← BiggerPockets Money Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript166 lines
- [00:00]
Scott Trench
Mindy and I are so grateful for the following sponsors who make BiggerPockets money possible. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting accounts and investments, your net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on your laptop or on your phone. Start your new year on the right foot financially and get 50% off your monarch subscription with the Code Pockets. With automated weekly money recaps and tracking progress toward future financial goals, it's easier than ever to stay financially fit in the short and long term. Monarch helps me be proactive instead of just reactive with my finances. Its AI tools are built on Monarch intelligence and get it right most of the time when auto categorizing most of my expenses. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code pockets@monarch.com that's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code pockets.
- [00:58]
Sponsor Voice
I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking you know what would make this more fun?
- [01:03]
Mindy Jensen
Calculating quarterly estimated taxes.
- [01:05]
Sponsor Voice
But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five star reviews from owners who say Found makes everything easier. Expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices, even. So, reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a Found account for free@found.com that's f o u n d dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member fdic. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates Fast? Easy. Just use Indeed when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking and it works. Sponsored jobs on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results in the minute, I've been talking to you. 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com biggerpockets just go to indeed.com biggerpockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com biggerpockets terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [03:06]
Mindy Jensen
Side Hustles can be great for earning extra income, but they can also be great at wasting your time for little in return. Today we're chatting with Nick Loper from side Hustle Nation about how to choose the right side Hustle for you. It doesn't matter if everyone you know is making bank, doing product representations and brand ambassadorships.
- [03:25]
Sponsor Voice
If you're an introvert, this probably isn't.
- [03:27]
Mindy Jensen
The right side hustle for you. Nick has tips for getting started, including a prompt template to help you gather your strengths in one place so you can feed it into your AI of choice so you can start exploring side hustles that might not be so mainstream but will be a perfect fit for you. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me, as always, is my former side Hustler co host Scott Trench.
- [03:57]
Scott Trench
Thanks Mindy, Great to be here. I've substituted side hustling for having arguments about bitcoin with random Internet strangers. We are so excited to be joined by Nick Loper today. He is the brains behind side hustlenation.com and the host of the side Hustle show where he talks exclusively about side hustles and how you can set yourself up for success. We did a recent podcast episode talking about how someone could go from broke at 50 to retired at 60, and one of our recommendations there was go listen to side Hustle Nation. Go listen to Nick's side Hustle show and sign up for the site and spend one hour a week, one way, on one drive of your commute. And we believe that you will earn not just the minimum hourly rate for like an Uber, a basic side hustle, but that you will have idea after idea germinate and you'll be making at least $10,000 per year if you apply yourself. Nick, welcome to Biggerpockets money. And do you agree with that assumption? Is that, is that a good pitch for why people should listen to the side hustle show?
- [04:52]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I appreciate that. Shout out. Absolutely.
- [04:55]
Scott Trench
From experience, how do we get honest about what the realistic potential of side hustling is for someone with a full time job? And what should people be looking for out of a side hustle, you know, in a realistic sense in the first year when they may not feel like they bring a lot of really unique skills to the table?
- [05:13]
Nick Loper
Yeah, we can dive into all of that, especially the skill side, because I really like that part of the conversation. But starting out, taking kind of an honest inventory of, well, what hours do I realistically have today to dedicate to this? Like, okay, if I'm working 8 to 5 plus commute plus kids, plus after school activities plus plus, plus, like how much is left? Right? And so you can kind of start with this time audit exercise. We all have dealt the same number of hours in a week, but it looks different for everybody. And you know, a friend of mine was like, I'm pretty sure my four kids hours per week looks a little bit different than, you know, a single 20 something person. So taking an honest inventory of where your time is currently going and saying, okay, could I realistically do half an hour in the morning before work? Could I realistically do half hour? And I kind of frame it that way like the bookends of your days, because where you probably have the most control over, over your own time before you start, like putting out fires and reacting to everybody else's agenda. And maybe I could do four or five hours, you know, one day on the weekend, and maybe it adds up to 10 hours a week. Right. It's kind of just as a ballpark, like being honest, first of all, like, what time do I have to dedicate to this? And then second, like, what is my dream scenario? Side hustle goal. Like, everybody's like, okay, I want to be able to quit my job. It's like, well, let's dial it back. And I think on a previous episode we talked about the side hustle snowball where it's like, could I cover my car payment? Could I cover my gym membership? Could I cover my cell phone bill? Right? There's little milestones, there's little wins along the way, but you got to make it meaningful enough for you to keep going when the times get tough or when you're like, I'm not seeing the results right away or have the motivation.
- [06:46]
Scott Trench
To see it through my hypothesis offices. Right? Let's take somebody who is really just starting out. We use this Persona, we call her Barb or Nancy depending on whether she has debt or not. She's been a stay at home mom for 25 years and is now terrified and starting out on the next phase of wealth building. Entry level job, 40 hours a week. We thought, hey, you're going to have to basically just grind it out. You're going to trade hours for dollars in the initial phases. And there's a number of relatively low skills options like Uber or dog walking or whatever that can get you started. Would you agree with that hypothesis? And then how would you suggest that this person begin the journey of identifying one of these future goals? Right at first it's just I need extra money. But then it becomes, I think something more and there are multiple options there. How would you frame that journey for us?
- [07:36]
Nick Loper
Yeah, you have to have kind of that both near term. What am I going to do today? And pair that with well, what does success look like three to five years from now? The plug and play type of apps that you mentioned, the rovers and the Ubereats and the doordashes, stuff like that's, that's a really good stopgap, like limited barrier to entry. It's a skill you already have. Like you can get started like this weekend, right. But your earning power is capped.
- [08:01]
Scott Trench
Right.
- [08:01]
Nick Loper
It's a skill that almost everybody has. So it's not particularly unique or like even Uber is like, well we're investing heavily in self driving cars. Like does, does this even exist in five years? You know, so there's that like what does success look like five years from now? Because we' tend to focus a lot on the, the downside risk of starting a business, of starting a side hustle. What if it fails? What if I look dumb? What if nobody cares this important because like you want to make sure you're not taking a swing that's going to bankrupt you, but playing for a swing that has a meaningful enough upside that that's a win. Right. It's like if you look at somebody else who's walked that path that you're considering and what does their life look like today? Are they still grinding 80 hour weeks or do they have a little more freedom and flexibility in their days?
- [08:45]
Scott Trench
Right.
- [08:45]
Nick Loper
That's kind of the, the benchmark that you can use. Okay, if I can reverse engineer what they did and apply it to my own situation, that would be meaningful. It's hard because you don't necessarily like try and advocate like you don't need to know steps two through 10, to be able to take step one, because it's like the analysis paralysis can be very real, but, like, trying to point the trajectory in a way that would be a big win for you.
- [09:07]
Scott Trench
I'm approaching it again with this lens of like an entrepreneurial mindset where 9 out of 10 businesses fail. So the obvious response to that is not to not try businesses, but to start 10 businesses.
