Hollywood Film Editor Optimizes Life Through Self-Care Side Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Your host today is Episode 501. That's right. We're back with Episode 501, going into the next dimension of Side Hustle stories.

I'm excited to bring you these stories every single day. I'm telling you about how somebody out there, a regular person with a real job, not a celebrity, not an entrepreneur, just somebody who wants to do something for themselves. How do they get the idea? How do they make it happen? What are the specific outcomes? How much money do they make? All that kind of stuff. Ultimately,

this is about creating freedom for yourself. And that's what I want you to be able to do, too. So here on Side Hustle School, we are all about teaching through storytelling. And today's story features a Hollywood film and TV editor who is feeling frustrated at his own lack of life work balance. So he starts a project to help others in his industry learn how to live more by staying present. It begins as a hobby, just a personal project. But when somebody suggests he consider

making money from it, he thinks, "Hey, maybe I should make money from this." And thus begins his journey to creating a new source of income. I'll tell you all about it after this quick thank you to our sponsor. Is work life balance even a real thing? Zach Arnold, a successful Hollywood film and TV editor, doesn't subscribe to the idea, at least not as it's commonly known. Even though he was working on shows like Glee, Empire, Unsolved, and others, his days were spent sitting in dark editing bays and then rushing home to be with his family at night. Like many of us do, he was trying

to divide and compartmentalize his days. And he realized that even though he was spending 50% of his days at work and 50% at home, on average, he felt scattered, unhealthy, and unhappy. One spring day, he decided enough was enough. He started an email chain he coined Fitness in Post to get his fellow film and TV editors together to do fitness-focused activities like hiking. It was more about starting a club than a business. His initial email blast was with friends, but more people wanted to

join, including a lot of people he didn't know. So he decided to sign up for a MailChimp account to help manage that list. And with very little effort over the next few months, he found an audience of more than 500 people. Zach realized he was on to something. One of his friends invited Zach to come on a podcast he hosted and talk about the clear need in the film industry for a better way to balance work, life, and wellness. Inspired by a suggestion from that same friend, Zach decided

to start his own Fitness in Post podcast. At first he thought it would be just two or three episodes, something short-lived, but there was another surprise. The podcast caught on just like the email list. A lot of people in the industry really wanted to talk about how to make working conditions better. Zach was inspired to make pushing forward this conversation his mission.

At conferences and events, people started asking him about his podcast versus his full-time job, which gave him another push to charge ahead. When you're so immersed in the day-to-day, it can be helpful to understand the potential that others see in your work. One friend said something to Zach at a conference that really changed his whole outlook. This friend asked how he was going to monetize his side hustle. And the friend said, "If you don't have a plan to monetize it, anything that takes this amount of time and dedication, you'll have to give up in two years. It's going to be too much for you." That advice shifted the way Zach thought about

fitness in post. He realized that his audience would want him to continue creating, so he got over his initial hesitation about asking for money. That's when he started to do some research. The idea of knowledge commerce or creating content and courses to teach people your expertise really inspired him. He wanted to create some online teaching tools, and he grew more and more excited as he considered the possibilities. Still, there was one big problem, at least he thought there was.

The name of his project, Fitness in Post, made sense to film editors, but not to anyone else. If Zach was going to grow the project beyond those film editors, he needed to rebrand. He felt this change was necessary, so he renamed the site Optimize Yourself. Then he took the content he developed and refloated it into an online course format. This first course was called Move Yourself. The idea was to help his audience learn how to stay active during their workday,

how to focus more and have more energy to enjoy their families. He offered that course for $100, using a teaser page on his website to gauge interest. That launch converted 25% of the people on his email list. And then over the course of the next year, that email list grew organically to over 3,000 people. He launched the Move Yourself course four more times, each with new updates, and each launch produced profits from $3,500 to just under $10,000. That year,

the side hustle that had made no money at all the previous year now brought in $35,000. Now you might be wondering how he organically grew his audience beyond film editors. Zach says the podcast was the biggest driver by far. Bringing on big name guests from other industries was huge in expanding his audience. People would follow a certain person, find his podcast, and then learn more about Optimize Yourself. Another win for the podcast is the interviews

and content he creates for each episode is then sprinkled throughout his courses. Not only can he feature interviews, advice, and tips from different people, he can also nod to the course throughout the podcast, promoting it to an engaged audience who wants to hear and learn more. Last year, he added coaching to his side hustle skills. As he created new courses, he wanted a place to test and try his methods. This helped Zach cater his courses to help people with all different types of goals. So for the coaching, he offers a 12-week program, one hour a week for $2,500.

He has only two to three students at a time, working with them one-on-one, setting goals and helping them take action. So far, he's coached six people, bringing in additional profits of $15,000. Today, Zach's side hustle monthly income varies depending on if he does a product launch or not. But in general, he brings in around $2,000 a month, which is largely passive, with the exception of those two hours of coaching he does each week. His email list is now over 4,000 people and he's currently developing two new courses. And by the way, throughout all this process, he's spent zero

money on Facebook or Google ads. All of his audience growth has been organic through those podcast listeners, the free guide on his website and his courses. It really proves that great content can make your side hustle a box office hit. So one thing I asked Zach about was this whole concept of work-life balance. I'm also not a huge fan of that concept or phrase. I think it's more important to think about alignment or convergence.

But I wanted to know what Zach meant by it, his critique and his alternative. He said, "The biggest thing is your mindset. The thing everyone needs to go after is work-life presence, not balance. Whenever I'm working on my business, I'm only focused on my business. When I'm with my family, I'm only focused with my family. I don't mix the two. So change any behavior that gets in

the way of that true focus. You might think you're balanced because you spend half your time on work and half your time with family, but you need to realize what behaviors you actually need to change. I know all of this because I did it the wrong way for many years. I made every mistake. I was a workaholic and now I put my kids to bed almost every night, but yet I'm still doing better in my career because of those choices, not despite those choices." So that might be helpful if someone will include some of that in the show notes. And of course, if you want to check out Zach's work and

learn more about his perspective, his philosophy, the work that he does to help people, you can do that as well. I just had one quick comment here. The idea about going beyond film editors, you know, obviously that's his vision and it's working for him. But I tend to think, you know, in lots of cases, we think that's a good idea. We always think like, "We've got this group of people. This is my background. These are the people that I relate to. But I really want to

go mainstream. I don't want to just serve film editors or whatever it is." And you can go mainstream. You can go beyond that. But I also think like, you know, and on the show, we've seen this too. A lot of side hustles and even really successful small businesses that grow to six figures, multiple six figures and beyond, they don't choose to go mainstream. In fact, they just kind of remained

hyper focused on that initial market. So of course, you have to figure out what's best for you. But I'm just putting it out there that I don't necessarily think it's always good to expand and go mainstream. Because even a name like fitness in post, well, it might not make sense to some people, but to the people it needs to make sense to, like they get it right away. That's just my two cents, of course. And I

appreciate Zach letting us share his project with all of you. As I said, this is episode 501. We're beginning a whole new series, all kinds of stuff coming up. Don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. And those aforementioned show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/501. Go check it out. You can also get a free five steps to hustle course, maybe

even a unicorn, if not a unicorn, at least the five steps to hustle course. And I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.