⚡ Quick Answer
The Side Hustle Summit was a free virtual event from Iman Gadzhi and Russell Brunson, September 6 to 13, 2026: five one-hour live sessions on building an AI-powered side hustle from zero. That edition has ended and registration is closed, with no next edition announced yet. This review covers what the five sessions actually delivered, for anyone deciding whether to watch for a future edition. Score: 8.3/10.
What was the Side Hustle Summit?
The Side Hustle Summit was a free online event where Iman Gadzhi and Russell Brunson taught beginners how to build an AI-powered side hustle across five live sessions. It ran September 6 to 13, 2026, and that edition is now over. The registration page has come down, and no next edition has been announced.
Free launch events are everywhere, and most reviews of them either gush or sneer. Neither helps you decide whether the format was worth the hype. Below: what the five sessions actually contained, what can be verified about the two men who taught them, and whether it is worth watching for a future edition.
Dates, format, and what a ticket cost
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Dates | September 6 to 13, 2026 (sessions on Sep 6, 7, 8, 9, and 13) — this edition has ended |
| Time | 1pm Eastern, about 1 hour per session |
| Format | Virtual, live, accessible from anywhere |
| Price | Free (name and email to register) |
| Replays | Were available within 24 hours for registrants during the event window |
| Hosts | Iman Gadzhi and Russell Brunson |
The calendar shape was worth noting for anyone judging a future edition on the same format. Four sessions in a row, then four days off, then a live build on the 13th.
Most launch events run five straight days and bank on momentum carrying you to the pitch. This one gave attendees a few days to sit with the material before watching the hosts build something live. That gap is where material either sticks or does not, and it is a smarter structure than the one-week sprint most of these events default to.
What the five sessions covered
- Session 1: the best side hustles to start in 2026, and how AI changed which ones make sense
- Session 2: building your first AI-powered side hustle, step by step
- Session 3: untapped digital opportunities for people starting from zero
- Session 4: Russell Brunson on offers, funnels, and the frameworks from his books
- Session 5: a live follow-along build, where the hosts constructed a side hustle on screen
The stated audience was complete beginners: no experience, no audience, no startup capital. If you already run an online business, most of it would have been familiar ground, and session 4 alone would have been the strongest draw.
The hosts, and what can actually be verified
This is the part that made us look properly instead of filing it with the rest of the free launch events. Iman Gadzhi started a social media agency as a teenager, built it into IAG Media, and turned the lessons into education businesses that made him one of the most-watched business creators anywhere, with a YouTube audience near 6 million. Our full profile of who Iman Gadzhi is separates what can be verified from what is marketing.
Russell Brunson co-founded ClickFunnels, the software that made sales funnels a household word in online business, and wrote DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets. We have reviewed his world in depth before: our ClickFunnels review covers the software, and our One Funnel Away Challenge review covers his best-known training. Whatever you think of launch events, these were not anonymous guru accounts.
What Made the Week Worth Attending
The organisers put a number on the promise: a challenge to build a “$373/day” side hustle, with $55.6M+ in tracked sales from people who ran the system. Those were the company’s own figures and its strongest cases, not a typical result.
The number was never the reason to show up. Nobody was handed $373 a day for watching five videos.
The real decision was smaller and much easier to make: could five hours show you one opportunity you could actually execute?
What made that plausible was the format. Attendees watched two people who had already built these businesses make the small decisions on screen, which offer, which traffic source, what to cut and when. A course gets edited afterwards. A live build does not, and the unedited version is usually where the useful detail leaks out.
What You Keep After the Week
The frameworks taught do not expire because the stream ended. What someone wrote down in session two about choosing an offer works exactly the same today.
That is the case for treating this as a real learning event rather than a launch to skip: five days of momentum, with two operators making decisions on screen while attendees watched them do it.