- [09:18]
Nick Loper
Right?
- [09:18]
Scott Trench
And then one of them should succeed. Statistically, that's. That's how I bring it to the table. And I think that that goal is, is. Is for a lot of people when they start side hustling. Like when I'm 23, I did a bunch of side hustles. I was a tutor. I tutored this high school kid in math for a little bit. It was really terrible hourly rate because I had to drive there, get paid like $10 an hour or whatever it was, then drive home. It was a horrible rate. Although I liked, I liked him. And then, you know, there I drove for Uber. I started these businesses and none of them really worked until things did work right eventually. And that mentality is, I think what I'm trying to bring to the table here is you don't really know that goal. How do you pursue a path that either makes you much more per hour or provides you something much more fun or flexible? How do I think about that experimentation flow, which is probably what most people who go down the path of listening to your show? That's probably the evolution that most of them take to get to wherever they end up.
- [10:12]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I would argue that the tutoring and the Uber driving probably set you up, like kind of the mentality, like almost the identity of like, I'm a person who's willing to do the extra work, even if it's not like, okay, it wasn't a home run success in terms of becoming a million dollar business, but it was like almost this mental win. I'm able to earn money outside of a traditional job and like, that's really empowering for a lot of people. Does that make sense?
- [10:38]
Scott Trench
Of course, yes. And so the question is, like, I didn't do science behind that. I just like tried something and then tried the next thing. Nowadays we've got you. There's a science, there's a path. There's like hundreds and thousands of examples that you've pursued there. So how would someone start, like, take that first step, but then actually begin incrementally moving in a better direction, even if they don't have that goal defined yet?
- [11:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this is the. Probably the primary skill that separates the people who take action from the people who are, like, perpetually stuck on the sidelines. And year after year, I run the survey, and it's like half of the audience is like, almost this entrepreneurial voyeuristic. Like, they're like, oh, that sounds nice. And they're kind of like, they tell themselves they're waiting for that perfect idea, this, you know, inspiration to strike. It's like, there's no such thing as the perfect idea. The perfect idea is the one that you're, like, inspired enough, excited enough to take action on, to take that first step. A friend kind of likened it to your first move in. In a game of chess. Like, I'm just putting my pawn out into the world. I'm gonna see what kind of reaction it gets. So where I typically start is kind of this inventory of skills, interests, hobbies. Like, what have I gotten paid to do in the past? What do other people ask me for advice on it? We can get into the, you know, AI Assisted brainstorming sheet, but kind of where does my excitement lie if I'm looking for that type of side hustle with more upside potential than driving for Uber or something like that? That's kind of where I start. And then try and pair that with pains and problems. You could have the. Call it like the what sucks Notes app in my. My phone. Just, like, taking inventory of what other people are complaining to me about, what my spouse, partner, coworkers, like, what's annoying to them, or what do I find annoying? What pains or problems have I overcome in my own day to day? And trying to figure out, like, okay, is there a match here where there could be a business idea on the other side? We had a woman who built a business, a pooper scooper business, pet waste removal business. She's out, she's staring in her backyard, like, kind of dreading this chore. And then the light bulb goes on like, well, if it's a. If it's a chore for me, if it sucks for me, it probably sucks for other people too. Other people will probably be willing to pay to make this problem go away. And sure enough, they were. And like, when we recorded, she had 100 weekly recurring clients. And now she had other. A team of pooper scoopers going out and doing the work. And it was just kind of like that one, using that pain point exercise.
- [13:02]
Scott Trench
Smells like freedom. Thank you for the pity laugh here, Mindy. That actually might have been more than a pity laugh on that one.
- [13:09]
Mindy Jensen
No, that was funny.
- [13:10]
Scott Trench
Let's talk about that person, if we can. Or an example like that. This person. Did they start with that? Was that their first one, their first concept that they explored? Or was that the evolution after trying multiple other activities that that sucked, you know, frankly, and then got better over time like that? Then the idea for what would actually work as a side hustle appeared to them. How do they evolve to that point?
- [13:34]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I'm not sure. In her case specifically, we talked to another gentleman in a really similar business, and he's like, okay, I ran a garage door company or I ran a plumbing service. And it was kind of, you know, almost arrived at the same conclusion in a different way, where he's like, my wife was pregnant. We hired this, you know, pooper scooper service to come out. And I don't know why we're on the poop train, but that's just kind of top of mind for some reason.
- [13:59]
Scott Trench
Let's evolve to the ups and downs of the garage door business. Thank you, Mindy, again. Yeah, I appreciate your pity laugh there.
- [14:06]
Mindy Jensen
That was a pity laugh.
- [14:08]
Nick Loper
But in this case, it was like, look, my wife was pregnant. We didn't have time to deal with this, so we hired the service. But, you know, we never knew when the guy was showing up. He didn't have a uniform or anything. It was like the billing was really weird. It's like the barrier to this seems so low to do better than the existing operators. And so it's like, what if we just took an honest swing at this to see if we could get some market share? And that's exactly what happening. That company is called Swoop Scoop, and they've cleaned like quarter million yards at this point. They're all throughout the Northwest. It's like, become a really, really, like a multimillion dollar pooper scooper business kind of from that similar inspiration of like, is this the best that's out there? We've had people on the show saying the same thing. Like, I was trying to get my piano tuned and nobody. Like, the people doing it are 80 years old. They just don't return your call. Like, they don't. They're generally not hungry enough for the business to. To go after it.
- [15:03]
Scott Trench
I think there's a lot of. A lot of truth to if you could pick up the phone and respond. I mean, I use a plumbing business to. That's way more expensive than a individual plumber for everything. But the huge jobs because of that dynamic. Right? I'll pay. I would much rather pay three, four, Hundred bucks to deal with a problem securely that I, that I, that maybe I could get for done for 200 bucks than I would. You know, I think it's a great concept and the pooper scooper business is obviously along those lines.
- [15:28]
Nick Loper
We're kind of working through the framework here. If you're that person who's kind of business agnostic or like, look, I don't have any specialized skills first, like, give yourself some credit. Like, if you've existed on the planet for any length of time, you probably have some skills and some might be worth paying for. Like, psychologists call it the curse of knowledge. Like all of us, like, we've been podcasting for years and years and so it's almost hard to imagine not knowing how to do it. Like, how do you structure the show or how do you produce this? It's like, you know, it's hard to imagine Einstein like not knowing basic algebra, right? It's like once you know the thing, it's hard to sort of first of all, you know, give yourself some credit. Go through the exercise of like, okay, what skills have I gotten paid to do? What other people ask me for help with all that stuff. You know, the very first tier is like that plug and play tier where it's just simple, you know, usually app based. You know, you don't have to do the marketing. It just, you know, the notification pops up. Do you want to accept this gig? Do you not? The next tier is what I call kind of like business in a box side hustles, where there's maybe a little bit more upfront work, maybe a little bit more upfront investment involved in like, in this category I would call like vending machines, where it's like, look, there's a proven playbook out there. You just got to go find the location, you got to do the math on the equipment financing and it's there. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. We had another guy who was doing mobility scooter rentals and it was really similar. Like the demand was already there. How do I step in front of that demand? And it's just like, okay, I put them on my marketing hat and I have to make some upfront investment in equipment there. We had another guy who doing like parking lot sweeping where it's like, this is an existing service that, you know, property management companies like strip malls, property managers, like either already pay for and they're happy or they're not happy with their service, like choice A or B, or they don't know that this exists and now it's your job to get in front of them and so kind of like going where there's already demand or trying to create a little bit of that demand. Kind of like that business in a box, like follow somebody else's playbook. I think that's probably tier two of the well, I don't really care what kind of side hustle I start but but I just want to make some.
