In today’s episode, I interview Tom Drake, the founder of Maple Money, which is the most-read personal finance blog in Canada.
Tom is somewhat of a legend in the personal finance community and he’s a blogging and SEO genius. But what a lot of people don’t know is that Tom built up his blog while keeping his day job as a Financial Analyst for a major grocery retailer.
In fact, he still has that day job today, even 10 years after founding his blog. So if you think that it’s impossible to build a side hustle while holding down a 9 to 5, think again.
How to Build a 6-Figure Side Hustle While Keeping Your Day Job
In this podcast, you’ll learn how Tom was able to do it. We also spend some time talking about his college side hustles and how he became passionate about personal finance in the first place. Here a few of the highlights from our discussion:
- One of Tom’s most interesting side hustles in college was working as a DJ. And his work as a DJ evolved into creating his first website, a rave music site.
- While Tom was always interested in making money, he wasn’t necessarily always smart about how he spent it. In fact, the first thing he did with his student loan money was to buy a new car stereo!
- But getting married and having kids caused him to start taking finances seriously. And he later started blogging about what he was learning on Maple Money while keeping his Financial Analyst day job.
- Tom explains why 7 PM to 1 AM is plenty of time to “do damage” with building a business. But while that’s a great start-up mentality, you’ll probably need to outsource things over time if you want to avoid burnout.
I actually was honored to be featured recently as a guest on Tom’s Maple Money podcast. So if you’d like to hear a little more about my story and how I built my side hustle as a freelance writer into a full-time job, be sure to check out that episode. Or check out this article: 10 Steps I Took to Become a Full-Time Freelance Writer.