5 Ways To Make $5,000 In One Week
16 Oct 2026 · 13 min
In this episode of The Hundred Dollar MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom explains how entrepreneurs can generate $5,000 in a single week without a second job. He frames the problem as creating value for others rather than trading time for money and walks listeners through five concrete, low‑risk strategies: (1) selling a curated event, (2) offering a skill as a freelance service or consultant, (3) delivering a high‑ticket VIP day or workshop focused on a specific outcome, (4) pre‑selling a product or service before it’s built, and (5) providing done‑for‑you services to local businesses. For each method he shares pricing formulas, marketing tactics, validation steps, and ways to scale the effort. Throughout the episode Omar intersperses sponsor reads for Justworks, Dell Pro, Quo, Upwork, and Mazda, and he repeatedly urges listeners to take immediate action, subscribe, and leave a review. The episode ends with a reminder of a related show on live‑event pitfalls.
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Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong so you don't have to worry, so you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. When you're at work, you never know when you'll be interrupted. But with the Dell Pro powered by Intel Core Ultra with vPro, no matter what distracts you, your laptop won't. It's battery optimized for the way you work, with built-in intelligence that quiets distractions when you need to focus. Your laptop will help keep you locked in, even when it's bring your dog to work day. Built for those who stay in the flow, The Dell Pro, built for you. dell.com/dell-pro. What if the next $5,000 isn't hiding in more hours at your job, but in a problem you can solve? You may already have skills worth thousands of dollars. You just haven't packaged it yet. Listen, I know a lot of entrepreneurs. These people are not geniuses. You can figure this out, and I'm going to show you how. But here's the thing: you don't need some big shot business to make cash. You just need a person or a group of people that want to pay for the skills that you have. Today, I'm going to show you how to make five thousand dollars in one week outside your paycheck, starting right now. Welcome back to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Most people believe money only comes from trading time for money. That's how a job works. More hours, more experience equals a promotion, which means more income. But that's not how a business works. For the most part, your income in a job is tied to the hours you put in, the effort you put in. But with a business, it's about the value you provide, and you could provide a lot of value with very little time. So if you need more money right now, you don't need a second job. You need to create something of value so that you can make even more money than any amount of hours can provide. Let me give you an example. We run an event called the Crazy Ones Christmas Party, a Christmas party for entrepreneurs, business people that no one throws a Christmas party for. We go go-karting, we have mini golf, we play bowling, we have lunch, we have a bunch of fun with video games. It's a blast. Last year we made over $15,000 on just one day, and this year we're on track to making $30,000 in one day. Yeah, the party is one day, but maybe I put in an extra 4 or 5, 6 hours of planning for this party to book the venue and all that kind of stuff. But in total, I'm putting in what, max 2 days of work to make $30,000? That's crazy. Most people don't make that in 3 months. Now, the reason why I'm able to do this is because I'm creating an event, and that's the first way to make $5,000 in one week. Sell an event. Listen, an event is a very low-risk, beginner-friendly way to make money because you don't have to do anything until you collect money from the customer, till you sell tickets. Then you can start paying for the venue and the food or whatever you need to pay the expenses to run the event. The reason why I start with this idea is because events are fun and it's easy to sell fun. People want to go to a dinner. People want to have a day trip. People want to network with the right people. They want a group of people that they are interested in, like-minded people that where they're going to build memories and bonds. When you sell an event, you sell fun, you sell convenience, you sell connection, and it's not the actual activity itself. So the real product is curation. You're bringing people together who wouldn't otherwise meet. It's very hard to bring everybody together. So by you doing this, by throwing this event, you're adding incredible value to the people that are attending. But make sure when you're pricing tickets for your event that you factor in a healthy margin for profit. You want to make sure you're making a healthy amount of money from each ticket. So what I like to do is find out how much this event's going to cost and then double that amount of money as your profit. So say, for example, the event's going to cost you $500 per person. So I would double that to make sure that I make $1,000 in profit. That means each ticket is going to be $1,500. If you want to lower your expenses, Partner with restaurants or coworking spaces to reduce the cost of the venue. One of the things I love about events is that they will teach you very quickly the core skills of running a business, like pricing, like marketing, like promotion, like logistics, like working with vendors. This is a great little test project incubator for you to learn what business is like. And best of all, they build your status. You become a trusted member of that community. You become somebody they actually see as a connector and want to support in the future. So when you build your next product or business, they're going to want to buy from you. Second way to make $5,000 in a week is to sell a skill as a service. Start with a skill you already have, one that you're using at work already. This could be designing, this could be coding, this could be marketing, this could be creating ads. Offer that skill as a freelancer through a service or a platform like Upwork or Fiverr. You can also package high-level expertise as a consultant. Now, platforms like Upwork and Fiverr will take a cut of your revenue, but to get started, it's actually a pretty good idea because they get you in front of clients. It puts you on a platform where you can be seen. You could start building your reputation. You could start getting some testimonials, some reviews that you can then use on your website, or even when you start pitching people privately. Getting started on a platform like Upwork is super simple. It takes a few minutes and you could start making money immediately. Have you ever called a business and it went straight to voicemail that's clearly from 2015 and you just hang up? Yeah, I know I do, but so do your customers. They do that too. That's why at some point you just gotta say, let's effing Quo. Today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. With Quo, all your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation See the full history and respond fast. You can set up in minutes on any device, keep your existing number, and add teammates as you grow. No IT, no hassle. Plus, Quo's optional built-in AI agent handles after-hours calls, answers questions, and even books appointments so you never miss a lead even when your team is offline. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/MBA. That's quo.com/MBA. Support for today's show comes from Upwork. I've been using Upwork for over a decade to find top talent for my businesses. From software development and AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations, Upwork is your one-stop shop for talent. