Taco Bell. That is awesome. I was like, it's all the taco bell I could possibly eat. What could be better. That is funny. I mean, that is a good way to hustle too if you want free stuff. You know, hell yeah. You are too funny.

So, yeah, so I'd say hustle the verb is like any kind of hustling that you're doing on the side in order to make some extra money. Yeah. But hustle as a noun would be a microbusiness. Okay. That's fascinating. I never would have. I mean, yeah, it makes sense because they are two different things. But I guess, yeah.

It's like a, not like a life, maybe a lifestyle. I don't know. There's some like extra oom for the exfad. There's something with the word hustle that like makes you more empowered or something. I don't know. I like the aura that it gives though. Yeah. Obviously, which is why I liked it for the name of our podcast.

Yeah, yeah, me too. You know, and I've met people who are like hustle. Doesn't that sound like dirty or sleazy or something? And I'm like, no. I mean, I guess there's some people who think that, but to me it sounds awesome. Yeah, it feels like you're moving towards something bigger or you've figured it out and you're trying to do something, you know? Well, so in the case for this particular show, like, I guess you wouldn't in theory, like you have a nine to five and you're side hustling at Taco Bell, you know, like you're not going to like, oh, I want to quit my nine to five to hustle more at Taco Bell unless you're like, you know, trying to move up or own your own franchise or I don't even know what's a franchise. You know, but you know what I'm saying.

Whereas for me, I guess we'll use me for an example because it's an easy one and stuff I could talk about. You know, like I started a blog out of pure hobby. Then when I realized you could make money, I thought, man, wouldn't that be cool? If all I did was type all day in my pajamas and be a full-time blogger. And so that was more of, I guess, a hustle in your sense of it was technically a small business because it made money now. And I did it on the side, so it was a side hustle. then when eventually I did a full time, my side hustle became my main hustle, which became my normal job.

Right. Which, by the way, it's a lot more exciting at times on the side than it is like when your lifestyle depends on it. When you're like, kids need money and you need to pay insurance. So let's talk about that, actually. Let's talk about how you made that transition from working full time at a job that gave you health insurance and retirement benefits to spit now definitions of hustle on a podcast for a living. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, there's so much to it. And it's so hard because so I've

been full time, I started my blog eight years ago. I've been, quote, full time blogging, like, as a career for maybe almost five years now. So it's been a little while, but I can tell you, you know, when you're like doing something. And like, I, again, like, I was a big job hopper. But when you're doing something that you're like, wow, this like is clicking with you and it feels right. And you're like, you know what? I'm going to see how long I can go and see what happens if you keep doing it. Yeah. You know, that's how like blogging was for me. There's never been a thing in my life, to be honest to you that like I just felt like I was on the right track, you know. And I mean, shit, I was like 25. Like I was, I done a lot and I traveled a lot and done a lot, but I never really,

that was the first time I just clicked, I guess. And so the more I worked on it, obviously the more it grew. And then when there was money, more money came. And at some point, you know, you have to make the decision while, you know, you can't do everything. Right. So to speed up a little bit, I was my full-time job, I want to say it was 75,000 was my normal income. And then two years into blogging, I think I was making, and I had budgets are sexy. I had a whole bunch of different sites. There's a whole industry on buying and selling sites. And, you know, it's just crazy what you can learn from online. But I think I was making anywhere, I think it was like 40,000, maybe 50,000 max a year on the side from the blogging stuff. So by the time I'd left, my side hustle was slowly creeping up to my full-time job.

Yeah. In a perfect world, like when you do something on the side, you want it to replace like your normal income from the job you're doing that you don't want to do anymore. Right. In my head, I was like, well, I needed to get to 75 so it could be even. And then I could quit my full-time job and do this full-time for a living. and I won't suffer any consequences financially. What ended up happening was that I got laid off on the same day that I went to quit, which is very good since I didn't have to make the decision all the way by myself.

That's nice, isn't it? I was beautiful. Yeah. But my income for my blogs was, let's say, at max 50,000. Right. So I went from 75,000 to 50,000. So in my head, I was like, well, I'm close. Like, I could survive off of this.

I had no kids. Like my expenses were low. So the plan was first to save money on the side, like into my savings account. Right. So I had 40,000 saved up. I was banking all the side money. And so for the chance of one day quitting and living the dream, right? So you have to have a padding of savings in a perfect world.

And you should be doing your dream job on the side in conjunction with your full time. Yeah. And you should be already having a good understanding of it. So when you pull the trigger quitting your job, you know, you're already in the mix. and all you're going to do is amplify it more. Right. You know, in a perfect world. You know, so I was slowly creeping up to the full-time job.

I had money in savings. I was really on the fence of putting in my two weeks. I was like 99% sure I was going to do, but I was still afraid. And then I got laid off on the same day, which was a blessing. And so for five years, I've been, you know, full-time. But you took a pretty significant income drop, right? So you were making, what, $75,000 at your job? Yes.