- [17:34]
Scott Trench
Money Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting accounts and investments, your net worth and future planning together in one dashboard, on your laptop or on your phone. Start your new year on the right foot financially and get 50% off your monarch subscription with the Code Pockets. With automated weekly money recaps and tracking progress toward future financial goals, it's easier than ever to stay financially fit in the short and long term. Monarch helps me be proactive instead of just reactive with my finances. Its AI tools are built on Monarch intelligence and get it right most of the time when auto categorizing most of my expenses. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code pockets@monarch.com that's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code pockets.
- [18:27]
Sponsor Voice
I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking you know what would make this more fun?
- [18:32]
Mindy Jensen
Calculating quarterly estimated taxes.
- [18:35]
Sponsor Voice
But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling and growing get replaced by late nights, chasing receipts, juggling invoices and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five star reviews from owners who say Found makes everything easier. Expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a Found account for free@found.com that's f o u n d dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member fdic. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday how can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored Jobs on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored posts. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results in the minute I've been talking to you. 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com biggerpocket just go to indeed.com biggerpockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com biggerpockets terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [20:34]
Mindy Jensen
I mean you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I think that is what stops a lot of people from starting in the first place is you don't have to come up with some brand new idea. You just have to be better than your competitors. And like the the pooper swooper thing you said they're doing like 250,000 different houses. Obviously it's you know, a whole team there. But one thing you want is rich clients. Rich clients are they will absolutely pay for your services. But you have to deliver and I guarantee you they are dealing with somebody right now in some capacity that is not delivering. So it goes back to your what's the suck factor? If it sucks for you, it's going to suck for somebody else. So figure out what is annoying you in your life.
- [21:20]
Sponsor Voice
How easy is that?
- [21:22]
Mindy Jensen
Just walk around your house and be like what annoys me today? Drive to work what annoys me today. And you will get so many ideas of just things that annoy you. They won't all be jobs that you could do. They won't all be side hustles you can do. But I see that as being a very big inspiration piece to to getting you some ideas that either are different or are the same. You're annoyed because your pooper scooper guy only comes once every other week even though he' supposed to come every week and he doesn't wear a uniform and he sends you bills before he gets there and I'm so blase about this, but it's not that hard to be better than somebody else.
- [22:00]
Nick Loper
It's not even necessarily about conquesting market share from an existing service provider, is that the pie continues to get bigger as elderly homeowners, millennial homeowners who are really busy in the kind of child rearing age of their lives. Like, I don't, I just want, I don't want to deal with this anymore. Like, there's got to be somebody else who can come do this for me. And like you think about the elderly homeowners, I'm not getting up on a ladder to clean out the gutters or wash the windows anymore. It's like the pie keeps getting bigger for those types of like blue collar home service type of businesses. It's not even necessarily like, oh, I'm going to go take food off some other guy's table. It's like just the available total addressable market continues to grow there.
- [22:36]
Scott Trench
I want to push back here on a couple of these concepts because I think for one of the challenges we're going to have here is, is the three of us are very entrepreneurial. I have no fear about starting a business. I don't have issue forming it, getting insurance, getting the website stood up, creating intake forms for clients, figuring out where those people are, searching for those, putting together a marketing campaign that's creative and moving. Like that's an overwhelming body of activity. To many people who are thinking about a side hustle, right? It seems like, okay, that's like a checklist to complete. They'll take a couple of days to try out to maybe us as folks of have done have a lot of entrepreneurial experience, small and large businesses. But for someone who's just starting out, that's a step I believe that's beyond what we're talking about here. And they're, they're going to be more like, well, I just want to like make some money in the next month. That is good. And Uber, I understand I can do the drive for Uber and get all that set up and I'll make, you know, maybe 10 to 20 bucks an hour depending on how good I am at putting myself in position to get demand surging or whatever. But I'm thinking, like, what are other ways to get that first step going? The point I want to get across with today's episode is it starts by driving with driving for Uber or the equivalent. Then it moves to optimizing surge demand for Uber. Then it moves to this kind of like next level more realistic skill for you. Then it moves to A business in a box, then maybe you hit a nice winner like a multi million dollar pooper scooper business. But what's, what's that like realistic first and second step here? Because that's what I think more tangible people can feel on the journey. I think it's going to be much more representative of the typical side hustle journey than these big, these, these big garage door businesses. Even though the garage door can be remote first.
- [24:23]
Nick Loper
Maybe a helpful lens to look at it through is Nathan Barry has this framework he calls the ladders of wealth creation, where he's like, you know, ladder number one is working a job. It's trading time for money. It's, you know, it's simple. It's like where almost everybody starts. And for him, he says, like, I was flipping burgers, making five bucks an hour at Wendy's. That was my first job. You know, tier two is that freelance service. And it could be, you know, Uber could be under this bucket or DoorDash could be under this bucket where it's still time for money. But it's like you're, you're kind of on your own. You know, maybe in this case the apps are delivering you customers and like, maybe a step higher on the ladder is I'm doing my own marketing for customers here, but I'm still doing a skill, solving a problem and getting paid for it, right? It's still kind of like time for money. Ladder three was, you know, how do I productize that in some way where it's like people can buy the solution without necessarily having to talk to me. They click a button on a website and then either I deliver the very packaged service, it's like, I will design you a website with five pages or I'll do your LinkedIn ghostwriting posts for a month or so. You know, something, you know, set deliverable, set price. And either you're delivering yourself or now you've started to build kind of a little agency. Maybe you have other people on your team delivering that service that could be on ladder number three. And he says, you know, Ladder four, where Kit, the software company plays is, you know, software services, it's marketplaces, it is, you know, more complex businesses where it's like much higher level of skill to build. And his argument was like, look, you can skip some ladders, but you can't skip learning the skills along the way. And I think that's the point that you're trying to make is eventually like, maybe I would love to have this, you know, million dollar business, but I'm still going to have to learn the service based skills, the customer service, the billing, the marketing, all of the little steps along the way. Like you can't skip those. Even if I want to skip to another tier. Am I, am I on the right track there?
