Have an idea? Try it out as a side hustle

CNBC’s Success Tip of the Week: If you have an idea, try it out as a side hustle. You never know where it will lead. For Jasmine McCall, posting videos with personal finance content was a way to make extra money to pay for child care. It turned into a full-time gig where she could earn more – and work less.

Just two years ago, Jasmine McCall, 31, worked as a resource manager at Amazon making $124,000 a year. Now, she makes nearly that same amount in a month as a YouTuber and finance expert, and works only two hours a day.

McCall thanks a YouTube video she posted in January 2021 for kick-starting her success.

“One day, I posted a YouTube video sharing how I went from a credit score of 495 to 820 — simply by disputing inaccurate information on my credit report,” she says. “At the time, making videos was just a way to bring in $1,000 a month to help pay for child-care expenses. But six months later, that video went viral.”

By May 2022, McCall was able to quit her full-time job to work on her YouTube side hustle. Her husband did the same soon after, and their work has paid off. 

“From December 2022 to March 2023, we earned an average of $105,000 a month in passive income, mostly from digital product sales and YouTube ad revenue,” she says.

McCall makes it all work by designating a different task for each day of the week: Mondays and Tuesdays for YouTube content, Wednesdays and Thursdays for partnership content, and Fridays for press and publicity.

“Choosing this life has been a bigger blessing than we ever could have imagined,” McCall says. She helped her parents retire early and now gets to spend more time with her husband and son. Check out the full story here.

The Success Tip of the Week is adapted from the weekly CNBC Make It Work newsletter, written by Ashton Jackson. Sign up for CNBC Make It newsletters, baked fresh and delivered straight to your inbox.

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