How To Grow Your Side Hustle With Day Job Benefits

We wanted to get out of being an employee, but job security, how do you give up that steady paycheck? How do you give up the health insurance where parents, obviously, and how do you risk everything that we’ve built and work for till now? Welcome to the Imperfectly Empowered Podcast with DIY Healthy Lifestyle Blogger on a former Empower you to transform your.
One imperfect day at a time. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Imperfectly Empowered Podcast. I am your host, Anna Fuller. Today on the show we have Gianna Ramani. Gianna is the founder of the incredible company called Day Hustle. This company is all about empowering you to receive the benefits of a day job.
While growing your side hustle, it’s an incredible company. I’m really excited to dive into this welcome side hustle expert and angel employer Gianna Ramani. Hi, Anna. Hello. How are are you? Good. Welcome. We finally made it happen. Yes, Yes. Finally. Thank you. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Yeah. It’s a blessing to have you. I really enjoyed looking over your business model. I mentioned in the introduction about Day Hustle, and you have a book coming out all about Day Hustle. When does it actually go live? It actually went live yesterday. Yesterday. Oh, yes, Yes. So I’m really happy we hit number one on Amazon in a few categories, including internationally in France.
So I’m super, super excited. That’s awesome. Well, it’s not shocking when you understand what the concept of your business and the book is all about, but as always, I love to press the rewind button and chat a little bit. I mean, you had a. Interesting start. So you are from the Philippines and you came to America, as I understand it, when you were about seven years old.
That’s right. And now you are the ceo. You’ve had several business startups. I mean, the journey there is impressive. I like pressing rewind. To hear a little bit of that backstory, share with us a little bit what that was like coming from the Philippines and the journey. So, Sure, Sure. Well I was seven, like you said, and I’m the youngest of four.
So my brother, I have two brothers and older sister. And it was funny, actually, our actual trip to immigrate, my mom works for the Philippine Airlines. Mm-hmm. . So we were on standby tickets and I remember my sister and I actually giving up our seats cuz it’s a 25 hour trip and a long flight. And in the middle of the night they let the steward, it says, And I remember my sister and I pulling up some blankets and, uh, you know, curling up in the aisle of the airplane.
So that was the trip itself. And, uh, we ended up immigrating to New Jersey. That’s where we first started, and we actually were staying in attic apartment and very humble beginnings. You know, my parents were doing everything that they could to give us a better life. And that attic apartment, it’s always a reminder of where you come from and where you can go from.
And it was half of the attic wasn’t even finished. My brothers, they shared the sofa bed in the living room. Um, my sister and I had a bedroom, if you wanna call it that, and our dressers, all of our dressers were these Rubbermaid totes and basically everything that we had was in there. And then, so for like Christmas, there was no room for a Christmas tree.
It was these Christmas tree shaped. That we hung on the foyer and our gifts were under that. So these are the things that I remember. It’s great memories, obviously, but it’s a fun story to say, so I appreciate you asking about it. Yeah. But you know, it’s always been about family and just doing with what you’ve got.
And where was the transition point for you in terms of the mentality, I don’t wanna call it an addict mentality, that sounds strange, but you start in very humble beginnings and. Then you end up founding several companies and this very entrepreneurial mindset. Do you look back and see a point in your life where you sort of stepped into that type of mindset, or did you always have this drive to create and that entrepreneurial spirit, was it always there?
Where did that shift happen for you? You know, when I think about it, I think our family was very traditional, but when I met Farhad, my husband of 20 years now, when I met him, he was in the real estate business. And I was fortunate enough to LA I needed a job for three months before school started and it so happened that the lady in his office was on maternity leave for three months.
So if you wanna call it fate, I do. But I started working with him for a real estate company and I guess our. We’ve just been in real estate ever since. And you know, at that point he was a salesperson. I was just an administrative assistant, but we were working in that world. You start thinking about investing and Robert Kiyosaki’s books that I think is really the catalyst, Anna, of us learning that being an employee and working for someone else isn’t enough for the goal of being financially free and.
Up until this year I was an employee trying to do things on the side. Those things really not growing as much as I would want to. And I even started writing a book years ago and not until I retired from corporate life did I finally get a book out. Mm. And you said your a husband, I know you’ve mentioned him several times and you have two little boys.
