This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and greetings, side hustle school friends, listeners. I'm so glad you're joining me today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I am the host of the show. And today's a special day for lots of reasons.
Got a great story for you. I'll tell you about that in a moment. But today is also National Girl Me Too Day. What is National Girl Me Too Day? Well, it's kind of like another version of National Women's Day.
National Girl Me Too Day, happening every year on April 7th, recognizes the strength and endurance of women of all ages and is an opportunity to show support for each other. So first of all, shout out today to all the women, young women and girls listening to the show and anybody who's just in your life. Maybe let them know that you appreciate them. Second, in what seems to be a coincidence, it's also National Beer Day and National Coffee Cake Day. So great day, really.
We can celebrate the women in our lives. We can enjoy a beer and a coffee cake. And lastly, it's End of the World Day. Or at least, I'm gonna call it End of the World Day myself. This is not a national holiday.
This just happens to be my 40th birthday. As I say that, I can hardly believe it myself. I would say I don't know where the last 40 years went, but it's more like the last 36 years because I don't remember the first four. After that, I can remember a lot, but I'm still not quite sure what happened. Just go to sleep one day, all of a sudden you wake up and you're 40 years old.
And thank you for sharing in this experience with me. Of course, the show goes on, even if I'm on my last legs here. I'll be checking into the senior center pretty soon, I'm sure. But until then, got a great story for you today. It is about an adjunct professor who uploads his final college course to YouTube, then converts it into a Udemy course.
Not sure what Udemy is, we'll stay tuned, I'll tell you. But here's the punchline. In 16 months, just 16 months, he's reached over 35,000 students and made over $100,000. That is $100,000 in net income from something that at least started with a bit of serendipity. So in celebration of National Girl Me Too Day, National Beer Day, Coffee Cake Day, and the personal End of the World Day, I'm excited to bring you this story.
So let's say thanks to today's sponsor, and that story is coming right up. [Music]
Jason Dion is a cybersecurity planner working for the government in the greater Washington, D.C. area. In November of 2016, he uploaded his first online course on Udemy to help people pass their IT certification exams. 16 months later, he has 14 courses online and earns more in his side hustle than he does in his day job.
Hold tight and we'll get to the exact figure later. How did Jason go from being a cybersecurity expert to running a successful library of online courses? Well, teaching online courses on Udemy was not Jason's first side hustle. His first was as an adjunct professor at a local community college. He had been at his government job for more than a decade when he realized he wanted to get into teaching at the university level.
When he tried, he was told he needed teaching experience. So instead of letting go of his dream, Jason set out to get the experience. He took an adjunct position at a local community college. He didn't pay well, but he enjoyed it and it helped him get better at it. After teaching a few terms as an adjunct professor, his day job switched to one that required extensive travel, often at the last minute.
This meant that teaching in the classroom was no longer an option. During his final in-person course, he recorded the audio of his lectures, converted that audio to video by pairing it with a slide deck, and then posted those videos on YouTube. The videos were something his students could go back and use as they studied, but he also signed up for a free program that allowed him to earn ad revenue when people watched them. Those videos sat on YouTube for about a year and he made a whopping $25 to $50 a month in ad revenue. Enough for occasional lunch money, but not much more.
A friend of his suggested that he turn it into an online video course on a platform like Udemy, which allows course creators to upload their content and students from all over the world can pay to access it. Udemy gets some of the money and the instructor gets some of the money. So during Thanksgiving weekend of 2016, Jason took that course from YouTube and converted it to Udemy's format. Within a month, he'd made $60. The next month, it was $300.
The next, $600. He realized he was onto something, so he started making more courses. In less than a year and a half since starting, and all without quitting his day job, Jason now has 14 different courses on Udemy and he releases a new one every one to two months. Each course leads to more students signing up for the first time, as well as existing students taking additional courses. So far, he's taught almost 35,000 students in 171 countries.
And get this, since that first course in 2016, he has made over $100,000 in net income. Again, net income, that's $100,000 after Udemy takes their cut. In the past six months, his monthly sales have increased further and he's now averaging between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. This is more than what he makes in his well-paying day job. So tremendous success, of course.
I mean, just huge, fantastic, wonderful story. But in addition to sharing this information with us, allowing us to pass it on to you for inspiration, perhaps for possible action of your own, Jason has gone even further. He's got some personal advice in managing your side hustle with your family. He said in his experience, he's had to be careful not to neglect his family just because the project has taken off so well. In fact, he said it can be all too easy to do that, to neglect your family, because when something's going well, you want to throw yourself into it more.
So how has he been able to prevent that from happening? Well, he has found that setting boundaries help. And here are four specific boundaries that work for him. Number one, he has a dedicated home office complete with a recording studio. It's where he goes to create content and record videos.
Number two, he has time boundaries. Every day when he gets home, between 5 and 7 p.m. is family time. Sometimes more, but nevertheless. And then he works on his side hustle from 7 to 9 p.m.
Number three, he has a separate business and personal laptop and a separate business email address. This prevents him from checking course-related emails when he's not supposed to be working on the side hustle. And number four, he focuses on content creation and filming and his three employees handle the rest. Wait, where did that come from? He has employees?
I thought this was a side hustle, something he just started on his own. Oh, actually, now I see employee number two is his wife, who handles editing, customer service, and daily operations. Employees number three and four are his kids, ages 11 and 13, who do things like uploading videos and adding captions. Nice delegation job there. In fact, that so-called outsourcing frees up his time so that he can spend more time with his employees, I mean, his family.
Okay, so what's next? Jason has no plans to leave Udemy, which is great, he shouldn't because it's going so well, but he also doesn't like having all his eggs in one basket. Udemy accounts for about 90% of his side hustle income, and he also realizes it could be gone in an instant. If his courses lose their popularity, or if Udemy begins to focus and advertise somebody else's course over his, so he's in the process of putting his courses up other places, including lynda.com. He's also beginning a membership site option.
For a monthly fee, students will have access to all his courses, plus live sessions with him. He sees Udemy as the high volume, low touch experience for students who are self-directed, and his membership site will have fewer students, but more hand-holding. Sounds good to me, and remember, this is all because he uploaded the material from an adjunct community college course to YouTube. What happened next is one part serendipity, one part intention, and one part growing a small success into a highly significant one. [Music]
Well, I don't know about you, but I thought that was pretty amazing.
I have very little to add to it, except congrats, Jason, and thank you for allowing us to share this story with our community. Maybe I would just ask everybody out there, are you sitting on a fountain of knowledge that could become an asset? This is a community college class that he taught, and in saying that, I don't mean to devalue it in any way. It's actually critical information these days, the world of cybersecurity and everything associated with it. But my point is that this is something that he applied from all the knowledge he'd spent a decade working for the government acquiring, not to mention whatever education he had before that, and so it was just a matter of kind of pulling that out and then putting it in a different format.
First YouTube with a slide deck, or I guess first with a community college class, and then YouTube with a slide deck, and then the course on Udemy, then 13 more courses once he saw that was working, and now he's moving to other platforms. And by the way, of course, we're gonna link all that stuff up in the show notes if you're curious about Udemy, Linda, some other options for you. So small success can often link to sustainable success, just like we saw here. So I hope you enjoy this one. I really enjoyed making it.
Oh, and thanks as well for sharing this special day with me. Girl Me Too Day, Beer Day, Coffee Cake Day, and End of the World Day for me. But of course, life goes on in Soda status school. You know, you can count on it. It's gonna be here for you every day.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including all those links I mentioned, all right, sidehustleschool.com/462. You are a rockstar. Keep your head up. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
I'll be back tomorrow with the weekly recap. [Music]
