Sydney man quits law job as resume writing side hustle hits $400k

He was tired of the corporate grind and stumbled upon an idea that soon earned him even more money than his day job.

A Sydney man has quit his job in law after his side hustle outstripped his annual salary by almost four times the amount.

Andrew Chong, 27, was frustrated working the corporate grind for some time and was looking for a way out.

The aspiring entrepreneur had tried a dozen different side hustles over the years, from selling shirts, teaching dance lessons and offering marketing services to small businesses.

However, they all “failed pretty terribly,” he told news.com.au.

Unperturbed, Mr Chong, kept trying, determined to be his own boss one day.

“I never really envisioned myself taking orders very well,” he explained. “At some workplaces and at others I realised I wanted to be able to have oversight over everything, influence the entire company.

“If you’re a team member with 30 other people, your input is one thirtieth of what it could be.”

Then in March last year, the then-25-year-old stumbled upon a lucrative side hustle that has netted him $400,0000 in the preceding 18 months and he now has a team of 15 working under him.

Andrew Chong is making more money from his side hustle than his job in law.

With more time on his hands during Australia’s national lockdown in March 2020, Mr Chong signed up to Fiverr, a global freelance services marketplace.

He offered to write resumes for jobseekers, which he did in his spare time after clocking off his day job as a legal officer.

“It [the resume writing] was in the background for a long time, I had my profile up, no activity for a month or so, then it started blowing up,” he recalled.

Around mid-2020, he was slammed with resume requests, starting from a base rate of $50.

“That period was wild, sometimes I wouldn’t sleep for two or three days,” Mr Chong said.

“When I see potential I really have to sacrifice stuff, I was working full-time, trying to balance things.”

Mr Chong said for the first 50 clients, he “made sure they were the happiest they could be” and gave it his all.

As a result, the Fiverr algorithm prioritised him and soon more orders were piling in.

Mr Chong has had more than 3000 jobseekers ask for him to write their resumes.

Soon Mr Chong soon found himself “overwhelmed” with the workload.

“My plan was crazy, [it] was to keep doing orders by myself until I couldn’t handle it,” he said.

Finally, he enlisted the help of friends.

“I told them to come to my place, told them to write resumes,” he said.

Now, he has 15 people working under him. Some have knowledge in different fields, including accounting, medicine and of course, law.

But Mr Chong insists that you don’t have to be an expert in the jobseeker’s industry to help them.

“I find that everyone’s work history is still a work history, whether you’re in tech or law or sales,” he said.

“I personally have no tech background [but] I’ve helped the CTO [chief technology officer] of a US top 100 company.”

Mr Chong and his team have written 3000 resumes for customers spread across 85 countries.

Their client base mostly consists of US citizens followed by Australians.

Quitting his job

Of the $400,000 in revenue Mr Chong has raked in since starting this venture, half of that he can take home for himself.

The rest goes towards tax and paying his employees.

For his previous job in law, he was making $120,000 a year.

Mr Chong only left his corporate job three months ago, back in September.

“I was quite conservative about this [quitting]. I wanted to be disciplined in case it stopped working. My measurement was at least 200 per cent of my wage earnings came through [the new job].”

His resume writing side hustle made $100,000 in the last half of 2020. This year, it generated $300,000.

He reckons his business is on track to make the same amount next year.