This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to Throwback Thursday. Welcome, first of all, to Side Hustle School. And welcome to our Throwback Thursday segment, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. This has been one of my favorite things of 2020 to go back to some of our popular stories from years of old, by which I mean 2017, 2018, and 2019.
And just kind of check in with folks and see, you know, hey, what's happened? And in a lot of cases, we've heard some really surprising updates, sometimes some really big successes, sometimes some challenges and missteps, and sometimes just, you know, things that you wouldn't expect. Last week, we heard from the co-owner of Near and Deer. Deer is spelled like deer, the animal, D-E-E-R. Near and Deer, a faux taxidermy service that experienced a huge influx of orders in the spring.
I guess when you're quarantined, you think, you know, what I need right now, what I really need is an artificial bison head to put on my wall. Well, true story, apparently a lot of people did think that because their business has taken off even further than it was when we first featured them. So today, we're gonna hear from Jason Dion. Now Jason does not make artificial deer heads or bison heads or any other artificial animal heads. But we first featured Jason back in episode 462.
Adjunct Professor puts course on YouTube for $100,000 profit. So even if it might not sound as exciting as faux taxidermy, his business is doing really, really well. And for all the teachers out there, all of the adjunct instructors in particular, this is a huge problem in the US, maybe elsewhere as well, all those adjunct instructors who are underpaid, maybe go and listen to that story. Because, you know, in that story, he did extremely well. He actually reached that $100,000 in profit mark in just 16 months.
And part of the key, of course, is teaching the right topics. Jason's field is cyber security. But what's happened since is far beyond even $100,000. So let's hear directly from him. He's got several updates, and I'll be back at the end to wrap us up.
[Music]
My name is Jason Dion. I'm located in Puerto Rico. My company is Dion Training Solutions, which is our side hustle. And the episode number was episode 462. My side hustle is concerning video training.
We provide online video training for IT certifications and cyber security certifications. I got started by teaching in the classroom as an adjunct college professor. After my day job had switched me to a traveling position, I started filming my courses and then releasing them online on YouTube. That then moved on into our own company and starting to sell the courses directly to consumers and just keep growing ever since. I work for the government in my day job and I actually have about 18 more months until I fully retired from my day job.
So this has remained a side hustle for me, even as it's grown and now employs 10 people underneath me. Since we were last featured on the show, we have expanded a lot. The company has continued to grow month over month and year over year. Since the last time we were featured on the show, we actually crossed a seven figure revenue last year. And we've actually moved our company down to Puerto Rico, which is where we live now.
At this point, we've taught over 250,000 students across the world in over 190 countries. The biggest challenge for us has always been having enough time to be able to dedicate to the business and to the side hustle. There's always a demand from students for more courses as we keep teaching new certifications. And the biggest limitation is me and my time because I still have a full-time day job. And so this is a after hours, nights and weekends type of work for me, even though I have a team that does all the work 40 hours a week during their day shift.
What I have found is if you take one step and take a small step and then take another step and another step, you'll keep making progress. Our first month, we made $58. And our goal was that in five years, we hope to get it to $5,000 per month. At this point now, we've been doing this for three years and we've gotten into five figures per month. So it has wildly exceeded our expectations.
And if you never get started, you'll never get there. I'm really excited for the opportunity that this side hustle has turned into as it's thrown into a business for us. It's given us the funds to be able to do a lot of great things. We've taken family trips. We've gone to Europe and back and things like that that wouldn't have been possible without the side hustle.
Also, I'm excited for the freedom and flexibility that this new business is going to give me in my retirement because I'll still be able to work, but I get to make my own hours and choose where I want to work from. For instance, we moved from Maryland down to Puerto Rico because we wanted to go enjoy the island life and this has given us the opportunity to do that. Well, you heard it from him. How about a side hustle that brings in more than a million dollars a year and has 10 employees? Again, side hustle, he's still got his day job working for the government.
And as you heard, they were also able to relocate to Puerto Rico, which has some pretty major US tax advantages. He didn't mention that in the update, but if you are a US citizen living on the mainland and then you move to Puerto Rico, as long as you stay out of the mainland US for most of the year, there's a certain number of days you're allowed to be in the States, then you have an extreme tax savings. It's kind of like an offshore bank account or something except it is perfectly legal. Now the knowledge economy, how Jason is able to profit here, this economy is going to be around for a long time. This is not a trend.
This is not something that is going to be gone a year from now or two or three years, or five years, 10 years from now. I think it's pretty safe to say the mediums may change, the topics may change, et cetera, but it's really not too late. I guess that's my point here. If there is something you can teach, share, or otherwise educate people on, what are you doing about it? Are you taking action?
Are you planning? Are you experimenting? Are you at least thinking about it? Are you at least thinking, okay, what is that thing? And what is the best medium or platform for me to get that thing out?
And what would be the logical steps to do so? That's my encouragement for you. I often say inspiration is good, but action's better. That's because I want to hear stories of our listeners taking action. Now another form of action is interaction.
2020 is our year of interaction. All year long, we've been doing these questions and answers and throwback segments and detailed case studies. So if you have a question, if you would like to update us about your hustle, or if you'd like, I don't know, cybersecurity training resources, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I will link up Jason's website, anything else I mentioned, and we'll be featuring these questions, perhaps along with answers, as the strange year known as 2020 continues. Today's notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1328.
Thank you so much and keep listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