Not so little anymore. Yeah, one 16 and one’s 18. Oh my gosh. Well, you do not look old enough to a 16 and an 18 year old, first of all. Thank you. That’s incredible. Oh my goodness. So you have been in this kind of entrepreneurial industry and this world and mindset, but tell me a little bit, so the two of you, I mean, you have your hands in a lot of different.
Me do. There’s a lot of different, Tell me about some of the things that have sort of contributed to this passion for helping people get their side hustles off the ground. Sure. Well, like I said, the real estate part has been there from the beginning and when we moved to Florida, we decided, okay, you know what?
If I found a job that covers our living expenses, I call him surviving expenses. Cause you can’t really sure, uh, live on just basic necessities. We did that so that he could just focus on our. And he is flipping homes and you know, doing our rentals and everything like that. So a lot of the things that we wanted to do ourselves, and it just always stuck with us.
But we also have a lot of other passions and things that give us fun as a family. We’ve been riding dirt bikes since the beginning, so we wanted to create a business around that. Farha loves feeding people. So we are starting a food truck that’s called Fe Persia. It’s Persian American fusion food, and he finally gets to live that.
You know, I’m so down to earth as far as I wanna get in that truck and serve food. Maybe one day we’ll have a restaurant or whatnot, but like food truck just sounded so fun and adventurous. That is so fun. Although I have to ask, what is American Persian? What is Persian food? What were that foods like?
Kabobs. Have you ever had kabobs, like Turkish, Mediterranean, a lot of that Middle Eastern area? That’s not spicy like hot, but very delicious flavors. Yeah, very flavorful. I love the Mediterranean cuisine is definitely some of my favorites. So I was curious where Persian. Interesting. So kabobs would be really more of a Persian.
Mm-hmm. . Is that what you sell? Do you sell kabobs? Yep. It’s kabobs food. And you know, so the fusion in there is that they’re Persian, um, kabobs with fries. With fries in a burger. There is with fries, Yeah. It’s so good. And they always say, if you ever start a restaurant, it always started with people just saying, Oh, your food is so good, you should have a restaurant.
And literally that’s what we’ve been hearing for years and I’m so glad that kind of happening. Now, does he make the food or like. Where was the food coming from? Yeah, no, it’s his recipes. He’s always been this natural cook. I follow recipes, but he’s the one that’s like, Oh, you know, taste this. It’s missing something.
I would never know, but he knows like there’s something missing and then he’ll figure it out. Really cool to watch. That’s so fun. And then I have to ask, where does the food truck, like how do you decide where the food truck goes? Great question. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You can’t just park it anywhere, Park anywhere, yeah.
No, but the plan is to find a place where we can serve both businesses and residential. So we actually found a location in Lakeland, Florida, which is the fastest growing city in the States. I hear So, Especially with post covid and everything like that. So we’re really fortunate to have found a location over there.
And then again, the fun thing is we can take that and go to events and food truck festivals that I’ve always enjoyed going to those. That’s so fun. Is this your kid’s summer job or you’re like, you get the food truck this summer ? Well, I told Farha, I was like, Let’s get one of these offroad motorcycles and I wanna deliver the food.
And you go, I don’t know, maybe I’ll be fighting the boys over that actually. . That’s amazing. Well, in case anyone is seeing some random Filipino woman in a. On a motorcycle of some sort with food that resembles kabobs. It’s Gianna. Just wave and and say hi, . I love it. That’s amazing. So we have, you said Fe of Persia, the food truck.
Yeah. And you have your, I’m like looking at my notes here. Is it called Motored design? Is that the motocross? So like I said, as a family we have always ridden dirt bikes. And when the boys graduated from two clutch controlled bikes, which is a lot harder when you’re little, they have it where. , she was the throttle.
And you can go, Okay. But at some point when the bike gets, she’s talking to me like, I know what she’s talking about, you guys. I have no clue what she, I’m like nodding and smiling. I’m so sorry. It’s like, you know, like a stick shift car. I gotcha. For the dirt bike. Yeah. So, got it. At some point, the bike, you need like the clutch and this, this and that, and it’s intimidating, but the boys picked it up really quickly.
Yeah. And so in between writing sessions they were like, We’re so motivated. Get it Moed, . And from there it was like, Oh my gosh, we should totally do something with that name. Let’s do t-shirts and you know, jewelry and things like that. So it’s, um, motivation and faith based, because to us, when you look at the dirt bike, it actually looks like a cross.