- [26:20]
Scott Trench
Yeah, absolutely. And so let's take somebody who's, who's starting out and is not going to move up those next tiers. What are some inspirational ideas that we can get started with or examples that you have that are not pooper scooper big businesses. But hey, you're gonna make 12 to $20 an hour doing the basic apps. Here's ones that make 25 to 50 that might be accessible to you. What are some of the ideas there that you've come across?
- [26:43]
Nick Loper
Gotcha. Gotcha. Have we talked about Sharetown on the show before?
- [26:46]
Scott Trench
No, I don't think I've heard of this.
- [26:48]
Sponsor Voice
No.
- [26:48]
Nick Loper
Okay, this is a really interesting one that kind of came across my desk a few years ago. Sharetown is this company that is the reverse logistics provider for, you know, bed in a box mattress companies for exercise equipment, for, I think they do like pizza ovens, like basically like a direct to consumer brand that's selling something big and bulky. They all have, especially on the mattress side, they all have like the, you know, 100 night better sleepers free guarantee and like 7% of those mattresses end up getting returned. Like, know what? My sleep wasn't any better. Take it back. I don't want it anymore. So the mattress company can't like take this back or they don't really want to take it back. They can't sell it as new. So they partner with Sharetown to handle these pickup requests. And rather than just landfilling it, they say, well, you can resell that into your local marketplace, clean, sanitize it, whatever, you know, mark it down for half off for the normal retail price. And because you're a private party seller, like it doesn't really damage the, you know, brand reputation or anything like that, you know, they Sharetown then partners with, with hundreds and hundreds of local reps around the country to facilitate these pickup requests. Like my wife and I, we bought some mattress a few years ago, like before I even heard about this company. And they came, they picked it up, they had a little Honda Pilot with a little trailer thing on the back. And this, I think it was a husband and wife. Like you could tell they had done this before, right? They had this mattress in and out, folded, bag, packaged, put on the trailer in like three minutes. And we're like Dang, that was always impressive. This was their whole gig and they would go around and, and do these pickup requests. And the different Sharetown reps that I've talked to say, look, 150, $250 per flip is kind of the target here. And it could be done, you know, nights and weekends. It could be done as a side hustle. We've talked to a few people doing it full time, making several thousand dollars a month, but that's one where you probably have a little bit more higher earning power. You do need to have transportation, you do need to have storage to be able to hold onto these big bulky items. But definitely higher earning power than a lot of your typical side hustle apps.
- [28:48]
Scott Trench
What about some item activities or items that don't require heavy lifting or big physical exertion? Because you mentioned blue collar for a good chunk of these. But scoop and poop is after probably the third hour. Probably fairly physically demanding to a certain point. Very unpleasant. Moving mattresses can involve heavy lifting or I presume that that job comes with the occasional client who does not put it out nicely in the front step. And you have to navigate a bunch of stairs and all those kinds of things. Things like those are heavy.
- [29:17]
Nick Loper
You can make money doing this, but it is, it is work. You gotta be willing to do it and have a partner to lift these heavy things. One of the more popular ones lately that is 100% online is kind of in this realm of AI data training. So the one that I tested was called remotasks, like remote tasks. But there's also data annotation. There's also one called outlier AI AI and where this is kind of helping the large language models figure out which prompt is best. And if you're anti AI, obviously don't touch this one with a 10 foot pole. But in my experience it was like 15 bucks an hour fully remote. And if you have specialized skills in programming, it could be like $45 an hour. That's one that might be a little more interesting to test fully from home. My experience, really tedious. It's like, oh my gosh, the onboarding was. It took several hours and, and it was like, am I ever going to get through this? I got to do it. I got to do it to be able to report on it. But then even the actual work is like, well, it's just more of the same. It's like, which prompt do you prefer? Like, did this answer the prompt? Did it follow the instructions? Like, yes, no. And it's like, how Would you do it differently? It's like, okay, you know, I could do this. But it's, you know, it checks the box for being, you know, fully remote, something you can do evenings and weekends.
- [30:32]
Scott Trench
Some of the ones that I was thinking about were we had a baby, you know, last year, and we had a night nurse come one day a week. Right. Because we're like, we just want one night of sleep for the first few months.
- [30:43]
Nick Loper
I can function if I just have one night. Yeah.
- [30:45]
Scott Trench
Yeah. It's amazing how much better off you are after because, you know, some nights you can trade off or whatever, but just have one full night for both of us asleep, that was like 600 bucks for each night. And they came and they. They slept in a bed for most of the night and woke up for the baby. That was the requirement with it. It was through an agency. We tried to hire one directly. And when we asked for, hey, we want, you know, a couple of things here first, like, you agreed not to be using alcohol or drugs during the arrangement here, and that ended. That ended up not being a problem for this person to sign the agreement with. That fine, you know, we're going to go with this agency or whatever. But I think that the direct relationships, because we had a bad experience with the babysitter once that did that, and we were never going to go through that again. Stuff like that seems like, oh, if you're willing to work and put in the sacrifice, you don't have to lift heavy mattresses, but you do have to show there are opportunities to show up on site and do those types of things that are not necessarily fully remote. Do you have any more like that where you can make really high dollars per hour without physical labor that's involved.
- [31:48]
Nick Loper
That sounds like a pretty good gig. If I could make 600 bucks a night. And maybe they're. Obviously, they're splitting that with the agency. But even if it's half of that 300 bucks to wake up a few times in the night, like, that's a pretty good gig.
- [31:58]
Scott Trench
Oh, my gosh. Yes. This is like. And you're really providing a service for folks like us like that are. That were. That really needed, like one or two good days, like it was. It's hard to lead a company when you're waking up throughout the middle of the night a bunch of times, right.
- [32:11]
Mindy Jensen
Scott, you called her a night nurse. Was she actually a nurse? Or is this something that anybody could do? I'm assuming that the service will perform a background check and do all of that. But do you have to be trained as a nurse because I can wake up in the middle of the night and feed a baby and then put them back in the crib. I mean, I did that for free for two, four years.
- [32:32]
Scott Trench
There were various criteria that I do not think are particularly onerous. Like infant cpr.
- [32:38]
Nick Loper
Right.
- [32:38]
Scott Trench
Like, like some, some of those things I can't remember. I'm stretching back a year for this. I probably should have looked that up. That's what I was going to as. Like, there's. If you're willing to sacrifice, like there is a real sacrifice, you're going to someone's house, you're going to stay up, you're going to be woken up multiple times throughout the night, your sleep is going to be shot. That is, that is going, like that's going to happen. But you're also earning really good dollar per hour, depending on where you're at. That's more like where I was. I was wondering if you're willing to, if you're willing to sacrifice but just physically can't lift things or get on a ladder and do like Christmas lights, you know, or whatever.
