Turn Your Passions into Profitable Side Hustles: Scaling from Startup to $6 Million in 5 Years

Discover the surprising story of a lawyer and a dentist who transformed their expertise into a lucrative side business, making millions and positively impacting lives while still maintaining their primary careers. By leveraging what they know, love, and do, they turned their passion into a profitable venture. And the best part? You can do it, too.

Imagine being able to teach a skill you excel at and generate consistent income year after year. It’s not just a dream—it’s a reality.

This incredible journey began when I enrolled in an online course without any immediate plans for its application. Little did I know, it held the key to an exciting opportunity.

Today, that side hustle has evolved into a thriving success story, generating around $5 million in revenue annually. Remarkably, neither my co-founder nor I have left our day jobs. At first glance, our venture may seem unrelated to our professional backgrounds or educational expertise. As I’ve come to realize, however, everything we do in life is cumulative and contributes to our collective success.

Let me share what led to this side hustle turned success story.

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Ryan Molis, a leading solo Invisalign provider, consistently treats over 500 Invisalign patients per year, whereas most dentists average only around five (yes, you read that right). Despite numerous requests to teach the secrets of his success, he kept them to himself for over 15 years. Meanwhile, I transitioned from corporate law to nonprofit work and eventually became a social impact consultant to some of the world’s leading brands.

Although our schedules were packed with our respective day jobs, we decided to merge our strengths and embark on a side hustle after a series of casual but consequential conversations over the course of a few backyard barbecues.

Ryan’s superpower lies in refining the process of integrating Invisalign treatment into a dental practice. My expertise lies in simplifying complex concepts into easily understandable and actionable systems. By combining these skills, we built a business and formed an exclusive partnership with the makers of Invisalign, offering our knowledge to Invisalign providing dentists everywhere.

Our online, on-demand education platform is accessible when and where member dentists need it and is available to them for an entire year. Priced similarly to a single two-day conference, the year-long membership includes a comprehensive curriculum, online community access for real-time support, and a relentless commitment to positivity, inclusivity, and a growth mindset. And we guarantee that it will pay for itself in its first year.

As a result, our 4,500+ members to date have experienced extraordinary growth in their practices by implementing our teachings, now averaging over 20 cases per year. Not only has this been beneficial for their patients and practice, it has also had a profound impact on their overall profits. Everyone in our value chain wins when our program works – patient lives are transformed, systems are streamlined, confidence grows, and practices are more profitable. It’s as inspiring on a human level as it is profitable.

The best part is that this replicable model is accessible to anyone. Why? Because success leaves clues!

Our model is straightforward and effective. Credit due to Stu McLaren’s The Membership Experience program, from which I learned and successfully applied the model to our business using Ryan’s expertise and my vision for packaging his knowledge into a product and service that our growing team and partnerships masterfully deliver to our members.

Here are five valuable tips for starting your own successful knowledge-based side hustle:

1. Identify Your Superpower: Gain exquisite clarity on what you excel at and can teach to others who are eager to learn. Ryan’s expertise lies in fully incorporating Invisalign treatment into a dental practice, ensuring scale, sustainability, and patient satisfaction through decades of experience. In my case, simplifying complex topics for easy comprehension and implementation is my forte.
   Do this next: Identify your unique strengths by evaluating what you uniquely offer that would be valuable to others and leverage them to create your own side hustle.
   
   
2. Plan The Work, Work The Plan: Organizing, outlining, categorizing, scripting, shooting, and packaging our curriculum took almost a year and a half before we officially launched our business. Although it required significant effort, focusing on creating high-quality content from the start made our long-term journey much smoother.
   Do this next: Maintain discipline early on by prioritizing the clarity and quality of your offerings and resisting the urge to rush the launch without attention to detail.
3. Embrace Simplicity: Simplicity is the ultimate elegance and user-friendliness. Human beings naturally gravitate towards products and services that are easy to understand and use. Though complexity may attempt to sneak in, remain steadfast in your commitment to simplicity. Over time, this focus will pay off significantly.
   Do this next: Strive for simplicity throughout every stage of your side hustle.
4. Make It Actionable: Merely learning is not enough; people crave actionable guidance. The true magic happens when your audience experiences tangible results, leading them to return to you as a trusted source of ongoing education. So you must teach something new while providing clear step-by-step instructions on how to apply it in real life.
   Do this next: Ensure every lesson, product, or tool you offer is accompanied by crystal-clear and straightforward implementation guidelines because knowledge without implementation is meaningless.
5. Turn Kindness Into a Competitive Advantage: Enthusiasm and positivity are infectious, and people are naturally drawn to optimists. In a world often consumed by negativity, kindness can become a powerful differentiator and even a competitive advantage.
   Infuse every aspect of your side hustle with kindness, encouragement, and positivity, allowing those you serve to experience the very success you aim to teach.

The SuN Takeaway

Remember, if you possess a skill that others want to learn, you can teach it. As long as there is value in what you know, love, and do, people will be eager to invest in that knowledge and apply it to their own lives.