Ruby Lee: [00:00:00] The social media aspect we have, we're in a generation like never before, giving us almost just like we're able to plug straight into the matrix, you know. We're able to just say, "Yes." Like, "This is how I want to show up to the world." You're the only person holding you back.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:19] Welcome to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room, a podcast where we provide insights, tips, and inspiration for college students and young professionals, so they can make a really successful transition from college life to the professional world and beyond.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:37] My name is Andy Molinsky, and I'm your host. I am also a Professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University's International Business School, where we record and produce this podcast.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:57] Okay. So, our guest today is Ruby Lee, who's an online side hustle business coach from Melbourne, Australia. After side hustling for almost four years, she developed what she calls the Own Your Hustle Movement in 2018. There are many people around the world who gather to listen from Ruby about how to launch an online business, grow a personal brand on social media, generate long-term diversified income streams, even while working full time. And there's much more to Ruby, but you're going to hear it yourself. And I just wanted to introduce Ruby. And thank you so much for for being on the podcast.

Ruby Lee: [00:01:36] Thank you so much for having me, Andy.

Andy Molinsky: [00:01:38] I'm so excited. So, tell us a bit more about what you do. What's your business? What's your job. You've got a very interesting, unusual job. Tell us about it.

Ruby Lee: [00:01:48] My job today involves speaking and working with side hustlers all around the world. Now, most side hustlers that work with me either straight out of college or university, as we say in Australia, or they have been working in their corporate jobs for anywhere between 5 to 10 years and realizing that they're wanting a little bit more. They're wanting to stretch a little bit more in their career. They wanted to see if there are other options out there for them.

Ruby Lee: [00:02:16] And it's so much fun because in that process, you get to really work with those that want to search for purpose and want to search for the things that perhaps they were always meant to do, but they just fell down this pathway of ticking boxes, and checking things, and having to do things a certain way. And it's almost just a finding of themselves again. So, I help them do that. I help them set up a tangible business online. And mostly, a lot of the work I do is about growing personal brands on LinkedIn. I am such a big believer in LinkedIn as a platform, and it's come such a long way. And then, I help my side hustlers set up an online business, mostly through training and coaching or becoming speakers and authors. So, lots of fun. And it's very empowering to be able to do that as my job.

Andy Molinsky: [00:03:08] So, actually, I imagine that most people know what a side hustler is. But for those who don't, can you explain exactly what that is?

Ruby Lee: [00:03:18] Yeah. I still get a lot of questions, "What exactly is the side hustler?" I've never heard of this term before. And it used to surprise me, but, now, I'm thinking, "Okay. Well, I think there's certainly different definitions of a side hustle." So, I'm glad you asked. Now, there's one definition which is very much of, well, a side hustle is just about earning secondary income to help you supplement your 9:00 to 5:00 if you're not earning what you want to be earning at this stage. Typically speaking, that manifests in the form of an Uber driver or like a part-time job of some kind.

Ruby Lee: [00:03:53] The side hustles that I work with that I'm talking about are those that are heart-centered. They're purpose-driven. They're born from a place where there's an interest, like there's a spark of interest that you know is more than just an interest. It's something that you have something to give back to the world. And so, a side hustle, usually, is when you're working something on the side of the side business, whilst you have something else taking the primary spot of your day job or your time commitment. So, in some cases, it's college. In some cases, it's raising a young family. In some cases, it's a 9:00 to 5:00 job. And then, the net time that you have left over - i.e. the time that you might be spending either watching Netflix or going out to drinks with your friends - you would instead be spending that time on cultivating a business of some kind.

Andy Molinsky: [00:04:45] Is that business related to like — I guess this is part of what you do, but how do you find out a business that's viable and that would be interesting to people? Is that part of your process?