- [33:06]
Nick Loper
I think the broader strategy here would be to find those local agencies, the night nurse agency that you ended up going through and asking, well, how could I get added to your roster of available service providers? Because then kind of similar to Uber, it's like, well, the agency is doing the marketing for you. You're not expected to go bring your own clients. They kind of say, okay, this is your assignment this night. You're going over here, or kind of a regular weekly thing until this baby grows out of this phase. So that's probably the strategy that I would go for if that's the service I want to do. Who are the, who are my target customers already doing business with? And it's like in this case, this agency that shows up in the search results and kind of going through it, maybe the AI tools will be able to help brainstorm what are some of those off the wall or unthought of services that are out there. Because like, typically in the online world it would be, you know, web design, ghostwriting, copywriting, graphic design, that type of stuff. But it's in the offline world. We talk a lot about these blue collar services. But to your point, it's like it could be something as simple as pet sitting or night nurse, you know, something where, okay, yeah, I'd be willing to sacrifice one night a week to make an extra 300 bucks.
- [34:13]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, I mean, that's a big chunk of Change right there. And I looked it up. It's. There are night nurses, but there's also night nannies, niece.
- [34:20]
Scott Trench
We might have done that. Yeah, that might be using the terms interchangeably there. I'm not sophisticated at this point on the, the nuances in those terms.
- [34:26]
Mindy Jensen
I mean, that's not something that I ever considered. But as a, when I was in my 20s, I could get by on no sleep, so I could have totally done that and, you know, cuddled with a cute baby and then put them back down again. Like, that's a great side hustle, Scott.
- [34:42]
Scott Trench
Oh, this person was, this person knew what was up too. Like, they were like, they, they arrived on time, they left, left on time. They knew exactly what the things were. They're like, I'm doing this, I can't do these. These are, this is why. This is how things need to be set up for me. You know, this is, this is how, where, where things need to be. When I. It was great. And it was like, thank you. And we actually felt way better about that because this person clearly had just been there and done that a million times.
- [35:04]
Mindy Jensen
And taking into account we're talking about Barb and Nancy, both of these people are fictitious people who have recently been divorced and they are starting from scratch. They were both stay at home moms, so they've already done this job for free like I did, and now they can go and do this again. Yeah, it's going to be a little difficult at first to get up in the middle of the night with an infant when you're used to sleeping through the night, but I think that that's a side hustle that they could thrive in. And I wish you would have talked to Nick before we had recorded that show because that would have been great to suggest to them.
- [35:38]
Nick Loper
Maybe. Mindy, going back to your point, like, you know, the query that I might punch in or ask ChatGPT about would be, well, what are the services that affluent families are paying for? That. That would really surprise you and this might come up on that list and then you can kind of reverse engineer. Okay, that sounds interesting to me. Number three sounds interesting to me. Are there any agencies that provide that? How can I add myself to their roster in that case? Like this kind of same strategy like my wife and her partner used for their wedding photography business. It was like, hey, we shot at a handful of. Handful of different venues. We really like this one. Hey, email the coordinator. Email the person, your contact person there. Like, what does it take to get on your preferred vendor list? All Of a sudden you cut through all the clutter. The brides are going directly to this venue. Hey, who are you? Recommended photographers. Boom, boom, boom. Here's the top three. It's like all of a sudden all the other marketing channels kind of faded away because like that was driving the bulk of the clients.
- [36:31]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah. Chris Hutchins from the all the Hacks podcast told this story about how he had hired somebody to cook for his family. I have the recipes. I want you to cook this recipe this exact way. My wife and I don't have time to make these recipes, but these are recipes we know our kids will eat. They found, I think it was a stay at home mom who would cook these meals for them, deliver them to them, and she batch cooked them. She wasn't delivering them hot every evening. Here you go. Your food's already cooked. All you have to do is warm it up. You know your kids are going to eat it. And Nick, you have two kids. Scott, you've got two young kids. So maybe they haven't discovered that they can be picky about what they eat. But knowing that your kids are going to eat the food that's on their plate is a huge burden off of your head at every dinner time. And when you don't even have time to make the meal, having time to make sure they eat it is even less available.
- [37:30]
Nick Loper
Yeah, well, it's just the decision fatigue of like, well, what's for dinner, the meal planning time, all of that.
- [37:35]
Scott Trench
Another one here is occasionally my wife and I would love to go on a trip overnight and the best way to do that is during the week and our kids are in daycare. Can someone watch our kids, pick them up, put them down to bed, drop them off in the morning and do that? That would be a wonderful service that we had a lot of trouble hiring for. But that's gotta be a dream gig for somebody, right? Somebody shows up at our house, puts them to bed, watches TV for a few hours, goes to sleep through the night and drops them off at daycare. Like that's, there's gotta be services out there that can do that and that now we can do a trip, just the two of us for that. So those, those kinds of opportunities are the ones that I'm like, I'm thinking are, are out there for folks that are, you know, I don't need a big skill set like basic references and those types of things and show up on time and I'm confident in your presentation. Those are the things I need. But there's a basic Trust there.
- [38:20]
Mindy Jensen
I just typed into chatgpt what Nick said. What are the household services affluent families are paying for? And there's, you know, meal prep and all of this other stuff. But household management or family assistant, this certainly falls into that, Scott. But Barb and Nancy have been unpaid household management and family assistance when they were doing it for their own family, and now they could do it for other families. The key there is affluent families because you definitely want rich clients when you can make somebody's life easier. And, and they have an abundance of money, but not time or an abundance of money and not an abundance of ease of life making that easy for them. I mean, somebody listening to this now needs to start a company that manages household managers and family assistants and like connects with wealthy families with them. Oh, Scott, you've got some time. You said you're. No, you have no problem starting up a new business. Start up a business and hire these household managers and family assistants.
- [39:20]
Scott Trench
Well, my business is interviewing Nick for these ideas on this.
- [39:23]
Nick Loper
So that's funny. We had a woman last year, that was her business. It was a virtual house management service. And it was like, I'm not going to compete with, you know, $5 an hour virtual assistants overseas. Like I'm going to intentionally position this as house manager for busy parents, you know, busy affluent parents. Because it was, I forget what she was charging, but it was, it was not cheap. And so it was just kind of like, we'll figure out the summer camp calendar for your kids or we'll do the, you know, the meal plan, meal prep and maybe even we'll coordinate the instacart or whatever to come and bring it all to your house. It was like pretty smart idea. And she'd grown kind of a roster of subcontracts. She started out doing it herself. It made, I think she started out doing it herself, but then eventually brought on other team members that she trusted to, to be the fulfillment side.
- [40:09]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, and I'm mentioning Barb and Nancy specifically because they have been stay at home moms. Moms and in air quotes don't have skills. You know, they're not going to go out and get like a job that pays $250,000 a year today because they don't have the resume that would support that. But you know, this isn't just for recently divorced women who were used to be stay at home moms. All of these jobs are things that anybody can do.
- [40:35]
Scott Trench
Once you get into are you willing to do reasonably hard physical labor? There's gotta be really good Arbitrage opportunities in your time there. If you can get creative. Right. That one's easy for me conceptually. Right. Like hanging Christmas tree lights, cleaning windows, picking up mattresses and moving them from one point A to point B. I'm sure you've heard thousands of those at this point, Nick, from your, from your community across those examples.