And then $40,000 or $50,000 through your side hustle. So in total you are making, say, $125,000 to $125,000 somewhere. Yeah, for that year. So then your income dropped from, let's say, between the two, let's say that your income was $120,000. And then it dropped down to like $50,000 from $120. That's a drop. I never thought about it that way. You know, it's funny because you're right, but it's funny because in my head, I thought,

I need this to be 75 so that I break even. And so that way I quit, it's like I never even, you know, nothing changed. Because that's what they tell you, like, or at least that's what I've been told. Hey, if you want to do this full time, you better be able to match what you're already making. But you're right. It was a huge cut. And honestly, like, when I went on my own, my wife said, look, try it out for a few months. If it doesn't work in like three months, get a full-time job again.

And at least you tried. Yeah. So that's all I was thinking about. Like, I was just paranoid about surviving, you know? and I didn't want to waste all my savings and then have to go back to a job and feel like a failure. You know, which happens all the time with small. Like, people fail all the time. And I've failed on like five other projects since the blog.

I think like after month three or four, like I remember blogging about this clearly. Like I was like, this is great. Like I've like this is my dream now, right? Like I'm blogging full time. It's ridiculous to even say I can't believe this is like a real thing. You know, like I'm feeling blessed. And around the three to four month part, I realize, holy shit. like I'm not even saving anything. In fact, I'm breaking even. My net worth, my growth,

there's nothing happen in there because it now makes sense, right? Because I went from 120, whatever, down to 40 or 50 and I completely, it was all extra money and then it was completely like I need this to live. Right. Your income dropped by like 66% roughly. Yeah, you're right. So my head was different. And then I remember writing an article like, is your dream worth? it if you don't save anything. Right. Think about that. Like if someone said Paula, like, let's say your perfect dream is like writing. All you want to do is write and you'd be happy. But you're not going to save anything. But you're going to be happy working for the rest of your life. Is that worth it? You know, it's a tricky one. I don't think I would be happy if I wasn't saving anything. That's the

thing. For me, at least, knowing that I am saving is part of my happiness. Wow, that sounds terrible when I say that out loud. It's an interesting question to ask yourself, too, because Paul, I mean, you know how many people bitch and moan about their job? And I did it all the time. You know, shit, I still do it now and I love my job, right? Everyone does it. It's an interesting question, especially if you're like nowhere close to like quitting your job, right? Because everyone thinks when you work for yourself, it's all perfect. You could do whatever you want, set your own hours. Yeah, it's all butterflies and unicorns and rainbows. Yeah. And it's, and there's like a

a harsh reality to parts of it and one to me was A, like not saving anymore. B, one of the hardest was writing like a quarterly check to pay taxes. You know, because your whole life that you know how it pulls from your paycheck. Right. You know, you don't really see it and feel it. I mean, you know it's there,

but it's just like, it's just, you're used to it. You're not physically writing the check. Yeah, but physically writing checks for thousands of dollars is such a mind, you know, bad word, you know. Such a mind bad word. That transition, and it was scary too, like, again, like, especially so I guess, and I know I'm like kind of rambling here, but if you're young, and especially if you don't have many responsibilities and you have the opportunity to chase a dream, whether it's self-employment, whether it's starting your business, whatever it is, oh man, like, please give it like good consideration and try it so you don't think later and look back and just so pissed at yourself that you didn't, you know? You know what? That's a good question.

What do you think? Let's imagine an alternate universe in which. you hadn't gotten laid off. Okay. And let's say that you stayed at that job for all of this time, these past five years. And you're still working at that job. By this point, you would have gotten a couple of promotions. The company's doing really well.

Still got your blog on the side. You know, let's say that you're making $200,000 now, you know, like, but still at this job. I couldn't do it. Yeah? No, because, well, A, that job actually went under like. Yeah, but I'm saying alternate universe. The job didn't go under and the company was still alive and thriving. Yeah.

So here's what I realized, which prompted me to also go on my own. Like, A, I wanted to be a full-time blogger because I thought it would be fun. But also, I was working like 80 hours a week because you had the full-time. And then to be able to make money online, like, takes a lot of work. Right. You know, as you know. And so that's where like my wife's like, look, like you're kind of starting to burn out and you're doing two full-time jobs. Like, which one are you going to quit?

You can't keep going this way. you know so like my health if i had gone that way my health my lifestyle everything regardless to the money would have just been blah right and and you know and even like the blog stuff right like there's weeks where i'll spend 80 hours now but but mostly maybe 40 nowadays now that I've kids to be successful on your own it takes a lot of mental energy and confidence and right there's like so many days we're like i don't want to work or do anything but no one else is going to do it for me you know so i think there comes to a point where like all the money in the world doesn't really matter. It's more about like your lifestyle. So I wouldn't have been able to do it.

