I love exercise. Specifically, I love exercise as a metaphor for what I’m doing right now in this case study.

When you go outside for a run, it feels productive. Every extra step you take is a positive step towards a healthier future.

That first run, maybe you only go for a mile or two. Maybe it takes you 10 minutes to run that mile.

You feel good and wish you could skip to the point where you’re able to run a marathon. After all, you know what you have to do to get to that point: continuously run as much as you can until you’re able to run a marathon.

Sure, maybe you could buy expensive shoes or hire a coach. They might be able to save you a tiny amount of the work. Either way though, there’s no way around the fact that you need to run a lot of miles to get ready to be able to run the marathon.

One foot in front of the other, day by day, month by month, year by year. One foot in front of the other. All the while, we just want to skip to the end and be able to run the damn marathon.

I’m realizing this case study is exactly the same way. My marathon is making $10K a day at 30. Each day, I’m slowly putting one foot in front of the other by side hustling and working my day job.

I can see what my destination looks like. It’s owning a 500 rental units, a business, a couple of SAAS products. Building all of that from scratch is a marathon.

And the path together there is also clear. Continue doing this grind, day after day. As many clients as I can possibly manage without letting my performance at my day job suffer or my head exploding from going crazy.

One foot in front of the other, day by day by day.

What I did yesterday to make $10K a day at 30

The current phase of the plan

I’m in Phase #1:  The Job & Side Hustle Phase.  You can read more about the phases and my plan to get to $10K/a day at 30 here.

Wake up & sleep:

I slept okay, 7 hours and 15 minutes, waking up at 7:29 after going to bed at 11:36

My recovery score is great at 95%, which I completely believe because I woke up with a lot of energy. I think it was due to a Monday and having two days off to rest up and get better.

Exercise

I did some pushups, arms, abs, and assorted workouts during the day. That made me feel a lot better.

It’s absolutly a cycle. If I wake up feeling a lot of energy, I do more exercise, which makes me sleep better, then repeats.

Diet

Diet was coffee, eggs,  and a  salad for dinner. Overall,  probably 2/5 with 1 being the best.

Again, it’s a cycle. When I wake up with energy, then everything flows from there into a productive and healthy day.

My Day Job

It was a Monday. I had a meeting with my boss to show some work that I’ve been doing for the company. Overall, the boss was pretty happy with it and is excited about what I’m planning to work on next.

Here’s the thing though: the amount of time it took me to complete that work was really little.

In a crazy way, COVID has actually been really important for my consulting business. It’s allowed me to drop my day job hours down to ~1-2 hours a day. I don’t need to sit in the office for 8 hours pretending to work.

Investment real estate

I made some uptakes to Stessa, where we track our rental buildings.

Right now, we are in the hole several thousand dollars on the 7 unit. That property management team needs to step it up ASAP. Otherwise, we’re going to need to sell the building or keep taking a bath on it.

I’m not super happy with it all right now.

Side Consulting

I have a few projects going on now. Yesterday was focused on doing a few cleans up things across projects.

Business plan

Final wrap-ups here for a few hours. This project is going to lead to an extension at $5K/month, which is very much appreciated.

Private Equity

Still waiting to hear back from these guys.

Financial modeling

I didn’t do much here. I’ll need to do a TON ASAP.

Frameworking

I emailed over the frameworking piece here. This is important because, if I nail the meeting,  there’s a good chance I’ll get a significant project here.

Sourcing new work

I  heard from the former client that might want me to do som VOC work for him. VOC is “voice of customer”, which essentially means interviewing customers to understand what they like and don’t like about the service.

He said he thinks he’s going to hire me, but needs a bit more time. I  responded promptly and said: “sounds  great, let me know how  I can be  helpful.”

I think it’s extremely important to be very responsive when talking with both current and potential clients. It kills my work-life balance at the moment, but it’s also a contributing factor to how I sell work at such a high clip.

$10K/day website

Just publishing the daily post.

Family

My fiancee and I watched Bachelor together last night.

Miscellaneous

No updates right now on trying to move

Rescue Time Daily Screenshot

Standard day, perhaps a bit fewer hours than I expected to see.

What I made today

Job: $170

Rental Income: $33

UpWork: $0

Consulting: $275

My business: $0

Affiliate: Not doing yet

WordPress Maintenance Site: Not doing yet

Dividend Income: Not doing yet

Micro-SAAS’s: Not doing yet, 

Hotels: Not doing yet

Dividend Income: Not doing yet

Total: $478

Today’s pro-rated amount of monthly & yearly expenses

Expenses: $250

Once I pay off my debt, I’ll break out expenses into a line by line as well.

Today’s Income (pre-tax)

Made  $2288

My plan for tomorrow

Tomorrow is Tuesday and it’ll be a big day. I have to:

• Nail the framework conversation to get a bigger project out of it
• Build an entire financial model for  a client.

About the Author & The $0-$10K/Day Case Study

Dean’s goal is to create $10,000/day in passive income through entrepreneurship. Too many people write “success porn” that skates over the struggles many face in entrepreneurship. His goal is to create something real that highlights the lack of sleep, disappointment from family, and setbacks you really face in entrepreneurship.

To read more about how this case study is set up, check out the ground rules here.

The hope is that this series of posts will inspire someone else out there to make their entrepreneurship dreams happen.

Dean Woods is currently an executive by day and a bootstrapped micro-startup CEO by night. Prior to working in startups, Dean was a management consultant. Dean graduated with honors from The Wharton School.