MBA1323 Guest Teacher: Shaan Patel- How To Build A 7-Figure Side Hustle Without Quitting Your Full-Time Day Job
2 Feb 2026 · 16 min
Shaan Patel, a dermatology resident, outlines five steps to build a six- to seven-figure side business while keeping your day job: start with what you know, build a service company, create passive income through courses and books, add 40 hours weekly through nights and weekends, and automate with digital marketing tools like Facebook ads and SEO.
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Hey guys, I'm Shaan Patel and I'm so excited to teach you this mini lesson today on how to build a seven figure side hustle without quitting your full time day job. So personally, I have a day job as a dermatology resident physician. In addition to my day job, I've launched two startups that have generated over $20 million in revenue. I even pitched one of my companies on ABC's Shark Tank and closed a deal with billionaire Mark Cuban. Now, despite many of the sharks thinking that I couldn't be both a doctor and an entrepreneur, I have been successful at both. So whether you're a doctor or a teacher or you name it in your daytime hours, I want to teach you how to start a side hustle that will allow you to generate six or even seven figures without having to quit your day job. So let's get down to business. Step number one, do what you know. So what kind of side business should you start? Well, billionaire Warren Buffett has said that he is a successful investor because he stays within the realms of what he knows. This could not be truer. When it comes to entrepreneurship, the first rule is do what you know. One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is attempting to enter an industry that they are familiar with. If you have no knowledge of an industry, you are shooting yourself in the foot before you even start the race. But if you have deep knowledge of a particular topic, you immediately have a competitive advantage. This is why I keep my day job as a physician. I want to gain specialized medical knowledge in dermatology so that I can start a skincare company that makes use of the thousands of hours I spent becoming an expert on the subject. You might be thinking, I don't know anything that well. Don't worry, I thought the same when I was first starting out. So let's do an exercise to help you think of some ideas. Answer the following three questions. 1. What topics would you consider yourself an expert at? 2. What is something you worked extremely hard at in your life?
3.
What are some of your greatest accomplishments in life? Hopefully that generated some ideas. The ideal situation would be if there was one discipline that showed up as an ANSW for all three questions. If that happened, you now know what industry you should start a business in. A mistake I see entrepreneurs make is not learning a ton and building massive value in the industry they plan to enter. There's no such thing as a get rich quick scheme. Most people are not willing to put in the time and effort necessary to build massive value. Step number two Start a service based company so should you create a product or should you create a service? My answer is service. Starting a service based business as a side hustle is much less capital intensive and has a higher probability of success than a product based business for the solo entrepreneur. But what services should you sell? Take your answers from the last section. Do what you know and come up with some ideas on how you can serve your audience. Lets say you are a chef and you have expertise in specific cooking techniques. You could write a book, do some consulting, start a food blog or become an influencer. Even create an online course on cooking. You also need to think about how to scale your service based company. The easiest way to do this is online. There are so many web tools available to help reach a wider audience. If you're creating a prerecorded online course to sell, consider Thinkific as a potential platform. If you're delivering content in a live online format, consider Adobe Connect as a potential platform. But whether you're creating an online service or an in person service, your strategy when creating a service based business should remain the same. Your service needs to be unbelievably effective and deliver results, preferably measurable results. Step number three Never Trade Time for money. Trading hours for dollars will never lead to significant wealth. You only have 8,760 hours in a year and much of that time spent is sleeping. You must set up revenue streams that continue to produce income even when you sleep. Passive income is the key to real wealth and approximately 70% of the world's billionaires started their own businesses. Starting a side hustle business is probably the most common way to generate passive income with this in mind, I want to give you some ideas on how you can generate a passive income stream with a side hustle without having to quit your day job. Here are three that work for me. One is to write a book it's easier than ever to write a book. Write a book on a subject that relates to the industry you want to start a business in. For example, if you are starting a copywriting consulting business, write a book on conversion copywriting techniques. I'd recommend self publishing your ebook through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and your print book through CreateSpace. Number two is to create videos. If you think writing a book is too boring or too difficult or you just hate writing, create content for YouTube instead. My videos on YouTube have been viewed by millions, resulting in thousands of dollars in royalties. I'm sure that you can develop videos that are more entertaining than mine. Similar to what you would write a book about. Create content on topics that are related to your industry. And number three is to develop an online course. Are you an expert in a particular field? Of course you are. Everyone has a talent and if you don't have specialized knowledge of a particular discipline or start developing it, online courses allow you to create income while you sleep. Because you are not physically sending any materials or getting on the phone consulting with buyers, your course runs on autopilot and people can access it whenever they want to step number four add 40 hours to your work week so how can you start a service based company if you're already working 40 to 5050 hours a week on your day job? Well, you can add an additional 40 hours of time outside of your day job to work on your business. Here's how I do it. Step number one is to work on weekends. Treat your weekends like weekdays for your side business. If you work eight hours per day on the two days you have off from your day job, then you can add 16 hours per per week to work on your new business. Step number two is to sleep less. Most people sleep eight hours a day. You can sleep six hours a day. This will give you an additional 14 hours per week to work on your business that others don't have. And step number three is to work after hours after