Ruby Lee: [00:04:57] It's part of my process, but a lot of it is, also, I would say going with the flow. So, firstly starting with what really interests you that might not yet be a part of your day to day. So, it's not part of your day job, it's not part of what you get to have in terms of your life every day, but you know that there's more interests out there. Now, the way to look at this is, what are you YouTubing? What tutorials have you got out there that you're reading about every day? What blogs are you reading? What newsletters are you subscribe to? And why is that sparking interest in you?

Ruby Lee: [00:05:36] So, I think it begins with that. And I've listened to some of your previous episodes before, Andy. And I think some of the themes in there are the entrepreneurs who have gone on to create awesome products and incredible services have almost accidentally fell into it. It's almost just been a,  "Oh well, I'd never meant to start it as a business, but I just was interested in it, and it became this business." So, kind of for me, I really resonate with that aspect of beginning a side hustle.

Andy Molinsky: [00:06:07] So, tell us a bit about where you went to college, what you studied, and then I'd love to kind of move from there to where you are now and what you're doing. So, tell us about college.

Ruby Lee: [00:06:20] So, I went to university. And at 18, I had no idea what I wanted to study. I had reasonably good grades. So, luckily, I could have a choice, but I went with Business Commerce because I feel like that's, sometimes, what people pick when they're not sure what to do. So, I went into Business Commerce. And I did this for three and a half years, I graduated from that, and I ended up scoring a job in one of the top four banks in Australia.

Ruby Lee: [00:06:52] So, that was really fantastic, went through that, and then I went back into college and I studied a master's in Human Resources. I wanted to switch my niche slightly from banking and finance into HR. So, I went back to university and did that for another couple of years, requalified into human resources, and started my long-term career in executive recruitment. So, I ended up working with some of Australia's largest brands, retail brands, insurance brands. I was leading large teams of recruiters, and I ended up also being the holder and the person that was heading up a lot of graduate recruitment. So, it came sort of full circle working with graduates and college students and helping them find their first jobs with the brands that I was partnered with.

Andy Molinsky: [00:07:46] And so, were you happy? Did you like it? Tell us. Bring us from there to now.

Ruby Lee: [00:07:54] Okay. So, when I graduated, I was lucky enough to find this grad role at one of the top four banks in Australia. And I thought, "Man, I've made it. I've made it. I've made something of myself." And I still very clearly remember walking through the marble hallway my first day at work, and I just thought, "This is awesome. I've done it." And I got into that first meeting with our graduate mentors and whatnot. And I remember, I was partnered up with the manager that was looking after my graduate rotation, so we can rotate every three months through different parts of the business. This manager sat down with me, gave me one look, up and down, and went, "You do realize that you're not going to be a manager in this place until you have a few grey hairs on you. So, let's just dial down that enthusiasm, and let's get you to work," and sent me to the photocopier to bind your a bunch of different board papers. And I still remember that moment thinking, "Oh my gosh. I've worked so hard at university, and I'm photocopying."

Ruby Lee: [00:09:05] And so, there was this real moment of going, "Okay, I get it. All right. I'm starting from the beginning. It's okay. This is what I work towards, and I'm going to prove myself. I'm going to do really really well." And so, began this decade-long journey of always wanting to please management and always wanting to work towards something that, in all honesty, Andy, sometimes, I actually didn't even know what I was working towards. It felt like an energy of status, but, ultimately, I think, it was just being in the game. And as they say, like you're just sort of spinning the wheels because once you get in it, it's almost like, "Well, what a shame to sort of get off the hamster wheel and whatnot." So, I just you know did that.

Ruby Lee: [00:09:47] And was I happy? I think I was. Ultimately, I made great friends, and I had a thriving career, I was promoted often, defying what that first manager said to me By the way, I did make it into management without any gray hairs. Thank you very much. But ultimately, there was still something that was missing. I felt like I was always searching for something that would really make me happy in my career. As I mentioned earlier, I switched from banking finance into HR. I loved working with people. The hearts of people, and being able to understand their motivations, and things like organizational psychology, behavioral science, I loved getting into their mindset, what made them tick. And I think the ironic thing was I couldn't really solve that for myself, what made me tick. And it wasn't until I actually discovered that I really wanted more in terms of creativity, it wasn't always the money, but I wanted more in creativity. I wanted to be stimulated more from an intellectual perspective. And sometimes, at work, it was just more about the doing rather than the learning.

