Colin Graves may have been earning a substantial income through his high-paying finance career, but he felt 'stuck and burnt out.' So he built a six-figure business from a side hustle, enabling him to leave his monotonous 9-to-5 job behind.
The 50-year-old from Winnipeg, Canada, shared with the Daily Mail that he secured a banking role right after college and climbed the ladder to a $120,000 salary. However, the relentless stress and tedium of his desk job left him feeling miserable.
In 2016, after a conflict with new management, he decided he needed to 'create another path' for himself. 'I had no idea how, but I resolved to leverage my experience and skills (and learn some new ones) and build something of my own,' the entrepreneur told the Daily Mail.
Graves explained that he had always been passionate about writing, so he combined that with his financial knowledge to launch a personal finance blog. 'I wrote about personal finance because it was what I knew. Over the next 18 months, and 150 blog posts later, I had built a small but engaged audience,' he shared.
In his first month, he earned roughly $200 from ad sales on the blog. Though modest, it was transformative. 'It wasn't much, but it changed everything. For the first time, I wasn't completely dependent on my employer to make a living,' he recalled. 'That's a powerful realization. It was no longer a matter of if this could work, but how to do it over and over again.'
From there, his income 'steadily increased,' and about a year later, he was making roughly $2,000 per month from the blog. '$2,000 per month just by typing away on my laptop in the evenings and on weekends,' said Graves. 'The key for me was consistency. I would write for one, maybe two hours most evenings, and then on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. For some, that sounds like torture, but to borrow a Jerry Seinfeld quote, "I had found the torture I was comfortable with." [Writing was the] thing that I could do over and over again, and not get tired of it.'
By 2020, his side hustle income grew to around $4,500 per month. Meanwhile, he also started learning about 'building websites, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).' 'That's when I realized that I could make money by offering these services to other financial bloggers and websites,' he said.
In 2022, he reached a 'fork in the road' where he had to decide whether to 'take the safe route and stay in his banking job' or 'take a risk and quit.' He chose the latter. He recalled of the moment he quit: 'I felt an incredible sense of freedom. It suddenly felt like my career (and my life) was this big empty canvas, a clean slate. And while there was risk, I felt like the guardrails had finally come off.'
Graves now runs a 'fully remote lifestyle business' and 'coaches mid-career professionals to build clear, practical paths out of the 9-to-5.' His biggest advice to others looking to follow in his footsteps is to find something you're truly passionate about. 'Find that thing,' he stressed. 'For me, it was writing; for others, it might be something else entirely.'
He also emphasized the importance of finding a side hustle that can become a full-time job, not just a short-term gig. The 'perfect side hustle' has three ingredients: 'It has to be something you enjoy, something you are good at (or can learn), and something you can scale (make money at). Sorry, but dog walking or DoorDash won't cut it if you want to take it full-time. If it's missing any of these ingredients, it's probably not worth starting,' Graves added.
He warned against 'trying to make the leap' and leaving your full-time job before you're fully ready. 'That usually ends badly. You need to play the long game. Build on the side, and be patient,' he said.
Now, Graves is grateful for having 'complete control over his time,' as he gushed: 'I feel like I was made for this lifestyle.' However, he noted, 'But the fluctuating income takes getting used to, and you have to constantly pivot to stay ahead of the curve. It's not like many 9-to-5 careers where you can kind of coast at a certain point. There's no coasting. While that can be challenging, I also think it's healthy. I'm 50 years old, and I'm learning new things every day.'
