This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's caller is diving into the world of side hustling. They're already making some money from a couple of different sources, and that's great. Multiple streams of income and all that. They've got some plans to add more, but because there's only so many things they can do in an average day or week or month, they're now wondering if there's an optimal number, especially considering the day job as well, in addition to their other limited time. So is there an optimal number?
How many income streams is best? Thought this is an interesting question. On the one hand, you could be like unlimited, right? But again, we deal in a world of constraints and limitations. So because you don't have unlimited time and energy and so on, is there an optimal number?
Is there a way to think, okay, is it best to have two or three or four? And of course, the answer is gonna be different for each person and so on and so on. But I also think there could be an overall recommendation to guide your decision as you're thinking about how to start different projects and such. So I'll do my best to give you that clear opinion right after the break and our listeners question. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Dylan from St. Paul
and I've been selling on eBay and I'd like to do more of that. I'm also trying to build a website and learn about coding. And then of course I have several other ideas on the back burner, mostly from listening to the show and hearing cool stories. I know that I can't stretch myself too thin and I also have a day job, but I like doing different things and I wanna make sure my income is truly diversified. Therefore, I'm wondering, how many income streams is best for the average person?
Is there an optimal number? Thanks for any advice you can give me. [Music]
All right, so I'm gonna base my answer on all the different people I've worked with over the years, everybody I've heard from through the community, hear my books, et cetera. Because as I said in the introduction, in some ways you could be like, well, there's no limit, right? Wouldn't it be great to have 20 or 30 different income streams?
But again, we're talking about constraints here and such. And so I would say that most people I've worked with who have done well in this world, who have built up pretty sustainable incomes from multiple sources, they typically have somewhere between three and five sources of income, okay? So they've got a couple things that are doing really well. They've got a couple things that are not amazing, but still bringing in some decent income. And then maybe a couple of things that they're trying.
In one episode, we featured a guy who had 10 side hustles and earned $100,000 a year from them cumulatively. But that's difficult to manage. And in fact, I think I said then he might be more successful focusing on a few of them and increasing revenue to multiple six figures. Ultimately, passive income is not always passive. In fact, most of the time it's not.
There's usually something that you need to do for the work and it could be a little bit or it could be a lot. If it's truly passive, you might be best served by asking how can you increase it instead of starting more in your projects? So the short and direct answer is most people somewhere in the range of two to five could be a little bit more, but not too many at least if they have to actively pay attention to them. I hope that's helpful. Listeners, let me know what you think, what your experience has been, sidehustleschool.com.
You can download or stream every single episode from the archives, 3,400 plus episodes and counting. New one's out every day. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