Ruby Lee: [00:11:01] And so, with all of that in mind, I recognized that I had to do something outside of work to quench that's thirst. Like my employer wasn't there to fix that for me or to make that happen for me. I could actually become a co-creator in my own career, and I could actually make some of these things come to life. So, hence, why I started my own side hustle, which was a blog at the time. And yeah, I think, at that point, I started to get really happy with my career because I had thriving business career, a thriving career in business, and also my own little side business that I got to play with in my own time.

Andy Molinsky: [00:11:38] It's an interesting story, and I think to myself about my own career and talking with others about their careers, a lot of students, a lot of young professionals. How do you know that— it's sort of a weird question, but how do you know that you're not happy? Because what are the signs? It's sort of a simple thing to say, but it might be a hard thing to really know.

Ruby Lee: [00:12:02] Yeah. And I think I really searched for this too because I wasn't sure whether I was happy or not. And nowadays, I can identify. As they say, hindsight's 20/20, and you look back at your career, you look back at what you've done in college, and you think, "Yes, I'm so happy because everybody else around me is so happy for me." And then, when you start thinking about, "Yeah, but does that actually really help you feel completely fulfilled?" then, I think, that that's an indication.

Ruby Lee: [00:12:31] But I like looking at it from a three pillar perspective. So, one is I believe to be truly happy and fulfilled in your career, there is the financial pillar. So, we want to be earning enough to live a lifestyle, pay the bills, go on holidays, buy nice things. Second pillar is, usually, to do with creativity. So, really wanting to create something in this world is so opportunistic. We're able to create so much. If we're in a position, let's say, at work or in college, where you're told that you can only play within certain boundaries, we can often feel unhappy in that but not be able to identify why you feel unhappy. It's often usually linked to being more creative.

Ruby Lee: [00:13:21] And the third pillar, for me, is intellectual. So, if you're constantly learning, you're at college at the moment, you're just soaking all of this information in, it's fun, it's expansive. Once you get to work, sometimes, you lack that, right. You miss it, or you are learning things, but it's more on the very sort of practical side of things rather than learning about theories and other ways of thinking about life. And so, I think when you're in that position where you're able to create that, if your employers are giving it to you, if college isn't giving it to you, then look for other ways to find that ability to do so. And I believe in that, once you get those three pillars right, is where you find true happiness in your career.

Andy Molinsky: [00:14:08] Does that mean that every day will be happy, or is it sort of — like, again, how do you assess it? Like, now, it seems like you're pretty happy. Do you ever have any down days, any down moments? Tell us about that.

Ruby Lee: [00:14:21] Oh yeah. Those down days, I mean, look, especially in having your own business, and my business is service-based. It's coaching. A lot of what I do is on a day-to-day, I'm not to know what's to happen. It's not as though I have a product where I can have predictive models in place to know X amount of sales I'm bringing in, and all that sort of thing. It's very much like, well, I show up every day, and people might come to me and say, "Hey, I'm looking for a mentor, and I'm looking for a coach," but there are other days where it's very quiet out there, and it feels like no one's listening, and there's just tumbleweeds out there. It's like, "Hello," and it just echoes back at you.

Ruby Lee: [00:15:00] And those days are, I think, for me and my personality type, I'm very extroverted. I'm someone who really thrives around others. And when I have days where there's seemingly no one out there or no one's, I guess, commenting, or asking me questions, or those sorts of things, I feel like, "Oh, it's a bit lonely, a little bit sad." And I'm sure you guys have heard entrepreneurship can be very lonely. It's how you kind of balls of that. But most days, most days, I am extremely happy and fulfilled.