But even now, like looking back, I don't know, I guess I just, I just know that it was really good that I got laid off. It really forced me to go after what I really wanted deep down inside. And I was kind of chicken a little bit, even though I've been like saving towards it. You know, it was still hard to do on my own. Yeah. It's psychologically very difficult to let go of that security blanket. And I know in your case, you got laid off. So that helped. But how did you, you were already prepared to like deal with that psychological hurdle. How were you preparing for that? Besides the savings, I think it was really just the micro goals. Like my wife's saying you have three months, do your best at the end of three months. If you're not happy or doing bad, like you have to start

looking for jobs again. You know, because it's really easy to jump back in the market and try and get a job. Now whether you get it or not is like obviously a different thing. If you get laid off, the first thing everyone does is they look for another job. And that's like how you're used to doing it. So to like prevent that from happening, it was just really strange, you know. But I had the three month goal and that helped. And it helped that I knew that what I wanted was to blog full time. So I could work 15, 16 hours a day and it was worth it until I got over that hump of knowing if this was full time or not.

Right. Because that's another thing, right? Like self-employed people regardless of what you do, like most of them are workaholics. Yeah. I mean, because that's the way it is. It just takes a lot of work. You know, now fortunately, we like the work, but it's still you're working. you do take a hit on your lifestyle, like partying and going out and hanging out with friends,

right? And it becomes a matter of which one, what's important to you right now. And I will say for the listeners who are getting scared off by this, it's not like that forever. You know, you work crazy hours in the beginning while you're building that initial momentum. But then after a while, you can like hire people and create systems and, you know, you frontload the workload so that later you can chill out. Yeah, and that's a very good point. It's actually very similar to building wealth. Like you get that nugget going in the beginning and get the system going. And then it's, yeah, less work down the road for even better rewards.

Yeah, you're right. And that's the decision that I made like, hey, this first year is going to be hard. I'm probably not going to see my friends as much. And I'm probably going to be stressed out like crazy, which I was. But once you get over and get used to it, you know, life turns. It just becomes normal life just like, you know, your life before. Yeah. But I very well could have failed or hated it, right? Because at your 9 to 5, like, as much as people

hate being at some place at a certain time, it forced you to do your work, or at least to get into the office and pretend to do work. You know, like you could, man, oh, that was another thing, Facebook that I noticed. When I was working so many people on Facebook, even me, a lot, you know, and it's like, you know, everyone does it and you waste a little time, but you don't realize until you go to work for yourself, like how much of a waste of time it is. Do you know what I'm saying? When I got home and I was on Facebook, I was like, I'm not doing my work and no one could do it for me. And I wasn't getting paid because I was on Facebook.

Right. Whereas at work, you still get paid, but you can still be on Facebook. So that was like a biggest where I goofed off more and admittedly did blog stuff while I was at work too. Right. That change of like now all your time, like if you're spending time working on it, then you're doing good. Any second you're not working on your stuff is bad in terms of the business. I installed this thing called the Facebook News Eradicator. It's awesome.

It blocks my face, the news feed from me. So if I go to the think, I can't see the news feed. Like in that space and that center column. Oh my God. I love that. It's amazing. That center column where the news feed is supposed to appear, the thing that it's blank, except for an inspirational quote.

Oh, my gosh. That's why you never respond. me on Facebook. I love that because when you're, when you have a business, odds are you're on Facebook for your business, right? And you're going in there to share something or whatever. You don't want to be sucked in. Right.

So that's brilliant. That's a really smart creation. Good one, Paula. I like that. Well, thank you. I mean, I just literally deleted my face, my personal Facebook account. It took too much time and I, you know, that's a whole other thing. Yeah.

I like rarely use my personal Facebook account anymore. Like I use it for like big life announcements like, hey, we move to the other side of the country and that's about it. Yeah. No more stalking or anything you're doing, I guess. Yeah, exactly. So that's my like brief background of how I, you know, went from full time to working for myself full time. And what about you, Paul? Like how did you, like you talked about it a little bit, but how did you get from working for someone else to working for yourself and what, how old were you?

Like, how did that kind of look? So my story is a little unusual because what most people, I think, have stories that are similar to yours in that you are working full-time, building a business on the side, and then once your side business had some proof of concept, then you quit your full-time day job in order to take the leap into self-employment. I took a weird route. I used to be a reporter at a newspaper, a very small newspaper out in Colorado. It was fun. I enjoyed the work. I wasn't getting a lot. I wasn't getting a newspaper. I was a newspaper. I wasn't getting a newspaper. paid much. My starting salary was 21,000. By the time I quit, I was making 31,000. And during that time, so when I was in college, let me just take a step back real quick. When I was in college, my dream was to study abroad. I'd always wanted to do that. But the study abroad programs in college were incredibly expensive, $15,000 to $20,000 for a single semester. And so I thought about that. And I realized, I don't actually want to