- [40:55]
Nick Loper
Where's the one where I get to mostly sleep and wake up a couple times to help a baby or like.
- [41:00]
Scott Trench
I'm willing to be there, I'm willing to sacrifice. I just can't. I'm not willing to put my body on the line.
- [41:06]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, moving a bed is hard.
- [41:07]
Nick Loper
Yeah, Yeah. I think these, these are a good starting point for sure.
- [41:10]
Scott Trench
Give us some more tools that you've developed over the years. I think you have a, a great AI prompt and spreadsheet and those types of things. What are some of the tools, you know, if you don't like these specific suggestions that we have here to continue to, to generate these ideas that are worth exploring.
- [41:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Do you guys want to run through. You guys want to be my, my guinea pig here? We can do a test. Live, Live test. This is the AI Assisted brainstorming worksheet. If you're, if you ask a general AI, you know, what are some side hustle ideas, you kind of get general responses because that's the articles it's pulling. It doesn't know anything about you. Right. But if you can feed it just a little bit of information, then you're gonna get way, way better results. So if you guys want to. Scott or Mindy, I don't know, it's probably gonna come back with like, host a real estate and money podcast. We can give it a try.
- [41:54]
Mindy Jensen
Let's do Scott. Scott, what are you good at? You are good at running a business. You are good at making vibe coding. This is harder than it, than you. You think. What have you gotten paid to do in the past?
- [42:07]
Scott Trench
My skills include. I've developed the CEO toolkit in growing bigger pockets from X to Y, a hundred thousand members to 3 million between the years 2014 and 2024.
- [42:19]
Nick Loper
It's going to be like, why do you need a side hustle?
- [42:23]
Scott Trench
Okay, okay, let's not, let's not, let's not. Let's, let's, let's make up somebody. Let's go back to Nancy or Barb as the example. Right?
- [42:29]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [42:30]
Scott Trench
So Mindy, what are some of Nancy or Barb's skills here? She's again, she's a stay at home mom who has been out of the workforce for 25 years and feels like she doesn't have any skills.
- [42:41]
Mindy Jensen
Yes. Because all of the stuff she's doing is, like, second nature. So she's a good cook. She is great at managing multiple different schedules, like, different calendars, because she's got to get her daughter to ballet and her son to football and then get everybody home in time to have dinner. So she's. She's good at multitasking. She's good at remembering people's names, which is a skill, let me tell you. That is a really good skill. Her day job is stay at home Mom. Right. Now, what has she gotten paid to.
- [43:15]
Sponsor Voice
Do in the past?
- [43:16]
Scott Trench
She.
- [43:16]
Mindy Jensen
Well, she hasn't really gotten paid for it, but I think that this is a really important thing to note that the management of an entire household paying bills on time, taking the dog to the vet for annual shots, taking the kids to the pediatrician for their annual checkup. Those are soft skills, but they're also. She's great at sourcing things because her daughter has extremely tiny feet. So she needs to get ballet slippers in a baby doll size.
- [43:44]
Nick Loper
Okay, I was gonna say sourcing hard to find products.
- [43:47]
Mindy Jensen
There you go. That's a better way to phrase it.
- [43:49]
Nick Loper
What does Nancy enjoy in her spare time?
- [43:51]
Scott Trench
Nancy's super good at showing up on time and is capable of appearing very professionally, which is really so hard in some of these. These areas. And you don't want to hire somebody to. It doesn't show up on time and is not appearing professional.
- [44:02]
Mindy Jensen
That is a really good point. I mean, your punctuality is a great. A great feature of you, even if you don't think so or don't realize it. Nancy's hobbies include knitting and cooking. She really loves to cook. She loves to price match at the grocery store to make sure she's getting the best deal on all of her groceries.
- [44:24]
Nick Loper
Nice.
- [44:25]
Mindy Jensen
If money were no object, she would like to go to the symphony more frequently and go on bike rides.
- [44:30]
Scott Trench
Not the Broncos game.
- [44:31]
Mindy Jensen
Not that last one. Nick's up in the Pacific Northwest, so he's got a team going to the Super Bowl.
- [44:36]
Nick Loper
Oh, we're doing it. Kids are very, very invested into the Hawks right now.
- [44:41]
Scott Trench
I'm not even sure I'm gonna watch the super bowl this year.
- [44:43]
Mindy Jensen
Oh, you gotta watch the commercials.
- [44:45]
Scott Trench
Yeah.
- [44:46]
Nick Loper
So here's a random, super random side hustle aside. I'm, like, testing this company called Media Probe, where they send you a little, like, sensor you. You wear, like, on your palm or you hold it and they say here's, Here's a TV show that we want you to watch. And what triggered it was the first one that they assigned to me was like the best super bowl commercials of the last 10 years. You know, watch this and we're going to measure your, like, biometric, you know, response to this. And we'll pay you five bucks after you watch this and answer a little survey. So very curious to test this out. It's like, I love the super bowl commercials anyways, you're gonna pay me five bucks to do this. So not a great hourly rate, but a random side hustle that I'm playing around with.
- [45:23]
Mindy Jensen
And is it only $5 or do they give you different amounts for different shows?
- [45:27]
Nick Loper
The two that they've sent me so far have both been five bucks for an hour of programming.
- [45:30]
Mindy Jensen
Okay, okay.
- [45:31]
Nick Loper
When I was a kid, what did Nancy love?
- [45:33]
Mindy Jensen
Nancy really loved being outdoors. She loved riding her bike and playing with her friends. She's not a shy person.
- [45:42]
Scott Trench
Nancy sounds suspiciously familiar.
- [45:45]
Nick Loper
The third component to this is what comes naturally to you. And sometimes that can be difficult to answer. So the way to flip it around is, well, what do other people irrationally suck at? And sometimes, like, you'll see people, like, struggling with Excel, or they'll be like, they have a list of numbers. And we, like, our friend literally was doing. They were like adding up the cells like on a calculator, like in their hand. It was like, oh, did you know that there's like a built in formula that will do that for you? So what do other people irrationally suck at is kind of the reframe for this perceived expertise.
- [46:18]
Mindy Jensen
Okay, so Nancy is very compassionate and very empathetic. People often ask her for help with very difficult, emotionally difficult tasks because she's good at that. She's very empathetic, but she can also compartmentalize and just get the stuff done.
- [46:35]
Sponsor Voice
Okay, time constraints.
- [46:37]
Mindy Jensen
She works a full time job. So let's give her 10 to 15 hours to do this right now.
- [46:41]
Nick Loper
The full time job, is it like traditional normal business hours, 9 to 5.
- [46:46]
Mindy Jensen
And how much does she want to earn from her side hustle? She would be delighted if she could earn $250 a week. So $1,000 a month?
- [46:56]
Scott Trench
Nah, give her 30 bucks an hour. That's a more aggressive target, I think.