So Oh, all, all fell in. Yeah. I love that. That’s amazing. Well, they’ve got, Dirt bikes with food, with their real estate flips, and I love you mentioned that you also like to pick up the hammers and do it yourself type of an approach that obviously it’s no secret over here. We’re very into DIY home renovation.
Do you have a favorite project that you’ve done or anything that you’ve done in your own home that you would tell anybody to do themselves? Oh wow. We’ve done a lot of projects and they’ve all been fun. I would say the most memorable probably was our first house. The first house that we bought for ourselves.
And it’s always funny because we end up always renovating the homes when we’re ready to leave it and it’s like, make it nicer for the next person. Yeah. And instead of selling that house, cuz we were ready to upgrade and the boys were getting bigger and everything like that, we decided to make that our first rental property.
Mm-hmm. . So we renovated it and Farha did a great job and he’s the crew. Bleed in this whole thing. But I remember, you know, breaking down, So there’s basements in Maryland, so we’re breaking down the walls. Mm-hmm. and all that. Masks and everything, so, yeah. Yeah. But that’s as far as the tools go, the hammer is like the most fun, right?
Like it’s just smashing pound it. Right. Literally. Yeah. That’s pretty much the first tool I think we gave all of our kids, cuz it really is, I mean like the worst they’re gonna do realistically is hit their finger, which has absolutely happened . But yeah. And then it feels good cuz they can just like slam.
The hammer into the wall and help us break it down. That’s awesome. There you go. One of the things that we’ve chatted about before is, I love that you say you have some favorite F words, . That’s right. . Tell me a little bit about your motto and it comes to these favorite F words. Yeah, so to be honest, I actually don’t say the common effort very much at all.
It just happened to become a theme in like the things that I was posting about, and it’s family, fun, faith, fitness, food. Finances, freedom and fulfillment and it just became a thing. So I enjoy writing until this day. I never did it too professionally, I guess, if you wanna call it that. But I ended up starting a blog and it’s efforts are my favorite.com, and I just started writing about these themes and gives some people, you know, some food for thought or it’s just me, or it could just be me putting it out there, whatever’s in my mind, just putting pens of paper.
I love that we are going to take a quick break, but when we come back, stay tuned. We’re gonna play a speed round of this or that with Gianna and learn a little bit more about her. And we are also going to hear her expert advice on how not only you can incorporate some of these F words. Into your busy, hectic schedule as you are receiving the benefits of a day job while growing your side hustle, and how Gianna can help you do that right?
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It is a quite literally this or that. Would you? Either a burger or a hot dog burger. Would you either chocolate or vanilla ice cream, vanilla cake or pie. Lots of food questions. Cake. Cake. What’s your favorite cake? Birthday cake. Confetti. Like the tea bottle of all day. It everything. Just throw everything into one cake.
I love that. I have come to enjoy in very small doses. Birthday cake, ice cream. Oh yes. Can be really good with just a, It’s like just a nice added touch of sweet to plain vanilla. Mm-hmm. tea or coffee? Coffee. Do you take anything in your coffee or are you a drink it black? No, I actually have coffee flavored sugar and milk is what?
What? I drink . If I drink anything. Wait, coffee flavored sugar? Yeah, like it’s just, I’m saying it because I put so much cream and so much sugar and that it’s not even coffee anymore. At that point I figure, I’m like, Wait a minute, share with me who is making coffee flavored sugar, and where can I buy it?
That’s, I have to invent that one day. That’s her next project. I just gave her her next business. That’d probably be very popular actually. Would you rather be a ninja or a pirate? Ooh, ninja. Hit question. A ninja. Yeah, you sh You would be a ninja because you’re gonna be a ninja on your dirt bikes with your kabobs.
right? She’ll be a kaba serving ninja. Would you rather wear flats or heels flats? Would you rather do a kitchen renovation or a bathroom renovation? Kitchen? Kitchen. Same. I don’t know anybody who had actually answered that question. Bathroom bathrooms are so boring. . Yeah. Yeah. Bedrooms would be more fun.
More of the, I wish I had more of the design aspect of it. Mm. It’s kind of like I call my sister and I say, You know what? What looks good? ? Yeah. Yeah. And then you just. She’s swinging hammers and these are the power tools. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Sometimes I actually enjoy the design piece more than the actual DIY piece.
When you do it long enough, there’s certain DIY aspects that I’m just like, Oh my gosh, can we hire somebody to do this , I’ve done this too many times. I just wanna do the fun DIY now. That’s true. But you know, it’s a good question that you ask bathroom and kitchen though, because those are the two. I think that once you renovate them, it really makes the house pop more than anything else with the counters does and the fixtures.