Pros and Cons
✅ Pros
- Was genuinely free, no card required
- Two hosts with long, publicly verifiable track records
- Built for absolute beginners, no capital or audience assumed
- Live build session showed the work instead of describing it
- Replays within 24 hours if you missed a session
- One hour per day was a realistic commitment
❌ Cons
- Live sessions ran at 1pm Eastern, so some time zones leaned on the replays
- Built for beginners, so experienced marketers would have recognised a lot of it
- Five sessions across eight days, and it only paid off if you actually showed up
- One clear method taught properly, rather than a survey of every option
- No next edition announced yet, so there is nothing to register for right now
Our honest reservation was never the teaching, it was the volume of the marketing around it. The $373 a day framing and the $55.6M in tracked sales were the company reporting its best cases, and they were loud enough that a careful person could read them and assume the whole thing was smoke.
The actual content held up without needing that volume. Five hours, no card, two people you could look up. That is the version of this event worth remembering if a future edition gets announced.
Still deciding whether this whole category is for you? We wrote a separate, host-neutral guide on AI side hustles that actually work, covering which patterns hold up, which ones are saturated, and the resale structure worth avoiding before you spend anything.
Weighing this against other models? We scored the five main online side hustles on capital, risk, income ceiling and distribution, and explained why one of them fits someone with a job and no spare cash.
No capital to start with? That is a constraint on which business you pick, not on whether you can. We covered it in how to start an online business with no money.
Who Would This Have Suited?
Maybe you have been meaning to start something online for months, and every option you look at seems to need money you do not have, an audience you have not built, or a skill you would have to go and learn first. That was the person this event was designed around, from the beginner-level sessions down to the price.
It would also have worked for anyone who already follows either host and wanted to see how they teach live rather than in edited videos.
It would have been a weaker fit for anyone already running a funnel-based business. Start with our One Funnel Away review instead, which covers Russell’s structured program in more depth.
Was the Side Hustle Summit worth it?
Yes, for the audience it targeted. The math was simple: five hours of live teaching from two people whose track records you could check, for free, with replays. Some people searched for this as a side hustle marketing summit, and that framing was accurate too, since the marketing frameworks in session 4 were the most broadly useful content in the week.
If a future edition is announced, our advice would be the same as it was this time: block the week and show up for the live build on the final day, even if you watch the rest on replay. That session is the one that justifies the format.
Worst case, five hours were spent learning that this route was not the right one, which is worth knowing and considerably cheaper than finding out after buying a course. If you are weighing whether the whole thing was trustworthy in the first place, our companion piece on whether the Side Hustle Summit was legit goes deeper on exactly that question.
Related Reading
While there is no live edition to register for, two of our guides cover the same ground you would have applied after the summit: the five online side hustle models compared and how to start an online business with no money.
Specifically curious about the AI angle rather than side hustles in general? The AI Business Summit, hosted by Alicia Lyttle, ran September 30 to October 2, 2026. You can still get the full recordings on the official page as a $67 Replay Pass, and we cover it in our full review.
One payment of $67 · All 3 days recorded · Watch at your own pace
FAQ
When is the Side Hustle Summit?
The 2026 edition ran September 6 to 13, with five live online sessions at 1pm Eastern on September 6, 7, 8, 9, and 13. That edition has concluded and registration is closed. No date for a future edition has been announced.
Was the Side Hustle Summit really free?
Yes. Registration took a name and an email, no card, and all five live sessions cost nothing to attend. Replays were included for registrants, so missing a day did not cost you the content while the event was live.
Who hosted the Side Hustle Summit?
Iman Gadzhi, who built a social media agency as a teenager and now runs an education company with an audience of nearly 6 million YouTube subscribers, and Russell Brunson, co-founder of ClickFunnels and author of DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets.
Was the Side Hustle Summit a scam?
No. The event was real, the hosts are two of the most verifiable names in online business, and attending cost nothing. The income figures on the registration page were the company’s own best cases, and the frameworks taught in the sessions were what you walked away with.
Is there a replay or a next edition of the Side Hustle Summit?
The official registration page for this edition is no longer live, and no replay or waitlist is currently offered. No next edition has been announced. If that changes, this page will be updated with the details.
Related reviews
How this review was made: we read the official page and checkout ourselves, verify prices, dates and recurring charges at the source, and never repeat a figure taken from another review site. Read our full review methodology and affiliate disclosure.