- [47:00]
Mindy Jensen
Then she'd be even more delighted to get that.
- [47:02]
Nick Loper
All right, thousand bucks a month. I think that would be. That would be a great win. And so what this does is it magically, you know, going back to Excel skills, it magically Concatenates all of this this into this ChatGPT prompt that you can copy and paste into ChatGPT or the AI of your choice. Okay, so we paste this in to Chatty and it is going to come back with some responses for us that I think are much more personalized, much more telling than kind of just a generic Google search or generic prompt for hey, give me some side Hustle ideas. To your point about like this house manager, like that's going to be the first one that comes up. Up. It's like, yeah, this is the cleanest path. It says to a thousand bucks a month. It's funny because that mental load was the exact phrase that the virtual house manager that we had on the side Hustle show talked about. We want to be your mental load assistant.
- [47:53]
Mindy Jensen
Oh, that's great.
- [47:55]
Nick Loper
Okay, so that's suggestion number one. Suggestion number two, Crisis concierge. Difficult task helper. I need help when life feels overwhelming. I don't know if I love that one as much. Appointment and care coordinator for seniors. High demand, low competition. Big trust premium here.
- [48:11]
Scott Trench
That's really interesting. I never thought about that. I like that a lot actually. That's probably a nice big market that's going to grow over time.
- [48:17]
Nick Loper
Anything senior care. I think this could be, that could probably be a pretty big one. Household ops manager. Name it boldly. It's got the COO of your household. I like that tagline. That's kind of cool. This is really similar to the first one.
- [48:30]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, but these are all skills that both Barb and Nancy could do easily, whereas they are in their 50s and maybe walking dogs when they live in Wisconsin and it's icy all the time isn't the best choice for them.
- [48:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah, and what is cool about this is it like even, I mean it gives example tasks, but it also gives example pricing of like how much do you think an affluent family might be willing to pay for this just to relieve themselves of some of that mental load burden? And it says, hey, this could be easily worth 250 to $400 per month. And now it's like, okay, now I just need to get four clients or I just need to get three clients. And now I'm at my goal and I think that's really helpful. Specialty grocery and hard to find product sourcing was suggestion number five. You know, for diet specific foods that might be kind of interesting. Like if you have dietary restrictions in your family and you're having trouble, like I might pair that with kind of like a meal planning or even meal Prep type of service where you know it's going to be vegan, gluten free, dairy free, like whatever, you know, the dietary restriction is going to be that could be interesting or specific, you know, weight loss, intentional diet that you're trying to follow for that family. Suggestion number six is a knitting business on, on Etsy. I don't know, that could be a little more challenging. But if you're going to be knitting in your spare time, maybe you put some of your patterns up or some of your stuff up there for sale.
- [49:51]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, I had a friend who, Rose, I'm talking about you. She knit at the stoplights. She would keep her knitting in her lap and she would drive and then when the stoplight hit, she'd pick it up and knit. She loves knitting that much. So she was a pattern tester because you have to make sure that the pattern works, I think for like a magazine or something. And she got all these free patterns and I think they sent her yarn and needles too. And that was an awesome side hustle for her.
- [50:18]
Scott Trench
Can we adjust this prompt with my, my thought? Because I'm still stuck on it. This is a problem I always have. But the overnight babysitting or weekend babysitting component. Can you ask a follow up? Hey, consider night nursing, overnight babysitting and weekend babysitting. I'd be really interested to hear what, what that looks like for this person because I'm not trusting like the local high school kid, as great as they are. And they're busy on the weekends, a lot of them. Right? Like, like a high school kid with that particular activity.
- [50:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah. So it's kind of like defaulting to like my local Seattle area. But who knows where Nancy lives. But it says, well, there is demand here. Here's some. Overnight babysitting could earn 100 to 250 per night. So you do that four nights and you're at your income goal or just on the weekends.
- [51:03]
Scott Trench
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:04]
Mindy Jensen
She's, she's working her entire Monday through Friday and then she does it on Saturday or she does it on Friday night because she still gets kids to sleep. Right, Scott? She just has to wake up when the baby wakes up.
- [51:13]
Scott Trench
My kids go to bed at 7:30 to 8 and they sleep through the night. If you want the infant, you could charge more for sure. That's waking up through the night, you know, in the early days. But once the kids are sleeping through the night, you know, then, then it's a very different job, I feel like, because you're, you're basically, you know, like there's a chance something goes wrong. That's why we're going to want somebody really responsible in there. But most nights they just sleep until the morning.
- [51:36]
Nick Loper
Is more than just like the side hustle listicles that, that I've published dozens of is it kind of gives you the next action step. Like if this sounds interesting to you, if you could take on four or five clients and make 1500 bucks a month, like, here's what I would do next.
- [51:50]
Scott Trench
Right?
- [51:51]
Nick Loper
It tells you to get your certifications. It tells you what you might even do for marketing. It says like, okay, I might pursue. There was some note on here, like, you know, post in parent groups on Facebook or start to like, network on next door or, you know, even on platforms like care.com here. So it kind of gives you kind of the next marketing steps. And then you can kind of have this conversation of like, you know, how should I market this service?
- [52:14]
Mindy Jensen
And once you're good, Scott, would you have recommended an excellent night nanny to somebody else in your neighborhood? Once you had an experience with somebody who was amazing, that's it.
- [52:27]
Scott Trench
What you do is you say, is you say after you've delivered a good experience to the person, they're. They're clearly happy with it. You say, hey, would you mind sharing, you know, your review with me in your neighborhood's Facebook group? Group or your nextdoor app or whatever, just share that in there. And you ask that every time. You're gonna get more business over time for some service like this, right?
- [52:47]
Nick Loper
Yeah. With trusting somebody with your kids like this is. And Chad even came back with that right away. Look here, marketing matters less than trust. I think that's a really wise line for it to say. And we've had some guests kind of say something similar. This is a guy like not doing anything with kids, but he was doing college admissions essay prep consulting, like a super, super niche service. And he's like, like, you know, I don't do any social media. Like, Right. I have one strategic partner who does other like college admissions consulting. And she hates the essay part. So she, she just refers business to me. It's like that's all it took, you know, to build the six figure, like, little side hustle consulting business.
- [53:21]
Mindy Jensen
Like, people are happy to recommend people that they have worked with that they love. But when it comes to your kids, moms talk. And moms will talk mad smack about you if you're not good. And they will absolutely sing your praises when you are good. So the moms get together. Oh, it was. I have so many great things to say about my daughter's night nanny.
- [53:47]
Nick Loper
It says it right there.
- [53:48]
Mindy Jensen
What does it say?
- [53:49]
Nick Loper
GPT is like, like he's scrolling on.
- [53:50]
Scott Trench
The screen and he's like chat. GPT is making your point right here.
