It is totally possible to create a side hustle that can turn into a 7 figure business. Our expert, the Millennial Money Man, will show us the step by step process to create side hustles and businesses to become successfully unemployed.
Today, I am excited to have Bobby Hoyt on the podcast. He is a successful side hustler and a fantastic business owner. Like Bobby, you can be successfully unemployed.
How Bobby Makes Money Without Having a Job with Facebook Ads
Bobby identifies most as a personal finance blogger, but he does multiple things.
He is a digital marketer, he owns a digital marketing agency, he owns the website Millennial Money Man, and he owns another website called Laptop Empires, which is a site to teach people how to start side hustles and make more money.
In addition, he does freelance writing and he writes for Forbes. It is a lot, but he loves it.
He wakes up every day and enjoys what he does. He is all over the place, but it is mostly all online businesses.
After His Website Made $3.00, Bobby Quit His Job
Bobby was a high school band director and he was running Millennial Money Man on the side for about six months. Bobby was convinced that he could run the website full time.
He knew he didn’t want to be a band director forever. He liked teaching and he liked the kids, but he didn’t like the pay and he didn’t like being told what to do.
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Bobby quit his job after his site made $3.00 from Google AdSense. He talked to his wife about it and she was very supportive, because she knew he was miserable and he believed in what he was doing.
Looking back, he is so glad he quit his job, but if he had to do it again, he wouldn’t have done it that way. Bobby had money saved up, but it wasn’t with the intent to quit his job.
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Bobby doesn’t recommend that other people do it this way either. At the time, he felt like they would be okay, because their living expenses were low. His wife was a teacher, and he and his wife were renting a 10×10 bedroom from her parents, and they didn’t have kids.
Now, Bobby and his wife are planning on having kids and they own a house. He recommends that people match their income for six months before quitting. Once you feel comfortable, then take that leap. It can be hard to hear people talking about taking big leaps, but you need to set yourself up for it.
Why You Should Look at Side Hustles, if You Want to be Successfully Unemployed
There are a couple of big points. Bobby went through a transformation over the last couple of years.
When he first started Millennial Money Man, he was talking about how he paid off all of his student loan debt, because he lived way below his means and he lived a life most people would not want to live.
Nobody wants to rent a room from their in-laws, but he wanted to get rid of his debt. He had a scarcity mindset about money and he was afraid to spend money.
Over the past couple of years, as he has built more and more income streams, he doesn’t have that mindset as much. He has more of an abundance mindset. There is plenty of money out there, you just need to learn how to go get it and create income streams.
Once Bobby started thinking like that, he started teaching people to think like that on Millennial Money Man, rather than just talking about frugality. He started to see more wins, where people paid off their debt faster.
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There were students that took classes from Laptop Empire and they didn’t have the money to take the course, and now they are making $60,000 a year doing something they like doing.
Seeing those wins, Bobby decided his skill was going to be helping people make more money. Everybody that has an internet connection has access to a lot more money than they think. The internet is still changing the world. There is so much money to be made providing services and courses.
This is the reason you should increase your income, rather than just lower your expenses. You will get further, and if you do a mix of both, that will get you there even faster.
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The reason Bobby has so many income streams is a fear thing. He doesn’t want one of his businesses to fail and that be the thing that takes him down. He is always looking at how he can hedge.
Bobby Hoyt has the digital marketing agency, but what if that goes away?
He has Millennial Money Man and the revenue that brings in, but what if that goes away?
He has Laptop Empire.
Bobby has tried to safeguard himself as much as he can by bringing in more income streams that he doesn’t necessarily need to work on all of the time, but they are there in case something does happen.
This can be the same case if you have a job. Maybe you have a job and you are making ends meet and you want to make more money, but you want to protect yourself in case you lose your job.
Bobby has had a lot of students who have been in that situation, and that is hard. When you have that kind of bridge income, it can make a huge difference.
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There are a lot of good reasons to start a side hustle. Frugality is not enough. Transition from saving a dollar to making a dollar. Having a side hustle is a fantastic way to earn extra income.
The First Step in Getting the First Side Hustle Started
Bobby does a lot of content on side hustles on Millennial Money Man. The more he has done that kind of content, the more he has realized the different opportunities that are out there.
Whatever you want to do or whatever you like doing, there is a good chance that it has some sort of income potential if you could just scale it.
The big thing Bobby sees a lot of opportunity with right now is freelance services online. Whether it is proofreading or Facebook ads (Bobby has a course on Facebook ad management at Laptop Empires), Pinterest ad management, freelance writing, etc., there are so many opportunities out there, and there are courses for all of them.
Find a course that you like, do a lot of research on it, and then jump into it. It costs money to take a course, but it doesn’t cost that much, in comparison to how much you could make on the back end of it.
The courses at Laptop Empire are about $400. This is a good chunk of money, but, before he started Millennial Money Man, Bobby was going to start a swimming pool company. His friend had a swimming pool company and he was teaching Bobby how to do it. Bobby was going out in the summers learning how to fix pool equipment.
To start a swimming pool company, it costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. You would need to take out a loan, get the equipment, and get a truck.
Now, you can take a course on a highly in-demand skill and, maybe it is a couple hundred dollars, but then you can go out an make thousands and thousands of dollars on the back end, once you learn that skill.
Find the course, buy it, and actually implement it. This is something that is so frustrating for a course owner that wants to help people. Someone will buy the course, but they won’t do anything with it.
There are a lot of people that will do this, and there is nothing stopping them. They were excited about it, they jumped in, and then decided they didn’t feel like doing it, they were too busy, or they were too scared.