study, I just want to go abroad. I decided that what I would do is graduate, work for a couple of years just to save up some money, and then go travel abroad for a little while. And that's exactly what I did. I graduated from college in 2005. I worked from 2005 to 2008, earning between $21,000 to $31,000 at my day job during that time. In April 2008, I quit my job. And at that point, I had about $25,000 saved up. Now, how did I save up that money, given that I was earning so little? Well, while I was working full-time, I was writing freelance, kind of hustling on the side, writing freelance articles. At that point, it wasn't meant to be a full-time career. It was just my way of earning extra money so that I could stash that money into a travel fund. As I was doing that, I began to see that

my hourly rate as a freelance writer was substantially higher than my hourly rate at my day job. Like $31,000 a year, that's $15.50 an hour if you divide that out. That's what you're getting paid to me on Facebook. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Yeah, so that is regardless of my level of productivity, I'm making $15.50 an hour, you know, if you assume 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Whereas when I was writing freelance articles, I was at that time making, between $50 to $100 an hour. So it was substantially more money for, you know, granted it was only a few hours a week.

But I could see right then and there that there was a lot of potential in that. But I wasn't interested in pursuing it full time because I wanted to go travel. So 2008, I quit my job. I have $25,000 in the bank. I fly to Cairo on a one-way ticket. And for the next just shy of two and a half years, it was I think 20, eight months maybe, 27, 28 months somewhere around there. I just sort of traveled. I went from Cairo, from Egypt to Israel, to India, through Nepal, then over to did the Southeast Asia

circuit. So I traveled through Thailand, Cambodia, Lao, and Vietnam, and Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. That's not a lot of places. You should have done more, Paula. You know, I actually, I agree with you. It's one of those, The more you travel, the more you realize how little you've seen. People are like, you've been to so many places. And I'm like, no, I haven't. I've never been to Albania. You know, I've never been anywhere in Eastern Europe.

I haven't been to Macedonia. I haven't been to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Like, there's so much of the world I haven't seen. But anyway, that's a different story for a different day. Yes. Places I haven't been. So where am I going with this? Okay, yeah, so I traveled for like two years in change, and I came back to the United States in 2010.

And at that point, I had been voluntarily unemployed for two years. I had spent down most of my savings. I worked a little bit while I was traveling, but not much. Like, you know, maybe 10 to 20 hours per month, you know. Okay. Were you writing or were you doing like working at a hospital? Yeah, yeah, freelance writing. Okay.

So, yeah, I worked a little bit while I was traveling, but not a ton, and I came back to the U.S. I had a few thousand dollars left that I used to like kind of resettle in. And I thought to myself, I really don't want to work for an employer again. I would, once I had that taste of not going into a desk job every day and having that freedom, I wanted to, maintain that. And so at that point, I was like, all right, what do I need to do? What should I do in order to maintain this? So I tried to amp up the freelance writing. And so unlike a lot of other people, like you, you know, you were making enough money on the side to make the leap. I kind of moved back to the United States and didn't making anything. So I was functionally in the position of a person

who was unemployed. Well, I was in the position of a person who was unemployed. But instead of looking for employment, I just started building a freelance career. You created your dream job while you had the opportunity and no responsibility and you're young and you're like a lot. Like if people are listed in this that are in like college and they haven't got their first real job yet. Yeah. And you know what you want to do or travel or whatever. Then then a good route would be to go to your out where you don't need all this money, you can just build it from ground up and follow your dream from the beginning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that's what I did. I built it from the ground up. And it's transitioned over time, right? So in 2010, I thought that my dream was to freelance right. Because at that time, I didn't really, really understand that you could make money as a blogger or, you know, I didn't know any of the stuff that I know now. I didn't have any real estate investments. over time, like I've been self-employed since 2000.

I've been unemployed since 2008 and I've been self-employed since 2010. Over time, that self-employment, what I do day to day has really shifted. So in the beginning it was freelance writing and then later it's moved more into blogging and then consulting and then coaching. And I find that I have to continually quit again and again and again. And I'm actually going through that right now where, like, right now, I'm still freelance writing. And I've been kind of grappling with this. I don't remember, Jay, if you and I have talked about this kind of off camera. Yeah.

Yeah, I think we have. Like, I'm freelance writing, and but at the same time, I want to create a real estate course for the readers of afford anything.com. And the only way that I'll have time to create that real estate course is if I drop some of those freelance writing clients. And psychologically, that's very scary because, you know, I'm dropping a stable income source in exchange for a gamble. You know, I'm dropping freelance revenue in exchange for having a time to create something which may or may not sell. Logistically, I can do it. You know, I don't need the money. This is all like beer money. The mechanics of that decision are not hard, but the psychology of that is incredibly difficult.

So even when you do, I guess the key takeaway is that even when you do quit your nine to five day job, you're not done quitting. If you are self-employed, you will quit again and again and again continuously as you drop clients, drop projects, outgrow certain opportunities and continue to scale up. because anytime you scale up, that necessarily means dropping other things. That's a good point. I mean, it's funny because the old me four or five years ago when I was naive and thought I was like, oh, I'm so cool.