Ruby Lee: [00:15:34] I wasn't like this beforehand. Four or five years ago, I thought happiness was in a pay rise. I thought happiness was in possessions, like physical possessions. And every time I felt like, "Okay, well, I've leveled up, and I've got something else," or "I've upgraded my car, I bought a new house," it lasted for a little while. And then, it just kind of went back to, "Oh, but what's next?"  Nowadays, I live out of a suitcase. I'm a digital nomad. I have everything. Me and my family traveled together, and we had everything in three suitcases, and I have been the happiest I've ever been with less things. I'm experiencing more in life. The business is thriving. I'm making a lot more friends and connections. I think what you are from the inside is what you attract on the outside. And that fulfillment comes from — a lot of that fulfillment comes from an inner knowing that you're doing what you're meant to be doing.

Andy Molinsky: [00:16:36] So, you've worked with a lot of young professionals, people who've fairly recently graduated college. What misconceptions do you think college students have when entering the workforce?

Ruby Lee: [00:16:47] I think college students — I'm going to go back to my days where I was recruiting. I interviewed thousands of university grads and college students, and we'd only have a small amount of positions to offer. And the ones that made it through, I met them at the induction. We'd have big inductions. 180 people that would be inducted into the business. And a lot of the individuals that I met were extremely ambitious, extremely, I think, clear of what they want in their career path. And often, I think, the businesses that I worked for, they wanted that type. They wanted the type that was hungry for it and that just really wanted to achieve.

Ruby Lee: [00:17:33] But the misconception was once you were in the role itself, like I mentioned early with my own personal story, you start from the beginning. You're starting as a real supporter. You're starting with the tasks and the things that you might not particularly want to be doing. It's not as glamorous, it's not sexy, it's not a status-driven. And the misconception is that you get told that you get this amazing role, and you get to work on big projects in the beginning. The reality is it might not happen for another year or two. Sometimes, even three years.

Ruby Lee: [00:18:10] I go back in, and I see them a year later, once the grad program is over, and they get integrated into the business as a full-time employee, and a lot of them don't get pay rises or big pay rises. They don't get different status. And I see some of the college graduates feel really deflated. I've worked my butt off for a year, and I've done it all, and I studied so hard, and why am I still at this level? So, I think a lot of it is about, "Hey, if you really want it, sometimes, it's about the long-term play." So, the misconception is that you do really well at school, you get placed into something that is exactly what you wanted it. It's not always the case.

Andy Molinsky: [00:18:51] Do you think that — was there anything from college that ended up being useful for your career? I know you said you studied commerce, mostly because you weren't sure what else to study, which, by the way, is not unusual. You hear that a lot. I think in my day, actually, I majored in International Relations, which I think was the exact same thing. So, you—

Ruby Lee: [00:19:14] Sounds better.

Andy Molinsky: [00:19:14] Yeah. You majored in commerce, and then you went back for a -- was it a master's degree in Resources?

Ruby Lee: [00:19:20] Yes.

Andy Molinsky: [00:19:20] Yeah. Were there any nuggets, any bits or pieces from like the academic side of things that helped you, or was it more just sort of you kind of figured it out as you went along?

Ruby Lee: [00:19:32] Yeah. Oh, there was so — I had so many great college and university professors. And actually, one of the biggest nuggets was sitting down with my career advisor. So, at university, we get partnered with a career advisor just before we graduate. And I remember sitting down with him - his name was Simon - and he had this all-knowing look on his face, right. And he said, "I feel that you were going to go into the corporate world and do very well, but I feel that you're going to find an entrepreneurial side to you." Now, that just went right over my head. I just thought, "What are you talking about, Simon? I'm not starting my business. I'm not starting a business. Who does that?" 

Ruby Lee: [00:20:13] And I think back then, I had this sort of belief that you had to have a huge amount of capital to invest into starting a business, right. And it was before Instagram was even a thing. This is like 10 plus years ago, and before blogs were even a thing. And so, I only ever knew new business and entrepreneurship as product-based. You needed a high capital investment. You maybe even needed investors to help you get something off the ground. So, I was like, "What are you talking about?"