- [53:53]
Mindy Jensen
I mean we will talk, the moms will talk and we will absolutely recommend. Now I've got, I'm the older mom in my neighborhood. There's a lot of little babies in my neighborhood. So my kids are the babysitter and my friend Sarah is like, oh yeah, hire Mindy's daughter Daphne. She's great. Hire Mindy's daughter Claire. She's, she's great at babysitting. So they have a ton of babysitting just in the neighborhood. Those moms talk to moms in other neighborhoods and it just kind of grows and spreads. So if you're good, your name will get out there. And the same thing with household managers and crisis concierges. Is that the plural for concierge? Okay. So Nick, that was an awesome Google Sheets file that you shared with us. Where can our listeners find that side.
- [54:39]
Nick Loper
Hustlenation.Com bpmoney and you'll be able to download it for free there.
- [54:43]
Sponsor Voice
Woohoo.
- [54:44]
Mindy Jensen
Thank you Nick. That is awesome for all of our listeners. If you are thinking about a side hustle, that little AI prompt is really, really helpful to kick out a bunch of different ideas for you and you know, take it, take your time with it. My skills include start thinking of it now and then enter it in and use it over and over again. It isn't a one you use only thing. Use it over and over and see what you can refine. Oh, these are great ideas except I don't want anything to do with cats because I'm allergic and then it'll spit out a whole bunch of other things. AI is kind of crazy how good it is.
- [55:16]
Nick Loper
Think of it as a starting point, the starting point of the conversation for brainstorming where you can be like, you know, a second thought, I'm already trading time for money at my day job. I'm willing to invest something like don't show me any service based businesses or don't show many, any, you know, client work type of businesses. And it'll come back like, oh, here's some media based businesses or content based businesses that you could try instead.
- [55:38]
Scott Trench
Yeah. And like I don't want, how do I not compete with minimum wage high school kids, right that, that are doing this kind of thing. Right? That's, that's going to be another, another challenge for for some of these and the way to do that is be that next level professionalism, the service that they can't provide the consistency. Those are all area ways to look I think for, for those things. But I think, I think this is fun and I think this is a great starting point here. And I think the challenge is, is how do you take some kind of action even if it's making minimum wage, if you're interested in this or something very small, but then evolve quickly to something that is actually generating a better per hour rate, something that is more scalable, something that is more in the true business world and treat it like an evolution. That was the big thing I wanted to come in with today. And it sounds like this is a great starting point for leapfrogging that minimum wage. First step here is using your prompt and using that to form a better hypothesis than you might otherwise have come up with.
- [56:32]
Mindy Jensen
Nick, where can people find you online?
- [56:35]
Nick Loper
We'd love to have you tune into the side Hustle Show. You'll find it on all your favorite podcast apps and YouTube and then check out the brainstorming prompt again. Side hustlenation.com bpmoney to take a look at. Start playing around with that and see what kind of ideas it comes up with for you.
- [56:51]
Mindy Jensen
Nick, how many episodes do you have now on the side hustle show?
- [56:54]
Nick Loper
720 something.
- [56:57]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, 720 episodes with all different types of side Hustles. There's. If you can't find an idea from Nick's show, maybe side hustling isn't for you.
- [57:07]
Nick Loper
It's almost been 14 years. That's making me feel old.
- [57:10]
Mindy Jensen
14 years. Holy cow. That's awesome. Nick, thank you again for your time. It's always a delight to talk to you and we'll talk to you soon.
- [57:17]
Nick Loper
Cheers. Thanks.
- [57:18]
Mindy Jensen
All right, Scott, that was Nick Loper from side Hustle Nation and the Side Hustle Show. What did you think of his amazing ideas for how to choose your next Side Hustle?
- [57:28]
Scott Trench
I thought it was great and I think I'm going to keep beating this drum a little bit around entrepreneurship and fire because you know, immediately Nick's brain goes to all the business opportunities. Here's how. Here's how to do this. Just put some figure out how to get in front of the demand. It's running a business. It's this entrepreneurial bug that some people, I think me, you, Nick clearly have and other people don't. And it's totally fine not to have that. And that's why I was pushing so hard on. What are jobs that don't require side hustles, that don't require this, like, true business mindset that are just more like, I can just show up and I can get paid a much fairer, much higher rate per hour with even basic skills if I'm willing to sacrifice, but not necessarily sacrifice my body. That was the next piece, right? If you're, if you're 24 and you're willing to sacrifice your body on the weekends, you can make a lot of money. I think if you're, you know, and you're willing to pick up heavy things or, or move them or get on ladders, I think there's a big, big opportunity there. That's obvious, I think, relatively speaking. But I think that the bigger question is how can somebody who doesn't have that, that same desire or ability make money? And I thought that was. There was a really good discussion around that.
- [58:31]
Mindy Jensen
I do too. And I think it's really, really important for you to be honest with your skills, your time availability, your personality, your physical strength. Scott, you might not want to move mattresses, but you absolutely could move mattresses. Whereas I can probably get by with it. But, you know, there's a lot of people who like, that's not an option. Mattresses are heavy.
- [58:54]
Sponsor Voice
They're awkward.
- [58:55]
Mindy Jensen
The Sharetown did exercise equipment. I am not moving a treadmill. In fact, I have a treadmill in my basement, and I did not get it down there. We had to have somebody come and help Carl take it downstairs.
- [59:06]
Scott Trench
Oh, man. Watching the guy move the treadmill was unbelievable. Right? I can't do that. And I'm. I mean, maybe I could do that, but I'm a power lifter at this point, right. I'm an amateur journeyman power lifter. And so that's, that's. Those things can really get big and very, very heavy.
- [59:22]
Mindy Jensen
So that, like, Sharetown might be awesome for you if you're six, eight and weigh, you know, 300 pounds of solid muscle. But, you know, that might not be a great side hustle for the four foot eight ladies in our audience who weigh 80 pounds. There's lots of different options available for side hustling. I love his AI assisted side hustle brainstorm document or worksheet. Again, you can get that at side hustle hustlenation.com bpmoney Download that for free. It is a great starting point. And then once you're into the AI, it'll spit out some ideas and then you just refine. Like we said. I don't want to do a service related I don't want to do a physical job or, you know, I want to do more of this. It's so easy to just get these ideas and then you can really start thinking about and finding and pinpointing something that's going to be a great fit for you. Because a side hustle that you hate is just like a job that you hate. You don't want to do it at all.
- [60:16]
Scott Trench
I love it. I'm looking forward to the next review for the Bigger Pockets Money podcast coming in. Saying I've listened to BiggerPockets money since the very beginning in 2016 and now I quit my job and shovel poop for dog owners three to four days a week. So that's the big takeaway there. All jokes aside, there are lots of creative businesses and if you can find and activities that your neighbors, friends, family, peers don't like to do and want to do them for them, I think there's a big opportunity, especially if you're willing to humber your humble yourself and do the work that nobody else wants to do.
- [60:48]
Mindy Jensen
All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
- [60:50]
Scott Trench
Let's do it.
- [60:50]
Mindy Jensen
That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Minnie Jensen, saying after a while, crocodile.