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence And get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With over 170,000 freelancers holding 5-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com. Upwork.com. Third way to make $5,000 in just a week is a VIP day or high-ticket consulting. This is you packaging your expertise in a one-on-one intensive session or a group session as a workshop. What you want to do here is that you don't want to say, I'm going to teach you marketing. What you want to do is you want to focus on a specific outcome to help somebody achieve something that they need. Like, I need more leads for my product or service. So this workshop could be all about how to get your first 100 leads for your business. Don't undervalue what you know. Your skills, your expertise is something that people want, especially somebody who's just brand new. You're a few steps ahead of them. They want to know what you know, and they want to apply that knowledge into something that will get them an outcome. I found that it's easier to find a few high-paying customers than a dozen low-paying customers. So you could definitely deliver a workshop where you charge $3,000, $4,000 for the full day to get them an outcome that's worth that money. So make sure that the outcome is valuable. You could deliver this in person. You could deliver this over Zoom, as long as you're getting a result for your customers, for the students of your workshop, or the one-on-one coaching session, you will win. Why? Because when you get results, you get referrals and you get repeat business. 4th way to make $5K in just a week is to pre-sell a product before you built it. Some people call this crowdsourcing, but basically you sell the idea before you build the product. I did this with my software company, Webinar Ninja, where we pre-sold our product 4 months in advance. We literally opened up a chance to sign up so you can get first access. It was $250. We sold out 150 spots in 48 hours. We then opened up another 100 spots, sold out those 100 spots in 24 hours. This works. And for many reasons, number one, it validates your product or service to see if people are actually interested. Are they willing to part money so that you can give them a solution in the future to a problem they have? In our case, it was an easy software to use to run and sell on webinars. You could sweeten the deal by giving them early access. You can give them a discount or some sort of deal by being an early adopter, or even some sort of status like founding member status. With us, we gave them all 3. In that waiting period after they bought early access, you can ask your buyers questions to improve the product that you're building. This is incredibly powerful because You're going to be able to get people that are invested because they put their money down in an idea. So they're going to give you some really good feedback and are willing to give you feedback in the first place so that you can create a better product for them. By the way, this works for software, for courses, for coaching, for events, for physical products. It doesn't matter. In fact, there's a whole platform built just for this purpose. It's called Kickstarter that you can try out. Quick pause. If you are finding this episode helpful, I highly recommend you subscribe to the show. Whether you're on YouTube right now or you're on Apple or Spotify, by subscribing, you get our next episode automatically. We have an episode I don't want you to miss. It's titled Treat Your Business Like a Game and Get Rich. I'm going to show you how business is really a fun game to play. There are levels to this game and there are rewards in each level, but it also teaches you how to have fun in the process. So you actually enjoy the journey of business and not just the outcomes of business. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. 5th way is done-for-you services for local businesses. Go to the local businesses that you frequent in your neighborhood and take a look at their website. Take a look at the store. Figure out how you can solve some problems for them. Maybe they don't have enough Google reviews. So set up a system for them where they have a QR code right there at the register so that customers can give them more reviews so they can get more customers through the door because of those reviews. Maybe their website is ugly and needs some updating. Maybe they need a better way to book customers or to make reservations for the restaurant on the website. Maybe you can help them with their social media presence so that they can get more customers via social media. The point here, if you notice the commonality, is you want to focus on services and activities that's going to clearly give them an outcome that is going to give them a return on investment. If they know that if they get, you know, 30 more customer reviews this month, That they're going to at least get 4 or 5 new customers. They know their average revenue per customer, so they can do the math and see the return on investment they can get from your service. You don't have to overcomplicate this. You can offer simple fixes like refreshing their website, like a system where when they get a missed call where somebody calls them and no one picks up the phone, there's an automatic text message that gets sent that number. In fact, one of our sponsors, Quo, does exactly that. You don't have to sell them on some sort of continuity program. You can just start with one-off projects, one little fix to their business. And then once they see results from you, then you can then think about creating some sort of retainer, some sort of ongoing monthly support, some way that they're getting value from you every single month. There you have it. Those are 5 simple ways for you to make $5,000 in just a week. Couple caveats. Number one, I said simple, not easy. They're going to be a little challenging if you have never asked for a sale before. There's going to be some hard work involved, but that's okay. I'm sure that you're not afraid of hard work. Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Number 2, you're only going to get $5,000 in a week if you get started right now. Just choose one of the 5 I just offered you. Choose the one that seems the most fun, the one that you are most interested in, and just get started. Get going. Because every day you delay is another day you're not making that $5K. The goal here isn't just to make $5,000. It's to prove to yourself that you can create income outside your usual paycheck. I remember when I made my first $30 outside my paycheck. It was a feeling of euphoria. It was like, whoa, I can't believe that I can make money without putting in hours. I can just create some value and make money on the side. You start opening up your mind to different possibilities. What else can I do? How much money can I make? What are the limits? And you realize, There are no limits. That's the beauty of business. Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode. If you want to learn more about how to create a live event, there's a recent episode we recently published called The Top 5 Mistakes When Creating and Selling a Live Event. Just scroll up on whatever app you're using right now. Spotify, Apple, YouTube, we're on them all. That's what the episode's called. Top 5 Mistakes When Creating and Selling a Live Event. I made all 5 of them. Don't make these mistakes. I'll show you how to avoid them. Go ahead and watch it. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you gotta do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.
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