It is a disservice people do to themselves, because they have so much potential. They could do so much and make great money providing a service, but they don’t do it and that breaks Bobby’s heart.
Go into the course knowing you are going to do it and that you are going to have to step outside your comfort zone in some way to become successful. There is no get-rich-quick course out there, it doesn’t exist. Step out of your comfort zone and take advantage of whatever kind of coaching or group is attached to the course and go out and do it.
You are going to hear no a lot and you are going to fail, fall on your face, and feel like you have no idea what you are doing, but the more and more you do that, the closer it gets you to being successful.
If more people pushed past the uncomfortable part of learning a new skill, they would start making more money. Successful people step out of their comfort zone, are scared for a while, and do things they don’t want to do.
All of a sudden, they come out on the other side making $10,000 a month in passive income. Do all of the steps and actually implement.
There are Three Things to Look for When Deciding on a Side Hustle
Five years ago, Bobby didn’t see a lot of opportunities for side hustles that were time leveraged that you could scale and that paid well. This is why he created the Facebook ads course.
When you look at any side hustle, you need to determine how much time it will take you, if it is something scaleable, and how much it pays for the amount of time you need to put in.
The reason the Facebook course has been so successful, is because it checks all of those boxes. The clients they teach are all from local businesses, like chiropractors, dentists, and realtors.
The going rate for the course is $1,000 to $2,000 a month, and it only takes a couple of hours a week. Usually, it is presented like you can learn Facebook ads and then start an agency and make $10,000 or $20,000 a month.
Bobby took the approach where they would teach one or two clients a month and it has become quite popular.
The Key is to Not Solely Trade Time for Money
When you are looking for something scaleable, you have to look at how much time it actually takes to do that side hustle. Bobby is not a big fan of things that will take your time because you need to go out physically and do something, like dog walking.
There are only so many dogs to walk and only so many hours in a day. It isn’t a bad side hustle, but you need to take that into consideration.
Similarly, Uber and Lyft are side hustles, but there are only so many hours in the day you can drive your car around. Whereas, a freelance service you can scale a little easier.
For Bobby, it is only two to three hours a week to manage the Facebook ads, because you turn them on and they run. There is back and forth with the client, but they basically run themselves and you can start stacking clients on top of each other.
Once you start doing that, you can systematize your processes.
You can hire virtual assistants (VAs) to run this and you become the face of the company. This is what Bobby’s business partner did with Laptop Empires.
He has his own Facebook ads agency, and he has about 20 clients, and he has two VAs and other people helping him. He was able to take the company from just him working with gyms, which is his main client, and he was able to stack and stack.
It is important to find something that is not just trading time for money. There are plenty of courses out there that teach you how to do this.
As long as the quality is the same, it doesn’t matter who actually does the work.
If You are Unhappy in Your Position, You Can Change Your Future
If you are a person who is in a position where you are unhappy, there is a way to become happy. Bobby sees this over and over. People feel like they are stuck in their job. For Bobby, when he was working as a band director, he felt like it was Groundhog’s Day.
He woke up at 5:45am, he had a feeling of dread in his chest thinking of everything he had to do at work and he didn’t want to do it.
He would get ready, heat up the same Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich and eat it in the car on the way. When he got to school, he would zombie his way through the day and get in trouble with his boss, because he would get upset with Bobby about something stupid.
Bobby would go home, drink two beers to relax, go to bed, and repeat the cycle the next day.
If you are in that position, there is a way out of it. You just have to do the work to get there. Start looking for opportunities now, because the earlier you start, the more revenue you will make. Bobby kicks himself for not starting three years earlier.
If you wake up every day and you are unhappy, you can get away from it. You just need to take the leap and put the work into it. Bobby sees people do this everyday.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today” — Chinese Proverb.
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How Bobby is Making the World a Better Place
Recently, Bobby has been looking at more ways to donate money and come up with things in his business he can do to give back.
On Millennial Money Man, they are looking at offering swag and all of the money from that would be donated to muscular dystrophy, because his father-in-law had it and he saw how the organization helped.
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Every time he goes to the grocery store or he sees the food bags you can buy for $5.00, he will buy two or three of those. That adds up over time. He also sponsors students in an organization he used to be in called the Cavaliers.
It is a band thing. It is like band for college students where they travel all over. Every year, Bobby sponsors a kid that plays the snare drum, which is what he used to play.
Every day Bobby wakes up and tries to be thankful and looks for things he can do to be helpful and make some kind of difference in the world.
The Advice Bobby Would Give to Anyone Who Wanted to Become Successfully Unemployed
Go to Google and search whatever it is you want to do. There are so many different opportunities out there. Bobby has probably 10 different articles on his website about different side hustles that are out there to make extra money. There are opportunities in all of those blog posts. Search for what interests you, click on it, and learn more about it. Do a lot of research, read reviews on courses, and jump into it.
The Advice Bobby Would Give to His Younger Self
Bobby feels like he needed to be a band director and do the job to realize that wasn’t the path for him. He might tell himself not to get a music degree. He wanted to get a business degree and he talked himself out of it. He doesn’t know where he would be if he went that route. Even at a younger age, Bobby knew that business was something he was passionate about. He knew he wanted to be self-employed, but he never went after it, because he was good at playing music.
The Tools Bobby Uses in His Business
Get Stuff Done journal. It is a 13-week planner. Bobby is a disorganized person and having this journal helps him plan out his day, week, and month. It makes him a better business person.
The Non-Fiction Book Bobby Suggests
$100 Startup, by Chis Guillebeau
Find Bobby Online:
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Blog: millennialmoneyman.com
Website: laptopempires.com
Facebook Course: successfullyunemployed.co/laptopempires