Yeah. Well, and bathrooms are such, Yeah, they’re two very like utilitarian rooms. You use them all of the time. Arguably even more than a bedroom. Consciously using them, I should say. So let’s talk about day hustle. Let’s talk about your book, your expertise, your passion with this company, and I’m reading from their actual website, but the idea is to basically, Transition from this nine to five grind and make your side hustle your primary source of income.
And in this book and in your business, you are laying out a step by step plan for people to actually quit their day job while keeping their salary and benefits. A lot of people’s ears are perk up. They’re like, How are they proposing this is done? So share with us ultimately how this is being done. Sure.
Well, it all started from where I was coming from. As I mentioned, we wanted to get out of being an employee, but job security, right? How do you give up that steady paycheck? How do you give up the health insurance where parents, obviously, and how do you risk everything that we’ve built and worked for till now?
And so I literally was thinking, I wanna. Be an author. I wanna be a published author, but I wish somebody would pay me to do that as the steady salary. It’s not a steady salary, obviously, to be a business owner. And so in the spirit of giving away first what you want, which is something that I’ve heard before, but never really grasp the concept, I said, Well, okay, well what if we pay people to do what they wanted rather than them being an employee and doing something, Whatever job responsibility it is to grow our company.
They get to grow their company. How would that work? So as investors and also wanting to start learning, in addition to investing in real estate, investing in businesses, we were learning about angel investing and venture capitalists and things like that. And those people invest in a business. So that the business can grow and scale so that money is typically used for business expenses, whether they need more marketing or operations or research development, what have you.
But we said, Well, what if the money we invest covers the person’s personal expenses? So their. Not having to worry about putting food on the table or having to go to the doctor in the middle of growing their business. And then that 40 plus hours a week that they’re putting for their day job, they can now actually put into the business.
So their side hustle surveys that say that the biggest challenge for. Side hustlers is time and growing their business. And I think absolutely this is our solution to that problem. And then, so if somebody’s interested, what kind of business models are being accepted, if you will, Like how does somebody qualify for being part of that program?
There’s no specific business model, I think to fulfill the purpose of being a day hustler, as we call it. Your salary that we’re gonna pay you has to cover your personal expenses. Mm-hmm. . So unfortunately, there are people out there that need two day jobs to cover their personal expenses, and then they really don’t have time to grow business.
Unfortunately, we’re not at that point yet. We need you to. Fully all in into your business, not distracted anymore about paying your bills to do that. But other than that, it’s an application process. And just like any kind of job interview, we’re gonna be evaluating you as a person. And in addition to your resume though, then we’ll be looking at information about your business.
What’s your business plan? Or how do you really intend to scale it? This 40 plus hours a week that you’re gonna put in this business now, what are you gonna do with that time to actually grow? . I love that. And then how exactly are you following up with those business? So let’s say somebody applies and you come up with with an agreement.
Ultimately then what is the future plan sort of as you move forward? Is there a timeline, like how long does that partnership last? How long do you kind of help pay them until they leverage this new business idea? Or can it be an ongoing business idea that can’t get off the ground? They don’t have the time.
Well, so we’re also looking for investors to become Angel employers with us, right? Mm-hmm. and angel investors, they stand to lose a lot of money because they put this lump sum into a business that they’re investing in, and they could lose it all. Well, the beauty with being an angel employer is that our.
Investment is cut down to biweekly salaries, and then with the salary, then we’re able to work with the founders week after week, month after month and say, Okay, you know what? Your business isn’t growing. Based on the plan that you’ve proposed, you know, or this or that. And obviously we’re here investing in people and we wanna make it work for them and we wanna accelerate their business.
So we wanna be able to see if there’s any resources that we can provide. Is there someone else that could help them, that we can connect them with? I think we could really create a community and a big network to help each other. I love that. And then Maya, of course my business mind is turning. How do you then, ultimately, how does this profit for you?
Yeah, that’s a valid question. So we obviously are investing something and we’re looking for a return on that. Mm-hmm. the. Percent of return, obviously depends on what your salary is compared to what your starting business profits are and where you need to be. The goal is though, and you talked about timeframe, is that we’re going to set it up so that once you retire from day hustle, your business profits is not only covering your salary, but it’s gonna cover whatever costs or whatever profit that we’re gaining, so it’s not coming out of your pocket.