I'm going to go work for myself. I was like, I'm never going to get another job, right? I don't want a boss. Well, guess what? You have, instead of one main boss, you pretty much switch it for like 100 little bosses, right? If no one reads my blogs anymore, I'm done. Right. Yeah.

Listeners of this podcast, if you guys don't like this, and listen to this. Like Paul and I can't podcast later on, right? Like, what's the point of like, like, you know, like there's, so you trade your clients, right? Like if they want something, you have a deadline and you have to do it and they're the boss. They're paying. So you do still have bosses.

It's just a different kind. And so you can switch like, yeah, if you, let's say have 10 clients writing, but you want to put out one kick-ass course on real estate, which, by the way, I think is awesome because our one podcast of learning how to invest in real estate 101, like I learned a ton of from. Thank you. So thank you. That was like I didn't know any of that stuff. You know, so you in theory, you can change 10 bosses to like one, which is now your clients or I guess 100 little clients, you know, like the readers or the people that the course, but it's more of what you're trying to build, right? And more, it's like your passions change over time, right? Like I don't want to write,

like I don't even like writing in general. Like I like getting ideas out, but I hate the process of writing. You know, I'm not naturally, I can't do it, and I was never a writer my whole life. So that's not my end goal, but the end goal was to, like, be in a community and, like, have fun and talk about money, right? Right. To your point, like, you'll switch over time. You'll start projects. Either it'll fail and it'll fire yourself, you know, whether it'll be successful and then you've got to quit less successful things. So yeah, you're constantly, if you're doing it right, like iterating and following stuff, right? And I got to tell you, like, I used to pride myself and work in 16, 17, 17, 20-hour days, I thought I was a huge hustler.

And now, honestly, having kids and, like, wanting, like, a life again, if I could work, like, five hours a day or even four, but still make enough to pay for expenses and stuff and to save some, like, I would do it in a heartbeat. So my priorities over five years have changed. I was chasing the money and the hustling. And that's not as important as the ideal lifestyle. Now, in a perfect world, I'd still work four or five hours and make double the money. I figured I'm not that smart.

Why just double? Yeah, why not a hundred times? Yeah. But it's interesting because you could have honestly, too, you could have written, I mean, I don't know what you're writing about before when you're a journalist, but you could have been writing about politics or why grass is green, right? You somehow managed to get into the personal finance world. Yeah.

Right. And then that online, the finance world versus the online world of grass. Right. Oh, it could be completely different, so you could have got a little lucky. I mean, I got lucky that I just happened to want to talk about money online. Yeah. If I talked about other things, I probably wouldn't have made anything. So you get lucky along the lines, too.

And, you know, if you can figure out what you're going for, I think it's smart. I don't know. There's a niche for everything. There is, yeah. A friend of mine the other day was telling me that he put out a video on YouTube about how to home brew your own beer. And he gets, I mean, it's not much money. He gets like $100 a year from, you know, advertising. revenue for that. But I'm like, wow, dude, you could, you know, you could amp this up. Like,

you're getting $100 a year from one video. Okay, let's make 300 more videos. You know? Right. So, yeah, I think there's a niche for everything. You know, we're not just making money because we talk about money. Honestly, there aren't that many people who want to hear about money. A lot of people don't like thinking about it. And so, you know, a lot of people would rather think about something that's more fun, like how to spin fire poy or how to... Well, I mean, you can always go, yeah, if you didn't care about, I don't know how to say this without judging. But if you're very sexual and you like naked pictures, it's like the number one search thing,

like billions of billions every day. Like, man, like some, like the business side of me wish that like I would go down that route and make a killing, knowing what we know about building websites. and stuff online, you know, like the whole like naked new porn stuff. I mean, that thing is crazy, right? The Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynn business model. Yeah, right, right. I mean, and honestly, actually, here's something funny.

Like the reason my size budgets are sexy was a Justin Timberlake had I'm bringing sexy back on at the time. That's how old it is. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I like that mixing like, I don't know. I just like that word sexy. But then I honestly thought, well, a lot of people search for porn. I bet you that they're going to find my sex.

site and they're going to love it, which is stupid. That like, talking about budgets is the last thing you want to do if you're trying to like look for porn, right? They do not go together. So like, I mean, I'm still glad I went with it because it's kind of catchy and I like it, you know? At least people will go once. Yeah.

But like not a very smart, like, strategy wise. And as far as that goes. Oh, wow. Actually, someone told me like to install something where if you were searching something for, I mean, you should see the search. of what people are searching to get to my site. Like, some, I can't even repeat. They are like, just, I can't even think this way that some of them think about.

But to like, like, somehow capture that traffic and redirect them to like a porn site, but like get a cut for every person I send, right? And I know there's ways to do that. You know, I don't want to go down that route. But the point is, like, there's some things you can talk about online and make a ton. And then there's some that, like, it's just a little bit harder to do. If you have angry letters, please send them to do. Jay at Budgets Aresexy.com.