you come home from your day job, eat dinner, then spend two hours working on your business. If you do this every weekday, you can dedicate an additional 10 hours of time per week to your business. Now that is a total of an extra 40 hours to your work week. Now I know these suggestions may not sound fun like sleeping less. You may not like them much, but if you want to start a side hustle, well, don't forget the hustle part. And step number five is to automate with digital marketing. The good news about generating a passive income stream is that it's easier than ever because of the Internet. Fifty years ago, creating a passive income stream was really difficult. To build a business you'd have to invest in infrastructure and you were limited by the location you were at and the hours you could stay open. Now the Internet makes it virtually free to open a store that's open 24 hours a day to a customer base of seven and a half billion. Scalability through the Internet has made it easier than ever to avoid trading time for money. My first startup only had modest sales until we implemented an end to end digital marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs can build great products and services, but the sales don't match because no one knows about their businesses because they're not marketing. You must use digital marketing channels such as Facebook and Instagram, content marketing and Google AdWords if you want to make money in your sleep to scale your side business. Here are some excellent digital marketing strategies to use. Number one is PR and media. Getting exposure through media outlets is a great way to build your brand and get customers without having to spend a dime. However, you have to know the right way to pitch the media. Reporters don't care about your business, but they do care about a good story to tell their audience. Remember this golden rule when pitching media and you'll be much more successful at landing media mentions. Number two is Facebook ads. Facebook ads are a low cost way to acquire customers because billions of people are on the social network and the platform makes it possible to target the exact demographic for your business. My businesses, for example, constantly make a three to five times return on investment on Facebook ads and number three is automated webinars. A couple years ago I decided to start using automated webinars in my businesses. Because my time is limited, I can't run a live webinar every day. However, using the software called everwebinar, I can pre record a webinar and have it show shown to potential customers all day every day without me lifting a finger. My automated webinars have generated millions of dollars in sales for my companies. Consider using automated webinars to close sales for your business. Alright guys, this was Sha Patel and those were my five tips on how to build a seven figure side hustle without quitting your full time day job. Again, those five are do what you know, start a service based company, never trade time for money, add 40 hours to your work week and automate with Digital Marketing. If you want to continue to learn more about Digital marketing, you can Visit my website clearhatmarketing.com my business partner Adam Lawrence and I have developed the Clearhat Zero to 10 million dollar digital marketing course. This includes all 10 Clearhat digital marketing courses in one flagship package. We have 10 courses on content marketing, conversion optimization, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, guerrilla marketing, lead generation, product marketing, PR and media, SEO and Webinar Marketing. It's perfect for every entrepreneur who wants to take his or her business to the next level. This 30 hour high definition video course sells for $799 on our website. However, we are offering it to $100 MBA listeners at a 50% off discount bringing the course cost down to $399 when you use the coupon code 100 MBA@clearhatmarketing.com thanks again for joining me today.
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What a practical and insightful lesson by Sean Patel. I love this topic because it's practical. I love it because it's real talk. We all have a hard time with risk and you don't have to quit your job and risk everything to start a business. But one of the biggest things you need to have a handle on in order to pull this off, like Sean mentioned is time management is allocating enough time to build the side hustle in your recreational time, on your weekends, in your evenings. This means sacrifice. This means you're going to have to let go of things that you enjoy or at least cut back on whether it's Netflix or video games or even just grabbing a drink with friends. No one says you have to have a boring life or not have fun at all. I don't believe in extremes, but the time has to come from somewhere. You have to exchange one thing for another. What are you going to give up? That's the question you have to ask. What are you going to give up to make up that time so you can dedicate it to your side hustle. That's what I want you to do. I want you to really sit down and answer that question. If you need 15 hours a week to get your startup going, where are those 15 hours going to come from? Are you going to get up earlier? Are you going to cut out an hour of TV a day? What about those weekends? How are you going to utilize those? This is the first step in really making this happen. Now, Sean Padel has been generous enough to give us an amazing deal on his clearhat marketing zero to $10 million digital marketing course. This is a marketing course that you could take right online. It actually comes with 10 marketing courses inside, including Facebook marketing, content marketing, conversion optimization, and more. We're talking about 30 hours of high definition video content. Now, Normally retails for $799 for this course, but he's given us listeners of the 100 MBA show a 50% discount. Just go to clearhatmarketing.com and use promo code 100 MBA to get 50% off his amazing collection of marketing courses. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now. So you get updates and our latest episodes automatically to your device. Whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether Spotify or Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Radio, Overcast, hit that subscribe button and we got your back. Before I go on, I'll leave you with this. It's easy to get overwhelmed when you have so much work to do to start a business. A side hustle and you have minimal time. You have all the time in the world. You're like, okay, I could do this, I have plenty of time. But when you only have 10 or 15 hours a week, everything counts. And you gotta take things in micro steps, baby steps, mini milestones if you will, so you can see the progress in front of you. Break things down into smaller steps. So every week you know what you gotta do and what you gotta accomplish. More about this in a future episode. But for now, I'll see you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
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