If that makes. It’s all clearly laid out in the book. I think you need to kind of see it to really fully grasp, but especially numbers, at least I am like that. Yeah, Yeah. But we try to be very clear in the book. Yeah. So the book is basically the manual, if you will, to basically read through the program.
Yeah, it is, yeah. Because as the creator of Angel Employment, this is a brand new concept. Right. And so that’s the reason why I wrote the book. Mm-hmm. and because it’s a new concept, is actually a prerequisite to applying. It makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I apologize guys. Usually I have the book here and I can like open it and show, but we wanted to get her on here and so I did not actually get the book in person.
But I’m very excited to go through it once I do get it. And if you are encouraging somebody like they buy this book, they’re really interested, give me a couple key points in the book that you want them to sort of mentally prepare for. If you. When they go through the book, like how should somebody be reading it?
What should their mindset be as they’re going through it, thinking about their own business and how it could apply. I. It sounds too good to be true. Mm, Right. So I think going into the book with an open mind and then reading my stories and you know, the thought process that I was going through and everything, I think that’s gonna help you see that.
Wow, you know what? This can happen and. I try not to sugar coat it. I don’t think it’s easy to be successful, so I try to put in some stories and anecdotes and qualities that I think would help somebody be successful. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you possess all of these, but it’s something obviously that you can work towards and work on.
And what I’m finding is, I’ve been talking to people, obviously as the book was launching, they were asking me questions already, and there’s some people that aren’t there yet. They don’t know maybe what their passion is yet, and I truly believe that if we invest in somebody, I would love to invest in somebody that’s, this is their dream, so we could be connecting them with a life coach or a business coach and get them to that point.
I. Believe that I’m qualified to help somebody conquer fear in the philosophical way. This book is to eliminate what you’re afraid of in the first place. In this scenario, losing that job security, this is meant to eliminate that. But if fear holds you back, I try to put in the tools that I use to conquer fear.
That’s beautiful. I love the entire concept of it is, Thank you, is so powerful. Where can people find you and what else do you want them to know? Well, so you can find me on Instagram. I’m at GM Ramani Official. It’s funny how many GM Ramani are out there. That is so fascinating. I would not have guess that.
I know. Um, so we, there’s not that many though, G Ramani who are out there with their motocross bikes and their kabobs and , Phil, in the blank. So you are one of a kind. There’s really. Any other G Ramani like this one. So take that Instagram. Thank you . Thank you. Yes. You can also find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook under my name, and then you can go to day hustle book.com.
That one is actually, you know, it’s a good book description, but it’s also gives my bio and it has links in it. So it’s a pretty easy stop shop there. If you wanna go to that day Hustle book dot. That’s awesome. Day Hustle book.com g Ramani. We’re gonna have all these of course, on the show notes@hammersandhugs.com.
And I did just wanna put a word out there, we’ve been like pausing this interview several times. She is in Florida, of course the hurricane just happened at the time of this recording, and it has been storming and raining here for the last three days, and there’s been some audio crackling. So I apologize.
I am not sure if that is going to record or not, but I just wanted to mention that you do apologize for that. What can you do about weather? ? Can’t do it. Nothing, Anything about it. My book launch went through the hurricane and everything. That’s true. Oh my gosh. It’s crazy. I stopped being able to text back and forth.
I don’t know where our conversation s left off with people, but hopefully the crackling will go through in your recording. Yeah. Well, and if it does, just keep listening. . There you go. Just listen. Anyway. Well it is so worth it, so worth it. You need to check out Day Hustle. Buy the book, check it out. I love this idea of eliminating the fear of job security because I mean, that is so valid.
I certainly have my own story. So you are already blessing many. I have no doubt. And this business is truly, it’s gonna change lives and the impact may be more than you’ll ever know, cuz it’ll just compound. On itself. Thank you. So thank you for your vision and your ministry. Really. Oh my goodness. I just hope that we can get the word out, and I appreciate people like you, Anna, for letting us do that.
It’s really a message and an opportunity that we believe in, that we really wanna help people just get over those golden handcuffs. Like, you know, it was such a struggle for me. Yeah. Well, I pray Gods were just blessing over everything that you’re doing. Your family, your boys who are not so little . Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Imperfectly Empowered Podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts from today, head to your preferred podcasting platform, and give the show an honest review and let me know what you think. Remember, you cannot be redefined, only redeveloped, one imperfect day at a time.
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