Yeah. Oh, man. The funny thing with Jay Money is that a lot of people mistaken me for a rapper, which I don't mind because I rap is my favorite music. But I'll get like, hey, can I send you like my mixtape or something like that? You know, I'm like, ooh, that's cool. Wrong guy, but it's still cool, you know. It is a good rap name. It is.

Oh, man. There is a Jay Money, too. Like, he got shot a couple times, but he always, like, shows up on the search. I think I'm number one in Google for J Money right now, which is cool. Cool. But, you know, if I ever do want to get to rapping, that could be cool. But yeah, so there's a lot of ways that you can be self-employed to. Like, obviously, Paul and I will talk about, like, you know, website stuff and online stuff and real estate and investing.

But there's other, you know, people start brick and mortar businesses. They build a product and then they sell a product online or offline. You know, people do services. That was another thing too, like passive income, right? Like when I first got started, like I thought passive income meant like, like if you were a freelance writer, I called that passive income. I'm like, oh, someone's going to pay me money to write even though like you have to write, you know. Like I even once said blogging was passive income even though I spent 20 or 30, 40, 50, 80 hours a week. You know?

Like it's funny how your brain doesn't really associate it, right? Yeah. Yeah. You will work hard when you're self-employed. But like if that's your dream to do something awesome or to travel. or whatever, right? You could do it for your lifestyle or you could do it

because you want to make money and or be happy. There's like a lot of reasons to do it. But, you know, like the old me, I would have never gone out and got another job. Like, you know, like, if I had to, I would.

But like, I didn't want to and I was like poo-pooing on that, you know. Like, no, now I'm too good to go get a job because now I'm self-employed, right? And you see a lot of that online too because people usually talk about all the good stuff only. Right. But now, honestly, like if someone said like,

Jay, I'm going to create the most perfect job for you in the world. you're only going to do the fun stuff. I'm going to pay you good money, but you're going to have a boss and a paycheck and you have to be a corporate man. I would do it if it made me happy.

Whatever makes me happy and it clicks all the lifestyle things, I would do. So I don't really care as much anymore whether I have one boss or a million. To me, at the end of the goal, it's all about your quality of life. Obviously, the things would have to line up

and have to get paid. I'd have to figure out what to do with my projects. But anyway, I'm just throwing that out there. Like, you don't even have to do like one or the other and never go back and forth. Like, I could have failed and got a full-time job and been just as happy. But this is the path that happened and I'm happy with this too. And I think that's a really good point, you know, for the for the listeners who are contemplating

whether or not they should quit their jobs. I mean, don't do it if you just have an idea, you know, test drive that idea, get that proof of concept, get some income coming in from that idea. But once you have that established, I mean, remember, nothing is forever. So you could always quit your job, give it a go, see what happens. And if it fails, get a job. Right. The worst that can happen is you're right back to where you are now.

Yes. You know? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And again, too, like there are some people that are very happy with their job. Right. Like, I know someone he used to write for me and he's a great writer of money. Like, I love him. And I'm like, oh, do you want to like start your business? Do you want to buy the blog for me? Do you want to build an online empire?

I'm thinking like online business stuff, right? He's like, nope, I'm perfectly happy writing on the side. I'm perfectly happy at my job. Even when we talk about early retirement, he's like, I don't care about early retirement. I'm like, come on. But you know, that's crazy. He's like, no, like if I had enough money that I could do whatever I want, I would stay at my job. Like he knows himself so well.

So that's like a perfect example of someone who loves his job, which is fine. It's great. Like that's the point is, again, to be happy, right? But there's people that are like him that do like their jobs. But then they hear, oh, Zuckerberg just made a billion dollars today. You know, like, oh, I'm going to go build the next Facebook or Google or I have this crazy idea, right? They do it because they chase like the vision, like the money, like the chance of making millions of dollars on your side, which is fine, a dream. But if you're already happy, like, just weigh these back and forth because the odds are obviously stacked against you for that.

But like, there's nothing saying like you have to go work for yourself. figure out what makes you happy. And like my wife, for example, like right now is the perfect time for her to start a business. Like she's at home with the kids and she's applying for jobs. We already have a lifestyle. We can move anywhere in the world because I work online. She can do anything she wants.

She can go back to singing if she wants. She can start her own blog. I could help her, right? Like she can do anything in the world. But what makes her happy, right, which to me is crazy. But to her isn't, she's like, I just want a stable job. I want to go in. I want to feel productive.

I want health insurance. I want this and then I want to leave and not think about it and hang out with my family. Like that's what she wants. Like she wants the job that most people like want to throw up about. But that's how she works. You know, and I'm like, this is crazy. Who are you? Jay, you're on a roll today.

I don't think she'll ever listen to this, but you never know. Yeah, you know, I got to say it's hard for me. I agree with what you're saying. I'm sorry. My phone is making all these weird noises in the back. It's all your bosses contacting you. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. At the end of the day, you know, you pick the career choice that is going to make you happy.