Ruby Lee: [00:20:41] And I still remember, he said to me, "Well, just have a thing about it. Just keep that in the back of your mind. Maybe you want to meet some entrepreneurs. And I can definitely connect you with that." That was a nugget that I think I completely missed because I was so -- I don't know. I was so driven towards the fact that I had to go down a certain path. The pathway that, often -- I think a lot of us can relate to this, family pressures, and you're told to kind of go down the same path because your parents had done that, and it was a proven path. So, go to college, university, get a good job at. hopefully, a well-known brand, and you're well on your way. Entrepreneurship was never on the cards in my family. I had zero entrepreneurs that in my own family. But Simon at uni, he had it, and he saw it. And I wish that I was still in contact with him because I'd love to go back down and say, "You were so right."

Andy Molinsky: [00:21:43] That's a great story. Now, let's talk about, sort of, like the mechanics of doing what you do. It sounds like you do a lot of work virtually. That's what a digital nomad is, right? You must have had to learn to use a lot of these tools. Are there some that are your favorites, your go-to tools? Tell us about the strategy you've kind of like learning a whole new system for creating a business.

Ruby Lee: [00:22:08] Oh yes. So, firstly, I'm completely self-taught. So, this is the journey I started. And this is the journey I went on to start the business that I have today. One is I started a blog on WordPress. So, I had to learn how to start that. And it was relatively easy. Just use the templates, right? Use the free account on Wordpress and started to get my message out there. My first side hustle was career coaching. So, I started to write about how to find your first job and how to write your résumé. So, it was very relative, given I also studied HR.

Ruby Lee: [00:22:42] Secondly, I started to grow my LinkedIn presence. So, LinkedIn at the time was very much an online resume. There was no video. You couldn't do anything cool with it. Just an online résumé, but I really started to connect with people on there. So, I started to connect with, let's say, college graduates or university students, and just asked them, "Hey, I'm putting together this blog," or "I write blogs. What do you mostly want to learn about when you're first entering the workplace?"

Ruby Lee: [00:23:10] And so, I used to get so many messages about, "This is my anxiety point. This is what I'm fearful of." And I would use their language to create blogs. And then, that was my second platform. Then, the third platform was actually starting to get courses out there or masterclasses. So, I started to create free online masterclasses. Back then, it was called webinars. So, six years ago, webinars is still a thing, but, nowadays, I call the masterclasses in my own business. But I started to create these free webinars, where people could register, they could ask me questions, and they loved hearing my aspect of things as a recruiter. 

Ruby Lee: [00:23:52] So, I used to get 70 people registered and 80 people registered to do that. I had to learn MailChimp, which was capturing email addresses. And once again, use the free account. That's the theme here, guys, how we spent to stop my side hustle. So, use the free account, started to capture emails. And before I knew it, I had over a thousand people subscribed. And they would come to these webinars, and a portion of them would then go on to inquire about one-to-one coaching. So, that was, essentially, how I started my business. It was very organic, it was very much through social media, and it was done through — the webinar was done through Zoom. So, just like what we're using now to record this podcast. Use the free Zoom account as well, and I started to see a lot of growth and a lot of traction.

Ruby Lee: [00:24:44] And with that one-to-one coaching, which I also did through Zoom, I would gather what some of the most common questions were from my one-to-one sessions, and I used that to then create courses, bigger courses. And so, my courses were then run through systems that I did have to learn and play around with. So, the first system I used was Teachable. The second system I used was Kartra. So, they're the two that I have used extensively and through different parts of my business. And the way that I learned that was attending their webinars. The companies would have their own tutorials. I would stay up till midnight some nights because I'm still working on my 9:00 to 5:00. And a lot of the love tutorials will run during US time, which is always like the opposite side to the Australian time, but I would get up for it. I would wake up at 2:00 am, listen to the live training, ask questions, and all completely self-taught.

