This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I'm really excited to bring you today's episode. This is a part of a new feature we're doing in 2022 called Your First Thousand Dollars. Now this is a great one, one of my favorites so far in the series. And if you're just tuning in, you might guess from the title, it's all about how someone made their first thousand dollars. Okay.
This is so fun because a lot of times we have stories about people making a hundred thousand dollars or sometimes a lot more. And that's awesome, of course. But first of all, it's a pretty long story, typically to make your first hundred thousand dollars. And second, sometimes it can be hard to relate to somebody making a hundred thousand dollars in a side hustle if you've never done that before. So if you've never made any money in a side hustle, maybe understanding that you can make a thousand dollars and then you can probably make more after that might just be the inspiration or motivation you need.
And even if you're well beyond that point, like if you have been side hustling a long time, you're doing well with your business, I think these stories are still motivational. Like I have been enjoying going through them. And so with that in mind, I don't wanna give you too much preface here because as I said, it's a great one. Today's feature comes from Joel Runyon in Austin, Texas. Joel Runyon, we have featured him a number of times, including a case study at some point.
I believe we had a failure Friday update from him. Joel is a long time friend of mine. You're gonna hear more about that in his update actually. He's the founder of impossibleHQ.com. He has ran an ultra marathon on every continent.
I was gonna say, and even the moon, but I don't think he's done that quite yet. I just, I wouldn't be surprised if he takes it on. So Joel has also started numerous businesses in the past decade. But as you're gonna hear, he got his start by taking on a freelance contract using the same skills he had learned for his day job. Now, even though I have known Joel since at least 2010, I don't think I've ever really heard this story before.
So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I'll be back at the end with a very quick wrap up. [Music]
Hi, my name is Joel Runyon. My company is called Impossible. And this is how I've made my first $1,000 on the internet.
I started my site Impossible after meeting Chris on his empire builder tour that he did back in 2010. If you guys remember way back then. I wanted to do something cool with my life. I just graduated school and visiting every country in the world sounded like fun. So I Googled around and ended up seeing that Chris was actually doing it.
So when I heard he was coming through Chicago, I made sure to be there. While I started Impossible right away, I didn't immediately make a ton of money as soon as I put the domain live. My first $1,000 actually came from working a freelance job that was the same as my day job. See from diving into Chris's work, I found another podcast called the Tropical NBA where they talk about building lifestyle businesses. They have a community and in there I ran into someone who needed help with PPC, pay-per-click marketing for their outsourcing company in the Philippines.
This was a skill that I was learning in my day job and I basically took that skill and sold it to another client after my nine to five hours. I negotiated a deal with them that would give me recurring commissions based on how many agents I placed in seats for them. The key here was that it was recurring. So every month, the baseline check would grow. At first, this was not very much money at all, but because it grew every single month, that started to add up.
And this eventually grew to $1,000 plus while I was still at my day job doing my day job work. When I decided I didn't like that day job anymore, while I wasn't rich yet, I realized I could crash on my buddy's couch and work on my own projects and scrape by for the thousand to $1,500 a month I was making on the side project while I figured out the next thing. I did that and what that's allowed me to do was give me the space to experiment with revenue generating projects on Impossible, which is going to include a fitness subscription app and e-commerce business and build side projects like Ultimate Paleo Guide and MoveWell app that turn into their own businesses down the road. A few of the things here that I did that made this work for me. One, I did this at my day job.
I didn't quit right away. I just did extra work after hours. Two, I didn't learn any new skills. I just got some more customers doing what I was already doing, but I was just doing this at a different time of day and in a separate contract. Third, recurring revenue is awesome.
I didn't even realize how great this was at first, but even if it starts small, it can grow quickly and lets each month of work grow on itself. Number four is at one point, the owner actually thought I made too much money for the amount of time I was spending because it had compounded over time. So he unilaterally cut the contract and we stopped working together. And so even though I had built his entire business from the ground up, he decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. So the final lesson in there is make sure you have really good contracts because if I would have had a great contract in place, I could have had a better plan of recourse.
So this is just a reminder that you don't have to quit your day job in order to make your first $1,000. You can hustle on the side, work on it at night and see what works. Then when you're ready, if ever, you can make the jump on your own terms. Remember, you can do way more than you think you can. So keep pushing your limits, go do something impossible and have fun out there.
Thanks guys. - Joel Runyon, thank you so much, man. Really appreciate that update. As I said, it was great to hear that story. And some really helpful lessons for our listeners as well.
Indeed, recurring revenue. I love what Joel said there about how I didn't realize how awesome recurring revenue was. Like you don't necessarily realize how cool it is until you start getting the same check every month, without necessarily doing a whole lot more for it. So great lessons, thank you. Joel has made a lot more than $1,000 since then.
So maybe we'll talk about that more at some point. I hope you found it encouraging. Check out his website, impossibleHQ.com or JoelRunyon.com. Or pretty much every social network under one or both of those names. Just search Joel Impossible.
You'll find him everywhere. If you've got a question or an update for us about your side hustle, love to hear from you too, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today's notes, sidehustleschool.com/1892. Episode 1892, marching forward towards episode 1900 and beyond. Thank you for tuning in today.
I hope you'll subscribe or follow. Come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