Like, I used to think that working at newspapers would make me happy. That was the reason that I went to go do it. I thought that I wanted a 40-year career writing for newspapers. And, of course, then my plans changed. in my like I learned more about myself and I also learned more about the newspaper industry and I realized that that was not what I wanted. But yeah, I mean, once upon a time, I did think that. Where's I going with this? Oh yeah, but now it's just, I even if you offered me the perfect job, I don't think I could take it because I want to, for me personally, I want to own whatever it is that I'm working on.

That ownership is very important to me. I want it to be mine. I want it to be my project. Yeah. And I think we've talked about this before because I remember like, you know, when you're, when you have a blog, some people like, oh, would you ever sell your blog? And you know, you're on the thing of like, no, I wouldn't. That's like my home base.

That's my baby, right? And I used to too. But now I'm like, well, yeah, I guess I would. Like if you gave me like $10 million. Like, yeah, like I could not turn that down. Right. Like that opens up like so many doors, obviously. You know, so I would for the, if everything aligned up, right?

And I guess it's hard to say too because you don't know, like, you could say it's a perfect world, but what does that really mean? Right. So what you're saying, you know, is good for people to hear because there's so many different ways to take it in. And when you, especially what drives me crazy, when everyone assumes that everyone wants to work for themselves, you know, as if that was what, you know, it's actually with traveling too. Like, I love travel. So I like, I don't understand it all the way. But there are people that like, like, I hate travel. I don't want to travel.

So stop sending me articles on like how to travel. the world for free and quit your job and travel and do all this, right? Like, not everyone wants the same things. Yeah, for sure, for sure. That's part of the reason that I decided to blog about money, because when I was starting, when I began my blog, I actually registered two different domains. I registered afford anything. Well, at that time, it was afford hyphen anything.com.

And I also registered the domain Globetrotting Guru. I like your first one. Thank you. And for like, I don't remember how long, weeks, maybe months, I wasn't sure which of those two to develop. I knew that I was only going to have time. Like, if I wanted to do it well, I could only develop one out of the two because that was how much time I had. But I was like, which one do I write about? Do I write about money or do I write about travel?

Part of the reason that I decided not to become a travel writer was because my thinking was not everybody wants to travel. but everybody could be helped by figuring out their financial life. Because once you get the finance piece of your life figured out, then you can do whatever the hell you want. You can continue working. You can quit your job. You can travel. You can stay at home. You can buy 85,000 boxes of Twinkies.

You know, like whatever you want to do, man. You get your finances figured out and it opens up all the opportunities. And so that was at least part of the. the reason that I decided to go down that road. Another part of the reason was that somebody gave me the advice to write about what you love to read the most. And my favorite magazine has always been Money Magazine. Even when I was like in high school, every other girl was reading like Cosmo or 17. And I was like, ooh, Kiplinger.

So that was the other part of the reason is, you know, I was like, well, I love to read about it. So I should start writing about it. Isn't it weird? Paula, do you remember when we were on, Paula and I were on a podcast once and we were on a panel with the editor of money. Was he the managing editor?

Oh, something. Yeah, he was like the top dog there and we got to talk to him, which is cool. And I was debating whether or not to ask him about the future of print magazine. Yeah. Because obviously he's not good. But I did.

I remember getting it in there. I forget what he said, but he had a really good response that I'm sure it wasn't the first time he repeated it. Yeah. But it was funny. Yeah, because I'd read it too on it off.

It's cool. I like it. How, we should get him on the show. Then I can ask him again. I will get him when he's not working there. And then I can get the real answers from him. The juicy raw answers. All right.

Well, I think we've covered. All right. So key takeaways for anybody who is listening who is thinking about transitioning to a full-time hustle. Don't do what I did. I like what you did. Well, thank you. I did it weird. You know, I quit my job.

I didn't quit my job for the sake of becoming self-employed. I quit my job for the sake of just traveling. And I really didn't know what I was going to do after traveling. I just, at that point in my life, I just wanted to go see the world. And nothing else really mad. Yeah, but see, that's what's important. So there's people that think and dream and talk. And then there's people that do.

Even people that do stupid crap. And I'm like, I can't believe that. I always give them credit for doing something they want to do regardless of the consequences, right? And obviously it's better to not do anything bad and to, you know, whatever. But you know what I'm saying? So like, I think the takeaway for your stuff is like, well, A, you and I were in different stages of life and age when we did stuff. Yeah, like I was trying to get the college, the poor man's college study abroad experience. That was what I was aiming for.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, and the people listening, right, they're all different ages and stages. So like if you're in a job right now that you'd rather be doing something else, like my story and my things are going to relate more. Whereas if you don't have a job right now, if you are unemployed or fun employed as some people like to say, your path of creating your dream from the ground up right now while you have the opportunity is good. When I start, as soon as you start working a nine to five, you can't just like, I mean, you start from scratch on the side. But it's not like you're going to quit your job and then start from scratch.