Ruby Lee: [00:25:45] And nowadays, a lot of the systems is so easy. They drag and drop. You can create modules within it. If you know how to toggle through a basic social media platform, it's not too hard to learn. But that has been my learning process, and it never stops. There's always new cool systems that come out to support online business owners. For those of you that are wanting to start online mentoring or online coaching, it is quite easy to learn once you get through and do some of the trainings. And a lot of it, like I mentioned, a lot of what I started was for free. I started my business for nothing. And then, once I started to invest a little , $500 here and there, I started to put towards my domain name. I hired one of my best friends to build my website for me. So, it began with a very small investment. And today, the business is doing so well still off that same website.

Andy Molinsky: [00:26:45] Great story. Let me wrap this up by asking you a question I've asked others in [indiscernible] question for you. If you could go back in time and give — so, you've been through a lot. You've been through almost — this is like your second career, in a sense.

Ruby Lee: [00:27:00] Yes.

Andy Molinsky: [00:27:00] If you could go back and give some advice to your 19 or 20-year-old college self, what would you tell that version of you, which I guess, really, is advice for people who are listening who are in that position today?

Ruby Lee: [00:27:16] Oh, easy. I wish, because I had this burning desire when I was 18 to 19 to start a YouTube channel, but I was too fearful of showing up, and I used to think, "Well, who would watch? And how boring?" Oh my gosh. If I'd started my YouTube channel over 10 years ago, I could just imagine what it would be like now being able to have a fully fledged business, personal brand would be way out there. And for any of you guys that are thinking, "Oh, I don't know how to really show up on social media," that's a big thing. And not show up in the sense of just posting silly videos but showing up from a personal branding perspective to, essentially, grow your career, grow your side hustles. And if you're too afraid to show up on camera, sometimes, it's just about moving past that, just shifting past all of those excuses, and doing it right. So, that's what I would've told my 19-year-old self. The social media aspect we have, we're in a generation, like never before, giving us almost just like we're able to plug straight into the matrix. We're able to just say, "Yes. This is how I want to shop to the world." You're the only person holding you back. That's what I'd say to my 19-year-old self.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:32] And what do you think your 19-year-old self would tell you back?

Ruby Lee: [00:28:36] I think if I sort of showed up from the future and said, "Look at this," it's almost like that moment, like back to the future with the almanac, I think she'd be like, "Okay, cool. I'm just going to do it. Fine. Let's start it," because I was almost there. I was almost there and I just chickened out. At some point, I was like, "No." I talked myself out of it. So, yeah, I think she'd be grateful.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:58] You just need that nudge.

Ruby Lee: [00:29:00] Yes, exactly.

Andy Molinsky: [00:29:02] All right. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. Now, if people are interested in learning more about you, your work, your business, becoming part of what you do, can you tell us how we can find you?

Ruby Lee: [00:29:14] Yeah, sure. So, my Instagram handle is @_rubylee_. And I also have a free Facebook group called Own Your Hustle. So, there's thousands of side hustles in there, lots of them are actually straight out of university and college. So, come and join.

Andy Molinsky: [00:29:29] Great. Thanks again for being on today.

Ruby Lee: [00:29:31] Thank you so much, Andy. So much fun speaking with you.

Andy Molinsky: [00:29:35] Thank you for listening to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room. If you're interested in learning more about the work that I do in helping people step outside their comfort zones and transition successfully into the professional world, please visit my website, www.andymolinsky.com. That's A-N-D-Y-M-O-L-I-N-S-K-Y dot com. And also feel free to email me directly at andy@andymolinsky.com with any feedback or ideas for guests for future podcasts.

Andy Molinsky: [00:30:06] This podcast is brought to you by Brandeis University's International Business School. By teaching rigorous business, finance, and economics, connecting students to best practices and immersing them in international experiences, Brandeis International Business School prepares exceptional individuals from around the globe to become principled professionals in companies and public institutions worldwide. Thank you so much for listening.