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Lemonada.

What if your biggest career disappointment could lead to your most successful business venture?

That's exactly what happened to Joe Maelano, a cancer researcher who turned a failed grant

application into a homemade gen kit business that sold 75,000 units and changed his life completely. Also, it's probably a lot more than

75,000 units. That's the number that we had a few years ago. I wrote a book called side hustle from

idea to income in 27 days. It's available wherever books are sold, including an audio version.

And that's the template that we're using for this series. I'm going to take you through the key steps of starting a new hustle in 2025 or whenever you're listening, along with listener stories and examples like this one. And for the first half of the year, we went through the 27 steps in the book. In the second half, we're looking at more detailed case studies so you can understand how people apply this framework. This was a pretty cool story. This guy,

Joe Mayayano, he spent years as a dedicated cancer researcher. He was pursuing grants, conducting

studies that he hoped would contribute to life-saving treatments. So his work was meaningful,

but sometimes it was financially unstable. It was dependent on grant funding that was increasingly competitive and difficult

to secure. Also, sometimes you would apply for a grant and not hear back for six months,

so you don't know what's going to happen. Do you have any income you can rely on, etc.

The breaking point came when his latest grant application was rejected, leaving him without

funding for his research and facing an

uncertain future in academia. He was 35 years old, found himself questioning whether the traditional

academic path would ever provide financial security. So he was like, well, what else can I do?

...