So I think depending on who you're listening. Unless you're me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you like, you know, I guess I'm thinking of it when you came back to the States and you had the option of getting a job or doing something on your own. Right. You chose to do on your own, right, which is not an easy decision, but I imagine if you already quit your job and traveled the world, you're already a little risk avert. Like you already like did it a couple times, you know, but still is still not like a non-scary thing. It's still scary to do that, right? Because there's always failure, you know.

So I like your path. I guess is what I'm saying. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. It was very lean and scrappy for a while, you know. And I remember. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I just, I remember when I got my first client that regularly paid $800 a month.

Oh. And that was my first, like, regular client, regular monthly client. So it was like a guaranteed, well, I mean, as much as anything could be guaranteed. It was like a stable 800 a month coming in. Okay. I could count, you know, realistically count on. You would have thought that it was $8 million a month for how excited I was. Because like, that was such a big thing when I was first getting started.

I was like, oh, my $800 a month. Yeah. Well, and now, right? Like now you can get paid $800 for one article. Yeah. Which you do. And sometimes more, sometimes less, of course. Yeah.

So that tells you like even going back from the X number of years starting out at $50. I mean, I know a lot of people in the blogging that, because a lot of bloggers are freelance for other bloggers, that'll get paid like $10 an article. And then over time will move up. But there are some people, I mean, that get like $1,000, $2,000 in article too. Right. So I guess I'm saying if you're thinking of writing, know that you can always make more as time goes on and as you swap different clients and as you get better. So you're not, if you're like, oh, I only make like 20 bucks an article right now. I can't ever survive on this forever.

Like, it's going to get better as you get better and smarter and, you know, you can get marketed and all that kind of stuff. Right, right, exactly. And that is where the constantly having to re-quit comes in, you know? Yes, yes. At a certain point, you hit your maximum workload and you're like, well, I just don't have the bandwidth to take on any more new clients unless I drop my lowest paying clients and then raise my prices.

Yeah, I don't think you're still working with that client that paid. you 800 a month, right? Right, right. You know, I'm not working with them anymore, but like, you know, it is scary. Like, you have this client, and in 2010, you're super excited about it, but then you outgrow the client, and that is that continual process of always quitting. I like it. There's a quote. There's one yes has to be defended over time by a thousand nose. Wow. That's really good. Yeah, that really resonated with me when I read it. There's another quote that I heard is said, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no.

Which I like. That's like the worst thing that, at least for me, that I hate is making decisions. And when you work for yourself, you have to make a billion decisions every day, small ones, medium ones, big ones. And with this guy, Derek Sivers is his name, really successful guy online. He said, like when he's trying to determine if it's a hell yes, like he goes all in. But if it's a maybe or well, it could be good or it's good, he just says no right of way and it helps him go faster. Ooh, I like that.

At some point, that's a good position to be in, you know. Absolutely. There's this book that I just finished reading. It's called The One Thing by Gary Keller. You know what? I can summarize the entire book in like 15 seconds. Every morning, ask yourself, what is the one thing that I could do today such that by doing it,

everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? And if you just ask yourself that focusing question, every single morning, that's all you need. And then, of course, you ask it from multiple aspects of your life. Like, what's the one thing I can do today for business? What's the one thing I can do today for my relationships? What's the one thing I can do for my health? So you apply it across, like, different verticals of your life.

Right. But in each vertical, you're asking the focusing question. I love that. It's a good book. You should put that in our show notes. Ooh, yes. That way I can copy it, too. hint to our editor put this in our show notes see what we're doing right here we're we're delegating

yeah that's right we don't want to do it again yeah I like it awesome guys well thanks for listening hopefully my voice is easier to hear on this microphone now that I did a little trick hopefully sign up to Paula's email as you're getting him now don't ever ask her for two hours of your time. If you come to afford anything.com, you'll actually start getting emails from me now. Sorry to the 2,000 people who didn't get that. You know, and here's the thing,

if you do have these in-depth questions, I mean, there's nothing saying that we can't talk about them on the podcast and, you know, maybe have question day or something. Right. Free of charge. And it'll give us some good banter and real-life example. I mean, I think that's why most people,

like, obviously people that are reading or listening to our stuff And any stuff out there, the main question that really they care about is how does this affect me positively? Right. Like, you read anything, you're like, great. Like, now can I do something to improve my situation? You know, so we talk in theory, and that's why we talk about our personal stuff, too. It's not just to say, hey, here's how much we have now, right? It's to say, like, hopefully this resonates or you can get little nuggets from it and apply it to your own situation.

Now, if you want to tell us your situation and we can talk about it, it'll be exactly. exactly 100% towards you. So yeah, so send in the questions or email us and, yeah, maybe we'll go that route. Perfect. Cool. All right, Paula P. All right, everyone listening. Keep doing good.

Have a good day, y'all. Bye, Jaymoney. All right, later on, guys. If you enjoy today's episode, please go to iTunes and leave us a review and hit the subscribe button. We love you guys and we could not be a podcast without you. So thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.